Buying a used car in Croatia

Buying a used car in Croatia has recently been made much simpler and having been through the process, I thought it would be useful to tell people about it.
The old complex system is out and anyone can now easily buy a used car here in Croatia and get it registered correctly in under a day.
The most difficult thing for us was convincing Croatian car owners that we were serious about buying their car. Most assumed we were messing them about or not serious. It is unusual for a foreigner to buy a car here.
We used Njuskalo, a buying and selling website and Facebook Marketplace to look for cars in our local area. Often the descriptions are vague and you need to go look at the car to get an idea of what it is like.
Once you have decided on a car and met the seller, things become very simple.
Agree a price with the seller once you are happy the car is suitable for you.
Normally, the seller will meet you in a public place, not at their home, this is normal and nothing to be concerned about.
Ask the seller to bring a copy of the used car transfer form with them, they can get it from the paper store and will know where to find it.
Get them to fill out their part of the form and then enter your own details. You will need an OIB (Croatian ID number). Then check the vehicle document that they should have with them, it will note how long the car is registered for as well as details of the car and their address etc. Make sure that they match the car.
Pay them for the car and they will give you the vehicle document, along with any existing insurance policy.
If the registration is not expired, any existing time left on it will be transferred to you. This includes the Technical inspection time and the insurance, so you will not need to buy new insurance or get the car Technical done until it runs out. The insurance is on the car not the driver.
The seller's part is now done and they can give you the keys and the car.
Then you must go to the Technical centre, there is one in most larger towns.
Take the vehicle document, insurance policy, your Croatian OIB and ID card and the car transfer form with you.
The Technical centre will prepare a new vehicle document for you in your name.
They will make a small charge for the transfer tax. The do not need to see the car.
The car registration plates stay the same.

The car is now legally yours, nothing else needs to be done.

When the registration runs out, you must go to the Technical centre and have the car tested, at the same time you will buy new insurance for the next year.

Simple! No longer do you need to have a notarised contract, visit the Police station, pay the tax, get stamps, etc.

Dragon Rally 2009

Dragon’s breath

Not content with riding the 1600 miles to the Elefant Rally and back, I had decided that it would be interesting to travel to North Wales for the annual Dragon Rally, which is held on the following weekend.

We arrived back home on the Wednesday evening, which gave us a few days respite to catch up on the news that in our absence London and most of the rest of the country had been brought to a standstill by some of the heaviest snowfalls in many years.

Milky decided against the trip, I guess he’d had enough snowy rallying for one year. So it was that Raff and I set out alone on the Saturday morning and headed up the A5 towards Wales. The first Dragon was set up by the Conwy Motorcycle Club in 1962 as an alternative to the Elefant for those that couldn’t, wouldn’t or just plain didn’t want to, travel all the way to Bavaria for a bit of sub-zero camping fun.

The format is quite interesting, it’s a one night only event and once you’ve paid your dues, they send you a receipt. This is followed up sometime later by a letter detailing where the checkpoint is for that year. You ride to the checkpoint, where your receipt is stamped and this allows you access to the site. It’s only at this point that they tell you where the Rally is being held. This year they were expecting heavy rain – which is hardly any great surprise for North Wales – so the event was to be held at the racetrack site on Anglesey.

Whilst riding up through Wales towards Snowdonia, I look over to my left and do a double take. I’m looking at a field covered in snow, in which are standing a herd of Buffalo! I grew up in the 70’s and as such, was one of the cowboy and Indian generation. Western films were all the rage and here was a scene straight out of those movies. I expected at any moment, to see a tribe of Indians sweeping down from the distant hills in pursuit of their favourite quarry. Unsurprisingly perhaps, this didn’t happen, but the Buffalo were definitely there. Raff was unable to corroborate this vision, so for a while I did fear for my own sanity, which was already somewhat tenuous, given my current and recent escapades.

