Romania: both pleasantly surprising and frustrating

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It’s Bucharest that was pleasantly surprising, while the desire to do a lot of hiking in the mountains was frustrating.



I’d always fancied Romania, mostly because it seems so rich in mountains and history. I don’t know why it took so long for me to make it there. We’d even encouraged friends from North America who were staying with us last summer to visit instead of the Alps and they ended up staying a month. They provided lots of tips on where to stay and where to hike, as did a Romanian colleague who I work with in Brazil, and we’d even bought a guidebook to trekking in Romania so we were full of plans for adventures.

The itinerary was supposed to be: almost a week of me hiking on my own in Transylvania while Magdalena was at a conference in Bucharest, followed by us travelling together for another 1.5 weeks in the Moldavia region, then a final almost a week over the border in Moldova. But then Magdalena was invited to a workshop in Thailand thus we had to cut the trip a week short. Then it didn’t stop raining in the mountains; actually weather-warning inducing thunderstorms.



Therefore, I spent the first few days in Bucharest, strolling around and working from cafes. It’s nice. You never really hear of Bucharest as a city-break destination, but I think it could be. The utterly enormous Palace of Parliament, often said to be the second biggest building in the world (after the Pentagon) and Nicolae Ceaușescu’s colossal waste of space and money, is actually not unattractive. Likewise the buildings and boulevards around it. When you learn about the evictions and clearance of historic areas to make way for it all though, and the fact that much of it remains empty, takes the shine off a bit. The Old Town does not seem that old and is mostly an area for eating and drinking though with some grand old buildings. We were there on Saturday night and it was great. Very lively, all bars and cafes outside on the pedestrianised streets, nice atmosphere, it was probably the latest I’ve stayed up for ages! There are a few more historic buildings dotted around that are worth a look and a nice park in the north (King Mihai I Park) where the lakes and trees meant it was much cooler than downtown. We were in that northern area to visit Ceaușescu’s mansion. This didn’t come up on any travelblogs that we used to plan the trip but was recommended by Magdalena’s parents, indeed almost all the other tourists were Polish. You need to book a guided tour and it reveals how the Ceaușescu’s were living while the rest of Romania’s population was struggling to survive due to the particularly harsh version of communism Nicolae imposed.



When I finally made it out of Bucharest I headed to the incredible looking (on the internet) salt mine at Slănic. I missed the first train because I queued at the train station ticket office only to be told it was a different train company and I had to buy a ticket from somewhere else. I couldn’t find where. When I eventually got a ticket, everyone else was just buying the ticket on the train. I thought being a few hundred metres down a mine would be safe from thunderstorms. For mysterious reasons, the mine was closed. The only train back was in three hours and was the train I would have taken anyway. Determined not to have completely wasted a day, I headed to Sinaia and walked (in the rain) up to Peleș Castle. Romania is rich in castles, palaces and citadels and Peleș was nice – I didn’t go in, just wandered around the outside. It’s forest setting meant it was easy to hide under a tree when the short sharp showers kicked in. Having so much of the day sat on trains, I walked the 10 km to Bușteni through the forest on the valley side. A grotty but cheap pension was found (~24 Euros per night), dinner was easy to locate in the little tourist town, and Lidl was visited to stock up on supplies for the next day’s hike. Fortunately, I bumped into the pension owner before I went to bed (he was away when someone in his family let me in) and told him about my hiking plans. I’d been recommended to head up Jepii Mici because of the via ferrata and possible bear sightings. However, the guesthouse owner said I would be risking a fine to hike it as it was closed – he didn’t tell me not to do it, just that I needed to be properly prepared as the gorge had 4 metres of snow in the bottom with a stream running below it so in these warm temperatures there was every chance of falling through. He called his mountain rescue mate who advised on alternative routes up onto the Bucegi plateau. I intended to leave at 6am to try and get up the mountains before the forecast rain hit at midday then get as far along the ridge as possible and descend if the thunder and lightning started. The guesthouse owner and his mate were my kind of people in that they never told me not to do any of my suggested routes, they just said, “hmm, that’s far, you’ll have to be fit”; quite the contrast to a taxi driver on our recent trip to Madeira who told us a hike was “impossible for you two to do in a day” that we then completed in 5 hours.



I set off at 6am to see a lovely sunrise up the ever-steepening climb to Jepii Mari. It was quite overgrown and muddy, the bushes were soaked with the previous day’s rain so I was soon wet through. The 1000 m climb got rockier and more open as it went higher, giving lovely early-morning views down over the cloud filled valleys, and I was pleased to beat the “4.25 hours to the top” sign by 2 hours (despite living in the Netherlands!). But the rain started early. An old dilapidated hut offered some shelter as I reached the top at just under 2000 m, but only if I stood in the porch as the roof had long since collapsed. Therefore, it seemed foolish to head along the vast open summit plateau in that weather. At least the clouds were high so finding the route was easy, which was good because the rain meant I couldn’t get a map out and my soggy fingers couldn’t activate my phone. I was soaked through from the climb and started getting cold so after a second breakfast I pushed on walking south quickly to warm up with the aim of descending to Sinaia for a train back to Bucharest. Other than some confused mountain goats wondering what I was doing up there in that weather, I only saw a shepherd (also wrapped up and miserable) with his huge dogs (bear and wolf protection for his flock) during the 6 or 7 km along the plateau (or indeed the whole hike), before I dropped down through a ski resort, which always seem like Mad Max-esque scars on the landscape when viewed out of season. I warmed up as I got lower then felt very out of place amongst the dressed up tourists in Sinaia as I squelched past them. Fortunately, the hourly train to Bucharest was 20 minutes delayed so I caught it, unfortunately, it had quite powerful air-con that dried me out but chilled me to the bone. I walked the 3 kilometres from Bucharest’s Gara de Nord to the hotel in the midday 36C temperatures and it took me the whole way to warm up.



