Blogs from Romania, Europe - page 86

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 to have the price. Tonights campsite is a 'christian' campsite according to our guilde book, Not looking forward to asking them if there is a local pub to watch the camapions league final. Eldarado When ... read more

"Use the blessed chance - that of being a human - to make the world better, fairer and more beautiful, not only for mankind but for the whole nature!" Herman Oberth - one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics. After 3 wonderful days in Sighisoara we were heading towards Sibiu. Bought ourselves tickets to the mini-bus and 2 hours later there we were! Since Friday the weather was very very hot and the Sunday noon ride was a nightmare - I ve promised my self I ll never travel in a mini-bus (peasants traveling with frozen lambs in their bags, bicycles and what ever u can think of). Sibiu is the European Cultural Capital of 2007 in partnership with Luxemburg and it had to be on my itinerary list. Of course we planned for ... read more

Etter to harde dager fortjente vi å slappe litt av, og gnagde oss bare fem mil videre neste dag, til industribyen Slobozia. En by som vi vil huske for utflytende sentrum og sitt labre utvalg i billige hotell og spisesteder. Veien videre neste dag bragte oss ca ni mil over den paddeflate Donausletta til Braila, administrasjonssentrum for fylket av samme navn. Her la vi inn en hviledag, som ble brukt til å rusle rundt i byen og få tak på sentrum. Dette er ikke nødvendigvis en enkel oppgave i byene som har hatt kraftig vekst under Ceausescu - man kan si mye stygt om regimet hans, og byplanlegging var heller ikke blant lyspunktene. Siste dag i Romania ble overraskende tungvint. I teorien skulle vi sykle ca 15 km for å nå Galati, og 12 til ... read more

Dear All, It has been a while since our last update but in retrospect the pictures, until recently have been rather dull. But now that the dark and stormy months seem to be passing into a spring time we are coming out of hibernation and have some pictures and stories to share. For the most part, life in Odorhei/Undvarhely is increasingly busy. Alecia is deep into the fruit project with Agora and we have had several meetings with various folks in the villages regarding re-vitalizing traditional fruit drying practices and creating some traditional product focused cooperatives. People have seemed quite excited. A cynic might say just because there is a promise of income (though even if this were the only case, who could blame folks subsisting on less than $140/month?) but I think the reality ... read more

HaHA! Score Tally: Scammers: lots Emma: 1! Romania seems about as corrupt as Bulgaria I arrived in Bucharest train station off the sleeper (read: tired after having been got off the train at the turkish border and kept outside in the cold at 3am for an hour just so I could get stamped out through their damn border controls who are too lazy to come on the train to do their job faster than making everyone get dressed and off the train and line up and stamped and back on the train before they can switch around the carriages and split em up and join em back together so each carriage goes to a different place). And a nice man asks if i need help (i think aha not this time buddy) I say no ... read more