The trip was rather more enjoyable, not only due to the relatively clement weather conditions, but also because the roads we’d taken on our trip north and west were a lot more fun than miles of unrelenting Autobahns filled with trucks. The directions to the checkpoint were less than comprehensive, but we managed to find the layby filled with bikes and a small caravan with relative ease; where my ticket was stamped. There was a great variety of bikes and outfits taking a break there, a group of Armstrongs looking particularly purposeful. Raff’s ticket was already on site in the hands of a character known as Sad Mike. We called him but he was on the beer already, so we had to ride down to the site, collect the ticket, return to get it stamped and then ride back to the site again. (During all this toing and froing, we witnessed some truly sad folks who showed up on their bikes, had their ticket stamped, went to the site to collect their badges and rally paraphernalia, then rode off again immediately, which didn’t really strike me as being in the true spirit of the event!) After pitching our beloved Quechua tent (it really does take about 4 seconds!) on what I have to say was really marvellously flat, un-frozen ground, it’s amazing how you learn to appreciate the simple things when you’ve been denied them for a while we went to collect our goody bags and complimentary soup. This is a great welcome to the Rally, the bags contain chocolate bars, a badge, a sticker, a slate coaster and a miniature bottle of whisky; superb! As an added treat, the elderly lady who served up the soup did a really good job of taking the piss out of everyone, she was entirely without mercy and had a wicked sense of humour.

We wander off to find Sad Mike, who takes us over to his camp and shows us his topbox, which has hollowed out foam in the manner of a camera case, but he has filled it with bottles of spirits, glasses, coffee and mugs. I do like a man who comes prepared, he’d even brought his South American butler, Miguel, with him. We’re sitting around swapping stories and generally get into the spirit of things when a man wanders up and asks to borrow a lighter for his stove. As he approaches I recognise him. It’s Tarka, a fellow Ural rider, not an otter, whom I last saw 1,800m up a dirt track in the Italian Alps a couple of years ago on the Stella Alpina rally! Tarka has two Ural outfits, which might seem a tad excessive, but he’s deeply passionate about them, as many owners are, so why not have two? I’ve never heard of anyone owning two Ford Mondeos, but it’s quite a common phenomenon in the world of biking, isn’t it? But anyway, I digress, this is a large part of why I enjoy bike rallies so much; they are all about meeting new people and catching up with old friends, then trying to work out when you last saw each other and at which event. Other people enjoy their rally in different ways, in certain cases this can involve showing their nipples to each other (blokes only, behave, it’s February and the Welsh ladies aren’t that crazy), pulling faces and generally hamming it up. But the one thing that unites all rallies that I’ve ever been to, is the all-round good natured bonhomie that surrounds these events, there is never any trouble at all, aside from that caused by misadventure of course. Everyone leaves all their things in their tents, or around their bikes yet there are never any problems with theft. The only time I come back from a rally without something, is when I’ve lost it and more often than not, somebody else will find it and send it to me. Many people have asked me why I would want to ride hundreds or even thousands of miles to go camping in the snow with a bunch of bikers, I still don’t have a good answer, I guess you either want to, or you don’t. Let’s face it, if you go camping in the UK in the summer, the chances are you’re going to get rained on a fair bit and for preference, I’d rather have snow and cold than rain and humidity; being wet and having wet bike kit in a tent is no fun at all. People say they don’t understand, I say that they don’t need to. I’m never going to climb a mountain or swim the channel, I very much doubt I’ll ever run a marathon (are they called snickers these days?) so maybe it’s the way I measure my mettle, who knows?

Wandering around the site looking at the machinery that people have arrived upon is also part of the attraction; I collect ideas for future projects and just simply marvel at people’s inventiveness. You’ll see bikes at rallies that are incredible feats of engineering and an amazingly diverse range of machinery that you just wouldn’t get at the regular weekend bike haunts. Not for here the rows and rows of identical, immaculate GSXRs, CBRs, R1s and Ninjas (although there was a rather large contingent of the ever present GS BMWs). Of course, as a sidecar fan, these events hold a special interest for me, since a combination is obviously the best method of travel in these conditions and what better way can there be of carrying your camping gear than on an outfit? Did I mention that my new Quechua tent fits perfectly onto a Ural sidecar rack? Consequently there are plenty of these otherwise unusual vehicles present to fire my imagination as I gaze upon them admiringly. One such machine was based on a BMW engine and had been entirely custom built, with a tubular space frame for the bike and the sidecar. It had travelled from Germany and although I’d not seen it at the Elefant, I’m sure it must have been there. I hung about for a while in the hope of having a chat with the owner, but I never did spot him (or her?).

