Five Fast Days

Romania... a country I have always wanted to visit but never would have... because well... it just isn’t France or England or Italy. After all, what is there to see in Romania other than Count Dracula? Lots.

On Wednesday we landed in Bucharest and picked up a car at the airport. Then we bravely set out with a high-level road map provided by Avis. We missed our first turn and found ourselves well on our way to somewhere other than our destination of Targoviste. Lucky for us there are only a few roads in that area of Romania, so we could readjust a few towns up.

In Targoviste we visited a monastery, had a delicious pizza lunch, and then wandered around the original castle of the Vlads built in the late 1300’s. Vlad Dracul and his son Vlad Tepes (the impaler) used the castle during the mid 1400’s. The castle was abandoned in the late 1600’s and fell into ruin. The tower is still in tact but the rest of the castle is in the process of being restored.





From Targoviste we headed West to Cutea de Arges to visit the monastery it is known for... the drive should have taken about an hour... ha ha. I think we drove the worst roads in that country with not a town in sight, though there were plenty of sheep, cows, shrines, and potholes in the road. In some places the road was missing and we had to inch along wishing we had a big ole 4-wheel drive. One hour turned into about four and the sun started to set...



Finally we got to Cutea de Arges... in the dark... with no detailed map or translator... and no Romanian SIM card. Frustrated, we stopped at a grocery store hoping to find anyone who could speak some English. A very nice couple read the address of our bed and breakfast and told us to follow them, which we did, though not without wondering if we had entered into some bad horror movie... two naive Americans blindly following a couple of Romanians after dark...

We checked in at our b&b and went across the street for dinner, where we found fried brains and offal soup on the menu, and no I did not order them. I know you are thinking that after that hotdog in Vorzel, I would eat most anything but even I have limits. Dinner was ok and after a drink we were ready for bed.



The next morning our hostess, Ruxi, made us a delicious country breakfast of omelettes, bread with jam, fresh vegies, feta cheese, and tea. Um yum yum. We asked her for directions to our next stop and she advised us to take a less travelled road so that we would be able to visit the ruins of Vlad Tepes’ fortress, 1480 steps up the side of a mountain. From there she said we could continue up through the Carpathian mountains on “the most beautiful” road in Romania that is “only passable two or three months of the year.” I have to admit, after our drive to her place from Targoviste, we were very hesitant to take a mountain road that is only usable a couple months a year. But Ruxi’s father convinced us that it was safer than the road we had come in on, so we went for it.

Going up there...



1480 steps is a lot of steps just in case you were wondering about that. After about the first four hundred or so, I was thinking that the zoom lens on the video camera would have been sufficient for visiting this site... At about 950 steps up, I understood why it was called a fortress and was thinking that nobody in their right minds could ever storm it. At the top I was thankful to God that I was able to make it there and take in the spectacular views, and I was also thankful that I am not afraid of heights.

The view of where we parked our car



The fortress



My very own Vlad



Hubby and I sat up there for a while (catching our breath) and we noticed a bridge across the way, and far above that, a road that disappeared into the mountain. A truck drove out of it and I got that wriggly feeling in my stomach... and then it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe we would be driving up into that mountain.





Oh yeah, that bridge was nothing compared to the rest of the trip up into and over the mountains. Twisting, turning, climbing, twisting, climbing... higher and higher until we were in the clouds. That road is not for the faint of heart but it is one of the most amazing drives I have ever been on. When we finally landed back on Earth, we were still a ways from Bran and of course the sun was on its way down.

Halfway down the other side (the easy side)



With all this to go



Have you seen the movie Dracula? You know the scene where he is racing to get to the castle before the sun sets? That was us. Really, who wants to be stuck on some lonely road in Transylvania at dusk? We stayed at the Hotel Bran and had a direct view of the Bran castle off our balcony.



Just like the night before, we headed across the street for dinner. This time we found “Dracula’s Manhood” on the menu and I said to my husband, “No way are we eating here.” (Really I insisted we leave because the menu had nothing great on it and the salon was empty... a sure sign it is not the best restaurant in town.) A few places up the street we found a wonderful spot called Christi’s that served the most scrumptious peasant potatoes ever.

In the morning we visited the castle. It has a lot of history and it was old, not sumptuous and ornate like a modern palace, but very realistic of an ancient castle with a wolf-skin rug, a secret staircase, and turrets with cross walks in between. Out side the castle there are plenty of street vendors to keep the shop-happy tourists busy. One of the vendors was making and selling funnel cakes... a sort of rotisserie cake. The dough is wrapped around a metal tube and then spun over hot coals. It cooks very quickly and is then covered in melted sugar. I bought one... um yum yum some more.







From Bran we went to Brasov, a 775 year old city first founded by the Saxons. We stayed in the old city center where all the buildings are from the 15th century... though we did venture across to the modern part of the city for a wonderful Italian dinner at Trattoria Del Chianti. In Brasov we visited the Black church, a stunning structure that was built and rebuilt from the 14th century through the present. We also visited the Brasov museum of history... that took a while, lol.



From there we headed back to Bucharest via the town of Sinaia where the castle Peles is located. This is a modern castle, layered in richness and luxurious details. You could spend a whole afternoon wandering its halls in awe... though we stayed only about an hour because we wanted to get to Bucharest before dark.



By now we had purchased a more detailed map of Romania and were fairly confident we would be able to find our hotel that was somewhere in the middle of the capitol city. Nope... there are huge 6-lane traffic circles, streets change names across intersections, lots of one-way streets, and enough crazy drivers to make a New York cabbie nervous.

Finally we pulled over and I managed to get a person to tell me which of the numbers to dial on our cell phone (that by now had a Romanian SIM card in it) to actually get the hotel on the line rather than the annoying “you have dialed a wrong number” message that I kept getting no matter which combination of numbers I dialed. (Think country code, long distance code, area code, and phone number... where did one number set start and another end?)

My knight in shining armor (who drove 730K of crazy roads)



We were right around the block, so within minutes we were in the comfort of our lovely hotel that came equipped with Craftmatic beds, his and hers sundries, and an espresso maker. After dinner and drinks at Sangria’s (the best dinner I have had since leaving home in August) we crashed until it was time to eat brunch and drive back to the airport.

Before we went to Romania I wasn’t sure we should do it. After all, we are here in Kyiv on important business, but now I am so glad we did it. It made the waiting period fly by and being away from all of our children helped to ease the pain of missing my sweeties back home. Now we are knee deep in paperwork again and moving ahead to our next milestones.