Romania - What an amazing country. We really didn’t know what to
expect when we arrived in Romania and other than a small knowledge of
“Transylvania” from the Dracula stories we had no idea where we wanted to
visit. So our 12 days in Romania, unexpectedly turned out to be some of the
best days we have had so far on our trip.
Because we were in Romania for so long I thought rather than
writing an entirely long essay on everything we did there I would share some of
the highlights during our stay. But first just so you have an idea – our basic
itinerary was this – We flew into Bucharest from Valencia and stayed there a
couple of nights, from Bucharest we stayed in the three Transylvanian towns of
Brasov, Sighisoara and Sibiu and then finished up in the Western Romanian town
of Timisoara.
PEOPLE
Romanian people, what can we say
except that we have decided that so far on our trip we have found the Thais and
Romanians to be the most helpful. Perhaps the Romanian’s even more so because
they never expected anything in return for any assistance they provided. After
a horror arrival at the airport with the vicious taxi drivers not leaving us
alone, every single person we approached for assistance in finding our hostel
(and there were quite a few as we got hopelessly lost) went out of their way to
help us. We had one woman who called her friend to try and find it for us, a
man who got his GPS out of this car and looked it up on a map for us and
another patron in a pub who let us use his mobile phone to call the hostel when
we eventually realised that the directions we received and the address of the
place on the map were completely contradictory and hence why we were never
going to find the place on our own.
So that was the start of our
realisation of the friendliness of the Romanian people and it didn’t stop
there. The owner of our accommodation in Bucharest not only helped us plan our
time in Bucharest but he also helped give us ideas to plan our entire Romanian
itinerary.
This kindness continued throughout
our trip both at hostels, in restaurants, tourist attractions and just on the
street. Whenever you needed to ask a question everyone was willing to help you
or at least point you in the direction of someone who could.
We also got taken out for lunch in
Bucharest by two amazing girls Cornelia and Elissa. They introduced us to some
pretty awesome Virgin Mojitos and gave us our first real taste of Romania food…
FOOD
Those that know us well will know
that we love our food. Tegan loves cooking and I love baking. We love to eat
out and enjoy trying different cuisines. Actually rather than calling our trip
just any “Round the world trip” you could almost say it was a “foodie tour of
the world.” Where we can afford it anyway J.
So the fact that Romanian food is so cheap only further fuelled our desires as
foodies. Romanian food is wholesome and delicious. Lots of meaty sausages,
meats and stews served with different styles of potatoes or quite often polenta.
I think it’s safe to say that we both really loved the Romanian grilled
sausages called “Mititei.” Deliciously cooked and served with a yummy mustard
and potatoes those things are heavenly together with a $1 pint of local
Romanian brew. Yes that is right, pints cost around $1 and the beer tastes
great! Actually probably some of our favourite Mititei was from the
Timisoareana Brewery, in, you guessed it, Timisoara. One of the staff members
from our hostel suggested it on our first night there and we loved it so much
we headed back for our 2nd nights dinner as well.
Another definite highlight of
Romanian food was the desserts! Oh boy, they definitely know how to cook
desserts. In one word, SCRUMPTIOUS! We tried quite a few during our time there,
Pancakes with a honey & nut filling, A very delicious Romanian take on
Tiramisu, Some pastry balls that had plums inside and were also very delicious
and definitely my favourite – Romanian donuts called Papanasi. They are
actually made with cottage cheese and fried and then covered in jam and sour
cream. You know what that really doesn’t make them sound that appertising. But
when you taste them you may just never stop craving them. For any sweet tooth
they are definitely a must try when in Romania. Plus I now plan on finding a
recipe and cooking them once back in Australia. So if you ask nicely perhaps we
will invite you over to help us eat them.
TRANSPORT
Ahh trains, how I love them….most
of the time. Perhaps not a good highlight but something that does stand out in
the mind as a Romanian experience was our train trip from Brasov to Sighisoara.
