An adventure in trains

I was sad to leave Romania. Everyone was just so nice and I felt really safe and comfortable there. I think part of it was that I was worried about traveling across 4 countries by train by myself.
So the first leg was to Prague, from Bucharest, with a transfer in Budapest, Hungary. Cristi's mom was nice enough to take me to the train station. She doesn't speak English, so I followed her. We had a long ride on the metro...sat in somewhat-comfortable silence...Oh, cuz both Cristi and Iulia were back at work. But Cristi was meeting us at the train station. Mrs.Malesh and I got to the station fine, and figured out what platform I needed to be at...and then we waited for Cristi.

He made his entrance by sneaking up and pretending to steal from my backpack. He was always warning me to keep my eye on my bags. Cristi's older brother David showed up too...we met once previously...he must've been in the area or something. Or I left such a powerful impression on him, he just HAD to say goodbye in person...yeah, that was it.

Anyways, we had a heck of a time finding the car I was supposed to be in. The numbers didn't seem to match up...but we found the best match...which I think was actually in the second class car...and I had tickets for first class (hoitey-toitey, I know, I just figured I'd be safer with the fewer people in first class). But the car was pretty much empty, so I was put at ease. The only thing that worried me about train travel by myself was the idea that I'd be in a crammed car and that I wouldn't feel safe. But luckily that wasn't the case. I got on the train, Cristi and I had our goodbyes...oh, and I took the huge bag of sandwiches Iulia and Mrs.Malesh had made for me. Sandwiches and fruit. They're so wonderful.

Bucharest is in the more southeastern part of Romania. I had to travel due west, through Hungary and Slovakia to get to the Czech Republic. So I traveled through the bulk of Romania. The train left at 2 or so, so for a while there was light out, and I got to see the beautiful countryside.

This was my attempt to get a shot of a cemetery. They can really tell you a lot about a culture.

Not so much countryside, but I liked all the lines at this stop.

I took this for the fluffy clouds, but the gas station is great too!

So the train would stop at various stations throughout Romania, pick up more passengers...but the car I was in never got full. A bunch of young people got on in the middle of the night somewhere, I think near Bran. They were goth and all and had touristy shirts about vampires in Bran...they were a bit noisy, but quieted down after a while. Sleeping wasn't the most comfortable, but I managed. Here's how another passenger managed:

Yes, that's the top of his head peering out over his collar...he went turtle style and pulled his whole shirt up so it covered his face...?

I slept somewhat through the night. I was kind of worried about missing my transfer, in Budapest at 5am or so, so I'd keep waking up to check the time. We got in later than expected, so I missed my 10 minute window to switch trains. What was I thinking with that scheduling? 10 minutes to navigate a foreign train station? Needless to say, it didn't happen. I got to the right platform right as my train was pulling away. I could've done the dramatic run-for-the-train thing...but I wasn't feeling it. There's always another train.

So there I was...Budapest...at 5am with the next train at 9:30 or so. That was the longest morning. It was kind of fun to watch the station come to life. Yeah, I just stayed put in the station. Lame? Maybe. Lazy? Yes. Chicken? Heck yes. I thought I'd be all set in the station, I still had a bag full of sandwiches and fruit...I was golden. Or I would've been if it hadn't been for the stupid bathrooms! You have to pay to use 'em! So I had to exchange money for some measly coins to pay the creep-o bathroom bouncer. 

But the hours slowly crept on by, and I treated myself to a Hungarian candy bar...ha, it was a Snickers. It was a really pretty station. Small, but nice.

This time I made a point to find the right car, hoping first class was a bit more comfortable. It was just the same, maybe a little more spaced out. So from Budapest to Prague I sat across from a nice American man, who had been in Hungary for a month or so. He was spending 2 or 3 weeks in Prague...then going to Korea ? and back to Europe somewhere. He was really interesting. Early 30s, good looking, a lawyer...we swapped travel stories.  It was fun to have someone to talk to. Since I still had leftover Hungarian bathroom money, I made my way to the fancy dining car and had crepes with chocolate! MMmmm. There was a group of older English travelers who were fun to eavesdrop on. And again, the views were beautiful.

We traveled a ways along the Daube River.

