WITH SADNESS WE LEAVE ROMANIA

Some day it had to happen to us in Romania, and it was on the exit of Brasov. We showed our cartel of Focsani, and stopped a big truck with more local “hitch hikers”. The driver had his small business, with different fees depending on the destination; ours it was 20€ per head, so our answer was: stop the truck now! The 200 km took nearly 6 hours, at the hands of another car through stone tracks that cross completely the Carpathian Mountains; and as we go out from the mountains all the ground turned into an infinite plain up to the Black Sea. In Focsani we were a couple of days with Oana and her family; and as it comes being usual in Romania, everything is: eat, drink, eat, drink... They invited us to a very big barbecue that we will never forget, since the first moment, they received us with the open arms.

In the city we saw the theatre inside because Oana’s aunt works there. The theatre is remodeled after a big earthquake that devastated the area 30 years ago.

We continue route towards Braila; we had to wait in the road for about 20 seconds, and by rhythm of an excellent Romanian Heavy Metal, and by truck, we arrived direct to the city; this stop is only on the way to go to the Danube’s Delta.


We had a very curious meeting; while we supply ourselves to go to the Delta in the supermarket, we coincide with two Spanish and two Romanians who live in Spain. Casually they were going to the Delta the next day, and… -maybe we see each other tomorrow! While we were walking in the morning to catch the platform to cross the Danube, we listen from a car SPANISH!!!, quickly they stopped and took us up to Tulcea, we were very lucky, because it would have taken us a lot of time to arrive, and a lot of sweat, from now we will have a temperature of 40 degrees or more everyday.


Danube’ Delta is a huge area, and only it is possible to see it well by helicopter or boat. We went by a road that borders one of the three main branches in which the river is divided. Tulcea is just on our way again, because of that we caught the road and hitch hike; but we don’t know what’s happen with the people here, they want money for everything. Two guys stopped and ask us 60€ for the lift, besides they tell it in Euros directly!! They reduced their offer up to 15€, but we didn’t accept it. After a while stopped another car and pick us up, but on the half of the way more problems, they asked us for a lot of money and we told them to stop the car, though they didn’t want to let us go, finally we did, and didn’t pay anything; we were in the middle of nowhere walking back 11 km to a village that we saw before when we came; while we were walking a man stops, after ask him if he wanted something, we went to the village with him. He didn’t want anything, he was friendly man, and proud he told us stories abut his sails from Tulcea to Canary Islands.

After a bath in Danube we search where to pass the night; due to the climate we start to have problems sleeping outside, for the sleeping bags are of winter. If we enter inside, it is very hot, and if we sleep out of them, the mosquitoes bite us... So we passed a nice sauna night…

When we went back to the city we hitch hiked again, but now always asking about the money, to don’t have problems afterwards.
We went to Constance, with desires of seeing the sea, we already started to miss it. And for these days of 40 degrees… what is better than to spend the rest of the day on the beach; well, in the water better said. This city is higher level than the rest of Romania, here is where Romanians coming to spend the summer holidays. The centre is nice, apart from orthodox churches, catholic..., there are several mosques, and surrounding the centre, the coast of the Black Sea.

Our night on the beach was disturbed by the discos, bars, and a lot of people drinking everywhere; even some people tried to steal us during the night, with no success. With 2 hours of sleep, we left to the capital, Bucharest. For the first time we took the wrong way, we were so happy with our cartel of Bucharest, in the way to Istanbul…We were lucky that one guy came to tell us that we were wrong.

Anyway it was 2 hours of waiting beside all the local hitch hikers, some of them coming with the purchases, others going with the tools to the work...

If 40 degrees was a lot, in Bucharest was much more, the days here have been unnatural, the people here can’t believe this unusual heat.

In spite of our tiredness, we went out that night in Bucharest to celebrate the birthday of Cati, the boyfriend of Andrea, the couple who hosted us in the city. We enjoy a lot the night, and the dinner that invited us.

The most interesting thing in Bucharest is the House of the People (Parliament); it is the second biggest construction of the world, after Pentagon. It contains more than 1 million tons of marble, more than 1.000 rooms, and in the visit of 1 hour that we did, we only could see a 4% of the interior. The interior is an extreme luxury, big columns of marble, lamps of crystal... curtain of 16 meters of height...

