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.