Romania – where to begin.
It is a mixture of the old and the new.
Bucharest, the capital, is a bustling city, but the remnants of the 25
year dictatorship of the Communist Nicolae Ceausescu is still apparent in many
of the buildings. The early 20th
century was the Golden Age of Bucharest.
Many neoclassical buildings were built and parks were patterned and
landscaped after Parisian models such that in the 1930’s Bucharest was known as
“Little Paris” or “Paris of the East”.
They even have a replica of the Arc de Triumph. However, bombings in WWII and the 1940
earthquake destroyed much of Bucharest’s beauty. Another earthquake in 1977 further decimated
the city. In the 1980’s Ceausescu began
a massive redevelopment of the city, culminating with the construction of his
grand Palace of the Parliament, meant to be the center of the Communist party
in Bucharest. The violent revolution in
1989 resulted in the fall and death of Ceausescu and the Communist Party in
Romania, but many buildings still bear the scars and bullet holes of that
time. Today, the town is recovering and
the Old Town has been turned into a beautiful pedestrian area lined with shops
and restaurants.
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| Working the fields Romanian-style |
Once you leave the outskirts of Bucharest, you feel like you
have returned to the 18th and 19th centuries. The area outside of the major cities are
still farmland and many of the farmers still use the methods of 200 years
ago. It is not unusual to see a horse
and wagon riding on the same roads as the cars.
Farmers still use horses to pull their plows in the fields. Most farmers own small sections of land where
they grow the crops that will sustain them through the winter months. Shepherds still tend the flocks of sheep and
herds of cows. In the summer the
shepherds take the sheep to the mountains to graze, returning in September with
the flocks. They stay with the sheep24
hours a day – you see them tending their flocks by day (usually with a dog or
two) and at night they take them to a sheep fold where they sleep near
them. It is much the same with the
cows. A herder picks up the cows from
their owners each morning, stays with them as they graze during the day, and
then returns them to their barns at night.
The peasant women still dress in the long black skirt, leggings, and a
scarf on their heads. They preserve the
summer crops for use in the winter and make their own plum brandy – which is
like drinking moonshine.
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| Flock of sheep |
So I guess the best place to start is at the beginning (just
like in “Do-Re-Mi”). It was a very
stressful beginning to an otherwise serene and placid trip. Our flight out of
Slovenia departed 45 minutes late and after one of the longest approaches, we
landed just as our flight to Bucharest was supposed to board. We parked at a remote area and they bused us
to the immigration center – the farthest point to our next gate. Bill literally ran to the gate (about a mile
away) only to find out Turkish Airlines doesn’t care about on time
take-offs. We both made the flight and
they were still loading passengers 30 minutes after our supposed take-off. 3 of or 4 bags made the flight, but Bill had
to wait about an hour to fill out the lost bag form. We got to our hotel about 2 am. Fortunately, the travel company changed our
meeting time with our guide until 11 AM.
And our lost bag was delivered to the hotel that afternoon.
We met Val our guide that morning. He is 40 and never been married (although he
does have a girlfriend that he says he intends to marry next year). He studied law in college, but then decided
that the law profession in Romania was full of corruption, so he opted to work
in the corporate world in procurement and sourcing. After several years where he said he got
bored and gained too much weight, he took up martial arts and self-taught
himself Japanese. He spent 6 months as a
Ranger in the Romanian Army. He then
spent 3 years working at the Japanese Embassy in Japan. He eventually became a travel guide.
Our first day he took us on a car trip around Bucharest
showing us some of the beautiful old buildings.
I’m glad he was driving – drivers in Bucharest are a terror (oh, and by
the way, he has also taken a road rally course and has driven high performance
cars around Europe – and he is a good driver).
We then parked and walked around the Old Town of Bucharest. He showed us one of the oldest restaurants
(1808) – Manuc; and the second grossing single operation (after the IKEA
cafeteria) – the German Beer Gardens. We
also saw the ruins of the Old Court built by Vlad Tepes (better known to the
world as the inspiration of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”). He took us to a little restaurant for lunch
which had an amazing Pumpkin soup.