After a thoroughly entertaining evening we retired to the tents and fortunately suffered none of the airbed disasters that had plagued us in Germany, with the happy result that we managed a reasonable night’s sleep. Wandering about in search of morning coffee we were accosted by two vaguely familiar figures, who were somewhat disturbed by their nipple showing escapades of the prior evening. We packed up in the fine morning sunshine and headed off for home, keeping one eye out for Buffalo on the way. We stopped in Snowdonia to admire the spectacle of a frozen lake covered in snow, which was a truly beautiful sight. The long ride home reinforced our exhaustion after what had been a seriously tiring few weeks involving a lot of riding, an acute lack of sleep and a general excess of merry making (if such a thing is possible!?). Many people would describe both of these events as extreme, but after the Elefant, the trip to North Wales seemed like a stroll in the park, especially given the kind of excellent on site facilities in Anglesey that persuaded most people to spend the majority of their time in the bar. It was a bit like going to the pub, but the pub is very far away so instead of returning home, you camp in the pub car park with all your mates and everyone else that was in the pub.

The difference was also marked by the almost civilised behaviour of the rally goers at the Dragon; no life threatening drunken riding here, no fireworks either, just good old fashioned fun. I’m not sure which I prefer, there was something appealing about the lawless Elefant and by comparison, time spent at the Dragon left me wondering whether we have travelled too far down the road to civilisation in this country. At times it almost felt as though the attendees were playing at life, rather than really engaging with it wholeheartedly, free of the chains that bind us to our modern lives. I suspect that when I attend the summer rallies in England, I’ll have a different opinion, as my contrast will then be between my regular life at home in 21^st Century London and time spent in a field with comparatively mad kindred spirits.

No sign of the Buffalo on the way home by the way!

Rod Young

Wemoto News: Motorcycle Sidecars - Three Wheels Good!

Wemoto News: Motorcycle Sidecars - Three Wheels Good!:   Sidecars   They’re as rare as the proverbial rocking horse excrement these days; an eccentric hangover from the days when they we...

Almost time for the Dragon Rally 2013...

Christmas is over, New Years has passed, the next great annual celebration is the Dragon Rally! 

For the uninitiated, here's my summary of the 50th Dragon in 2011 and also the 5th Dragon, back in 1967.  

This year was the 50^th anniversary of the legendary Dragon Rally. The Dragon is organised by the Conwy Motorcycle Club, first held in 1962 and this was to be my third and final visit to the event. Last year was my second and final visit, I’ll see you there next year then. Nobody quite knows what it is that makes grown men and women make the trip in the depths of winter to the darkest recesses of North Wales to camp out for a night in what are often the sort of conditions that would have had Shackleton wondering if it might not be better to stay at home and have a nice cup of tea instead. The Dragon was held on the 12^th February this year. Almost exactly 44 years previously, in 1967, I was being born into this world and a young man named Steve was on his way to his second Dragon Rally. Over 3 decades later I met this man when he filed into a lecture room at a University where I attempted to teach him the complexities of the Unix computer operating system. He was a biker and liked his beer, so we became firm friends immediately.

For various reasons which I won’t get into here, Steve now lives in Hungary where his goats have very little interest in Unix and Steve is more likely to be found re-programming a vegetable patch with spade than a computer. A keen lifelong photographer, Steve suggested that he might have some slides from the 1967 Dragon, somehow he found them and popped them in the post to me. They are reproduced here and what follows now are a few memories from all those years ago. 

