This article was also published in Romanian on contributors.ro (worth looking at for the intelligence of the comments).
When my brother Moona moved to Portugal and started to build an eco house out of mud, stone and straw he soon realized he needed a nasty, polluting diesel van (a small sacrifice he was willing to make on behalf of the environment). We were discussing the issue when driving towards Edinburgh, our home town, and we agreed that the cheapest place to buy a van was Belgium. Both of us had worked in Romania in the 1990s and we recalled armies of people traveling to Belgium and Germany to buy cheap second hand vehicles. The idea of buying a cheap car in UK – let alone Scotland – didn’t even enter our minds. (more…)