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Published: June 19th 2007
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Above Sinaia
We went hill climbing. The hills are bigger in Romania. And higher. This is at about 2000m. Although I write this from Hungary, Several days later, Medias is the last town in Romania we visited, so is dated and placed from there.
"Do they have running hot water here?" Has become a by-word for the dumb, pointless question.
Our route ran to Brasov, then Sibiu via public transport, then piking up a car in sibiu (Cultural Capital of the EU, 2007), we made our way to Sighishoara, then to Suceava, then Bistritsa, then back to Sighisoara, Sibiu and Medias, to drop the car off and pick up a train to Budapest.
As you can imagine, every town was beautiful. special Kudos must go to sibiu (lots of old buildings with pretty coloured rooves), and to Sighisoara, which looked exactly like a picture postcard, only bigger. Really. It looked more like fairy land.
In Brasov we also took day trips to Peles castle, Bran and Rasnov. Peles Castle is an 19th Century masterpiece of beauty and taste. It looks like a fairytale castle, but I feel guilty praising it and damning the Peoples Palace, as both took money away from the people to build for the few. In Peles' case, the royal family
of romania: a relatively short-lived family of only four generations. Although Romania has a long, good history of Inherited Autocracies, mostly there were three of them: Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldova. Vlad Tsepesh was the Ruling Prince of Wallachia. And rather fond of Impaling Turks, but that's nothing unusual for his age. His Contemporary in Moldova, (Saint!) Stephan the great, once impaled 300 Turks upon the same stake. transylvania, the romanians are rather quiet about, but that could be something to dowith it's Ruling family being the Hapsburgs for far too long, and the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire for a bit as well.
Bran Castle was beautiful, and thankfully, devoid of Dracula leitmotif. Except outside, in cheesy t-shirts and ashtrays. This is a good thing, as it is doubtful whether Vlad Tepes himself ever visited Bran, and even the myth by Bram Stoker was set a fair way further north.
In Brasov I ran into someone I had met in Zagreb (whose name I can't remeber, Help me, Karen, it was the guy with the Tattoo up his knee); he'd come chasing the legend, and was bitterly disappointed.
Rasnov was very pretty, a walled town that reminded
Secret Staircase
With Sal and Emile me of Ait Benhaddou in Morocco.
We started driving after we got to Sibiu, and I can't tell you how glad I am that we didn't try the Brasov-Sibiu road by ourselves. A trip that took the train an hour and a half (and Romanian 'Personal' trains are renowned for being slow) took us three hours. And if we'd not ignored the red lights for roadworks, may have taken five.
but we took a day to travel between Sibiu and Sighisoara, to visit the Famous Saxon Fortified Churches. Or I should say, between Hermannstadt and Schaessburg are the famous Sachsen Kirchenburg.
Or maybe it is: between Nagyszeben and Segesvár...
The area was settled by the conquering Hungarians in the 12th Century, and they brought in the Sachsen settlers, as a buffer between Hungary and the Turks (didn't work, but. Romania became a Vassal state (indirect administration), and most of Hungary itself came under direct administration.) So everything is in two, sometimes three languages. And each old city has three names. Even the villages.
The Hungarians also resettled themselves in the 18th century, in the same area, under the Austro-hungarian Empire, and again invaded transylvania
in WW2, and to this day still consider a large part of Romania hungarian... But quick. Look at the pictures, I can feel your eyes glaze over.
Sighishoara is it's own beautiful place. It is just a pretty place to be. And the Birthplace of our favourite prince.
Romanian Roads
As I said in a previous post, There was clearly no budget allotted to Romanian roads in years. Every Road in Romania is under construction, ir should be. I know why Romanians drive like they do: if they don't, it is impossible to avoid both pot-holes and oncoming traffic. At times we were reduced to 30km/h, and this on major roads. Often a secondary road (although barely a single laneway) was the better option, for although it wound around the place, well, so did the primary roads, and the road itself was better. And they had interesting villages on them. One Random town (Gyergodit) had a festival in full flight, where we tried a local barbeque (for two bucks, how could you turn it down), bought cherries, and a random bread thing that turned out to be dough, wrapped around a thick pole, roasted over coals,
and coated in sugar. What was even better was the local's obvious enjoyment of our obvious enjoyment. We couldn't speak to each other, but that didn't stop clear communication. (
Check it out- if you speak Romanian)
One night, in Suceava, we wandered around town until we found a pub, in a park, playing good jazz. Well, the pub was packed, so we sat outside the pub and listened to the Jazz. Before long we were joined by a young boy, he was two. We couldn't communicate with him, but that doesn't matter so much in this age group. We played with him for a while, then his father came over, and we discovered that he was two, and that his name was Noran Aldamovitch. His father spoke English.
I would recommend Suceava to anyone, merely for the hostel. Monica was amazing, and kind, and spoke excellent English (had been to Australia to escape the snow). And you can't not go to the painted monasteries
The Painted monasteries, world famous and UNESCO protected wre on the next tour. The Best of them were on the Road South again, Voronets, Humor and Molodvitsa, the only major one we didn't see was
Sucevitsa. These were beautiful, and (hopefully) I will have pictures to show you.
They are also fortified churches, but these were painted in the 15th Century, to teach the llliterate peasants and soldiers inside the teachings of Christ. It was also about the time of the sacking of Constantinople (I hadn't even known it had been Christian, but, there you go), so they have pictures of that on them as well.
We went to Bistritsa that night, bypassing the cheesy hotel that claims to be built on the pass that Bram Stoker Set Castle Dracula on. We did, however, splash out and stay at Hotel Coronea de Aur, where Jonathan Harker stayed, the night before going to Castle Dracula. Both Castul Dracula and Coronea De Aur were built in the last fifteen years. Anything for the tourist dollar, hunh?
I have put more photos on this blog to make up for it's gigantic size. Promise.
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Sally Quill
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Cards
Tell them about that train conductor who played cards with us!