The idea of going to Romania came to my mind actually from my father. He went there few times to the river to collect snails ( yes, my parents love to collect snails 😀 ) and to observe birds. I used to hear that it is amazing country but on the other hand, my parents also said, that that country can be really dangerous. My mum remembered me, that not even trains were allowed to stop in Romania, because they were afraid, that gipsy would rob them of. 😀 Haha, this is obviously not the reality anymore.
This trip was also the first trip, where I could try for the first time my new camera.
So I took pictures. Many of them. I actually don’t have huge amount of knowledge in making pictures, but I am kind of really motivated to learn more. So. Preparations:
Time spent on packing things: 2 hours (night before departure)
Baggage: 2 backpacks + 2 small ones + tent + sleeping bags
I consider one of our best ideas the fact, that we borrowed car. The service was quite good, the company picked us up at the airport and took us directly to the villa, where they borrowed us a rental car. HERE. However, the deal was a little bit tricky, since we were supposed to pay only 50 € for the whole week, but actually, this price was without insurance. In the office, the lady told us, that we have 2 options:
- To pay the deposit of 1070 € with the condition, that if any single small thing will happen to the car (and we had brand new car, so of course, that on Romanian roads – and they can be pretty crazy, will something happen), we would be supposed to pay minimum 600€ for the reparation of that -which is a looot of money)
- To pay 176 € as an “insurance”, so if something happens, we will not need to pay anything extra
Of course, we chose the second option, because Javi would be otherwise probably shaking his body all the time because of fear. ( And he would probably not let me drive since I got my driving licence just few months ago). And here is our schedule:
ARRIVAL AND VISIT OF THE COZIA MONASTERY
We arrived to Bucharest before noon, however, out of Bucharest, we got after 2 p.m. It took a bit longer, than we thought, but despite that, we managed to visit Cozia Monastery, which was on our way to Carpathians mountains. We were really happy for the weather, because the forecast was saying, that it will literally rain all the time.
So the first city, that we visited was Sibiu. Surprisingly, it was not really heavily raining, but just drizzling a little bit. We went for a cool dinner, I had great tuna salad and Javi some mexican roasted veggies. We were so tired, that we were not almost even able to walk back to our apartment.
When we woke up, it was raining again. We are very brave couple, co we went to explore the city anyway and actually, it was really great! Highlights of Sibiu are it’s roof windows. You can guess how do they look like…? Yes, Sibiu was literally watching us!!
The afternoon program was pretty random. Some guy from the tourist office recommended us to go to the museum complex of old Romanian culture called “ASTRA”. Eventhough I am pretty used to this museum complex, this was really huge and beautiful. In a way. And there was also some birthday party with life music happening! Right when we were heading to our car, it started to rain so so heavily! At that time, we just decided to return back to our car and ridein the direction of Brasov.
From Sibiu, we went directly to Brasov, where we came really late in the night. We were sleeping in some kind of “fancy” Romanian hotel, but it was rather awkward there. There were crystal lamps hanging, but at the same time, the walls were kind of shabby. We woke up and went for a free walking tour with the “Walkabout tours” company. The lady told us many cool stories, however, the weather was really bad, so we couldn’t enjoy to our fullest since I was just thinking all the time about the coffee time, that would follow. After that, we were just walking through the city, but it was not that interesting as we thought. So we went to LIDL. To our first Lidl in Romania. We were thinking about shopping in the local stores but finally, we were just really glad, that we will have our favourite cottage and Javi would get his favourite “Zacusca” for a good price.
Zacusca is a vegetable spread mainly made from eggplants, tomato paste and roasted red peppers.
THE DRACULA CASTLE
As many of you probably know, Dracula comes from Romania. BUT.. is it really true? What is the REAL connection of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Vlad the Impaler, the actual ruler who is loved by the public till today?
So the actual connection between the Dracula character and Vlad the Impaler is only the name. There are many legends around Vlad the Impaler, but there is no real connection between sucking blood and Vlad’s lifestyle. Bram Stoker had actually never even visited Romania before he wrote the book and also not even after releasing. But why is than the Bran castle ( which is supposed to be the Dracula’s one) so popular? Well, it’s because of movie industry. In some of the first movies with the Dracula, apparently the castle that was shown there was very similar to that one, which in in Bran. Already when you come to the city, you realise, that the place is very very turistic area. Anyway, we bought the entrance and went inside of the castle and were kind of disappointed since there was nothing really more special than in every normal Czech castle (yes, czech republic is full of castles!). Well, we visited that anyway, I tried to do some handstands and make pictures of them and after our visit, we just wanted to have dinner. We came to our pension (which was some pink house with confused teenagers working there) and went to the first restaurant next to our place. It was some kind of real Romanian restaurant, the girls on the bar were not able to speak English, they were not accepting cards and the only tourists that were in that restaurant were me and Javi. We had our first glass or Romanian red wine ( which was really great) and some fish, potatoes, polenta and cheese. I felt a little bit dipsy after that. When I feel dipsy, it is actually the only part, when I feel good after drinking alcohol. Otherwise, it is rather annoying for me.
