Poenari Fortress

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I was up a bit before 7 in the morning to go driving out to the ruins of the real life Dracula’s castle. Now I had made a big mistake in hiring this car that I hadn’t worked out yet.

1. they drive on the other side of the road, which means the rest of the car is to your right not to your left
2. the car was a manual and I drive an auto, so I was changing gears with the wrong hand
3. the map that the hostel had provided me was not so good for driving - you could only read the main roads in the middle of the city, anything else was too small or not on the map - and I was going 200km out into the countryside
4. I was driving a car that belonged to someone else and I was worried about hurting it
5. the main one -> Bucuresti drivers are the worst I have seen

People say driving in Rome is bad but the hostel owner said he drove there for a month OK but still gets nervous when he thinks he had to drive in Bucuresti even after living there for 3 years. Think what you see in South East Asia with bikes going everywhere, constant horns, but replace the bikes with cars. They park on the footpaths, around corners (a common taxi trick), wherever they can find a spot.

They don’t follow the road rules very well. A four lane road might have 6 cars next to each other fighting for space, honking horns and swerving to try and make room for themselves. And you’ll see shitty old Dacia 1300s dicing like this with Mercs, Beemers, even the odd Ferrari. Unbelievable.

Roads will often have 3 lanes on one side of an intersection but only 2 lanes on the other, and often the outside lane will be blocked by the backs of cars hanging off the footpath. So you have 3 lanes of cars fighting and honking their way into one lane of traffic. Which of course leads to a bit of a jam across the intersection by the time the lights turn red and it’s the other traffics turn. But just because the intersection is blocked doesn’t mean you can’t drive right up to them and sit there with your hand on the horn. Why do something like wait until the intersection is clear and you can drive through to the other side?

And traffic lights aren’t the most reliable of things either. At some intersections they work as planned, at others only the green or the red light works, and other no lights work and you go when the pedestrians aren’t walking across in front of you - or the cars behind you get even more vigorous with their horns.

And did I mention how bad the signage is? The signs to go to Pitesti, the second largest city in the country, were no bigger than normal street signs, no big signs like every other country has. Fucken hard to see when your driving on the wrong side of the road, in a manual, amongst a bunch of clowns who wouldn’t know a road rule if it bit them on the arse, with no useful map. Maybe they just assume that everyone knows how to get there? Surely no foreigners would be stupid enough to drive here?

So anyway, set out at 7am driving towards the centre of the city watching for Pitesti signs, some of which I saw in time to go in the correct direction, and others I couldn’t fight my way through the lanes of traffic so had to do a turn down a side street and come back. And that was a whole other world of pain…

When you are turning right at an intersection in Australia, or left for people living in countries where you drive on the other side), you wait for a gap in the traffic on the other side going straight and then you go through that gap. Not quite how it works in Bucuresti… everyone screams out into the intersection and attempts to turn, 2 or 3 lanes wide of cars. The problem is so do the cars coming from the other direction, so you curl around the lead cars from the other direction and straight into the snake following them, ending up in a stalemate. Bit like a ying-yang symbol. Any cars that want to go straight go up on the footpath to get around. And the whole thing is done to the symphony of hundreds of horns.

So it was through all this in morning traffic I followed the limited signage to the motorway out to Pitesti. The motorway was pretty good, looked brand new with some parts still being completed. Didn’t see any cops and people seemed to be driving whatever speed they wanted, so I ended up sitting poor Focus on 140 pretty much all the way to Pitesti, about an hour away.

Once I got I there I was looking for a sign to Curtea de Arges and by luck happened to be in the right lane going in the right direction to get there. The driving here was a whole lot less dicey than in Bucuresti, and I was used to the car, so it was a whole lot less stressful. After Pitesti the road turned into a much smaller one but was still OK.

Had some more strange occurrences like in one small town there was an intersection with 2 roads crossing and no signs or lines marked on the road to indicate who had right of way. On the other road there was a constant stream of trucks going slowly but with small gaps in between where the cars from the road I was on were ducking in between, despite not being able to see what the trucks in the other lane on the cross road were doing. It was crazy.

