At first I had planned a massive three week extravaganza for my summer travels - it was to involve Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. Then I realised that was too much. Even for me. Also there was no way I could afford it. So I streamlined it into nine days of Romania (the capital, Bucharest, and Transylvania) and Varna, a seaside resort town in Bulgaria.
Bish's Precis
- I went to Romania and Bulgaria
- I washed my neck specially for Transylvania but didn't get any action
- Bucharest is NOT Budapest. Its dusty and still has bullet holes from the 1989 revolution
- If you ever go to Varna, go to Gregory's Backpackers. It rocked. So did the whole town, beaches, food and nightlife
- There's another email/blog entry following about one massive day of travel
- My parents arrive here on Saturday!!
- I'm off to India next with Chop, and I'm reading Shantaram thanks to Guy and Sarah's recommendations- This and previous travel emails are on my blog:
http://plugger-home-and-away.blogspot.com/
- See all of my pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ross.duckham/BulgariaAndRomania
Romania
There's three things you need to know about Romania. First, their history is dominated by two tyrannical despots, Vlad Tepes in medieval times (the real life basis for Dracula, who life had the handy moniker of Vlad the Impaler), and Nicolae Ceausescu, who was a terrible Communist dictator during the Cold War (he made his dog a general in the Romanian army - it was illegal not to salute it). Secondly, Chad plagiarised their flag. I forget the third thing.
Bucharest: Its NOT Budapest
The night before I left, a buddy of mine was opining that his favourite city in Europe was Budapest. It has ornate buildings, but is still quite gritty, cheap booze, a wonderful setting, great people, a lively music and arts scene: overall it's quite a package.
Bucharest is NOT Budapest.
If the road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions, then it is surely lined with buildings from Bucharest.
Some of the buildings there are extremely ornamental and quite detailed (or at least they were when they were built). These same buildings are now very shoddy, with noticeable slants in the buildings and structural faults. I wonder how many fall down each day. So, despite their aspirational decorative design, it seems too many buildings in Bucharest have been designed to make lovely facades but fail to retain their structural integrity. Priorities eh?
Anyway, I arrived late on Saturday and found my hotel. It was in a fairly grubby area. Powerlines everywhere . I asked where I could eat and they suggested a place around the corner which did some decent stuffed vine leaves and pork. Romanian food is fairly typical eastern European fare - stews, lots of meat, cucumbers, tomatoes and dumplings - except it contained maize meal where you might expect to find mashed potatoes. I remembered that my Lonely Planet pointedly avoided calling Romanian food "cuisine." Still, I scoffed it down.
I headed back to the hostel and eventually got to sleep. It took a while because of the time difference which was a shame as I wanted to get up early for a full day of sightseeing.
Turned out I didn't need it.
I woke up early of my own accord and headed to the Palace of the Parliament first thing. It was a major reason why I wanted to go to Bucharest. This monstrosity, the second biggest building in the world behind the Pentagon, was begun by Ceausescu in the early 1980s (after he'd knocked over 15% of the Old Town of Bucharest) and by the time he was toppled and executed in 1989 was still only half finished.
Astonishingly, despite the brutality of the regime it represents, they finished it (only fully in 2005). The reason they kept going was that all the materials needed to finish it had been brought to the site and it was more efficient to build it than take it all back.
The place is an amazing folly, and incredible in its scale, still mostly unused despite the parliament being based there now. Look at the photos and consider this: it's 86 metres high. It gives you an idea of the size of the place. Something like 35 hectares of floorspace.
Strange then that the tour only lasted an hour. Entry (and compulsory tour) cost about £3, and if you wanted to take photos it was another £6. Not bad, but considering the time you get and that you can get in to the Tower of London (easily a whole day) for £16 it's a bit steep. Inside, it is incredibly ornate: marble , wood, about 1500 tonnes of crystal, and no air conditioning - Ceausescu had a fear of being poisoned by it. He should've worried more about the bullets.
The highlight was the balcony - where Ceausescu never stood - looking out over the gardens and down the magnificent avenue reserved for Ceaucescu's use only. It is also the balcony where a touring Michael Jackson famously looked out over his fans and says "Hello Budapest!"
