It’s Bucharest! (Not Budapest.)

Laura and I really had only a day and a half in Bucharest, our final destination on this trip. We started out with lunch at Caru’ cu Bere – the Beer Wagon restaurant. This is a gorgeous place with a huge outdoor patio. A “student’s lunch”, consisting of 4 courses (soup, salad, main and dessert), is served daily for about $6. This was a very good start to a short time in Bucharest.

We left lunch to join an afternoon walking tour. In just a few hours we covered a lot of ground, and heard a lot about the communist regime under Ceausescu from the 60’s through the 80’s, and how Romania has been transitioning into democracy since then. At one point, our tour guide noted how many celebrities, including Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, and Ozzy Osbourne, have come to Bucharest and thanked the lovely people of Budapest for having them there. It’s become so much of a joke that they’ve even created a website devoted to it. Of course, once this was said it was in my brain, and for the next day and a half I was constantly making the mistake of saying Budapest! Very embarrassing.

Due to massive reconstruction during Ceausescu rule, Bucharest architecture is an odd mix. Vast amounts of historical buildings were demolished and replaced with communist style apartment buildings. Luckily, a good portion of the “old town” remained preserved, which features a lot of French-inspired architecture. Most of the grand old mansions and palaces that remain have been converted to museums, banks or high end hotels. Local architects developed a system to move entire churches and other historical buildings to save them from demolition, and they were randomly placed wherever there was room. The end result is a rather schizophrenic looking city combining old and new, beautiful, ugly and just plain weird.

Our last day started with renting bikes and taking a long (2+ hours) ride through Herastrau Park and around Lake Herastrau. Being off season, rental paddle boats and tour boats were docked, rose gardens had already been clipped down, and most of the lakeside restaurants were closed for the season. But the trade-off is that we had the entire park mostly to ourselves.

After our ride, killer fatigue started to set in, and we just couldn’t decide what to see or do next. It also started raining, ending our streak of nice fall weather. So we had lunch and made appointments for a little pampering – it was massage time. The massages were great, but the rest of the day just didn’t fall into place. Luckily, we were able to salvage the day with a late night bite at a cute restaurant in Old Town, then returned to the hostel to pack up, go to bed and get up just a few hours later for a 4am ride to the airport.

I wish we had an extra day or two in Bucharest. Not that I’d trade any time from anywhere else on the trip, just wanted an extra day or two here. The travel books and blogs we read prior to the trip really underplayed Bucharest, and I think unfairly so. It deserves more than a day and a half. I’m hoping to finagle in a 2-3 day layover here someday, on my way to or from something else in the region.

It was raining as we left Wednesday morning. My trusty red umbrella had pretty much given this trip it’s all – but now it no longer wanted to stay open (much like my eyelids at 4am). I decided to give Red its final resting place in Bucharest, and left it on the couch in the hostel lobby. With that, we said goodbye to Romania, and started our trip back home.

People, food, traffic and other random thoughts…

Overall, Laura and I had a fabulous experience with people we met in both Bulgaria and Romania. We had a few unscrupulous cab drivers, but as much as I hate to say it, that is to be expected pretty much anywhere in the world. We consider ourselves lucky that we know enough to know when we’re being scammed and can hold pretty firm on what we think (or have been told) is a fair price. Yep, we just wear them down until they take what money we’re offering and throw us out of the cab.

As far as non-taxi drivers go, the drivers in both Bulgaria and Romania are pretty normal by our standards. No incessant horn honking, lane lines actually have meaning, and traffic signals are generally obeyed. Overall, the city roads were pretty sane. In the countryside, Laura had to navigate around a number of horse drawn wagons, the occasional chicken or goose, and a cow here or there. Most of the major roads between the cities we visited were only 2 lanes, and a constant game of chicken with oncoming traffic is played by anyone wishing to pass slower cars or trucks.

When it came to the languages, we quickly learned Romanian is a lot easier than Bulgarian. First, with Bulgarian, there’s the whole Cyrillic alphabet to deal with. If that’s the only thing you have to go by, you’re pretty much lost. Romanian has the latin roots and uses “our” alphabet, so with a little effort we could figure out a lot of things. We learned a bit of the basics in both languages – hello, thank you, please – to at least let people know we were trying. We constantly butchered the Romanian thank you (multumesc), but it seemed people appreciated the effort. We also learned that sometimes language just really isn’t that important. On our horse & wagon tour of the Romanian countryside, our guide Yurgi spoke no English, and we spoke meek Romaneski (little Romanian). But somehow we learned quite a bit about each other.

