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Braids and ribbons
Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria Greetings!
From Istanbul we caught a night train north to Bulgaria. We nursed a bottle of Raki (Turkish Ouzo) with our cabin mates before nodding off, only to be woken by border guards at 3 a.m. and told we needed to walk to the far end of the station to have our passports stamped. As we exited, the conductor pulled Jub aside, stuffed 15 Euros in his pocket, and asked for three cartons of cigarettes from the duty free store. So after getting his stamp, Jub headed to the store, but realized the conductor hadn't specified a brand. No big deal; ten minutes back to the train, ten minutes back to duty free, only to find they'd just sold out of the conductor's brand. Jub then repeated the process--trying to ignore that it was now around 4 a.m. and everyone else was back in bed-- to find the store didn't even carry the conductor's back-up brand. Ugh. Back on the train, the conductor was nowhere in sight, so Jub stood waiting, but after spotting him and trying to head outside, a burly Bulgarian guard with a German Shepard shouted "Mr. Wilson . . . where do you think you're going,"
in a way that made it clear he wasn't going anywhere. Which was actually a relief, although back in the cabin Jub felt a bad about failing in his mission--until the conductor came by to get his money back with a pillow-case full of cigarettes that he must have collected from other passengers.
Our one stop in Bulgaria was the slightly provincial but cute-as-a-button town of Veliko Tarnovo (VT). The attire on display in VT was the first sure sign that we'd left the middle east, and is probably best described as country-fairish, with the girls sporting lots of short-shorts and bedazzling (and even a few bedazzled short-shorts), and nearly every male under forty wearing a black t-shirt and looking like they had just finished wailing on their pecks. VT has some worthwhile sights since it was Bulgaria's first capital, and we dutifully checked out the town's huge ruined fort, and brand-new post-modern decorations inside its hill-top cathedral. Even more enjoyable were our walks along the the river that cuts through town to admire the centuries-old houses spilling down the hill, enjoying the first of many town square ice cream cones, and taking in a folk-music competition where the
opposing groups bid their time by dancing along to the music.
In the morning, we caught a train through rolling green farmland to Bucharest, getting our first glimpse of Romania's estimated 200,000 stray dogs en route, as one or two packs ran up to the train each time it stopped and people threw whatever food they had out the windows to their favorites. We'd been that told one day in Bucharest would be plenty, but we enjoyed the quasi-Parisian Old Town architecture, the massive Parliament building (supposedly the second largest government building in the world after the Pentagon), retracing the steps of the country's '89 revolution, including the balcony where Ceauşescu cut his last speech short and fled by helicopter as tens of thousands of protesters swarmed the square, and the shell of the former secret police headquarters that was burnt to the ground later that week, as well as what was probably our favorite museum of the trip---the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, which had floors full of folk art and reassembled traditional houses, churches, a school, and huge, hand-hewn water and wind mills.
Up next: Brasov--tucked into the base of the snow-capped Carpathian Mountains in the
heart of Romanian Transylvania. Since we'd come in part to chase the legend of Count Dracula and Vlad Tepes, we had a hard time keeping straight faces when the super-friendly lady who checked us into our hostel also had piercing green eyes, pointed incisors, and a stereo-typical Transylvanian accent she put to work by saying things like "I vaant tooo . . . show you the kitchen," or "I vaant tooo . . . show you the room." In the end, Brasov was way more beautiful than spooky, with an huge idyllic town square perfect for people watching (and ice cream eating) and oodles of blooming flowers and brightly painted houses--all very charming regardless of the tacky, Hollywood-style BRASOV sign overlooking the town, or the proliferation of western shops along the main drag (we knew for sure we weren't the first Portlanders to fall for this place after spotting adjacent Columbia and Nike stores). We also ventured into the countryside on successive days, spending an afternoon in Sighisoara, a small village where Vlad spent his salad years, and where we explored the town's churches, thousand-year old cemetery, and numerous towers protruding from the city wall--each named for the guild originally
Folk performers
Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria charged with its defense (pity the invaders who assaulted the Butcher's Tower rather than the Baker's). We then saw the Bran Castle, the small architecturally cattywompus castle in which Bram Stroker housed Dracula, Rasnov, a hillside castle where Vlad began piling on the carnage, and the incredibly ornate summer palace of King Carol I which was great, despite the fact that the Carpathian Brown Bears **allegedly** inhabiting the grounds failed to show, let alone perform any of the menacing we'd been warned about.
From Romania we took another night train to Chisinau, Moldova, a comfortable if not luxurious ride that included two hours of fitful sleep at the border as our cabin was hoisted onto a new undercarriage to accommodate the narrow-gauge track the Soviets laid throughout their former satellite states to slow potential invaders. We only had a day in Chisinau, which was fine since there wasn't a ton to see or do--especially after we spent an hour walking around the same few blocks looking in vein for the Presidential Palace only to learn later that we'd unknowingly walked past it like three times without even taking a picture since we'd mistaken the palace for a 1970's Radisson
whose builders got a good deal on pink frosted glass. (Someone else
got a shot though). We passed the afternoon in the sun on the edge of a scenic downtown park drinking tasty, dirt cheap Moldovan wine, and confirming for ourselves that, as Maxim magazine declared last year, Moldova is home to the world's most beautiful woman, with literally 1/2 the female residents looking as though they could make ends meet as models. After a great breakfast and lunch, Jub thought he'd play it safe at dinner with Fish & Chips--but his meal leapt onto our "worst of the trip" list as soon as he crunched into a fish spine on his first bite and realized the "chef" had eschewed fillets and thrown entire small fish into the fryer (although, in hindsight, this was obvious since the fins were visible through the batter--see pictures). Later, our cabby tried to talk us out of going back to our hotel, insisting there was a great dance club and casino right down the road that also featured an all-night eatery, but since he apparently didn't know the English word for "eat" of "food" he tried to make his case using the instantly classic (and since
oft-repeated) phrase "Is very close, and open all night, so . . . if you ahhh . . . want to take'a da meat at 4 a.m. . . . is no problem, you can take'a da meat all night." We'll never know what could have been; in the morning we caught a flight to Latvia after an hour delay during which the assembled passengers on our plane watched from the gate as our flight attendants repeatedly ran from our plane and dry heaved on the tarmac, which was followed by an announcement that our plane's bathroom would be out of order for the duration of the flight.
So that's the lowdown on our first week in Eastern Europe. Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for stories and pictures from the Baltics.
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Kara Loffelmacher
non-member comment
ahhh, this is awesome. i, too, have always wanted to hit up transy in search of bram's dracula.