Eventually I got to Curtea de Arges and stopped at the old church there for look around and some breakfast. The old lady that opens it and lets you in for a look speaks a little English but she might be easier to understand if she had all her chromosomes. The church used to be fantastically decorated inside, it’s covered in (unfortunately old and decaying) 13th century frescos in the usual Orthodox style. The building is close to collapsing apparently and they have had to put in supports to keep things together.

From here I walked down the main road for a look around, got a few looks from the locals as I went along but I was getting used to this by now. Seems a pretty quiet little country town, most people seemed to be around a building that I couldn’t quite work out what it was for, seemed to be a school, and the police building next door. Once again I saw a lot of people crossing themselves as they walked past the front of the church. Turns out that the cathedral was under going some fairly major restorations, so I grabbed some little cake things and a Coke and went back to the car. By now the car park there had turned into a congregation of lappies and they all gave me a stare. There is even a sign near the church that directs people to Poenari now.

From my checking out maps earlier I figured I just stayed on the main road through Curtea and that seemed to be what happened when I followed the sign. Some of the countryside I was going through now was third world stuff. It was the kind of stuff like Borat’s home village in the movie, and although I didn’t see a car getting pulled along under horse power, it was amazing how this felt like a different world compared to Bucuresti where I had been just a few hours earlier. Houses people were living in were falling down around them, people sitting on the road to chop wood, taking the chickens out on to the side of the road because there was more food to eat there than in the yard which was just a dustbowl. Speaking of dust, everything was covered in it… the people, the house, the fence, the trees, the garden, even the chickens were covered in a depressing gray-brown dust.

Had my closest encounter with a horse-and-cart when one pulled out in front of me. I couldn’t overtake as there was an old school Russian truck coming the other way, so it was hard on the brakes, pulling up about 2 feet behind the cart. Then I got yelled at by the old lady sitting on the back, no idea what she was saying but I did notice she only had 4 teeth left. Its funny how some of the carts look like the wheels are about to fall off and the kids clothes are falling apart yet the horse looks all healthy, go decorations on its head and things.

Another thing you see a lot of is people standing on the side of the road wanting a lift. Bloody everywhere. I didn’t want some smelly villagers stinking up the hire car or making the carpet grubby so I didn’t stop for anyone. But never fear, you can fit more people than you think in a 1300. Five people already? No worries, we got room for another. The poor cars could barely move they were that loaded up, and don’t get me started on how slowly they overtook horse-and-carts… I even saw one horse-and-cart even overtake a laden 1300 on the flat.

Despite being way out in the countryside, I wasn’t the only car driving through. There were a number of trucks coming the other way and some big Mercs going both ways. This road is the Transfăgărăşan which joins Wallachia and Transylvania through the mountains, so I was expecting to see some through traffic. Along this part of the road there seemed a lot of B&Bs all of a sudden, a number of them having something to do with Dracula in the name, so I figured I was getting close.

As you get to the base of the mountains you are driving along a small river on the flat, and then as you start into a valley of sorts it bends to the right. I thought this seems about the right place and looked up ahead and there it was, perched right at the top with the valley curling around it. I was disappointed to then see there was a car park and shop at the bottom and a sign announcing it, but then also happy that I was there in low season and the only other people around were some workmen further down the valley. I imagine there must be a number of people around in high season to make having a shop viable.

Parked the car at the bottom and took a few pics before starting up. There was a sign saying how much it cost to visit but I didn’t see anyone around collecting money, must only be in summer. Now I had read a few different counts on the number of stairs to get to the top and how long it took people, so I checked my watch and started counting as I went. After 100 steps I decided it was going to take too long and was too much to count like that, so I went 2 steps at a time. Up, up, up. Stopped at 300 to take off the jacket and have a short breather before continuing on. 400, 500, 600, 700 steps. Another stop for a swig of Coke and take a few pics then on through 800, 900, 1000, 1100. Was up pretty high now and the view back down the valley where the river was flowing away to wasn’t too bad. I could see why the castle would’ve been so hard to take, just getting up the bloody steps was a nightmare as I was doing it, let alone with weapons and armour.

