In early 1992, I spent five weeks at the Costina Hospital in Romania – an exchange visit organised by the West Midlands Regional Health Authority at the request of a charity known as Faure Alderson Romanian Appeal, based in London. The team who set off with me in a lorry, minibus and a Land Rover, included a residential social worker, a medical student who helped me with the assessment of patients and four other volunteers from the charity to help in an orphanage. The journey across Europe was confronted with difficulties at Romanian customs but we eventually managed to meet the Director of the Hospital we were visiting, after a week on the road.