“The first year I went was in 1966, on a Puch VS 250 split single. Last I heard it was in a barn in Dorset, very derelict. That was the year of the fine weather. I honestly don't remember if they had the headlight parade the two years that I went. If they did I don't remember going on them. (Premature senility!) The first year I very nearly broke the Puch on the way home. Flat on the tank down from the Llanberis pass with 80+ on the clock and a following gale I tightened it up. Fortunately I got the clutch in before it seized. It was never the same after that though. My camping gear was on the back wrapped in a polythene sheet upon which I had lovingly painted the Welsh flag, complete with dragon.”

“The second year (1967) I went on the 350 Velocette Viper, as in the pictures. As I recall it pissed down most of the way there. Some incidents along the way:

There were five of us. Barry took the lead on his Norton outfit. Mike was on a Brough Superior SS100, then the guy whose name completely escapes me on a Triumph 21 350, then me, then my mate Pete on, I think, another Norton. As I said, it pissed down until we got well into Wales.

I remember locking the front wheel up on the Velo when some dozy tart in a car in front braked for no reason on a wood-lined level crossing. Was only doing about 20, so a swift bit of leg paddling kept it up. Until then I didn't even know that it was possible to lock up the front wheel on the Velo. A while later Barry and Mike went round an invisible right hander that they knew about but us other three didn't. Mike and Barry went round, the guy on the Triumph 21 did an expression of a grass track expert around the verge that would have turned a grass track expert green, but not with envy. Pete and I realised that we had nowhere to go. Fortunately Mr. Farmer had provided a muddy little lane straight ahead leading to a field. We slithered to a stop in there.”

“The Brough conked out in Wales. The rain was so heavy that it shorted out the plugs, which just had the HT leads screwed down on the top. No plug caps. We all pulled up and Mike parked the Brough in the lee of a wall for a few minutes. It dried out and was fine after that.

We had a stop when we got to the top of Llanberis. The guy on the Triumph 21 was moaning about its performance. Barry got on it and disappeared in the direction we were going, only to reappear about a minute later with the Triumph at full chat in third. "Nothing wrong with it" was his verdict.

At the rally Mike's Brough attracted a lot of attention. Including Mr. Plod. Plod signally failed to notice that the tax disc for the bike, although current, was in fact for a completely different bike. I think Mike had about thirteen bikes then, all in the front room of his house. His excuse? "Well, I can only ride one of them at once so I only tax one of them at once" This was the guy that chopped a 650 single Panther into a trials bike. It wasn't a 650 "sloper" any more it was a 650 "horizontal"!”

Steve told me that in 1967 the Dragon was held on the site of a disused slate mine, the ground was so hard there was absolutely no chance of getting a peg in, so he had to search about to find lumps of slate heavy enough to hold the tent down. It was a little different this year. If you happened to place a peg on the ground, within a few seconds it would have sunken into the oozing mud without trace. More mud discussion later.

Fast forward forty four years further on and we find intrepid, modern day Dragon goer “me” with no ticket and only a few weeks left before the event. The 50^th Dragon had sold out only a few weeks after the tickets first went on sale, many months previously. My normal ruse of saying “I’m a journalist, let me in please” just wasn’t going to cut any ice with the Conwy Club marshals so I used my fallback position which was to sit back and hope. Sure enough, a few days later, my Rally mate Tarka, who I met 5 years ago on a gravel track near the top of an Italian Alp, told me that he knew of a spare ticket and I probably wanted it as I hadn’t been doing my usual thing of nagging him about going to the Dragon. He was of course, quite right and the ticket was mine.

The day of the Dragon dawned and was uncommonly sunny and pleasant which unnerved me slightly as more often it’s either snowing or as Steve says, “pissing with rain”. I wasn’t about to let a bit of sunshine stop me, so armed with an excellent windy route through the Cotswolds and up into Wales, through Snowdonia via what is known locally as the Bala Pass, by Llanwyddn and the lake formed by the damming of the Vyrnwy river, created to provide Liverpool’s water supply. Of course, you can’t actually see the village of Llanwyddn, as it’s been at the bottom of the lake since 1889. The Bala Pass is spectacular if not a little dangerous, locals advise not to use it during inclement weather; advice that has been ignored from time to time, resulting in various people going over the edge to meet their doom. This superb route was given to me by a chap called Chris who I completely failed to meet at the Dragon due to a complete absence of any phone signal and having no idea what he looked like. Thanks Chris, you’re a superstar and thankfully my own doom will have to wait for another time to meet me.

