Arriving in Romania:
Huzzah! New country, this one the much anticipated trip to Transylvania. Having to choose non-Schengen countries to visit has made us think of places we might not otherwise choose to, but Romania was one that there was never any doubt we wanted to go check out.
Arriving in Romania was much the same as any other, although this time around we were arriving with less than the usual amount of poorly spoken local language. Makes life more interesting. Although, with Romanian being a romance language, there were a few similarities with French (this wasn’t really an advantage, but it did make things marginally easier).
Collecting our hire car was once again, memorable (but not in a good way). It seems that the hire car aspect of every trip gives us the most grief. This month was no exception. It’s (un)surprisingly tricky to navigate your way around an airport when the signs (or lack thereof) fail to communicate your anticipated needs. Such as: “Where is the car hire collection point?” Our failure to speak Romanian, and the general failure of Romanians at the airport to speak any English resulted in a lot of walking up and down the concourse and waiting around at the only hire car shuttle sign. Eventually we discovered that there is a whole rank of hire booths on another level that we would have seen, had we disembarked from a different gate and baggage carousel. Somehow, anti-fortitude led us to not see this area at all. Anyways, having successfully checked in (finally), next up was finding the hire car shuttle. It was not where we had been waiting (i.e. The one and only signed area indicating a hire car shuttle collection point). It was in fact a) unsigned, and b) not even in the arrivals area. Instead, we were directed to the departures stop, drop & go area and left trying to figure out what was going on. After milling around for quite some time, Murray eventually headed back to the rental booth for a second go at instructions. Turns out we were in the right place, just no one had organised the aforesaid shuttle as of yet. *Sigh.*
…Long story short(er): The eventual outcome was yes, we did get our car. However the whole experience was a whole lot more challenging and time consuming than expected. Which was closely followed by Google taking us bush within the first 5 minutes of collecting the car whilst attempting to locate a nearby McDonald’s for a bathroom break. Google Maps never ceases to amaze me. Can’t live without it, but sometimes it seems that it must be on some binary form of crack.
Once we were on the road (and headed in the correct direction), our drive to Transylvania was reasonably uneventful. Although, at the same time it was quite an eye-opener, with the landscape and local architecture seeming charming, but also considerably run down. Crumbling buildings and rivers choked with rubbish amidst beautiful pine forests and mountains. I expect the state of affairs is fallout from the communist regime, but some areas seemed to be positively shambolic. I will never forget how lucky we are to have been born in Australia. But it certainly wasn’t anywhere near all bad, and the houses (if old) were often quite cheerful.
Homes are frequently rather colourful.
Home sweet home:
This month we chose to locate ourselves in Brasov, a largish city in Transylvania. Mostly chosen because it was large enough to have decent internet, whilst also being close enough to some of the places we wanted to check out during our visit. Our place in Brasov consisted of a 2 floor apartment (one of which was a loft level). It has been one of the nicer places we have stayed at (and was the second cheapest, coming in at about $1100 for a month). Can’t believe the value for money. Also came with fast internet, the like of which is a good 10x faster than what we get at home. Go figure. Better internet than at home. Hmmf.
If you wish to check it out, go ahead: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/3659477
View from our window: Brasov (along with a few other towns around these parts) features its own Hollywood-style signage.
What we have been up to:
Actually, not all that much. Lots and lots of work and not a whole lot of free time meant the trip to Romania was not big on activities. It didn’t help that the weather was not the best, either. There was plenty of rain, thunderstorms (complete with hail) and generally not nice weather to be had (some days hot, some days cold – I’ll never get used to the temperature shifts). The hail storm was pretty cool though, with the loft window providing an excellent view of the incoming hail (Foolhardy, I know, but the window was double glazed, so I wasn’t too concerned about the prospect of getting a face full of glass).
So with the weather being average and Murray being a busy bee, we spent a lot of our time in Brasov. But we did manage to make it out and about a few times…
Romanian Oktoberfest:
We didn’t plan for it, but Romania happens to celebrate its own version of Oktoberfest, with Brasov hosting the largest beer tent in Romania. So it was on, and we were there. How convenient. Interestingly (read: unfortunately), the beer was almost all local beer eg. Ursus brewery’s Ciucas and other lagers, and not much in the way of German beer. But we discovered that there was a Weiss beer made for the festival that we found to be worth repeating. The festival was definitely worth a visit (very festive, very family friendly), and it gave us the opportunity to try various Romanian food (and the obligatory German pork knuckle) on our forays into the festival. Due to my lack of competence in reading a Romanian menu, it took us a couple of visits before we successfully got that pork knuckle… (i.e. gave us a reason to go back for another look)
The Romanian Oktoberfest included a parade, complete with a kiddie float. Too cute.
