01.10.2016-08.10.2016 - Transylvania, Romania

Saturday 1st October 2016

I'm off on holiday!
Our flight is at 06:25 which requires me to take a 03:00 cab to the airport. It is a text from this very cab that wakes me up. Gah!! Hair, makeup and last minute luggage check all complete in 7 minutes. Fortunately a more thorough airport check reveals that the only thing I have forgotten is my coat. Annoying but manageable. I find my holiday companion Brian with reassuring ease at 04:15 and together we make our way through the characteristically cumbersome process of airport security.

At the other end of our flight Dragos, our tour guide for the holiday, is ready to pick us up with my name on a card. Pleasantries exchanged, hands shaken, he then drives us off to Pele Castle.

Pele castle is externally the most beautiful castle I have ever seen. Inside it is plush and ornately gilded. My preferences run to medieval-gothic so the ostentation is lost on me, but it IS a very pretty place. And very interestingly it was the first castle in Europe to have electric lighting and power. It even has an elevator! It has its own electrical plant on site. The guide there was fast talking with a strong accent and I regrettably didnt catch a word but fortunately Dragos met us outside and told me everything the guide probably was saying minus the air of thinly veiled xenophobic pomposity.

After that we B-line for our hotel in Brasov.
Casa Wagner is based right on the main square of Brasov (The main square is pretty much all there is of Brasov tourist centre in real terms, though there are a few more streets of shops and eateries leading from it) The rooms are light and airy with the pine-coloured wood theme I have always found so pleasing running throughout. There is a television - something I come to not take foregranted as this holiday progresses - and coffee is available for self service from the breakfast room down the corridor. English tea proves somewhat difficult to obtain on this holiday and we quickly buy a box of our own bags to accommodate our English needs.

Dragos has kindly arranged for us to join the Brasov walking tour which picks us up at our hotel an hour after we arrive. It is a perfect introduction to the area. The tour guide is Simone and despite her youth is incredibly knowledgeable, engaging and with flawless English. The tour was 50 leu which is about £10 in British sterling and there was too much information to blog, but some of the points I found of particular interest were:

-Most of the street names are of German origin since the Germans were brought in to build protective fortifications around the city in exchange for living tax-free.

-The Germans actually called Brasov 'Kronstadt' (and also Corona) which means Crown city on account of the fact they felt the shape of the city was that of a crown (I didnt see it myself, no matter what map I looked at). Nevertheless, the name is reflected in the cities coat of arms which incorporate a crown and oak roots (typically considered a sign of strength)

- The Black Church is the city squares main tourist attraction. It is not black so much as of muted hue in comparison to the buildings surrounding it, following it being set on fire by invaders in 1689. A mural inside is considered something of a miracle as not only did it survive the fire, but the fire changed the colour of Madonna's dress from blue to black, without altering any of the other colours in the mural.

-The Black Church also houses the second biggest organ in Europe (Giggidy!)

- There is an old Romanian tradition of sacrificing a small animal when a house is newly built in order to give the house a soul. A young boy allegedly fell (or was pushed) off the roof of the church during construction, and some say it is HIS soul that blesses the church. A statue of the boy built by the other workers in his memory now peers out from the roof of the church like a gargoyle.

- Strada Sforii (AKA Rope Street) is the 3rd narrowest street in Europe after some street in Germany and another in England, though it is worth noting that it is just the narrowest of paths calling themselves 'Streets', There are equally narrow paths all over Europe. Additionally, the term 'Rope' doesnt refer to the street being thin or long, but rather to the fact that medieval Romanions lived in districts according to their trade, and this was the rope-makers district.

- The southern "Poarta Ecaterina" gate part of the old fortifications still stands. The four smaller towers standing on each corner of the gate tower advises visitors of the cities right to enforce the death penalty. I do not at this stage know whether this is a standard thing or just a 'Brasov' thing.

- The last public execution was by shooting on 25th December 1989. The death penalty was officially absolved in 1991.