The Russian church, the Atheneo, the square where the communism and the dictatorship of Ceausescu fell... they are other things that we saw in the city. Also curious constructions, as the ancient building with a modern one in its interior, or the chaotic light cables that are mixed with those of the tramway and trolley buses.

We traveled fast across what remains of Romania, to arrive to Serbia. In Pitesti, I would say that there is nothing interesting to see, but yes to tell; here we have had our first serious attempt of stealing. Seated on a bench with our backpacks to our side, a boy at the back managed to open the zips, logically we don’t have any valuable staff there; when he tried with María’s, she listened at it, and the guy run away very fast. It seems impossible to us that he could open our backpacks; it means that we must to be more alert.

We keep moving fast up to Craiova, our thought was to stay a single night, but the warm welcome of Geo and Marina, oblige us to pass two beautiful days. From the beginning they were very nice with us, they took us to see the entire city, and at night the show of a musical fountain.

As it says the title of the blog... with very much sadness we leave this great country!, when people ask us which country is the best up to this moment respect people, undoubtedly the answer is ROMANIA. Very warm people, which are very friendly, proud of their Latin origins, and with a dark past for the dictator Ceaucescu, of whom it is spoken a lot still in the streets. A country that grows, and who looks the Euro with optimism, because worse could not go the country. The groceries have the price of Spain, and the minimum salaries are 150€ to 200€. We hope that this confidence in the Euro, be truly recompensed...

TRANSYLVANIA

While we held our cartel of Oradea, still in Hungarian land, it happened something unusual. A car situated on the other side of the road, and going in opposed direction to ours, stopped to pick us up. With Tudor, we enter to this new country where is waiting for us great adventures and sensations. This first entry of the blog is all our tour in Transylvania, which covers the west part of the country, locked up among the Carpathian Mountains.

While we advance the clock one hour, we gave our first steps in this city near the Hungarian border, Oradea. With Silvana of HC, we saw the entire city at night; the centre was specially nice with very colorful and illuminated buildings; contrasting with the rest of the city that was quite dirty.


Quickly we adapt to the Romanian way of life, especially in the hitchhiking. Here there are places to do hitchhiking, and in them crowd of people with cartels or moving the hand, are always seen; and fighting to get in the car that stops, because there is not queue…
We also know that it is habit in Romania to pay for this type of transport, because of that, we usually move away a little of the crowd to “differentiate” us; and like this, usually stop another type of people, which do not need a tip, and want to practice English.
Distances that before were insignificant, are now converted in long distances of hours of journey for the bad state of the roads; so, up to Cluj Napoca were more than two hours of journey squeezed in a car full of things, with two Hungarians. On the way we saw many houses in construction with metallic roofs imitating to palaces, afterwards we discover that they are the houses of the gypsies, but they don’t live in them, the houses are just to show off, they live behind in the shacks.
In Cluj Napoca, we start to realize the infinite hospitality of the Romanian people; with Raluca and Alex, not only we share great moments, we also share a goal, for them their next destination is Australia, where they aspire to a better quality of life.


The majority of Romanians are orthodox and very devout in general, we have seen some church, and they are very different to the Catholics. In them there is not altar, the priest prays standing, beside all, as there are not benches. There are many differences, but the one that catches our attention is that, to be orthodox priest, you must be married.


The orthodox cemeteries are very nice and well taken care; and very old, because this religion forbids to take the bodies out. Something curious, is that there are tombs without dead persons, here the people buy their stones and everything, and place it in the cemetery with the name and date of birth, and an empty place to put in future the date of death. For what is seen, if it is made like this, it is cheaper.

We went to the north of the country to the Maramures, to the city of Baia Mare, at the base of the Carpathian Mountains that coming down from Ukraine, and for whether we had not had enough in Cluj, Ramona and her family gave us two beautiful and warm days in family. To start, a party of end of university, and the day after with her family, they brought us to see the famous wooden churches, the highest of Europe built with this material and not even a piece of metal!, the one in the picture reaches the 54 meters, just the tower.