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| Pedistrian Walkway in Bucharest |
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| Cat outside a craft store - only 300 EUROS! |
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| Inside Manuc restaurant |
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| Ruins of Old Court |
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| Old Stock exchange-now an antique shop |
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| Romanian Orthodox Church |
In the afternoon he had made us a reservation to tour the
Palace of the Parliament. This was the
building built by Ceausescu to be the center of the Communist Party. However, he was executed before it was
finished so he never got to use it. It
is the second largest building in the world (after our own Pentagon) and today
houses the two branches of the Romanian Parliament – House of Senators and the
House of Deputies. The rest of the
building is used for international conferences.
It has 12 stories and 3000 rooms.
All of the building materials came from Romania, as did the interior
decorations. It was an amazing tour. We then stopped by Revolution Square where
Ceausescu made his last speech on 21 December 1989 (the building today houses
the Interior Ministry). He was able to
briefly escape from the crowd demanding “Down with Ceausescu,” but he and his
wife were captured several hours later and executed on Christmas Day. Many in the crowd were killed by Communist
bullets that day. Today, in an island in
front of the building, is a white obelisk piercing a basketlike crown (really
looks like a doughnut on a stick) known as the Rebirth Memorial. When we were there, there was a small group
of animal rights activists (by the statue of King Carol I) protesting the current government operation of
killing stray dogs.
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| Palace of Parliament |
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| Chandelier weighing 5 tons |
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| Rebirth Memorial |
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| Statue of Carol I with protestors |
The next morning we left Bucharest and headed to
Transylvania. Our first stop was the
Peles Castle, the summer home of Romania’s longest-serving monarch, King Carol
I. It is a fairy-tale castle, and if
anyone has seen the Hallmark Channel’s film “A Princess for Christmas,” this is
the castle featured in many of the outdoor scenes. The inside has beautiful wood–carved walls
and ceilings. It was also the first
European castle to have central heating, electricity, and built-in
vacuuming. Built in a predominantly
German-Renaissance style, construction on the castle began in 1875 and was
completed in 1914.
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| Peles Castle |
Just down the road from the Castle was the Sinaia Monastery,
home to about 40 monks. There is a
beautiful Orthodox church located inside the monastery. We stopped at a nearby restaurant for lunch
where I had a typical Romanian dish – bean soup in a bread bowl. It became one of my favorite dishes.
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| Sinaia Monastery |
Before reaching our final destination – Brashov, we stopped
at Bran Castle. It sits on top of a
hill, and was built by Saxons in 1382 to defend the Bran pass against the
Turks. Although the castle may have
provided a few nights refuge to Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler and focus of Bram
Stocker’s Dracula) in his escape from the Turks in 1462, Vlad never had any
connection to this castle. In 1920,
Queen Maria lived in this castle and it was the summer residence of her husband
King Michael until 1947 when he was forced to abdicate the throne.
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| Beautiful fall foliage |
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| Bran Castle |
We spent the night in Brasov, the largest of the 7 fortified
Saxon cities in Transylvania. It was
established on an ancient Dacian site in the 13th century by
Teutonic knights and later became a German mercantile colony. The Saxons built ornate churches and
townhouses inside a massive fortified wall, while the Romanian natives lived
outside the walls. We stayed in a lovely
little hotel just off the main square of the town. For dinner, Val had recommended a Romanian
restaurant, Sergiana, so we walked there.
We were not disappointed. After
this meal we learned to order one entrée and share it – Romanian dishes are
very large and filling.
We started the next morning with a walking tour of the old
part of Brasov. We walked by the Black
Church, but it was closed on Monday so we couldn’t go in. It is the largest Lutheran Church in the
country and got its name from a fire in 1689 that left the outside covered with
black soot. It was built in the Gothic style
between 1383 –1480, and is still in use today. We walked through the main
square and some of the narrow streets that were once part of the medieval
city. Today they are lined with little
shops and cafes. We walked along the
western part of the wall that was built to surround the city in the 15th
century to ward off attacks by the Turks.