It really was a memorable ride, I took my XJR1300 and Motopodd sidecar, which was filled with all manner of things that I would never use, all lovingly protected by superb “Aquapac” waterproof bags and rucksack against the rain that never came, or so I foolishly thought.

Sun is unusual on a mid February day but warmth is asking a bit much so I wore an excellent, if oddly named, Oxford Chillout windproof thermal shirt and some glorious and equally oddly named Held Freezer gloves. The shirt didn’t chill me out and the gloves didn’t freeze my hands, so I was dead happy with that. Photographs were taken by my compact Nikon safely within the confines of it’s “Aquapac” waterproof camera case, a truly wonderful piece of kit which I highly recommend.

Actually getting to the Dragon is a bit of a rigmarole, you get sent a vague destination by post, which is usually a lay-by somewhere near the actual site. Three Welsh chaps in an ancient caravan then give you a ticket and some more vague directions to the site in exchange for the piece of paper they sent you. After quietly observing some bloke necking a bottle of whisky in the lay-by, you then proceed to the site. And immediately wish that you hadn’t.

This year the Conwy Club promised something special for the 50^th anniversary, what they didn’t mention was that the something special was about a million gallons of liquid mud. Presumably because they thought this might put a few of the less deranged rally goers off. In their infinite wisdom and from all of the potential sites available in Snowdonia, they chose to hold the rally in a natural bowl with a river running through the middle of it. I am now very conversant with the term “FLOOD PLAIN” and can describe exactly how one works in practice. They described the site as “back to basics”. I describe it as lunacy. Upon entering the site, a marshal stopped me and enquired as to whether or not I would be camping. Since this seemed to be the whole point, I replied in the affirmative and he gave me a look as if to say “Really?”. He pointed at a muddy slope and told me to go that way. I passed a paddock area that was especially provided for the type of people that pay for a ticket, go in and get their Dragon Rally badge and then mince off to a nice warm B&B. Off down the muddy slope where various riders of solo bikes were having a splendid time throwing their bikes into the mud and picking them up again only to drop them again mere seconds later. I blessed the God of sidecars and rode grimly on past them. Into the FLOOD PLAIN. Oddly enough, at this point I seemed to lose traction, possibly due to the rear wheel sinking up to the axle in liquid mud. Small teams of helpful souls are never far away though, and one led by an excellent fellow named Adge, soon had me over the far side of the FLOOD PLAIN where it was clear I would be camping as nowhere else was available, the Germans and Dutch having arrived at dawn and stolen the only dry land on the site, plus the minor fact that the bike had sunken irrevocably into the mud again. I got off and was immediately surrounded by a flock of people all wearing identical green woolly hats who started questioning me about the sidecar. I smiled wryly and reached for my emergency cider which was stowed in my pocket for just such eventualities.

I couldn’t face the prospect of putting the tent up immediately so decided to call my girlfriend who had wisely chosen to spend the entire weekend on some hellish work assignment rather than accompany me, but the natural bowl formed by solid Welsh granite very effectively screened all three mobile provider signals that I can normally avail myself of, so I was unable to do so and imagined her back at home wondering if my doom and I were having a pleasant meeting. I bravely put the tent up on the sea of mud whilst fending off teams of sidecar questioners and wandered off with several ciders about my person for a bit of respite. I waded over to the marquee and collected my “free” packet soup (give it a bit of a stir now there’s lovely), my Dragon badge, free green woolly hat (ahhh, now it makes sense), chocolate bars, commemorative slate coaster, miniature bottle of whisky, breadmaker, cuddly toy and speedboat.