After an informative walk and a very long day Brian and I settle for dinner in the restaurant recommended to us by our guide - "Sergiana". It is incredibly busy but when we are finally seated the food is incredible (I basically opt for a plate of various kinds of meat wrapped in another kind of meat) and the 'Dracula' wine we feel obliged to buy to conform to theme is of a pleasantly surprising high quality. Afterwards we gently pub crawl back to our hotel - stopping for some cocktails in Doctor Jekelius: a medicine-themed cocktail bar. It is not strictly rigid to the theme of medicine, but it does have a cocktail called an antiseptic which is served in a test-tube shaped glass. However, I am all about the gingerbread cookie cocktail ultimately.

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Sunday 2nd October 2016

I have a restless night, waking up throughout the night at varying degrees of 'hungover'. Disorientingly enough I dream I wake up twice before I actually AM woken up by the church bell ringing loudly, persistently and (in my opinion) rather obnoxiously at 06:00.

I toddle off alone for the morning to peruse the local shops, with a mind to buying a cheap coat. Yesterday I was eyeing up an altogether too expensive and unfit for purpose pink bomber jacket at a budget-breaking 250 leu. My plan for the day is to find something significantly cheaper and more practical at the local second hand shop. Brian predicts that I will be returning with the pink jacket. Bored already of his unfounded prejudices I leave without comment.

2 hours later Brian, myself and my new pink jacket ride the cable car up the side of Mount Tampa, bound for the Hollywood-esque "Brasov" sign. The cable car takes us the majority of the way up the mountain but a certain amount of terrifying uphill hiking over loose gravel and steep travel-worn rocks is involved. I feel like I 'earned' my 'from behind the Brasov letters' photo op.
An environmental sign advises that the wildlife we might spot could include: Bear, Lynx, Viper, Wild cats and Wasps. I only encountered one of these things. Can you guess which one...?

At 16:30 Dragos introduces us to Cosmin, a local forest ranger who will be taking us to the bear hide to watch bears from a safe distance.

I think I'm a little disappointed to find out the bear hide is so.... civilised. I wanted it to be an open air platform in a tree, looking down on the bears, so that we're actually out there WITH them but high up enough to be safe. But it actually (and I suppose unsurprisingly) turns out to be a small, lockable, solidly-built wooden shack with a large window watching out over a clearing in the forest with a cow carcass in it. I feel safe. So boringly safe. Time passes and nothing happens. Cosmin's endless knowledge on local botany, ravens and other wildlife starts to fail to fill the void being created by the possibility I might go home without having seen my bear. But then something black and furry starts to amble heavily down the path from the trees. Its my bear!!

Before we leave we see 3 bears (In hindsight there's something rather contextually pleasing about that)

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Monday 3rd October 2016

We check out of our hotel in Brasov. Poor ol Dragos is poorly today and Cosmin picks us and our luggage up at 08:45 to take on a nature hike through the forest.
Cosmin is awesome. He is incredibly knowledgeable about wildlife and plantlife alike and is the kind of guide who give you 110% if you show a genuine interest. I mentioned I had a particular interest in medicinal plants and subsequently I filled 3 pages full of hastily scribbled notes as Cosmin cantered us up the mountain, stopping at just about every new plant to give the name and description of it. For me it has evolved into a bit of a hobby now I'm back home, and the dudes still helping me out with new identifications.

Christ, the walk nearly killed me though. We don't really have all that many mountains in London. I mean, we have about none of them. Uphill isnt really a 'thing' for us. I was embarrassed by how many times I had to stop to catch my breath. Particularly since by that time I think I kind of fancied Cosmin a little bit. Smart is sexy. But it's pretty hard to pull of effortlessly alluring whilst red-faced, sweating, clutching your side, gasping for breath and swearing just a tiny bit.


Dragos is well again!! He picks us up from the end of our trek and drives us to Bran castle, which is

generally associated with Vlad (Dracula) Tepes, but in actual fact was only a place he stayed a handful of times as a child.
Still though, it looks suitably gothic both in and outside. It is surprisingly minimalist inside, all grey stone with few luxuries such as carpet or gilding. It's cold and functional. I like it!
The grounds immediately outside the castle have market stalls full of the expected Dracula related tat. By the road there is a surprisingly small parade of shops given the commercial potential of the area. It is a very quaint and charming little area with a bit of a small seaside resort vibe.

