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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