 We got into Prague around 5pm or so. My dad had asked a friend of his who worked at the Embassy there to meet up with me and have lunch. Well, lunch had come and gone and I hadn't shown up. So of course he emailed my dad...who got super worried...But I called the guy and explained and he said he'd let Dad know. So instead of meeting with him, I left my luggage in the station (in a secure locker) and went out for a stroll. I didn't have a map so I ended up following street signs with little pictures. At one point I could tell I hit a major road and then I basically just followed the crowds of tourists.

I have a lot of pictures of buildings. They are all just so beautiful and interesting!

Entering the Old Town area

The astronomical clock...not sure how it differs from other clocks...except it's really pretty

A nice stranger took a pic of me after I took one of him...but he caught me getting worried about someone stepping in front of the picture...ha

Me and some Korean tourists

This was a beautiful synagogue I stumbled upon on a side street on my way back to the train station. I was just floored by all the colors and patterns...amazing!

I made it back to the station by the time it was getting dark. I still had a few hours to wait for my train to Krakow. So I got my luggage, got dinner at Burger King...and then sat and waited. Luckily I had my handy little seat cane. I can't believe I never got any pictures of it. It's this cane/seat my Grampy got for me. Folded up you can use it as a supportive cane. Tired? Unfold it and it's a comfortable seat. It came in handy. When we finally got to board the train, I was soooo happy to have my own little compartment!

It was actually quite comfortable!

I liked how there was a space for everything. Oh look! Bottom right corner! The cane/seat!

I slept soundly through the night and awoke 30 minutes or so before we pulled into the station in Krakow. Overall I had a lovely time on the trains of Europe. I'd do it again in a heartbeat and I'd recommend everyone give train travel a try!

Romania!

The trip started with a flight from Boston to Amsterdam and then another from Amsterdam to Bucharest. From Boston to Amsterdam I sat next to a Russian lady who had spent a few months visiting her daughter in New Hampshire. She spent that time mostly watching her grandson who didn't speak Russian, so she was excited to talk to someone who understood. The flood gates were opened and I learned her whole life story. She was really nice though. I helped her buy expensive makeup and she gave me some hard candies and a hug goodbye.

But I got into Bucharest fine and my friend Cristian (Cristi for short) met me. I know Cristi from Russia, we were both missionaries. We were in the same area for three months or so. He is a great, fun loving guy and I was excited to meet his wife. They both speak English, so that made it so much easier. We stayed at his family's apartment where Cristi's sweet wife Iulia had dinner waiting for me. I loved her from that moment on. She was so nice and attentive it was impossible not to love her. Cristi's whole family were all so nice and loving. Only Cristi and Iulia speak English, so I couldn't really talk to his parents or his cute little niece Oana, although she was always sure to tell me "Good morning!" and "Good evening". She's been learning some English in school. All the food was great. We had a lot of really good chicken soup, it was almost sour, I think it was vinegar based. I ate lots of yummy meat and fresh veggies...I was taken care of very well.

*A note on Romanian pronunciation. The Ș is pronounced "sh", while the Ț is pronounced "ts" like the end of 'boats'. There are other differences too...but these are the ones I have paid attention to in the following written account. * 

So I got there on a Thursday evening, and the next day we packed up the car and headed to Brașov, a decent sized city in central Romania, via the scenic route. I LOVED the scenic route. My 100 blurry pictures from the backseat will attest to that.

We passed through the nice medieval city of Curtea de Argeș. We stopped to see the cathedral, which was beautiful. Unfortunately it has a pretty gruesome legend associated with it.

The prince commissioned a group of masons to build a cathedral. They couldn't build the walls high enough without them falling. So they decided to follow the ancient custom of putting a woman in the walls and building around her. So burying her alive in a sense. They agreed that the next woman to come by would be the one...and it was the head mason's wife who stopped by with lunch. So that's creepy, but there's more! The masons were telling the prince that they could go build a higher cathedral somewhere else. The prince was angry and had all the masons trapped on the roof. They proceeded to build wooden wings in an attempt to get down, but the main mason died and now there is a spring to mark the spot where he fell.

We then kept driving and driving, right over a range of the lower Carpathian mountains, or the Făgăraş mountains (This name will show up again in a bit). The mountains are soooo beautiful! I loved it. Half way over was the Vidraru Dam, which was stunning. It's a hydroelectric dam and super tall. You can bungee jump off it...eek. No thanks!

