Romania

We left Hungary and headed for Romania! We were truly in Eastern Europe now (all the previous countries try and pass themselves off as ‘Central Europe’). Romania is full of horse-drawn carts on the road, haystacks in the fields (who knew that was actually a thing, and not just in cartoons!) and wild dogs roaming the streets, which we are apparently supposed to avoid due to the threat of rabies. Trying to head into Transylvania as quickly as possible, we made today a bit of a ‘drive day’ – ultimately ending up in the city of Cluj-Napoca, on the edge of the mountains. Being a Saturday, Hayley and I dumped Ernie on the outskirts of town and checked into a hostel in the centre of town. The Lonely Planet guide book warned us that ear-plugs may be required as this particular hostel due to the bars opposite. Whatever – we’ll just stay out late enough and it will be no problem…

We dined at one of the nicest restaurants in town and had some nice Romanian red to wash it down with, the bill coming to the equivalent of a burger and a beer each in Copenhagen. We then had a couple more drinks while bar hopping our way back to the hostel. We had one more drink in the noisy but completely empty of patrons bar opposite the hotel. We retreated to bed about midnight or 1am confident that the bar would soon turn down its music and shut up shop given the complete lack of customers. How. Wrong. We. Would. Be. They continued to blare their music up 8 AM! We had very little sleep that night… (lesson for all of you – listen to Lonely Planet!!)

The next day we were so wrecked, we just moved into a nearby campsite and vegged all day.

(how’s that for a one sentence paragraph!).

The following day – we had a rainy drive to Sighisoara. The drivers in Romania are actually suicidal. They will overtake you, and the truck in front of you, on a blind corner, over a slight hill, in the rain, while towing a trailer. And then the bloke behind him will do the same thing. The problem is the roads are all single lane in each direction, with no overtaking lanes. So be content (as I learned to be), sitting behind a truck doing 60 kph – and at least you’ll live to reach the next town.

Sighisoara (which I pronounce Sigh-A-Sore-Ah, but know is wrong) is billed as a super-cute medieval town, which I guess it was. It has a super compact citadel, which is probably millions of years old and some famous person was born there, but all I really remember was the rain… it rained and rained and the streets were filled with running water (medieval gutters go down the middle of the cobblestone streets, to whatever sorry place is at the bottom of the hill). And the other memorable part was the Roma child that followed us around begging for money for about 10 min. He didn’t leave us until Hayley gave him “the look” and a firm NO. Then he found new gullible targets (tourists) that looked rather American. (Don’t think we are cold people who don’t want to help the needy, the Roma are professional beggars and often earn multiples of what tradespeople do in Romania – there are signs everywhere telling you not to hand over money).

Visiting an ethnographic museum en route, for some beautiful colours:

Was a nice photo...

Snap Dragons

The following morning we made another journey across Romania accompanied by suicidal drivers – ultimately ending up at a campsite in Carta. There is nothing interesting really about Carta other than the fact is sits at the base of a mountain range nearly 3000m high, and that a certain road that Jeremy Clarkson dubbed the best road in the world starts there - The Transfargasan Pass. Sadly, I was informed that the pass was closed due to snow – thus it will have to wait until the next road trip in Romania (with an automobile double to horsepower and half the weight of Ernie…). The campsite was run by a nice Dutch couple, who gave us a small bottle of blackberry brandy as a welcome drink J. Notice for all those aspiring small business owners – what really moves you from a 4 star to a 5 star review are the small personal touches like this!

Our escort as we left the camp:

Our next stop was Castle Bran, home of Dracula. While the story is set in a castle of this name, the place actually has nothing to do with Bram Stoker or Vlad the Impaler, whom Dracula’s character was loosely based on. But the castle is a nice little warren of chambers with secret passages in the walls, and beautiful terraces looking down the valley that the castle originally controlled. We also returned what was apparently a very important stuffed toy to a family, dropping it off a balcony into the courtyard to the mother who shouted, in her American accent, “Oh my god I love you!!!”. I think we saved them from an impending temper tantrum and a frantic hunt all through the castle!

