Finishing Romania

Our last day, and the last little history anecdote. The Transfagarasan Road. Beautiful, amazing, wild, very long, very high, very steep -and yet there were intrepid bicyclists.  80 hairpin turns and switchbacks, tunnels,bridges,  long S turns, a huge dam,  and bears! It was built on the whim of the Communist dictator Ceaușescu, because he feared a Soviet invasion. He wanted a “fast” route to the mountains of Transylvania so he just put a finger on the map and said to build it there. Very, very costly in money and lives. He never needed it after all. There was no invasion and when the revolution came on 12/22/89, he and his wife were tried and executed 3 days later on Christmas Day. He was a very bad man, but he did leave a heck of a tourist attraction behind. 

And then we get to our hotel, ask for a room with a view and this is what we get. Call us Rodney Dangerfield…no respect!

Uh oh, here we go again!

 As we started out to take the Transfagarasan Rd, we programmed the car nav system to a small village at the start of the road. This lovely British voice guided us there, but since we weren’t really heading for the village, just the highway, we no longer needed her. But she wouldn’t shut up! Take the next right.  Ignore. Take the next right. Ignore. So on and on. We couldn’t figure out how to cancel the route, so we ultimately gave in and followed her until she said we reached our destination. This is where she took us!

And finally -  our destination!  Wonder what’s for lunch.

The Griswolds embarrass themselves in Transylvania

What a day! Ok, we managed to get thru most of the day without putting a foot in our mouth, but no day would be complete without our doing something to cause a native to just give us “the stare”.

But before I get to that point, there was one unexpected serendipity. As we were headed to Bran Castle (which, contrary to everything you have heard, had nothing whatsoever to do with Dracula or Vlad the Impaler) our GPS offered a shortcut which turned out to be anything but. We ended up on an unpaved road, in the middle of a small town, and ran smack into a detour. But we did stumble upon the filming location of Nevermore School from the Netflix series “Wednesday”. Pure serendipity! 

And we did have a nice visit at Bran Castle where fortunately nobody noticed us driving the wrong way down a one way street! 

That was on Brian, but the next two were on me. When we checked into our hotel tonight I had to fill out a detailed form. As asked, I wrote down my birthday- 29/09/1948. But when the blank came to write down our arrival and departure dates I just automatically wrote 29/09/1948 and followed with 30/09/1948. 

Then tonight when we went to dinner there were 2 men dressed in black at the front door. I asked the first one very nicely for a table for 2, and that’s when I got the first stare. So I turned to the other one and asked him. And got the second stare. That’s when the first guy coldly said, “We’re the musicians.”

 

Pictures are Bran Castle.

 

Bulgaria!

For some unknown reason, I have always pictured Bulgaria and its people in an unflattering way - oppressive; big, burly, and thuggish; primitive; and a little frightening.  With one exception, nothing I saw yesterday was like that.  The part that I saw was charming, the people were friendly, and (my benchmark standard), the restrooms were all modern and pristine. 

The one exception was the border crossing. Oh, there were no menacing soldiers, dressed in black and carrying automatic weapons (like Israel), but the border between Romania and Bulgaria isn’t open like most European borders are.  The first clue are the trucks trying to cross. They are lined up for miles on both sides, just parked. They have to be weighed, inspected, and all documents thoroughly checked and they are sometimes waiting for days or even weeks to cross. Our small tourist bus sat at the border, both ways, for 5 - 10 minutes while our  passports were examined. 

Ironically, the bridge over the Danube, which is the border, is named the Friendship Bridge and was built primarily by the KGB so tanks could cross. 

 After the fall of communism (when most people could not own homes), everyone wanted to buy a house. Now 80% of Romanians and 92% of Bulgarians own their homes. What fascinates me, because I don’t get it, is that most homes in Bulgaria have televisions but not refrigerators.

Our first stop on a 13 hour Bulgarian

tour, was a monastery built into a rock. It was very pretty, but the experience was memorable because the fellow sitting in front of me became so sick that his panicked wife and I both thought he was dying. She was pleading in rapid fire Arabic as she tried to rouse him from what looked like a diabetic coma onset. Brian turned on his Google translate and we learned that she was beseeching Allah and at the same time blaming her husband for eating too much sugar and smoking.

An ambulance was called and the attendants both had that burly build I had expected of Bulgarians, but were so kind and gentle that my imagined stereotypes were instantly shattered. They took him to the ambulance and no one was sure what they did to him, but he emerged awake and mobile and was able to continue the tour.  

Pictures are of the monastery, the fortress which protected the medieval town of Veliko Tarnova, and us taking a break in a garden restaurant.

For our last two days in Romania, we are renting a car and will be exploring Transylvania  and Dracula country.  Cue the menacing organ music. Bwahahaha!

Bucharest, Romania

 Bucharest is a lovely city that looks older than it actually is. Much of the downtown area resembles cities that were built 100 to 150 years ago, but was actually built within the past 50 years. This is due to a couple of factors; a devastating earthquake in 1977 and the communist regime from 1947 to 1989. 

Following the earthquake, the Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu, tore down a large section of the old town to start construction on what eventually became the Parliament Palace. This building was built between 1984 and 1997 and is the second heaviest in the world (after the pyramids) as well as the 2nd largest administrative building ( after the Pentagon). The street in front of it was designed to be a small Champs - Elysee, but the buildings are based on the architecture of Pyongyang. There is also an Arc d’Triumph in a different part of the city. Over the years following the end of Communism, Bucharest has evolved from being a heavy industrial city to become a service based city.

I definitely think that being a Tuk tuk driver here takes nerves of steel as traffic is heavy and scary.

The Parliament Palace

Brian and our guide, Valentine in front of the street based on the North Korean capital. 

A new private home designed as a copy of the Rodin Museum in Paris.

A private home in the traditional Romanian style.

We’re not in Kansas anymore …

 And so it begins! It’s a very long way from Jacksonville to Bucharest but we are here now and hopefully, by tomorrow, we’ll be raring to go.  When we checked into our hotel, the desk clerk misunderstood our name, and checked us in under a totally different name. I only realized it when she handed me the print out and I saw that the name on it was some Danish fellow. Once we got that straight, she realized that our room was on the 7th floor but the elevator only went to the 6th floor. No idea why it was built like that , but she switched us to the 3rd floor, and started giving us instructions on how to enter and exit the hotel with our key. Next came the instructions on how to work the elevator, which is so tiny that we had to make separate trips. So I go first, ride up to our floor, but can’t get the door opened. So back down I go, to the shock of Brian and the clerk who had forgotten to give me the one most important instruction — how to open the elevator door! As soon as the inner door opened, you had to double press on your correct floor number and then push on the outer door. Like Charlie on the MTA, I would have been riding that thing up and down and up and down all night because I wouldn’t have ever guessed how to get that blankety blank door open. 

Then it was time to venture out for our first Romanian dinner. But what was on the menu? Pizza, wings, burgers, guacamole and chips, and quesadillas!  And we missed Dick ‘s Wings for this!

 Let’s see…this time next week we will be in …?

Yep, it’s “hit the road time again” and in five days we are off for our first time visit to Eastern Europe. Just  like the Griswolds, we venture forth expecting to follow a plan, act like sophisticated world travelers and calmly and creatively handle any unexpected problems.  But, just like the Griswolds, things rarely go according to our plans, sometimes with funny results. 

Through this blog, I’ll share our good times, bad times, funny times, and whatever interesting background tidbits I learn about the places we see and the people we meet. 

So, in answer to the first question, this time next week, we will be exploring Bucharest, Romania…in (of all things) a tuk tuk! Join us please!