The path had been up fairly steeply until now, when it started heading across to the castle a bit more. The castle is on the peak at the end of the ridge, with the river flowing in the valley down behind the ridge, curling around the end and then down the valley. The path approaches the castle from along the ridge which dips then rises to the end peak where the castle sits. Makes for a great sight as you approach, would’ve been fantastic to see when the castle was in working order.

There is a little bridge across the bottom dip, which is quite narrow and you can look down both sides to the front and back of the ridge, it would’ve made for an excellent defensive choke point. Looks like the railings and path have been updated recently, doesn’t look like the old pictures I had seen on the internet. As I climbed the last stairs and got to the castle proper, I had counted 1420 stairs give or take 10 lost or gained by bad memory when stopping for rests.

It was pretty hot up there. It was midday by now, there was a warm wind, the sun was shining, and I was sweating a bit from the climb. Had a drink as I sat there and soaked in the atmosphere in silence except for the river far below the back of the castle and some birds twittering away in the trees. Checked my watch, it was 15 mins since I started climbing.

It’s not a big castle by any means and not in great condition. There are a few additions to hold it together such as the concrete collar around remains of a tower at the front, which is over a huge drop, wonder who were the poor buggers that had to do that? Actually down all sides was a nasty drop, the castle is bigger than the actual peak itself. Would’ve been pretty treacherous work if you were one of the boyars Vlad forced into slave labour to rebuild it back in the 15th century. It was down into the river below that Vlad’s wife threw herself when she thought they would all be captured and killed when Vlad’s brother was leading an army up the valley to capture them.

There are 2 levels to the structure of the castle, the remains from a previous castle that had fallen into ruin before Vlad’s time that were built in rock and kept as the foundations, and the top half built in red brick that he used the boyars to build. Not sure what kind of mortar they used but its damn good stuff, the bricks are wearing away faster than it is. In a few sections you can see how the wall was constructed with red brick outer walls filled with stones in between, made for some thick walls that would’ve withstood a fair bit of punishment.

There is a good view down the valley and also up into the mountains, which is the Transfaragas highway. Would look pretty cool in the snow during winter but I bet its cold. Going back down was a hell of a lot easier than going up and didn’t take too long. I considered counting the stairs again on my way back down just to make sure I had them correct on the way up but really couldn’t be bothered lol.

Thought I’d check out a bit of Transfaragas highway so I drove the first few kms in the poor little Focus, trying to take pics out the window as I went along. I had read about people hiking it up in to the mountains but I became a bit dubious on that after encountering some more of the ubiquitous stray dogs. The first one ran across the road at the car barking and growling, which distracted me from the second which came bolting down the road and tried to jump up through the window. Luckily it mistimed it from a bad angle and hit the B pillar, but it still surprised the hell out of me. And stopped me from pulling over anywhere I wanted to take a pic.

At this time I was still wanting to get my Moldovan visa and catch the night train to Suceava, so I started the drive back to Bucuresti. The oldies were still sitting in the road chopping wood when I went through their village again. It was a bit strange driving through these old, poor villages signing along to pirate songs on the radio... “yo ho ho, and a bottle of run for me…”. I followed the signs out of Curtea de Arges towards Pitesti and the only 113kms of motorway in the country to Bucuresti, but somewhere along the way they sent me along a road I hadn’t been in the morning.

And it was a nasty road, plenty of large potholes forcing trucks to go over to the other side of the side - several times I had to stop so I wouldn’t have a head on with them. In the UK they have the “A”, “B”, “C” roads thing, but this road was a rather busy and important link yet still would’ve rated below “C” roads I saw later in Scotland. I even pulled over asked if I was going the correct way. It wasn’t much of a sentence really. Seeing everyone seemed to speak some Italian, I said “Scuzzi” and the bloke sitting in the car nodded, I said “Bucuresti” remembering to make the “s” a bit of a “sh” sound and pointed in the direction I had been driving. The bloke nodded “Si, si, Bucuresti” and waved onwards like you would to indicate far away, and on I continued.