Bucharest is NOT Budapest.
I left the Palace of the Parliament at about an hour and half in total. Walking out, I had a close look at the gardens and saw they were very poorly maintained (especially for a place as significant to Romania as this). It made me wonder what the palace itself will be like in a few years' time.
Leaving the palace, next stop had to be Piata Revolutiei, where the uprising and overthrow over the Ceausescu regime began in December 1989. There's a monument there which could unkindly be likened to a massive turd on a stick. But that would be insensitive given the number of people who died, so I won't make that comparison.
A couple of other buildings overlook the square, including the one from which Ceausescu fled as the security forces opened fire on the unarmed protesters. One building which is not standing is that of the security forces, which was torn down by the mob out of hatred ( only the shell remains).
One thing I noticed a lot of in Bucharest was bullet holes still in buildings, almost 20 years on. Even important buildings like the National Gallery still have them.
The last significant stop I made was at the Arc de Triumf, built after WWI as a symbol of friendship with France. Nearby is Piata Charles de Gaulle.
There are a lot of links to France actually. Both languages are Romance languages and had a lot of similar words (paine is bread in Romanian). I found it a pretty easy language to read actually.
By then it was 5pm, and my lack of sleep was getting to me. I headed to he hotel for a siesta, which in fact lasted the whole night.
While reading up I found that Ceausescu reserved special hatred for Hungarians when in charge of the country, regularly torturing them (eg making them ingest radioactive material, condemning them to painful cancerous death).
Good thing that Bucharest is NOT Budapest.
Transylvania: A Bite? Not Even a Stinking Hickey
My alarm went off and I was up early to get a five hour train to Sighisoara, deep in Transylvania. I made sure I washed my neck for the occasion.
On the train I was buried in my book when someone asked me something in Romanian. I said I only speak English. His old face lit up and he engaged me in conversation in English. He was shocked that someone would come to Romania without knowing anyone here (on reflection he had a point).
The old bloke was a pastor. He asked whether I was christian. I said yes (hey, I am baptised). He asked what type. After a slightly-too-long pause I recalled I was Anglican. He smiled knowingly and spoke to me about the different denominations in the country for a while, asked me about Australia, etc. Then we both settled in to our reading. As I was leaving the train he gave me a business card with some phrases in Romanian on it. Bless the old bloke!
In Bucharest I'd been surprised by the lack of Gypsies. In the country about 10% of the population are Gypsy or "Roma" (they're not native Romanian either despite the name - they apparently descend from the Persia area). There was no lack of Gypsies in Sighisoara. It was a bit intimidating actually.
After arriving at the hostel in the late afternoon (Nathan's, like the famous one in Krakow) and quickly headed to the old walled citadel where markets were set up and a festival was on, with traditional dancing and the like. The walled city itself is interesting - some of the towers have been rebuilt and its a real mishmash of styles.
The reason I headed there was because it was the birthplace of Vlad Tepes. The house he was born in is now a steakhouse (what else would it be). I ate at a very good traditional restaurant called Rustic - cheap and better than the one in Bucharest - and marvelled at the non-smoking section which consisted of a perspex booth with a table of four set there. It reminded me a little too much of the smoking rooms you see in bowling alleys etc. The tables had been turned!
I had a couple of beers and headed back to the hostel. Not along the dark, dangerous waterfront mind you, along the streets where I could see where I was going. Disappointed in the lack of social life at the hostel ("oh, we have a bar - you just need to go out and buy your own beer"), I turned in for the night.
The following day was one of vigorous travel: alarm set for 6:30am train to Brasov and then bus to Bran castle , a fairy-tale-type castle famous for Dracula even though he never set foot in there. The castle is quite funny really: inside it's all about some queen or princess who actually lived there in the 19th century and has faithfully reconstructed rooms. Unfortunately the trip in the castle was a one-way affair, where you are directed fairly quickly through the rooms (there's no space to stop and ponder and let others wander past you).