FIRST HIKE AROUND BRAN
We were not really sure where we could go hiking so we just found some random path close to Bran and were walking up and down. Up and down. On our way, we met two rural guys, one was with sheeps and the other was just picking mushrooms. What i find interesting (and I already realised it in Brasov) is, that many many Romanian people speak German. There are even German schools! The only problem, that we had during that hike was, that we forgot to take enough water so we were literally just dying in the way back. Luckily, in some small village, we found some closed hotel, where one woman had shop and she sold us water and coke (which only Javi was actually drinking).
SUPERELEVATION OF 1100 METERS
Everyone who likes to hike in the mountains would tell you that one of the most important things is to wake up early. Because in the mountains you can never know what will happen and it is always good to have some extra time. At which time we started hiking with Javi? At 11:30 a.m. And we went for a hike which was supposed to be for 9 hours. Finally it took us more than 11 hours but it was definitely worthy. The countryside was gourgeous. Firstly, very steep climbing through the forest and at the very end, we were just climbing with hands and with everything that we could use for that., it was just real climbing on the top of Ft. Turnu.
We were not eating anything the whole day, waiting all the time to reach the peak. However, we came to the top at 5:30 p.m. (!!!). Super late for being 6 hours to the foot of the mountain. Nevermind. We had a very quick lunch and were literally running down the hill. It was 4 hours of running till we reached more or less not steep terrain and could just walk in the forrest. It was already dark, when we realised, that our room ordered by booking.com was cancelled. It was in Rasnov called “Zara Homes” (in case somebody would like to come there.. don’t). Fortunately, we found very quickly new one in Zarnesti. The host was a really old guy, watching football and offering us breakfast and coffee for free ( well, obviously, you pay everything in the price of the hostel).
RASNOV CITADEL – OLD CITY ON THE HILL
After that long hike, we decided, that there is no reason to wake up early so we just left our alarm clocks to live their own life and sleep as much as we wanted. We woke up at 8 and went outside on the garden to have some müsli with youghurt (which was the breakfast for us for most of the time ) and coffee from our host. There was some group of rescue workers, who had a meeting before they went to the terrain.
We rode to Rasnov, which was actually really close ( about 15 kilometers) and wanted to explore the town a little bit. However, it was compleltely dead. So we went to the citadel, which was above the city. We paid some small amount of money for the entrance and went for exploration of the old place. It was really lovely. In the beginning, I thought, that it will be some place very similar to Czech castles, but it was completely different since it was actually whole city. Nice view from there and moreover, the weather was fabulous.
HARMONIOUS, COLOURFUL AND ENCHANTIL – SIGISHOARA
Our next place on the “Transylvania list” was definitelly Sigishoara. Small city, which is considered as one of the most beautiful and magical places in Transylvania. I thought, that it will be full of tourists, but the opposite was true. We were walking there almost alone ( if I don’t count some Spanish elderly tourists – but they are everywhere). We were actually really tired, so we just climb a hill through the city up, saw some German church and went back down to buy some fruits and decide, where we can have some romantic dinner ( Javi was really in the mood of a romantic dinner that night). Finally, I found some restaurant on TripAdvisor, which seemed really cool. And it was gorgeous! We drank undoubtedly great red wine and had really cool vegetarian dish, which was very good served to us. After two wines, I was little bit dipsy. I also asked the waiter, if he could give us one of his cigarettes. And he did! 🙂 Nice guy. Aaah and I almost forgot! In Sihishoarra, we had really amazing accomodation (Cosbuc residence). It was a room with two floors, nice sofas, fridge and also some reindeer-shape carpet on the floor.
AMUSEMENT PARK IN SALT MINES
My idea was to wake up very early and go directly to the Salt mines, which Javi suggested. The problem was, that we never wake up early. But well, at least I tried. I prepared things for breakfast outside the hotel however, there was no sun shining, so we decided just to go directly there. On our way, we stopped in some café (real Romanian one – next to us was some loud gipsy family sitting), drank kind of cappucinos and ate our favourite müssli.
We arrived to the Turda salt mines around noon, after about 4 hours of driving ( Google maps said, that it takes 2,5 hours – but Google probably doesn’t count with Romanian traffic). The entrance was 40 Lei each (10 €) -student price. If you are asking, why student price for both, Javi decided to be forever young and use his expired Spanish student card, even when he reached almost 30 ( this is the attitude that I appreciate, good job, Javi!). First part of the mines was more or less normal, dark corridors with old machines, descriptions.. BUT! than we discovered the main space and it was.. amazing! gorgeous! It was literally amusement park! Many games, lights, tourist shop.. really cool constructions. We were really amazed. Even if this place is kind of touristic, I can highly recommend that.