After the dam we kept driving through the mountains and got to the other side where the Transfăgărăşan road heads down and out of the mountains. Transfăgărăşan=(trans (over, across) + Făgăraş. This road is amazing! I first saw it in an episode of BBC's car show Top Gear. They were sent to Romania in sport cars in search of the best driving road. And they sure found it! It was the coolest road I've ever seen. We didn't go at it at a high speed or anything, we were just in a Suburu Forester, but after 5 minutes of twists and turns I was getting slightly sick--and thrown from one side of the back seat to the other.

 

It was the funnest road I've been on. From what I've read it was built by the government as a way to get troops over the mountains. There was an incident of the USSR invading Czechoslovakia quickly? and Romania was then afraid of the same fate, so they quickly built a road to where the Soviets were suspected to attack. At least that's how I remember it from that Wikipedia article...

 Once out of the mountains it was pretty much a direct shot to Brașov. It took us a while to find Iulia's cousin's apartment, but we finally found it, were welcomed in, fed and put to bed. At least I was...put to bed that is. The cousin and her husband didn't speak English. I did find it fun listening to Romanian and trying to pick out words that were similar to it's cousin Spanish, but I was tired...so it was hard not to look it.

The next day we headed to Bran to see Bran Castle...commonly referred to as none other than...Dracula's Castle!

So, for those interested...here's a brief history of "Dracula". (You're in luck, I just recently caught a bio of author Bram Stoker). Stoker was from Ireland I believe...and he had a career running a theater company and it was only later that he penned his now famous novel. But it was based on all the creepy bedtime stories his dear mother would tell him. I guess at the time there were a lot of creepy myths and fairy tales that were akin to today's Dr.Seuss books. One such tale involved vampire-like creatures. After some study, Stoker crafted the character of Dracula and set him in Transylvania, an area of present day Romania.

From what I understand, his character of Dracula was based on Vlad Țepeș III aka Vlad the Impaler. According to Wikipedia, he's best known for "his resistance against the Ottoman Empire and its expansion and for the cruel punishments he imposed on his enemies." His last name was Drăculea, meaning "son of the dragon". His dad was part of the "Order of the Dragon" some knighty thing. So yeah, Vlad took torturing his enemies really seriously. He went on to get a pretty gruesome reputation which was told all throughout Europe. Feel free to find out about his favorite forms of torture in this informative Wikipedia article. But the castle was only briefly used by Vlad as a fortress and defense cuz it was on the boarder of two waring lands.

It was built by Teutonic Knights in the 1200s, then used by Vlad in the 1300s...used by different groups...but it was in 1920 that it was taken over by Romanian royalty. Did you know that Romania had a monarchy from 1881-1947? It was only until the Soviets took over that they were dethroned. So the castle had a lot of modern furniture and decoration. Since it's now a museum it did have a fair share of knighty suits of armor and whatnot. 

"I am like Captain Moroni"...such a Mormon ;)

"Where's the money? And the elevator some sign said was under the wishing well?"

Ok, just a bit longer. Stay with me here. We also went to another fortress thing, a town over. It was really cool, located "high on a mountain top" (yup, I'm such a Mormon too). It was quite the walk up, but there were beautiful views of the valley.

And then later that night in Brașov we saw the Black Church...crud, I used to know the word for church...black is like in Spanish, Negra...anyway. It was spooky looking at night.

  

Brașov also had a really nice downtown area. I loved this umbrella thingy though:

Brașov. Probably the best city in the world...probably? Where's the conviction? It's funny cuz it was surrounded by other umbrella's with other city names on 'em...haha

Ok...I'm trying to wrap this up, I swear. We went to church that Sunday...and then set out back to Bucharest. We stopped at Peleș Castle in Sinaia. It was soooo breathtakingly beautiful. I loved it, and I didn't even go in. Touristy places like this aren't cheap. But at this point, we were all tired and wanted to get back, so we just spent less than an hour there. The outside of the building was all painted, and the statues and gardens were gorgeous. We saw a newly wed couple were taking pictures there. I wonder if they got married there...