But outside in the markets is a real cacophony of rampant tackiness as I suspect only Romania can do. Among the fake fangs and awful books ("Dracula: Myth or Reality?" - you can't write that stuff. No. Seriously. You CAN'T write that stuff), were even tackier things like fake Spiderman 3 outfits (why would you counterfeit that cr@p movie?) The food was awful too, and the place was crawling with tourists of course. I couldn't wait to leave.
So I got a bus back to Brasov for the afternoon, and the town was a real highlight actually. The old town and in particular the town square are said to be the best in Romania. I wandered through there very quickly to get to the cablecar for a view of the city from the Hollywood-style letters overlooking it. The view was wonderful, although the bar at the top for some reason faced the wrong way, down the other side! They had the right beers on tap though.
It was a stunning day, and nice and hot. I headed back to the square in beautiful weather and wandered around the old town for a while. For some reason, the women there were gorgeous! So much so that I have to add Brasov to my list of "Tidy Towns," which includes Tartu, Ghent, Eger, Bergen, and London. I later found out that there wasn't much night life there though. Shame.
Anyway I got the train back and after a long day that included about 6 hours travelling, I crashed out. I figured the next day was going to be a big one - getting from Sighisoara, two thirds of the way across Romania, to the resort town of Varna on the Bulgarian coast. My alarm was set for 7:30am.
I was right. It was big. So big that it gets its own email, all by itself!
Varna: A Beach! A Beach! My Kingdom for a Beach!
I really, really needed to relax once I hit Varna, and to make the most of the beach.
I was staying just out of town in a village called Zvezdetsa, at a hostel called Gregory's. Run by a British couple, and with a couple of West Aussie guys helping them out for summer for free board and food, this is the best hostel I have stayed at in my travels. The people - guests and staff - are wonderful there, and the setup is superb.
We were all English speaking (except the yanks), and it's a small place so we all tended to do things together, like heading to the beach. And after getting back we'd just sit in the bar and get on the squirt (500ml bottles of beer 50p, shots of lethal Bulgarian spirit 55p: before, after). The relative isolation really worked - it made for a nice atmosphere.
The main beach in Varna was a bit disappointing and dirty, so I was glad to head up the road a bit on the second day. We had lunch on the beach (I followed up my steak on the first day with a whole fish on the second for about 5 quid: before, after). Another night on the lash, including heading to a beachside bar (5 vodka and cokes on the beach - 4 quid) and it was time to head back to Bucharest for my flight back to the UK.
Back in Bucharest I headed out to eat that night, totally famished. I wandered around the streets a bit to, but not too much as it was still very hot. This photo was taken at 9:15pm. I stayed a night in Friends Hostel, which was fine but I didn't think it was in a very nice area (right near the main train station).
Then it occurred to me - maybe there were no nice areas in Bucharest.
But I guess that was part of the reason I was in a rush to see Romania. Having just joined the EU, its still a bit of frontier-land tourism-wise. No bucks parties really, no yobbos (present company excluded), and not really all that prepared for visitors. I keep thinking back to the surprise expressed by the pastor on the train.
Bulgaria was fantastic, and I would go back to Gregory's in a flash. Varna was about unwinding rather than sightseeing, and you could've stayed there for a week doing different stuff each day - in fact I think I should have done that. Ah well, next year!
In Bulgaria I also liked the Cyrillic alphabet. Perversely, it made me try to learn a bit of the language, probably more than I would have otherwise bothered with. Doesn't matter though as it's all forgotten now.
What's next?
First of all, my parents arrive here on Saturday! I haven't seen them since I left, so it's gonna be a fun weekend! They're here for the Rugby World Cup (and me!) I'll be heading to Montpellier for the Australia vs Fiji match in a couple of weekends. They're back in the UK in October.
But the next big trip on the horizon is India! Two weeks at the start of November which should be ... well, I don't really know what to expect. I'll be heading there with my good mate Chop. I can't wait! On a couple of mates' advice I've started reading Shantaram in preparation and I'm really enjoying it (thanks Guy and Sarah!)
Except for my "Plugger's Odyssey" email which follows (probably tomorrow), that's about it for now though. I hope you're all well!
Cheers all!
Rosco
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