Once I got to Pitesti it was sweet, plenty of big signs pointing to Bucuresti. Once again I sat on a steady 140 and was overtaken by some big Mercs and overtook plenty of old Dacias. I got to the end of the motorway and the start of Bucuresti’s suburbs around 3pm and now was when things turned bad.

Until now I hadn’t realised that the map the hostel printed out and gave to everyone was only the very centre of town, and even of that the only streets you could read were the main ones. So I had no idea where I was, the battery on my GPS was flat so I couldn’t use that to get to the hostel either. All I could think of doing was going towards the centre of the city until I came across a road or landmark I recognised from the map and then heading to the hostel.

What a fucken ordeal that turned out to be. The drivers had been bad in the morning, but the same way as it is in Sydney, Friday arvo traffic is much worse. I didn’t know where I was going, I just assumed I was heading the correct general direction as I still wasn’t sure which way was north, south east or west. Not like in Australia when you know the sun in rising in the east and setting in the west… here it is rising in the south east, not getting that high, then setting in the south west. And where I saw some people who looked like they were in a rush ducking down side streets I followed, I figured they were using back roads to avoid the traffic.

After about 50 mins I suppose I saw something I recognised - the parliament. I knew where this was on the map and as I spent the next 15 mins waiting to get to the next traffic lights, I planned out where I was going to go on the map. Which got completely screwed at the intersection when I couldn’t go the way I wanted as the other cars in the lanes to my right started while the light was red and turned left across my nose, which forced me to go that way as well. Bugger. I was screwed now, driving down crappy suburban streets not knowing which way was up or down. Finally found a major road and located it on the map and planned how to get to the hostel. And again I got screwed by other drivers breaking the road rules and forcing down other ways.

This was seriously stressing me out and I would’ve loved to have just dumped the car and walked back to the hostel. Instead I spent 2 hours driving about 5kms as the crow flies, more like 15km as the traffic forced me. I had long given up on filling the car with petrol or getting it back to the hire company office. All I could do was hope to get back to the hostel before I had a breakdown of the nervous variety.

I think I got back there about 5:40pm and felt wrecked. My hands were shaking as I put the keys on the bench and told reception to call to the hire company and tell them to come and pick up the car. “Tell them I haven’t filled it with petrol either”. I ended up getting slugged an additional 30 euro for not putting the petrol in but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to touch that fucken car again. Well drive it in the bloody traffic. The stress levels were stupid - it felt like bungy jumping level stress but for 2 hours, not just 10 seconds.

Travel tip: Don’t drive a car in Bucuresti

So I hadn’t made it to the Moldovan embassy to get a visa. And I certainly didn’t want to now get my shit packed and go catch a train to Suceava. Just the thought of having to face the bloody taxi drivers was enough to stop me doing that. I sat watching the TV with the German girl for a while and thought I better make sure they had a bed for me that night, and to my horror saw 6 people turning up at the same time in reception to book in. after asking Andrea and being told there was no beds left I got more stressed and jumped on the net looking for somewhere else and sat there swearing when even 150 euro/night places were full. Andrea asked what was wrong and I said not having a bed and she said “of course there is a bed for you, we can always find something for someone that is already here”. I was relieved after that.

Had a chat with the new people that turned up, seems they all arrived on the same train from Bulgaria. Four were doing uni together in Istanbul and the others they had met on the train. One was a former US Marine who had served in Iraq, and another was a Pom who had been working in Greece. They were all keen to go out but I was in no condition to do that - I ended up staying on the lounge all night with the German girl. We watched some domino night from England, where 80 people between 16-24 from 13 European countries had spent 8 weeks stacking 4.4 million dominoes in the hope of setting a new world record. And the bloke who had been overseeing it all looked like he should’ve been on the child sex offenders list if he wasn’t already. The dominoes started falling at 9:30pm and were still going at midnight when I went to bed.

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