NATURE RESERVATION CHEILE TURZII
Right after the salt mines, we went to some Penny market to buy things for 3 days (since we thought that we will hike for 2 following days). What happend was, that we bought 5x cottage cheese, some things for lunch that day and that was it. So not enough. But it was ok. At least for one afternoon. We took a car and went to the nature reservation called Turda Gorge (Cheile Turzii in Romanian). We parked our car in the middle of the fields and went to some outlook where I tried to do handstands but I did not really manage to feel comfortable with that so I did it just on some field nextby. We could see the whole canyon and it was really really beautiful. After that, we went down to actual place where we wanted to go. In the beginning of that forest, we needed to pay some small entrance and than we could discover amazing bridges, trees, caves etc. We didn’t manage to do the whole route that we planned, but we felt much better to take the car and arrive to the accomodation for that night, which was about 2 hours distant by car. 
Our accomodation that day was only for 14€ (private room) in the middle of some random village where was not even concrete road. It was something between clay and stone material. But fun, because this is how experiencing real Romania feels! The guy was not speaking English at all but somehow we understood each other. The only thing that I was missing there was milk in the morning. We bought just some instant coffee, but as you can imagine, it is not really friendly to drink without milk. He told us, that it is possible to buy in some “magazin”=shop, but I was rather suspicious about presence of the shop in the village, since it seemed really really rural. Anyway, we packed our stuff and set off the road and went towards Balea Lake, which is situated on the top of the Transfagarasan (crazy road in the Carpetians mountains). It was super fu to ride there, but I think, that I was expecting a little bit more. Around Balea Lake, we hiked to another lake and than down to the other side of the hill. Unfortunately, Javi’s knee didn’t feel that enthustiastic about hiking so when we reached the road for cars, we just hitchhiked through a tunnel in order to get to our own car. next to the Balea Lake, we bought (as Javi said) “the best street food ever” It was both gluten-free and vegetarian..the name was.. BULZ! -> melted brynza (sheep) cheese which was hidden inside of polenta (kind of porridge from corn). It tasted really amazing! I loved that. First we bought only one portion, but than we decided, that it was too good to share. After Balea Lake, we wanted to go to another lake which seemed really huge on the map, but unfortunately it was not possible ot bath there or do something fun. It was dam for electricity. So we decided just to go to the next accomodation, where was our host already waiting for us. We slept in a village called Corbeni (probably), where our host immediately offered us meal ( which we didn’t want and didn’t feel hungry), wanted to talk to us a lot etc…We were not that much in a communicative mood, so we just went for a walk, bought some wine in a shop and took pictures on some small beautiful bridge closeby and just walked and were happy together.
We dedicated our last day only to the way back to Bucharest and it was good that we did so. As I already mentioned before, it never takes you that much time, asi you would like to, if you are travelling with a car through Romania (with bus, I would not recommend, if you don’t have enough time). Becausee we didn’t want to sit in the car the whole day, we had a small stop to see Curtea de Argeș Cathedral, which was super beautiful. On these protestant churches we really love it’s paintings inside of them. It is completely different from catholic churches, since catholic churches are also painted inside, but not so properly. Here is no single piece of wall left empty without paintings.
VISITING AN OLD FRIEND AND EXPLORING THE CAPITAL
When I realised, that we will actually be in Bucharest, it was necessary for me to contact Maria, girl that I met in Germany when I was there on high school. She is a girl, who travelled for more than year around the whole world and is great violist. We went to her office for the keys and after that to her flat. I felt little bit weird, since the house had so much kind of “family nature”, so when we came, I felt that we are almost disturbing her neighbours. But i think, that they are pretty used to, since Maria has friends just everywhere. We went to bring back our car, we cleaned that and in the evening, we were just walking around the city and went for nice dinner in the restaurant called “Aubergine”. They caught us immediately with the sign “healthy food”, which is something, which when I hear this phrase, I just want it. Instead of 2 meals, we ordered 4, because we just felt too hungry to have only 1 meal. And it was great. We didn’t really mind, that we were in the most touristic area, we just liked to enjoy the atmosphere and honestly, being tourist is also cool! Finally, we didn’t meet Maria in the evening, because she went to some party, but we just felt tired for that. In the morning, we went to free walking tour. The guide was really nice guy, who was patient and explained us all stuff and in the end, he even almost forgotten to ask for money. In Bucharest, I really loved Stavropoleos Church, historic place from 13th century. The interesting thing on that was, that it was literally in the middle of the modern city. Whole Bucharest is full of contrasts, expecially when we consider the architecture.
In the evening, we went to a jazz festival with maria and her boyfriend. Later on, we continued to some bar, had wine and just totally tired went home to sleep. Our flight was at 7:30. GREAT TRIP!!!!