We walked up to the platform expecting a reasonably comfortable, clean
air-conditioned train, similar to the one we had enjoyed coming from Bucharest
but we were quickly brought to our senses on what the other end of the Romanian
scale could look like. A lovely stinking hot train with old bench style
seating. To make matters worse the train was full when we got on so we thought
that we were going to have to stand up for the 3 hour journey. However we were
once again taken aback by how amazing lovely Romanian people are when three
different groups of people moved around and swapped seats to ensure that there
was two seats together for us to sit down. So we were kept amused on the hot
trip by a very loud group of old Romanian men playing cards next to us.
Another trip that won’t be readily
forgotten was the bus ride from Deva to Timisoara. A 3 hour bus trip with a
driver who spent the majority of the trip with one hand on the wheel and the
other either holding a cigarette (it was a non-smoking bus) or on his mobile
phone. And he wondered why all these cars kept overtaking him and honking their
horns loudly as they went past….He was drifting constantly across the lines in
the middle of the road. A little scary and I must admit I couldn’t watch a lot
of it and figured it was best to just go to sleep and pray you would still wake
up alive and well at the end of it J
SIGHTS
With 12 days in the country we saw
plenty. But a few highlights have to be mentioned.
Firstly – Bucharest. I would have
to say out of all the places we have visited so far on our trip this one
surprised me the most. It is an amazing city. Perhaps not so beautiful in some
areas but the old town itself and the surrounding areas are just wonderful and
we really loved our couple of days there. We could have easily stayed longer
but we prefer to be in smaller areas rather than big cities if we can so we
were looking forward to heading into Transylvania.
We of course had to visit the
castle known as Draculas, Bran Castle. In fact, Vlad ‘the Impaler’ Dracul, whom
Bram Stoker based the Dracula character on never actually lived in the castle
at all. It was just a good place for Bram Stoker to based his story. Vlad
visited the castle only once during his lifetime. So other than the souvenir
shops you won’t find any real information about “Dracula” at Bran castle. But
still the castle itself is beautiful, perched atop a cliff in a lovely little
town close to Brasov.
We did actually go out of our way
to make a day trip to another castle which is rarely visited by foreign
tourists in the industrial town of Hunedoara in Western Romania. This was truly
amazing. A amazingly medieval looking castle which was also helped by the fact
that there was some filming going on there at the time so there were people
walking around dressed in full costume to help add to the atmosphere.
Something we never expected to see
on our round world trip was Jousting. Yes the real kind with knights on horses
and long pointy sticks. There was some kind of Jousting tournament happening in
Brasov when we were there and we happened to hear about it through someone at
the hostel. So thought we’d go along and investigate. It turned out to be some
great entertainment watching the “Knights” battle it out with different
disciplines in the arena.
Another one of our favourite things
we did in Romania was again kind of by accident. Our hostel owner in Sibiu had
suggested we visit this town nearby and to get there we had to take a bus to a
tramcar. She said that if we wanted to waste a bit of time if we had to wait
for the next tramcar we should visit this “little open air museum,” close by.
So when we arrived on the bus we thought ok lets go and see this little museum.
Turns out it was not little in the slightest and we ended up not visiting the
other town at all and just spent the whole day in the museum. It was in fact an
entire village which had been created by moving different building and
structures from across Romania over the years and rebuilding them to create a
kind of old traditional town. We really enjoyed just wandering through the
hectares of property and seeing all of the old buildings, they had everything
from traditional water mills, to icehouses for fisherman, horse and carts
moving things around the village, traditional Romanian wooden churches and even
an old Ferris wheel, completely made out of wood. What we found even more
amazing was the fact that it appeared people were actually living there as
well. Whilst you were allowed to go into some of the house and they were just
decked out with traditional artefacts like a museum in other areas there were
gates at the back that lead to other houses which were private and were
actually where people were living. We assume they were people who maintained
the museum. But it was great as it made it seem more like a real working town.
So as you can tell we loved every minute in Romania. We
would love to go back and spend some time visiting some other areas of the
country. But for now it was time to jump back on a long train ride back to
Croatia.