Castle Bran:
Bran Castle was one of the places that I had wanted to visit while we were in Romania. Being touted as the home of Dracula, the historic castle looked like it would at least make for an interesting day out. Being in Transylvania, it made sense to visit Dracula’s Castle, since the whole vampire business was said to have originated in these parts (and I’ve always been a little bit fascinated by the whole vampire myth). Not that there is really any truth to the name. I think Vlad the Impaler was incarcerated at the castle at one stage (Vlad being the inspiration for Dracula), but the castle and location was not part of the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s creation. Bran castle wasn’t bad, but it was very touristy and like other places we have visited, it was more or less a case of penguin-walking through the castle sandwiched between hordes of other tourists. The castle was more of a museum showcasing aspects of the royal family’s history (who also lived there), with a small portion dedicated to torture devices, vampires, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Vlad the Impaler. Can you believe people were tortured based on whether they were considered to be the appropriate weight vs a Bible? It was still very interesting even if the vampire business was a bit of a farce. Reading about Vlad was fascinating (and rather horrifying), and exploring the castle with it’s rabbit warren corridors and skinny staircases was pretty cool. Would have loved to have done it at night, minus all the people.
…In terms of visiting castles in Transylvania, Poenari Castle would be more truthfully the one Vlad the Impaler should be associated with (its location being more Dracula-esque, too). We did think about visiting that one as well, but it’s considerably less accessible. Solid drive to get there, and then there is a climb of almost 1500 stairs to get up there. After seeing bucket loads of castles on our trip, that many stairs just didn’t seem worth it (especially since there is not much left of the castle, just the ruined remains). Suffice to say, we did end up driving past it. (Read: Appreciated from a distance.) …And we drove past it mostly because it was actually on the Transfagarasan route. Retrospectively, I kind of wish we made the effort to check out the ruin, since we didn’t go to any other ruins during our stay in Romania. Oh well. (The whole attraction to checking out every castle we see is a hard thing to kick.)
Castle Bran. Dracula’s castle it is not.
Driving the Transfagarasan:
As supposedly the ultimate driving experience in the world, it was a fair assumption that we would give this one a go. Not that what Top Gear has to say would have made all the difference, since all reports (and photographic evidence) all back up that this would be quite the epic road trip. The Transfagarasan is probably the main reason why we chose to stay where we did. But even so, it was still a solid drive to get anywhere near this iconic drive.
I wasn’t expecting it to be anything too ridiculous, since when we got there the signposted speed limit was listed as 40 km/h. Having said that, there were a few others out and about but not many were adhering to the limit. However, no one was traveling at high speed, either.
The initial approach to the iconic drive up the mountain was on road of extremely poor condition. The drive down was also much the same. But the road in the middle, through the range, was top notch. Switchbacks and scenic views aplenty. Hung out at the lake for lunch, which although reasonably busy and very pretty, was by no means packed out with tourists. As we came on a weekday, I suspect we also avoided most of the crowds. Lucky us, as I expect the Transfagarasan would have been substantially less enjoyable if it was backed up with traffic (which I’ve read is quite common). As it happened, we narrowly missed out having to contend with several busloads of people. Nice timing, yes?
After reading many reports on TripAdvisor about the dangerous nature of the road, the reality was substantially safer than their reports implied. Yes, some areas were missing guard rails. But if you are traveling at 40, I’m not sure how this is a problem. But the poor quality road on the way up and down really took the cake (not super dangerous, but it would really suck on a bike). In Australia, rather than try to patch it they would just resurface the lot. IMHO it was definitely past the point of patching. So much of the road had been removed, it was very nearly a complete resurface. And you were expected to still drive on it whilst the repairs were underway. On sticky asphalt and through pot holes that had potholes…At least they were trying to fix it. But alas, too late for Murray (who had planned on riding the road as well as drive it).
The trip to check out the Transfagarasan was a long one, and we opted to do an overnighter rather than drive back to Brasov. We stayed at a random hotel in the mountains in a tiny bungalow by a stream. Was not quite as picturesque as it sounds, but chilling out by the stream was definitely a nice touch. The Romanian red wine also helped. Quite nice, actually. The resorts were a strange sort, being only a few stand-alone ventures with nothing else going for them. The place we stayed was at least part of a small village of sorts. But, being the off-season, it was still more or less a ghost town. With random dogs. And the road there was also being resurfaced, so the place smelled of bitumen and was subjected to the usual noises of roadwork. Ah, the serenity…
That’s about it for this post. I’ll recap on some of the Romanian quirks in the next post.
Lake at the summit.
These dilapidated shacks probably command a pretty excellent view of the mountains.