The food in both countries had one common theme – giant portions. We really enjoyed a lot of the local dishes, but were leaving about half of our food wherever we went. We had a Romanian version of chicken paprikash, polenta, lots of sheep cheese, and piping hot bowls of soup – tomato soup, vegetable soup, bean soup, pork soup. The pastry and dessert selections were amazing – chocolate creations of all sorts, papanash (fried donuts with cheese and cherries), strudels, croissants, and the list goes on and on. Cheese pretty much came in two forms – cow or sheep. We tried various other cuisines just to mix things up a bit – in Brasov, Laura had guacamole and Mexican tortillas, and the next night I had a delicious spaghetti carbonara.

And finally, the people. Pretty scenery and good food is a great reason to travel, but it’s the people who really make the lasting memories. We met so many kind, funny and interesting people on this trip, people who went out of their way to guide us, help us, feed us, entertain us, point us in the right direction, and make our experiences the best they could be.

Surviving the Transfagarasan Highway

We left Transylvania country via the Transfagarasan Highway. This 90km stretch through the Fagaras Mountains has some dangerous (and deadly) curves. Luckily, we were driving the tamer end of it, the southern tip, from Pitesti to just above Arefu. Our destination was Poenari Fortress, the “real” castle of Vlad the Impaler. Vlad didn’t build Poenari, he pretty much stole it from the last owner, and then made it bigger and stronger to fight off invading forces. I don’t understand how anyone could actually invade this, as it is built on top of a very high, and steep, hill. The only way up to the current ruins is climbing 1480 steps. I don’t know what kind of path was there in the 15th century, but getting up there in full battle gear and weaponry must have been exhausting. It must have been very easy for the soldiers in the castle to pick off the invaders while they were busy catching their breath.

There’s not much left to the ruins, pretty much just outer walls and a bit of the original tower. The fortress was abandoned about 100 years after Vlad’s death, then in the late 1800’s was mostly destroyed by an earthquake. Today, Bran Castle gets top billing as Dracula’s “home”, even though Vlad spent much more time at Poenari, mostly due to the fact that Bran was still an operating castle at the time Bram Stoker wrote Dracula (and, Stoker never actually went to Romania, writing only from research).

Laura and I also stopped in to Horezu, a town known for its pottery and ceramics. We sought out the home pottery studio and shop of a woman whose pottery I bought in Sibiu. The shopkeeper there told us how to find her. She invited us in, even though it was a Sunday and she wasn’t actually working that day, and showed us her full selection. Yeah, we bought a little more. Unfortunately, pottery is not an easy (or light) souvenir to take home, so I had to be a bit picky.

Before heading south, towards Bucharest, Laura and I decided to drive a bit of the Transfagarasan Highway north, just to see what we could see. (I kept screwing up the name, and just decided to call it the Farfenugen Highway for the rest of the day.) We reached a large dam, one that rivals the Hoover Dam, with a reservoir lake. A gorgeous spot. On the hill above is a giant silver statue, holding what looks to be a thunderbolt looking like something out of Marvel comics. Still need to look that up to figure out what it’s all about.

After a long day of driving, we left Transylvania and headed towards Bucharest. We stopped for the night in the town of Pitesti and decided it was a perfect time and place to enjoy a Chinese dinner in Romania.

Traipsing through Transylvania, Part II

In the last few days, Laura and I have quickened our pace and done quite the whirlwind tour of Transylvania. We left the slow pace of Viscri on Friday and headed towards Sighisoara, a few hours to the west. This is the first vacation I’ve ever taken where I have not relied solely on public transportation. Laura and I have been getting around in a little white VW Hi since we left Brasov on Wednesday. As I have only about a half dozen experiences driving stick shift, Laura (who has a manual Mini) is our appointed driver. I am navigator, mobile picture taker, chief information officer (courtesy of google and Laura’s international data plan), and occasional passenger seat chef, cutting up apples or doling out chocolate as Laura deals with crazy Romanian roads (and other drivers).