 Weighed down with all this booty, (and realising that I’d essentially paid £20 for a mud bath and a woolly hat) I soon bumped into my mate Nik, who was wandering about having parked up a huge Boom Trike that he’d blagged for the trip and was scouting out a dry place to pitch his tent. I absconded with his lady friend before we got roped into another mudbath tent disaster  and ushered her into the marquee to get her “freebies”. There was some debacle over whether or not she deserved to get a badge and she was interrogated as to exactly how much she had paid for her ticket, which I felt all added to the general bonhomie and spirit of the rally that I was now basking in. We had more success at the bar however and for some reason it was quite a long time before we saw Nik again. By which time he had his tent up, which worked out well for me and for him as he’d found the last bit of dry land on the site. But the fun wasn’t over yet, Nik asked if I had an air pump he could borrow. I admitted that I did. It was situated in my tent, some 5 nautical mud miles away. Several hours later I returned with the pump having met and chatted to various friends old and new and bestowed upon them a complimentary gallon of liquid mud each, as it ran off my clothes and boots into their tents.

Things looked like improving even further with the addition of some delightful Welsh sunshine. Or torrential rain as we know it. This really loosened up the ground well, which must have pleased everyone immensely. I wandered back over to the bike and wondered if it would have sunken without trace by now. It was just about still visible, but the thought of leaving in the morning after several hundred others had churned up the land even further, filled me with dread, not to mention the fact that my girlfriend would probably have the air ambulance out in the morning if she hadn’t heard from me. I decided to call it a night and had a fabulous nights sleep on an air mattress floating on a sea of mud with tiny streams of brown water flowing through the tent. If you haven’t tried this, I can highly recommend it as a way of overcoming narcolepsy.

In the morning, whilst trying not to think about the horrors of packing up and leaving I wandered about looking at the bikes. I spied a 1967 Suzuki T20 Super Six which fits in well with the story and could well have been one of the few early Japanese bikes that attended back in 1967. I couldn’t get a picture of it as my camera had mud in the lens mechanism from when I briefly took it out of the case to swap the battery. I spent a happy four hours throwing myself into the mud whilst pushing various bikes off the site and after pouring 10 gallons of mud and some brown nylon into the sidecar, I was ready to leave. I just wasn’t sure how to. Various theories about a hidden stone path under the mud were bandied about, but I didn’t fall for them. After a while a fresh team of woolly green hatted people including my mate Nik, managed to get me up and out of the site. A sleep deprived ride home in the rain was marginally less enjoyable than the trip up, but at least my girlfriend had made me some proper soup when I got home rather than leaving me in disgust, so that was good. Nik left for Australia shortly after the Dragon, I can’t say I blame him.

I am not going again.

Words and Pics by Rod Young and Steve Welsh. 

See Steve's fascinating daily blog about his life in a Hungarian village:

Life in a Hungarian Village

New sidecar projects at Motopodd

We're coming to the end of our giant Triumph Rocket custom sidecar project. Full details will be on Motopodd.com very soon.

We currently have a BMW R1200CL in the shop for a Motopodd sidecar to be fitted.
Next up is another custom project, an enduro style sidecar for a Honda XR650.

After that we have a micro sidecar to build and fit for a 50cc scooter!

Motorcycle sidecars for all!

Motorcycle sidecars probably make more sense now that at any other time in recent history. Sidecars provide personal transport at an affordable level without all the unpleasant side effects that having only two wheels can generate. Aside from the cost benefits, sidecars are huge fun to ride and you are guaranteed to get plenty of attention wherever you go.
When you have a sidecar, you can take your motorcycle nervous friends out with you, or even your dog. Shopping or picking your child up from school becomes an event to be enjoyed and no longer a task.
Why not take a look at the sidecars from Motopodd? They are made in Buckinghamshire in the UK.
If these don't suit you, you can ask them to build a custom sidecar just for you.

CBT and test regulations for sidecar outfits

Well here's a good one for all you lovers of regulations.

I have a motorcycle training friend who calls the DSA the Double Standards Agency and i'm beginning to see why...