We meet Dragos at the carpark and he drives us to the middle of nowhere for our overnight stay at Inn at Balaban; a traditional guest house in an idyllic grassy mountain setting surrounded by forest. The one road leading to the guesthouse is a rarely used dust track. As Dragos drives away and Brian acquaints himself with the bathtub (yay, a bath!!) in our shared room, I settle myself down in the grass to catch up with my notes. I have never known a quiet like this. It's almost eerie. I find myself occasionally mooing just to remind myself I've not gone deaf (Its pretty disconcerting exchanging a fear you've gone deaf for a fear you've gone mad).

The food is amazing (I particularly enjoy the soups out here) but the bath is the real winner of the evening. I wallow like a hippo until I lose the feeling in my 'everything' then take myself to bed and fall asleep before Brian even has a chance to keep me awake with his old-farming-equipment snore.

My hope is that I will wake up early enough to watch the sunrise from this idyllic setting, but a fog has set in from the forest and settled over the landscape. It lends its own mystique though.

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Tuesday 4th October 2016

We are up and atom by 09:15 as we have a 10:00am time-slot at the Libearty Bear Sanctuary.
The tour starts with a short video designed to tug at the heart strings and to stress all the reasons why keeping bears in captivity is cruel and harmful.
We are then allocated a group tour guide and walk a short distance to an approx. 8' x 10' cage which we are invited to stand in to understand the perspective of a captive bear kept in similar conditions. After that we view the bears in their large but nonetheless electrified enclosures.

The saddest story here is of Max - a bear who was blinded by sticking pins in his eyes so that he didn't respond to camera flashes in tourist shots. From what I understand, the sadist who did that to him got a minimal token penalty for his actions.

It is interesting to see a bear and a wolf share an enclosure in harmony, but generally seeing animals behind cages is always a bit of a sad affair. Unfortunately, the animals here have all been so damaged that they would never have survived upon their return to the wild.

Back in the car Dragos is kind enough to find me a pharmacy as I have been nursing a mild headache for the past 2 days. He recommends Quarelin. Within 20 minutes my headache is gone and Dragos - whether he likes it or not - is my new BFF.

Then we're off to Viscri - A town which is a world heritage centre in its own right. Apparently Prince Charles owns a house here. It is an unassuming blue building at a similar level of exterior tattered functionality as its neighbour buildings. We are allowed to walk around the courtyard but not inside the building as it is currently used as a guest house (yes, this confused me too. The monarchy never seemed so compliant about letting their other properties out as guest houses)

We settle down for lunch in a pretty little wooden shack decorated with a multitude of flowers and Romanian embroidery. Cold though it is at this time of year, it is a dry and sunny day and it is subsequently a rather lovely place to eat in. The first course is, as very often, soup. The main - Pork chops and a flavourful rice with a side of shredded white cabbage. The food here I find is basic but highly flavoured. I want to learn about spices and marinades!



For 8 leu we visited Viscri's fortified church. It's well worth the price just to wander pretty well unrestricted around the 300 year old architecture, but included within the structure is a fascinating little saxon museum, displaying old traditional local garb, tools, furniture and money.

The church inside is small but honest. It has that feeling of intensity only the local churches tourists don't know about seem to have. I don't really know if I enjoy the feeling, but I certainly appreciate the authenticity of it.

Then we trundle across to Crit where we B-line for the Casa Kraus - a high end hotel where we will be 'helping' to make a traditional Romanian dessert. I get the impression this has been muddled together by Dragos to compensate for the fact its too cold for the bee-keeping activity I wanted to try, and for some reason the bread-making isn't available either. The 'baking' itself ostensibly just consists of pouring a syrup over a pre-made pancake and sticking it in the oven for a bit before cutting it into aesthetically pleasing triangles. But it's interesting being behind the scenes of a genuine hotel kitchen, and the staff are kind hosts - providing tea, cakes, conversation and a tour of the hotel while the dessert cooks, and a generous glass of wine to enjoy the dessert with once it is done. My thanks to Flavios particularly for being translator and an awesome host. I enjoyed our chat with him.

Dinner back at our Crit hotel for the evening - Casa du zorelle - consists of an appetiser of a highly peppered pasta and mushrooms, a main of soft meat (probably lamb) and rice wrapped in olive leaves and covered in bolognaise sauce, and dessert was pancakes with cinnamon sauce. The room is large, traditionally decorated and well heated by a large stone piller in the corner of the room called a soba. Our host speaks no English whatsoever but serves with a beaming smile.