Driving ourselves around allows for last minute itinerary changes (like we had much of an itinerary in the first place – we are making this trip up day by day), and impromptu side trips. It also allows Laura to pull over and take pictures at her whim.

Sighisoara is a medieval (12th century) fortified town that sits on a hill, topped, of course, by a large Saxon church. The walled old town isn’t very large and was easy to tour in a day. There are several towers still standing, but only a few you can go up in to see the view of the town and surrounding “new” city. Vlad the Impaler was born here, so there is a lot of vampire kitsch in the souvenir stands that line the small main square. You can pay 5 lei (about $1.25 US) to see the room where Vlad was born, and yes, we just had to do it. It was fabulously kitschy – eerie music, strobe lights, and a rather bored looking “Dracula” that greets you in the first room. The second room is now set up like a bad medieval movie set crossed paths with a bordello – red and black material draping every corner of the room, several busts of Vlad lit up in red light, and a large dining room table with heavy chairs sits in the middle of the room. We giggled our way through this, feeling a little sorry for Mr. Dracula trying to keep in character. But if you take away all the silly Dracula stuff, Sighisoara is a beautiful town, and would be a great place to spend a few days.

But we didn’t have a few days to stay. Saturday morning we got an early start to make our way to the next town on the Transylvanian loop, Sibiu. Sibiu was once the center of Transylvania, so holds some importance among the old Saxon villages, and now boasts itself as a center of culture – theater, opera, music, and local festivals. We detoured along the way to make a stop in Biertan, home to one of many large fortified churches in Transylvania. This route took us a little into the Carpathian Mountains, so Laura got to put those driving skills to work!

Our original plan was to stay the day & night at Sibiu, and leave in the morning. But we changed plans and turned Sibiu into a day trip, leaving late afternoon to head to Calimanesti, an hour or so south. We drove further up into the Carpathians on this leg, which was absolutely stunning. Calimanesti is at the tip of an area known for hot springs, around which a number of spas and wellness centers have popped up through the years. The Europeans love their hot springs and treatment centers. We checked in to our hotel, grabbed our swim suits, and headed for the Aqua Park a few km down the road. This is a large public facility, with several hot pools with various water jets for some hydrotherapy (think of the most powerful hot tub jet you’ve experienced in the US, then quadruple it), whirl pools, hot tubs, and outdoor thermal pools. It was pretty full, but not overly crowded, and as far as we could tell, we were the only non-Romanians in the place. Our only regret is we arrived too late to get a massage in – that service had closed for the evening. But we went from pool to pool, soaking for over an hour and a half before having to get out before they closed at 9pm. Relaxed, but a bit pruney, we had a small dinner then collapsed for the night.

Traipsing through Transylvania

Leaving Ruse by afternoon train, we arrived in Brasov, Romania, by train at almost 9:00 at night. Brasov is a picturesque European town, with a traditional city center of main plazas and pedestrian boulevards (lined with shops and restaurants for the tourists). We spent the next morning exploring the city a bit, but wanted to get on the road to hit the one “must see” for every traveler in Romania – Bran Castle, the legendary (but maybe not quite historically accurate) inspiration for Dracula.

Vlad the Impaler supposedly spent a night at this castle, at it has since been associated with him. It is imposing – sitting high on a hill, built right into the rock, it towers above everything. Add to that a wicked wind that was sweeping through town making it nearly impossible to even walk a straight line. The inside, though, was much more welcoming and, well, homey, than I ever expected. First, you were met with a touch of USA movie marketing. Yep, product placement for Transylvania Hotel is the first thing you see walking into the castle. Nice to know Disney is now everywhere. Everywhere. Luckily, after two rooms, that stopped, and what you saw was how the last real inhabitants, the children of Queen Marie, lived. All the walls are white plaster, gorgeous woodwork, iron chandeliers, and intricately decorated iron work were in all the rooms. OK, one room has been reserved as a kitchy tourist trap showing various torture devices (we peeked in but didn’t bother paying the extra fee). But other than that, you walk around thinking, yeah, I could live here.