Castle Bran (from the back side)

Castle Bran

Town Cows

The most exciting (read: terrifying) part of visiting Dracula’s town was getting to the castle. We stayed at “Vampire Camping” (original title I know), and had a nice 2km walk through the town to the castle. Unfortunately this walk apparently crossed through the territory of a pack of wild/stray dogs. We had seen the motley group of big and small dogs when we drove in the day before, seemingly led by a small but stout mutt. The mutt now appeared to have been involved in a fight, with some bloody wounds on his face, and he saw us from across the street, and led his crew of about 6 or 7 dogs (including 2 large retrievers) across to us. They surrounded us, and we sped up our walk and tried to stay calm and not think about rabies. They seemed pretty docile, but continued doggedly (ha!) to tail us. We took to crossing the busy road very suddenly, just as a car was coming, so that they couldn’t follow, but they would always keep the pace on the other footpath, and cross to us as soon as the traffic cleared. Suddenly, a large Alsatian appeared on the street, and he was clearly not one of them. They chased him barking furiously into traffic, stopping cars with their horns blaring, into a yard where there was some snarling and fighting sounds, then the Alsatian dashed out and scooted up the street and out of sight. This was alarming, but we were glad they had left us. They had not forgotten us however, and came back to us again, now panting hard, herding us along the street. We got to a bus stop where a local was standing, and loitered there watching him while the dogs surrounded us all. He seemed unfazed, so we continued on, but the dogs moved on with us, now bumping up against our legs and jostling us, keeping us moving like sheep. Finally, we seemed to reach the border of their territory, where they stopped and watched us until we were far enough away, before turning and going back to stalk their streets again. We took a cab to get back!

We went into the great small town of Brasov, which has a town sign just like the Hollywood sign!! Uber awesome. We took a cable car up the mountain beside the town to get a closer look at said sign. Australia, the UK and the US all have this overdeveloped Health and Safety culture – where every little drop or sharp edge or trip hazard is identified and sealed off from the public via a guardrail. Needless to say this does not exist in Romania (or most other E. European countries). If you want to fall off a several hundred metre cliff while looking for the Hollywood Brasov sign – go right ahead! I’m all for Darwinism.

Brasov from above:

Our sleeping place that evening was a very out of the way campsite in Rasnov. Along 2 km of dirt and bumpy road we approached a campsite that looked all but closed – except one camper that was just setting up. As we pulled in, I couldn’t help but notice the GB plates on the other van and blurted out “Bloody Brits” out the open driver’s window such was my surprise… the other occupants of the van heard me and made a very British “I know, we’re sorry!” apology!! Claire and Barry graciously invited us Aussies around for a cuppa, but only after I had assured Barry that only Hayley was a convict. The cuppa turned into dinner, which turned into us decimating our hosts’ liquor cabinet… it was a great night had by all.

The next morning we didn’t do much except for nursing hangovers… we eventually packed up and said our farewells to our new friends with promises to bring the booze next time we ran into them. A slow drive down the mountains and onto the plain towards the capital, Bucharest, awaited.

Bucharest is pretty much everything Budapest is not. It’s Ugly, Dirty and Distinctly Untouristy. It did have some charms, however. We stumbled into an excellent coffee joint on some backstreet that served Australian style flat whites as good as you’ll find in any hipster joint in Melbourne. We talked to the owner about the good coffee and his comment to us being Australian was “ah, the third wave”…which we had to later google. And yes, we are 3rd wave coffee people indeed (google it!)

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Next stop was the behemoth “Palace of Parliament’, which is the second largest building in the world and it earns that title with huge state rooms, massive staircases and ungodly ballrooms. It feels like a cross between a hospital and an airport, with the décor of a palace, simply because those are the only other buildings we’ve ever experienced on this kind of scale. Unfortunately, the electricity bills are so high they only turn on half the lights, so the interiors are in shadows. Probably a good thing as only the BIG rooms are grandiose, the regular halls, staircases, offices, toilets etc that make up most of the building are a sea of ceiling tiles, bad paintwork and fluorescent lighting. It is a dead dictator’s folly, but at least it’s getting some use today, and is certainly worth a visit.

What Bucharest is good at is drinking – they have a complex of streets devoted solely to this activity. At a fake beach in the heart of town, we ate baklava and tried some local cider, followed by cocktails at a fancy rooftop place. This country is so full of contrasts – we were sitting with drinks costing an arm and a leg on a local salary, in a place with flocked wallpaper and chandeliers, while the building across was an abandoned shell in ruins. Over dinner at a vegetarian restaurant as we watched the revellers surge past, stag parties and all. Took a crazy taxi ride through town back to the campsite (they really like to lean on the horn here). We only spent the 1 day in Bucharest, which was probably enough.

We were up early the next day and made a break for the border with Bulgaria. After our previous 2 hour wait to get into Romania, we were expecting similar lines waiting to get into our next country. Instead what we got us the most relaxed border control official ever, who took a cursory glance at our passports and waved us on… little did we know the issues not getting a Bulgarian stamp would cause us upon entry into Greece…