In our way to Medias, we face a long tour which we covered in 10 hours. On the way the old cars Dacia, are on the road with the carriage of horses, registered, normally driven by gypsies.
As we keep approaching ourselves to Medias, the roads are smaller, and we need more time to move, anyway, car that passes, car that pick us up. And after the cute comment of the last car: “What are doing two Spanish in Romania, when the normal is that the Romanians go to Spain??” we arrived to this expected destination, the city of our friend Ioana, where we spend great days with her family, and who made us to feel like this, in family…


Nicolae was taking care of us continuously, and he brought us to meet a lot of people, those who are in the section of “Friends of Travel”. A very special visit was the grandparents of our friend, who live traditionally in a small town. They showed us, and put on us their traditional clothes, and showed us where they make the wine, the cheese, where they keep the animals... An authentic museum, which many people would pay for see it, and we had that opportunity, not only to see it, also to meet these great persons. About Medias, Adela and Calin, showed us all the centre, the most important thing is the church with its inclined tower, the second most inclined in Europe after Pisa, and we approached a nice lake at the outskirts.


One day we went to Sighisoara, where Earl Vlad Tepes, most known by the legend of Dracula, lived 2 years. Again we went with friends of the family, by the Dacia of Nicolae.


If until now we had had hospitality, now we don’t have words to describe this; with a deep pain we leave Medias to follow route to Brasov, our last destination in Transylvania, placed in the centre of the country, at the foot of the curve that the Carpathian Mountains do. The enclave of this city is very nice, and its small centre has a lot of life and charm.


Always by hitchhiking we went one day to visit the Castle of Bran, more known as Castle of Dracula, although this man has almost nothing to see in the castle, he was here just for three days and prisoner. The legend rose up for the scary form of the castle, which makes this place to be full of tourists. The castle is ok, although much smaller of how painting it to us, but inside objects of great value, secret passages, are seen...

WAY TO MAGYAR

To leave Cracow we went on the road, and as other times we had some biscuits for breakfast, but here we don’t have time to having breakfast, before finish the packet we were traveling in a truck and returning to Slovakia. One more time we travel in the hands of a Turk, so we had the hospitality and the guaranteed laughter. On the border, we didn’t have any problem, but it was the first time which they ordered us to bring down, and it was normal, two Spanish in a Turkish truck and with a Turkish driver who has Bulgarian passport, on the Polish-Slovak border...
We traveled with him for about 5 hours, and all the way invited us to eat things and to drink, and all the time said us: later Turkish restaurant!!, after some time, he stopped and invited to us to eat with him in the truck food of his country. When we reach Zvolen, the destination of both, he gave us some bars of chocolate and water.
Our stop in Zvolen, is because is on the way to Budapest, but anyway we wanted to see a little this part of the country, that is seen more crushed than Bratislava. Here we had a contact that fails us; the easy solution would have been to sleep near the river, as other times, but we decided to investigate more and see what happened. As we had his address we present ourselves at his house and we knew his mother; we took a walk through the city, and finally they found an accommodation for us at the house of a friend.


The following day was a little undecided, we get up with an idea, and we end up making another thing. Without haste and entrusted with our "way of transport", we arrived to the border with Hungary. From Sahy, we cross by foot to the Republic of Magyar, (Hungary), and walking we finished at Hont.


We spent the night between the church and the cemetery, and gave ourselves a great feast for dinner with the chicken that we had bought to use up ours last Slovak crowns.

We had to wake up at 5:00 am, because at 4:30 is the sunrise; and we didn’t know at this moment the great party that waited for us this night. We arrived direct to Budapest with one North American, who said us: the only rule that I have is, if my wife call me please don´t speak because she doesn’t allow me to pick up hitchhikers... of course his wife called two times.

In the house that we arrived, they were going to celebrate the farewell of university, and we couldn’t count the quantity of people that pass through the house during the night, and plenty of different nationalities. Among all there was a boy from Malaysia, Wilson that sleeps here as us, for CS. This guy is traveling by hitchhike during 13 months already for Europe, and when we met each other, we had a lot of questions and experiences to tell between the three.


Another time we met the Danube, in a modern and very beautiful city, divided into two parts, Buda, and Pest. In the part of “Buda” is the big fortress, and in “Pest”, we liked the Parliament, the most significant building of the city. Something essential in this city is to enjoy a nocturnal sight from some of its bridges.


On our days in Budapest, we celebrate the travel day number 100, every time we feel more comfortable and adapted in the journey and with desires of following and spend many more days...