From Bran, we drove to Viscri, a small town where the cows & sheep, walked through the town to grazing fields each morning and evening, outnumber the people (pop. 400) in the heart of Transylvania. We spent the next two days enjoying local culture. We took a horse and wagon ride with Yurgi, the village’s brick and tile maker. He demonstrated how he makes roof tiles, and then inscribed our names in it. Laura and I will forever be a part of Viscri once that goes up on someone’s roof! We also visited the town’s blacksmith, who still uses a gigantic 300+ year old forge blower passed down through his wife’s family. The blacksmith’s family is Roma, and Viscri is a mix of Saxon, Roma and Romanian. Viscri is also home to Prince Charles, or at least he owns a home here, right in the center of the village. It is usually used as a guest house, but is currently under renovation. Prince Charles visits here about once a year, with no fanfare, and goes hiking in the hills. He has established a trust for the village, which is helping homeowners restore their homes.

Viscri is lovely, and is seen mostly by day tourists who come by large buses to take pictures of Prince Charles’ home, have lunch, and go back to one of the larger towns. We are happy to have stayed even a short time, which gave us the chance to get to know some of the local people and culture.

We spent our last day in Varna, much like the first… in the rain. Everyone said it would be nice and sunny Monday. Which is nice, except that we were leaving on the afternoon train to go a few hours north to Ruse, a city on the border of Bulgaria and Romania. We spent the morning visiting a few standard tourist sites – St. Cyril’s Cathedral (huge), ruins of a Roman bathhouse, and a local historical museum. We stopped in a small café to warm up with some tea, and were entertained by a Bulgarian flash mob. OK, it was really a group of women from a local church choir who sang a special song to one of their group, as it was her birthday. When we said it was also my birthday, they shared their tray of pastry with us and invited us to see them perform at their church.

On the train, we saw our first glimpse of the sun in 3 days. And, then, it was gone. The second half of our train ride was through thick fog. It made the countryside rather surreal, and a little creepy. If we were on the Transylvania leg of the trip I would have been wrapping my scarf tight around my neck.

We arrived in Ruse at nighttime. Ruse is known as the Bulgarian Vienna. It sits on the Danube, and has an enormous central square and plaza area. From there a number of pedestrian streets shoot off, like spokes on a hub, all rows of belle epoch architecture. Pastel yellows, pinks, blues, etc., with icing white trim and decoration. Even in the rain and dark it was very pretty. Our hotel was right on the square. We headed out for a late dinner. We chose a restaurant that we had also seen in Varna – the Happy Bar, which had a #1 rating on TripAdvisor. What we found is that it is pretty much the Bulgarian version of Applebees – very Americanized fare, even quesadillas on the menu. It was the first disappointing meal of the trip. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, but it was a mediocre way to finish off what had otherwise been a great birthday.

We spent our first day in Ruse being standard tourists, taking a walking tour of the city, seeing a few museums and churches. The rain followed us to Ruse, but it stopped for most of the day. Like Varna and Balchik, we were pretty much the only tourists in town, and had most of these places to ourselves. We enjoyed the archaeological museum, as it contained a lot of pieces from places we would be going to the next day, and we learned more about what we were going to be seeing. Laura and I tried to go to a local winery on a hill overlooking Ruse for dinner, but arrived only to find it was closed on Mondays. So back down to the square it was.

Tuesday morning we were picked up by our driver, Hanko, and spent 4 hours touring three main sites. The ruins of the medival town of Cherven, the Ivanovo Rock Churches, and the Basarbovski Rock Monastery. Cherven was amazing – located on a large bluff, it had natural defenses, in addition to the large walls built around the whole city. It takes a climb of over 200 steps to reach the ruins. Only about 1/3 of the old city has been excavated, but the views are fantastic. We spent over an hour wandering around before going on to Ivanovo. In the 12th century the monks of Ivanovo decided to build their churches and living quarters into cliff side caves. Again, a good climb to get up there, but it was worth it. The colored frescoes have been incredibly well preserved. The monks abandoned the churches in the 14th century after an earthquake hit the area and destroyed some of the caves. They were “discovered” in the early 1900’s and are now a UNESCO Heritage site. Our last stop was at the rock monastery, which is still in use. Also built into the cliffs, small chapels are carved into the stone.

The most amazing thing about the day is that the rain had stopped. Finally. Of course, now that it was getting nice in Ruse, it was time to move on to Romania. We caught the 2:30 train to Bucharest, then moved straight on to Brasov, in the heart of Transylvania. Dracula, here we come!