Brian and I take a walk around the village but barring a seemingly randomly abandoned horse and cart, a crap load of stray dogs and a single village pub patronised by a handful of hostile-looking locals, there wasn't much to spend our time on. So we went back to our guest house, disparaged the home-made wine, then proceeded to get drunk on it.

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Wednesday 5th October 2016

We wake up to rain today. Since there is little to do in the local area of Crit save the exploring we did yesterday and the bee-keeping it is too wet to do, Dragos will be picking us up at 10:30am.
It's a pity, I really did want to try the bee-keeping.
Well, more accurately I wanted to be able to say I HAD DONE bee-keeping. The reality of the flying little monstrosities being all over ones person was not something I was particularly looking forward to, so the weather-restriction is a bit of a mixed blessing really.

We arrive in Sighisoara before noon, which gives me time to pinball between souvenir shops (before doing that annoying thing of not buying anything at all, and ultimately buying a last minute item in Bucharest later in the holiday for more than twice the price)

We climb the 172 steps of the students stairway leading from the town centre to the church (so-named because it was the route taken daily by the students of the school at the top of the hill. Gah. Poor bastards) the stairway opens out next to the Church on a Hill and its cemetery. It was a pleasant enough environment considering it was a field full of dead people but it wasn't a major highlight for me.

What "I" enjoyed was the museum here. Like so many amenities in Romania, the descriptions aren't in English, so I borrow (**kidnap) Dragos to chase up the multiple levels with me to talk me through the things that aren't immediately obvious. My favourite bit was the very top floor, which opened up into an open-air platform with plaques with various city names and their distance away from our current location. Londre (London) is 1872km away. This would be a baaaaad place to break down.

We come out of the hotel practically on top of Vlad (Dracula) Tepe's birthplace. It's a somewhat wonky sunshine-yellow building that doesn't conform to the theme of the legends at all. Dragos explains that all the buildings would have initially started out as single story buildings, but over time other levels were added. Hence the lack of uniformity between levels. I don't pay the 5 leu to actually enter the room in which he was allegedly born. Generally if I'm paying to enter somebodies bedroom I prefer that person to be alive and at least partially naked.

We walk around the local area, which offers a whole bundle of history. Of most interest to me is the triple gated city fortifications that echo those of Brasov. Basically the invaders would break down one gate only to find themselves trapped in an exposed and restrictingly small space where the home-team would rain arrows and boiling water down upon them while they worked to knock down the second then third gates. It seems like an effective system.

We have lunch. Then we're on our way to Sibiu. We pass through Medias, where we hurtle past a small township of modern red-brick buildings in unusually temple-esque shapes. This is apparently a gypsy village. Is it terribly racist of me to have been expecting a field full of caravans? It is really, isn't it...

We arrive in Sibiu for 3:30pm and I must have been being a pain in the ass because Brian urges me to take some 'me time' and explore the local area (I of course interpret this as 'Go shopping').
Sibiu is a little bigger than Brasov, but with the same laid-back 'resort town' vibe and similarly has a main square as a centre-point. I pinball from door to door, attempting to show some semblance of respect with butchered attempts at the local language. Sometimes I pronounce thankyou as 'Morto-mesk' and sometimes I pronounce it as 'Multo-mesk' and I am under no delusions that either one of them are correct. The natives are mostly kind though, and smile at my attempts with the gentle amusement of a benevolent adult watching a small idiot child attempting to untangle a slinky from their hair.

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Thursday 6th October 2016

Today Dragos is meeting us at 10:00am to take us around the ASTRA museum.
I don't know what I was expecting from something describing itself as an 'Outdoor Museum'. But it turned out to be a large and decently spaced collection of traditional old rural Romanian homesteads punctuating a meticulously manicured green landscape of grass and trees. To my eyes it was a collection of small medieval villages and it bought to life the sword and sorcery books I have always enjoyed reading. I mentioned this to Dragos who advised me he was actually bought up in a very similar style of home. Feeling somewhat embarrassed that I had just referred to my young tour guide and everything he loves as 'medieval' I change the subject to computer games before scampering off to take a whole bundle of photos of the landscape - which I ultimately wind up keeping in a folder labelled 'Medieval landscapes' anyway.