After the final morning of Magdalena’s conference, we took a lunchtime train to Iași. The 6.5-hour journey had some less pleasant patches when the air-con in our carriage failed and it was stickily hot. It was a good job we had pre-booked online and had reserved seats as the train was full. The scenery was pretty much non-stop wheat and sunflower fields; how the breadbasket of Ukraine looks. It was quite a rough hotel in Iași, but it was close to the train station and near a highly-rated local restaurant were we think the ratings were driven by the massive portions (most other couples had one plate between them – but we were hungry).



The next morning we picked up a hire car for a long day of driving around some of the Bukovina painted monasteries. These UNESCO-recognised monasteries are dotted around northeastern Romania and we visited four, which was probably the right amount so they remain impressive and before they become samey. They are all still occupied by very austere nuns who charge 2 Euros (10 Leu) for entry. The painted exteriors and interiors are incredible, reminding me a lot of monasteries in Ethiopia where even the new ones get painted (apparently so that illiterate people are still exposed to bible stories). We were ducking in and out of heavy showers so spending more time inside the churches than looking at the painted exteriors. There were some odd themes common to the painted panels. The first room of the church was always filled with horrendous images of imaginative executions (possibly showing various martyrs?) including usually an entire wall of beheadings. Though they are interesting, each monastery only requires about half an hour of your time, but the drive between them is pleasant through the forested hills. The roads were pretty good and drivers were fine. Friday night back in Iași was great as it was a pleasant place to wander around and we found a nice craft beer pub.



We got the chance to look around Iași the next morning before a marshrutka to Piatra Neamț. We marched in the rain in between the monasteries, palaces, churches and ugly communist apartment blocks of Iași – it’s a nice place. A couple of hours on the marshrutka (don’t believe the times available online, even on the companies’ websites) and we emerged in much nicer weather in Piatra Neamț. There is a nice square and we found the ubiquitous pancake café in the neighbouring park to wait for pals to arrive. After a nice drive (Romanian pals were driving us) with some great views down over Bicaz Lake we arrived in Durău. We were now a five, which was rare for us to travel with other people. It was a nice change.



Ceahlău National Park is lovely. Perhaps not as wild and dramatic as some of the Transylvanian mountains but wild enough for our phones to vibrate as we arrived giving us a “bear warning”. The next day being Sunday and the trail we were on being quite famous, it was pretty busy. A fairly steep climb up through the forest to the lovely Cabana Fântânele then a more gradual climb past some nice conglomerate rock formations all of which had a sign in Romanian and English with a lengthy explanation of their formation, usually related to eloping lovers or a witch’s curse or some such tale. To get to Toaca peak, there was a loooong metal staircase. It had people puffing and panting, especially those descending who didn’t like the exposure, and particularly those who were carrying dogs! The view on the top was lovely, despite the clutter of the weather station and mobile phone mast, and we queued for the requisite group photo by the flag. Later, the big and busy Cabana Dochia provided very welcome soup and beer (Romania does soups very well) before a steep descent to Duruitoarea waterfall, where the path had collapsed but a chain was now provided to enable ‘abseiling’ (walking backwards down a very steep slope). Overall it was a really nice hike. Much slower than we would usually go but it convinced us that hiking with others can actually be fun! There was no time to linger at the bottom as we had to drive the few hours back to Iași to drop someone off in time for the overnight train to Bucharest. He just made it for the train but it meant we were too late to find dinner anywhere. Consequently, the buffet breakfast the next morning in the hotel was a four-course affair in order to catch up.



Then, feeling like I hadn’t done Romania justice and really need to return especially given the knowledge of the place I now have following all the planning, we drove to Moldova…

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Photos

Ceahlău National Park
At the top of the 1 million stairs up to Toaca Peak.

Memorial of Rebirth, Revolution Square, Bucharest
Remembering the victims of the revolution but locally known as "the olive on a toothpick" or "the potato of the revolution".

Iași
There are still plenty of ugly communist blocks of flats around in Romania.

The Triumphal Arch, Bucharest
In memory of WWI troops.

Comments

[lexispence10]

Fresh Inspiration
I too was pleasantly surprised with Bucharest during a quick stopover from Moldova. I am dying to see the rest of Romania, including many of the places you mentioned (Painted Monasteries for sure!). Thanks for the guidance as to what I can expect.