Brasov

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It’s now more than a week since we left Bucharest to travel to Brasov, a moderately large city in Transylvania. The city has a population of around 250,000. We left Bucharest on Easter Monday, which is a public holiday in Romania, and so the traffic through Bucharest was not too bad – or at least significantly better than a normal weekday. The week after Easter was also school holidays and so many people had left Bucharest to travel to the countryside and this was pretty evident from the relatively empty carpark surrounding our apartment. However, a lot of these people had to start work on Tuesday and so the traffic returning to Bucharest was bumper-to-bumper coming towards us – I was pleased that we weren’t part of it.

Our trip northwards initially passed fairly flat farmland before entering the Carpathian Mountains. There was a little bit of remnant snow in places but the thing that I noticed was the chocolate-box architecture of some of the old houses in the towns we passed through. They reminded me of the illustrations in my childhood Little Golden Book version of Heidi – rendered stone/brick houses with ornate wooden balconies and wooden decorations around windows etc. On our way to Brasov we stopped in the town of Sinaia to visit Peles Castle. Peles Castle actually looks like a storybook castle with steep spires and its image graces many a jigsaw box. I was surprised to learn that it was pretty new, having been built between the late 1800s and early 1900s as a summer residence for the Romanian Royal Family. The woodwork in the rooms that we saw is incredibly ornate, there are some pretty impressive Ottoman and Persian rugs in the Moorish room, a Klimt original hangs in the theatre, there is a huge display of armour and to top it all off the palace came complete with a ducted vacuum system.

We were so pleased that we had a GPS because it’s difficult to imagine how we would have located our Brasov accommodation otherwise. Our B&B is located in a narrow residential street about a 10-minute walk from the old town. Soon after arriving we walked into the old town to get our bearings and find some food. The old town is dominated by a large square and the Old Town Hall, whilst the Black Church can be seen off to the side of the square. The old town area was chockers that evening and pretty much for the rest of the following week. There were people dressed in rabbit suits selling balloons, a clown selling balloon animals, children’s electric cars for hire and crowds out and about enjoying the sunny holiday weather and drinking and eating at outdoor tables. Terry and I visited the Black Church (Biserica Neagră) one morning and I was surprised to learn that it was an Evangelical (Lutheran) Church rather than Catholic. The church was originally built as a Catholic cathedral but in the early-16^th Century it converted to Lutheran services under the influence of a bloke named Johann Honterus. Honterus must have been a pretty impressive person because he brought a printing press to Brasov and began printing school books for the school that was setup adjacent to the church. It turns out that having schools adjacent to churches is a characteristic of the Saxon/Germanic Evangelical Church in this part of the world.

One afternoon we travelled to Bran Castle which, for some reason, keeps being associated with Dracula (Vlad III). The association is pretty tenuous although that hasn’t stopped the owners of the tacky souvenir shops from trading on the link. The castle is very austere in comparison to Peles, but also very old. It was originally built in the late 1300s to defend the region from Ottoman invaders and from what I can gather the only link to Vlad III is that he may have stayed here once or twice. More recently, in the early 20^th Century, the castle became the royal residence of Queen Marie and later her daughter. Following WW2 and the rise of the communist regime the castle was seized from the royal family but has since been returned to their heirs. The castle is currently decorated in the style of the inter-war period and as used by Queen Marie. On our return from Bran Castle we visited Rasnov Citadel which is a fortress built to protect the surrounding villages from invasion. The citadel was built during the 1200s on the site of an even older fortress dating back around 2000 years ago. The citadel is pretty much a ruin now but there are some spectacular views of the Carpathian Mountains from the top.

Our next excursion was to Sighișoara, a town of about 25,000 people located about 130 kms from Brasov and the starting point for our organised tour of the Fortified Churches of Transylvania. During the 12th century, German craftsmen and merchants known as the Transylvanian Saxons were invited to Transylvania by the King of Hungary to settle and defend the frontier of his realm – Transylvania was part of Hungary until 1918. In the 1200s the Mongols invaded Hungary and many villages in this region were destroyed. Following the Mongol invasion many towns and cities (eg Brasov, Sighisoara) were fortified whilst the surrounding villages built fortified churches. These fortified churches consist of an inner church surrounded by massive walls and watch towers. The village houses lie outside the fortification but in times of invasion the villagers and the large animals move inside the walls of the fortified church. Water, food and ammunition were stored in the church. Following the Reformation all of these churches converted to the Lutheran faith. The most memorable of the churches that we visited was in the village of Viscri. The church was decorated with “naïve” Germanic-style artwork, had incredibly uncomfortable-looking pews for the women and employed a set seating system for the congregation – older women up front on one side of the nave, young (confirmed) women opposite them, married women and children further back. The men and boys sat upstairs in pews with a back. The reason for the lack of a pew back was so that the women and girls Sunday-best dresses would not be crushed and the seating arrangement allowed the young men to suss out the young women (future wife) whilst in church. The village of Viscri is also home to one of Prince Charles’s Romanian properties. This is a modest traditional house in the middle of the village. His idea is to encourage the local population to preserve the traditional architecture and so his house has been renovated as an example. The village appears to be quite poor and has a large Gypsy population and so you can’t help but wonder what they think. Since WW2 the German population of Transylvania has markedly decreased with many Transylvanian Saxons returning to Austria and Germany and one church we visited now has a congregation of just 6.