The main thing I saw in Bucharest, other than Cristi and Iulia's new apartment (they were remodeling it), was The People's Palace. It's this HUGE government building built in communist times. They actually took out a whole historic neighborhood for this monstrosity. Cristi hates it, he refused to go in for the tour...which turns out I couldn't do cuz I didn't have any ID on me...it was then that I found out I was supposed to have my passport with me the whole time...Oops! I left it safe in the apartment! No one told me differently. But we walked around it...this thing is massive! Imposing really. The BBC show Top Gear took their sports cars in the gigantic tunnels underneath it for a spin.

This thing is this big on all 4 sides! Crazy big!

So, as you can see, I have awesome friends who took two days off work just to take me around to see the beauties and wonders of Romania for myself. I will end this entry with my favorite video from the trip. We would listen to an awesome European radio station with all kinds of great music (oldies mostly). Cristi would sing along--loud and without abandon. This video is us going through this quaint village of Cristian. I liked the colorful buildings. We joked that the town was named after Cristi and that he was the ruler...so he'd wave to the people...and then yell at them to get back to work.

 

My Trip

I have yet to write about my Eastern European trip. In the next several entries I'll try to cover the trip highlights. Overall, I had such a good time. Visiting friends in Romania was wonderful, their whole family made me feel so welcome. And touring around Poland was great, I learned so much about Polish history and met great people along the way.

Newport Revisited

When Renee and I went to Newport in April, we decided to come back in the summer, to use unused tickets, and to see all the flowers in bloom. We found out that Beth and my mom also wanted to go, having never seen the palatial mansions that rule the beautiful coastal town.

So we started our trip with lunch of course. We were driving in the downtown, more shopping/touristy area and we passed a nice looking tavern thing, that was labeled as the oldest tavern in Newport. So we stopped in and had a wonderful lunch. I believe it was called The White Pony, The White Horse?...The Prancing Pony? I forget...It was a neat building though. It stayed in the family for a while, there was even a ex-Pirate owner.

Oh, and we learned about a new hot sauce...it was Thai...Sriracha. The waiter recommended a cold soup that had some in it. So we kept asking him the name, and we even got to tell another table about it. The soup was very good, the hot sauce has a slight after-kick. Mmmm.

After a long lunch we made our way over to The Breakers, which is the main mansion. I thought we had to get tickets for other mansions there, but in the summer you buy 'em at each individual mansion. But we got to walk the grounds, which were pretty.

I like this one of my mom, looking out, surveying the land, dreaming of mansions and oceans...rainbows...

But Renee and I had already toured The Breakers, so we headed over to Rosecliff. Rosecliff was much smaller, but very beautiful structurally. It was a big H shape, so large wings on each side. It also had a beautiful Sweetheart staircase. You can't take pictures inside unfortunately. The stinky thing about Rosecliff is that none of the furniture was original to the house like at The Breakers. The family that built the house eventually sold it, but auctioned off everything inside. So all the regal 1920s stuff was gone, but replaced by nice 1930s-40s stuff. They also had a temporary dress exhibit. They had all kinds of dresses and showed how they were each individually tailor made to fit the wearer...that was neat to see. But I was still disappointed by the house itself. The Breakers and all it's splendor and original, crazily ornate furniture makes everything else pale in comparison.

Oh! But lots of films were shot at Rosecliff! True Lies, 27 Dresses, The Great Gatsby (one part at the fountain)...hmm...what else? Those are the main ones I remember. And you can rent out a room and have your own private function, be it wedding, or Thanksgiving...that would be a memorable event.

A view from out front

Out back, facing the ocean

The Gatsby fountain, and a very excited Mom. I think when I took this I was joking about her getting in or something. She normally doesn't get this excited about fountains.

 Me and the view. I look slightly uncomfortable for some reason...

I borrowed this cane/seat from my Grampy, and I told him I'd be The Thinker in it.

This is me cheesing it up by the fountain out front. The landscaping was really pretty.

You can see the lawn was decorated with big, ornate planters. 

And then I got a little crazy/artistic with this one.

Unfortunately, we didn't plan the day too well and were only able to see one mansion. So Renee and I still have one more ticket each from the set of 3 we got in April. But overall it was a really nice day trip. Maybe I'll go back and see yet another opulent homestead. Beth pointed out that they are kinda like America's castles.