Bulgarian rain - a good omen that's bad for the sole

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My first two days in Bulgaria landed, unfortunately, in the middle of a rather wet spell the whole region is suffering. I arrived in rain, and it really didn’t stop much until about an hour before our train ride out of town two days later. The air damp, but my spirits high, I spent my first afternoon in Varna getting the lay of the land of the nearby neighborhood. Even in rain, Varna has a charm to it. A bit gritty, with an odd combination of traditional European architecture mixing with communist brutalist design. Many beautiful old buildings have seen better days, but no one seems to mind. The city is clean and well kept, locals mostly keep to themselves, but are still friendly. A few words of Bulgarian go a long way to charm even the most stoic around here.

Laura wouldn’t be arriving for another 7 hours or so, so I had that first afternoon to myself. Of course, right as I ventured out to get a late lunch, the light rain transformed into a downpour, so my plans to wander about were cut short. The side streets turned into mini rivers, too big to jump so I just waded through. Stray cats and dogs were scrambling to find trees that provided some shelter, but with little luck. I found a great little place for lunch, and soon had a giant bowl of piping hot tomato soup to warm me up. The “small” plate of sausage risotto was enough to make 3 meals out of, and amazingly delicious. All washed down by a very large Czech beer.

I wanted to wander a bit more, but the rain just wasn’t letting up. So I did something I almost never do on my first day of vacation – I went back to my hotel room to take a nap. The Hotel Splendid is, well, splendid. Centrally located, right across the street from the massive (and I mean massive!) St. Cyril’s Cathedral, it provided us with a nice large room for the next 2 days.

The rain kept coming down for that night and most of the next day. Laura and I took a bus up the coast by about an hour to the little town of Balchik. Our plan was to have lunch there, explore the cozy seaside resort town (off season now, so virtually empty), then go another ½ hour north to Cape Kaliakra to explore the ruins of an old Roman fortress. I had packed an old pair of hiking boots, which haven’t been worn in many years, knowing that we’d be doing some day hikes throughout this trip. I wore them this day, figuring they’d be perfect for the ruins. What I didn’t know, though, is that at a certain point in a shoe’s life span, the glue that holds the leather upper to the sole dries up. Well, you know what happens when dry glue gets wet from walking around in rain and puddles? Total disintegration, apparently. Within 20 minutes of walking the boardwalk, one sole started flapping partway loose. We started asking around if there was a cobbler in town, thinking this was fixable. Within a few more minutes the sole of the other boot just came off entirely, leaving me standing in the rain in a soleless leather bootie. Well, this was going to completely ruin any plans for hiking (let alone just walking). As luck would have it, and a taxi came by just then. Although he knew no English, the driver figured out pretty quickly what I needed when I held up my boot sole. We got in, and in about ¼ mile he pointed to a path that led right to a shoe shop. We gave the owner a good laugh, but in just a few minutes she had me in a new pair of hiking boots, and the day was saved.

We hired a driver to take us to the Cape. Cape Kaliakra is beautiful, even in the rain. There was a light mist partially obscuring the sheer cliffs that provided the fortress with natural protection against invasion. Some small fishing boats were in the Black Sea below us, along with a few huge shipping vessels lining the Cape. The ruins were well marked, but mostly just outlines of buildings remained. We came across a strange find at the edge of one group of ruins – a small pile of bones. We could tell by the jaw bones & teeth that they weren’t human – looked like large dogs, maybe – but it was a little freaky. Laura and I couldn’t tell if they were excavated from the ruins, or something newer (maybe this was once a neighborhood pet cemetery?). After an hour or so, mostly having the ruins to ourselves (another benefit of off season travel), our driver took us back to Balchik and there dropped us off at the upper entrance to the Gardens of Queen Maria. Maria was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who married the King of Romania. At age 60 she used Balchik as her summer residence, with a small palace built just for her, and an amazingly large multi-tiered garden surrounding it. It took us almost an hour to rush through the garden, making our way down many small flights of stone steps, before we finally got to sea level to enter the palace. Queen Maria had an affinity for all things Turkish. From the architecture that inspired her summer home, to the 20 year old Turkish boy that reportedly shared it with her.

We returned to Varna, and explored a bit – yes, in the rain – until it was dinner time. Laura and I made our ongoing travel plans over dinner & wine, planning to leave the next day to get us one step closer to Romania.