I’ve never been as terrified in a car as I was on our trip to and from Sighisoara. Roads in Transylvania are narrow, windy, pot-holed and busy with vans, semi-trailers and buses. Often there is a Gypsy in a horse and cart slowly travelling along the side of the road. However, that doesn’t deter many Romanian drivers from overtaking in locations where no-overtaking is clearly marked, and on a windy road where they cannot possibly see on-coming traffic, only to advance one car length ahead. By the time we had arrived back in Brasov I had “thrown a wobbly” and decided that I wasn’t getting into a car again. We’re “slow” travellers, preferring to spend 3-4 nights minimum in a place rather than just a day. The result was that Terry and I ended up spending the rest of our Romanian “rural interlude” here in Brasov whilst Oana and Gary drove north for a few extra days before returning to Bucharest.

We’ve enjoyed our quiet time here. The first couple of days were beautiful weather-wise and we took the opportunity to explore the mountains on the edge of town. We took the tele-cabina (cable car) to the top of Mt Tampa to enjoy the views over Brasov before commencing our 1 hour walk back to the old town. There were lots of wild flowers blooming and I was surprised to see Hellebores in flower in the wild. We’ve also taken a bus to the nearby ski resort (Poina Brasov). There wasn’t much to see there apart from some old snow on the ski runs but the now snow-free sides of one run were covered in lilac crocus – who is that weird women kneeling in the slush taking photos? In town there are numerous white magnolias in flower and their perfume fills the air, or at least it did while the weather was warm.

We’ve also explored other areas of town that we wouldn’t have visited otherwise - we can tell you where to go for 30% off on a pensioner funeral. Today we visited Romania’s first school and the printing press used to print its books. Doesn’t sound that great but it was one of the most interesting sites that we’ve visited. The printing press was first used in 1556 and the school dates from that era also. We were both in awe of the workmanship behind the "negatives" used to make the prints. These were large wooden slabs with 4-5 mm Cyrillic characters carved into them in reverse. There were 22 books prints at the school and a book of 300 pages took about 2 years to make. The now museum housed many ancient manuscripts and documents and has a much larger ancient document archive than housed in the Romanian Academy. One document was an illuminated manuscript printed on the tanned skin of a goat foetus. We also visited the local synagogue. This is a new building having been rebuilt in the last 15 years with support from an Israeli Friendship group. The Holocaust monument at the synagogue was built last year and lists the names of the local Jews that lost their lives during the Holocaust.

We’ve spent the last few days resting and fighting off head colds but are now looking forwards to resuming our travels. Tomorrow we catch the train back to Bucharest and on the following day we fly from Bucharest to Dubrovnik via Vienna.

Some extra thoughts/notes on Brasov:


• Shoe shops – the density of shoe shops is surprisingly high – not many “sensible” shoes amongst the stilettoes.
• Smoking in restaurants – even the “smoke free” rooms in restaurants stink although we’ve managed to find 1 or 2 restaurants that are smoke free.
• Security people - I've never seen so many security people in my life. Large clothing stores, supermarkets, banks have them walking around watching everything.
• Soup – We’ve developed a soft spot for a small, smoke-free Brasov restaurant that sells just soups, stews and home-made pies. If only such a place existed near home. The soup has been especially good since the weather has deteriorated to tops of 7⁰C. $3 buys a bowl of freshly made soup served with fresh bread, sour cream and pickled, hot peppers.
• Dark beer – surprisingly good. About $1.60 for 500 ml can in supermarket and $2.50 if served in a restaurant.
• Red wine – haven’t had a bad one.
• Meals – we’ve enjoyed the traditional Romanian food – stews, homemade sausages, chicken. As with Czech Rep and Hungary we have been able to have a meal of soup, main, side of veg and wine/beer for $35-$40 AUD for the two of us.
• Internet – who’d of thought you could get free wi-fi in the local bus. It’s available here in Brasov.
• Weather - The weather changed from a maximum of a warm, sunny 23⁰C one day to a cold, windy 7⁰C the next.

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Photos

Peles Castle
Fancy woodwork

Bran Castle
One of the sitting rooms

Fortified church - Viscri
The older women sat on the left and the confirmed girls on the right.

Crit village and fortified church
We had lunch here

Mt Tampa
These blue flowers were beginning to carpet the forest floor close to the summit of the mountain.

Mt Tampa
Walking down from the summit to old town.

Brasov Senior Citizens Club
Not quite but these retired men were playing chess, mah-jong and other board games.