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| Black Church |
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| Old Town of Brasov |
Leaving Brasov in late morning, we drove toward Bucovina and
the painted monasteries. To get there we
had to drive through the beautiful Bicaz Gorges. The gorges cut through sheer 1000’ high
limestone cliffs where pine trees cling to the surfaces. The road runs directly beneath the
overhanging rocks – you had to tilt your head to look up at the cliffs. It was truly spectacular!
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| Bicaz Gorge |
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| Bicaz Gorge |
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| Swans on the lake |
In route to our hotel in Gura Humorului, we passed a lake
that several hundred swans on it. Although it was getting late, we stopped at
the Humor Painted Monastery. The
painted monasteries are unique to Transylvania and Maramures. Both the outside and the inside of these
monasteries are covered with beautiful 5th century fresco
paintings. Unfortunately most of the
north facing sides of the monasteries have lost their paintings due to the region’s
prevailing winds and rains, but the paintings on the remaining sides of the
monasteries have survived. The
prevailing reason for the outside paintings is that these fortified monasteries
were built when the Turks threatened and would have housed large numbers of
soldiers. As these soldiers, like the
peasants in the area around the monasteries, were mainly illiterate, the
outdoor paintings helped explain biblical stories and ethical concepts.
It was approaching 6 PM as we were inside the
monastery. Val had us come outside, and
we heard this tapping sound. It was one
of the nuns walking around the monastery blessing the church. She had a small wooden hammer and a board and
she would stop at all four sides of the church (the four corners of the cross)
and beat on the board a specific pattern.
When she was done another nun would ascend to the upper part of the
monastery and also beat on a wooden board – this was the call to prayers for
the rest of the convent. It was quite
interesting.
The next morning we visited the painted monastery at Voronet. It was built by Stefen cel Mare to celebrate
a key victory over the Turks in 1488. The
most impressive of the outdoor paintings was on the back wall and explained
pictorially the Last Judgment, which fills the entire western wall. The one at
Voronet has been deemed the most marvelous Bucovina fresco, and is the only one
to have a specific color associated with it – Voronet Blue, a vibrant cerulean
color created from lapis lazuli.
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| Voronet Painted Monastery |
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| Last Judgment scene |
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| Pottery Shop |
After leaving Voronet, Val stopped at a small ceramic
factory in Marginea where they make a black pottery by leaving the smoke in the
kiln as the pieces are being fired. We
went into the workshop and watched the men create pottery vases on the pottery
wheel. They could make a large vase in
about 5 minutes. It was amazing to watch
them.
We then visited two more painted monasteries – Sucevita and
Moldovita. The Moldovita Monastery is
located within fortified walls and has beautifully tended grounds. The south wall also contains a fresco
depicting the Siege of Constantinople in 626 AD. One interesting fact about all these painted
monasteries is that they are cared for by nuns who live in a convent on the
grounds of the monastery. There are no
monks or priests present. A traveling
priest will come on Sunday to conduct the mass.
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| Sucevita Painted Monastery |
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| Sucevita Painted Monastery |
We then started our drive over a mountain range (not high
like our Rocky Mountains) to Maramures, with beautiful views of the countryside
– gorgeous fall foliage and beautiful valleys with little villages. As we drove
over the mountains we saw the remains of snow that had fallen several days
ago. We stopped for lunch in a quaint
little village where many of the homes where decorated with beautiful designs
on the outside walls.
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| House with design |
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| Beautiful Views |
Before reaching our little B&B Hotel in Maramures, we
stopped and saw two of the old wooden churches that are found throughout
Maramures. What is amazing about these
churches is that the craftsmen used no nails to hold the wooden planks
together. These churches date back to
the 14th century when Orthodox Romanians were forbidden by their
Hungarian rulers to build churches in stone. They are only found in the
Maramures area. The churches that remain today were built in
the 17th and 18th centuries. The first church we visited was the Leud
wooden church – the oldest remaining wooden church built in the early 17th
century. The next wooden church was located on the beautiful grounds of the
Barsana Monastery.
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| Beautiful Views |
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| Leud Wooden Church |
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| Barsana Wooden Church |
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| Inside wooden church |
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