It takes us just over an hour to walk from end to end of the 'museum' and that is with minimal pit-stops to actually enter the homesteads. It is an amazing space. We stop for a coffee at the Inn (which I was quietly disappointed to find was rather modern on the inside - It was MEANT to be solid mahogany coloured worm-riddled wood, and full of the raucous laughter of bards and pirates to the accompaniment of a lyre player) My coffee transpired to be a glass of wine. Yay, holiday!

Dragos drives us back to Sibiu to enjoy the rest of the day at our leisure. Brian opts for a shower and lounge in the hotel room. I take myself out for a walk. Since the local area has already been done, I set out to walk in a random direction and keep going until I'm lost or home. Lost comes first. I find a river. Then I find a market. Then I find myself deep in a residential territory. What was I expecting to find; horse drawn carts and gaudily-dressed fortune tellers? In truth, yes. In reality, I got a whole lot of empty industrial centre, barking dogs behind locked up metal gates, and angry looking elder women wearing headscarves. I turn back and follow the distant church spire back to what I think is my hotel. Turns out to be the wrong spire. Meh. I get there eventually.

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Friday 7th October 2016

Today we have a long ol drive back to Bucharest in readiness for our flight home tomorrow. We're travelling over the Carpathian mountains via the 56 mile long Transfagarasan highway. Top gear made it famous to us British; General awesomeness made it famous to the rest of the world. We stop by the Engineers Gate - a monument built to honour all those who lost their lives in the 5 year process of building this epic road that was completed in 1974. Officially, around 40 lives were lost. It is generally believed there is a much higher unofficial tally.

Two thousand metres up and minus two degrees Celsius, and we reach Balea lake for our lunch stop. It is the first week of frost up here and I have the unrivalled child-like pleasure of pouncing around in fresh and mostly untrodden snow. Dragos leads us up to where we can get a good view of the Transfagarasan. Like an idiot I deviate from his path and wind up in a patch of inescapably loose snow up to my knees. The response from my companions could only be described as 'less than sympathetic'.

The lake is picturesque. The surrounding frost makes it's ripples sparkle. I spend an idiotically long time peering down into the clear water trying to spot the golden trout Dragos tells me are in there, but see nothing. The lake is about 11 meters deep, so the fish are probably in the grown-up end of the pool. Booo.

Back down the other side of the picturesque mountain and after a few hours we finally hit Bucharest.

It's horrible.

Dragos says he's not going to be able to take us to the airport tomorrow so he is arranging a transfer. Gah! No more Dragos? I'm not really a people-person but Dragos has become my little buddy out there. I'm not great at the human connection thing so I rip out a sheet from my notebook with my facebook name on it and mumble some bollocks about my therapist saying I should reach out more to people (I NEED to work on this!) Still, he's on there, so there's one less goodbye I have to add to my rejection issues.

Goodbyes made, we check in. The hotel is quality, if a little more modern than I like. One feature is weird though. After a 6 hour drive I dart through the door and straight into the bathroom. I'm sitting down when I realise I can still see Brian unpacking in the next room.
What the...??
WHY IS THERE A WINDOW BETWEEN THE BEDROOM AND THE BATHROOM??
Fortunately there is also a blind attached to it, but its still a pretty weird bloody thing to have in any hotel room that doesn't describe itself as 'special interests'.

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Saturday 8th October 2016

We're off home! But it's an evening flight to give us time to find out what Bucharest is about. After such a pleasant holiday through the peaceful rural and suburban areas of Transylvania the sudden grey anti-climax of urban civilisation is an unwelcome shot of reality. I can see why the agency don't go out of their way to incorporate it as a pit stop. But it is still a new experience of a new area.
After zigzagging up and down the local streets and a spot of over-priced souvenir shopping we end up holing up in a shopping mall to escape the rain where we ultimately find ourselves in the empty amusement arcade by the name of Funland (The place where apparently Fun goes to die)

Home by 11:00pm British Standard Time. Time to start working out how to avoid my bank until I work my way out of my overdraft.