We had heard acount couchsurfing from a few people but it was the German hicthhiker that really convinced us to give it a go. Basically its a website with people who have a couch or have some space to accomadate fellow travellers. A great resource for travellers as it gives the opporunity to meet local people and also have a free nights accomadation. Our couch surfing host in Timisoara was Rasvan, a Romanian who studied in Timis and is now working for an IT company there. Rasvan is true gent, he had some friends up from his home town that night [View Full Entry]

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When we left Shigisoara we took a detour to visit a unesco fortified monastry. On route we went through many colourfull villages, houses brightly coloured, even had a few kids chasing our van. Scarily, one tried to hang on to the ladder at the back of the van. These were some of the predominantly gypsy villages. Saxons We picked up 3 German hitchhikers. One of the girls was working in Romania as a volunteer (helping the Romani Gypsy children) for the last 8 months and spoke a bit of Romanian. We were also in luck as when we got to the [View Full Entry]

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The myths and legends about Transylvania enticed us to go a bit further into Romania than we initially planned. For those who know me(Shilpa) well, Im not the biggest fan of dark, scary, or vampire stuff so Dara loaded the van up with those extra few cloves of garlic and started sharpening the wooden stakes. This sealed the deal for me, and we headed into dracula land...!! Left my Appendix in Romania.....(Dara) As Dara cannot recall much of his first day in Transylvania I'll attempt to explain the longest 2 days of our trip. Well, we thankfully in hindsight decided not [View Full Entry]

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We really enjoyed the scenery driving around rural Romania. Here are some pics we took along the way..... [View Full Entry]

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From the Maramures we went over the mountains to Southern Bucovina, where there are a number of painted monastries. Weve read the monastries are a few hundred years old, all on the UNESCO world heritage list and have gorey paintings of stories from the old testament on the inside and outside walls. We´ve been enjoying our time in Romania so much that this was certainly good enough an excuse for us to go to explore another region of the country... Due to the lack of tourists up here, there are again no campsites in this region. Since weve been told you [View Full Entry]

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Botiza Botiza is a little village in northern Maramures, off a road, off a road, off the main road. When we got to Botiza we took a side road and found a nice guesthouse where we asked about parking up our van. The said 5 euros to camp in their garden and to use thier bathroom and shower. We had just managed to park the van between the spud patch and the plum tree when our hosts, Alexanderso and Lucia had poured us a glass of thier home made plum brandy (palincă) and invited us to sit down with them and [View Full Entry]

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Wooden Churches, Folk Festival and Mass! The drive from Rohia to the Maramures was to take us by a number of traditional wooden chruches that are on the UNESCO world heritage list. Our timing at the first church coincided with Sunday morning mass. As we walked up to the wooden church two old ladies, dressed in full traditional costume ushered us in, next thing we knew we were sitting in Greco-Catholic mass, which turned out to be quite a fascinating experience. In contrast to the system Im used to in Ireland, it was men at the front and women at the [View Full Entry]

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We started our drive for a region called the Maramures. Reading about this area was really what enticed us to visit Romania. Due to its geography, the huge mountain range, it has been seperated from the rest of Romania. So it really did feel like going back 100 years in time and some of the villages felt untouched by modern times. Our first stop was a Cluj Napoca, a large university town, with lots of cafe bars. We only stopped briefly as we were excited to head to the more medieval Romania. Travel distance by this time we had realised took [View Full Entry]

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We spent the last couple of days trvelling from Bukk national park to the Romanian border. Once out of the hills in the north, Hungary is as flat as a pancake. The bridge over the motorway is the biggest hill we have gone over in 6 hours driving. We have come from one of the best campsites in Hungary in Bukk to the worst campsite in Hungary in Miskolc. The guy running it had the cheak to try and charge us 20 euro (twice the price of the best campsite). After investigating the rusty, filthy cold showers we haggled him down [View Full Entry]

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After a few days relaxing in Eger we headed for the Bukk national park, about 20km north east of Eger. We've enjoyed keeping fit and excercising in the outdoors on this trip and after a few days of relaxing we are always eger to get back to the countryside for some hiking or cycling. We stayed at a great campsite in a lovely rural village called Borsodbota. It was run by a dutch man named Gert, and his wife. A lot of the campsites in Hungary seem to be owned by dutch or germans. Gert was very helpfull with information [View Full Entry]

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