Bucharest

April 30, 2024

Our MyDayTrip driver promptly picked us up at 9 AM for our trip to Romania.

On our drive through the Bulgarian countryside, we were still seeing monuments out in the middle of nowhere.

We stopped for about 30 minutes at Basarbovo monastery. It is the only active cave monastery in the modern history of Bulgaria and was named a historical landmark in 1978. It was worth a 5-minute visit.

The grumpiest monk ever took our money to get in. I certainly didn’t want to take a photo of him.

The stairs were quite precarious and there were signs everywhere about potential rocks falling down on top of you.

Now we were finally in the last city in Bulgaria before crossing the river over into Romania.

This was the first time we actually had to show our passports. Although Romania is part of the Schengen zone, you still have to show your passport for land crossings. (Travel through the Schengen zone in Europe is like domestic travel in the US where you don't have to go through passport control).

The countryside was dotted with yellow flowers of rapeseed.

We are very happy to be at a Hilton and we have a great location in Old Town.

Plus they have the longest cord in history for a blow dryer.

So glad we aren't staying in this building!

It turns out that we had a VERY good reason to be happy that we weren't staying in this building! That red circle means that the building is structurally unsound and will probably collapse if they have an earthquake. Romania is one of the worst countries in Europe for having major earthquakes.

This was really fascinating to me. Originally, this area consisted of European architecture (mostly French). However, during the communist years during the regime of Nikolai Ceaușescu, he wanted to raze the area to build the Parliament House and to put up mass housing. An earthquake in 1977 damaged a lot of the European-style buildings, so he seized the opportunity to tear them down and build these mass housing complexes. Over 40,000 people instantly lost their homes and sometimes only had one week's notice to move out.

We had a really great guide and here she is showing us a picture of Ceaușescu and his wife Elena.

Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost things. If you come to this church and pray, you may find your lost keys, your lost income, or your long lost love. But it's only open on Tuesdays. So, on Tuesday morning there will be a long queue of local people in line to pray to Saint Anthony. Our guide said that if you dress up real nice you may find that lost love also in the queue.

An old Greek church.

This theater had the first retractable roof in all of Europe. On a warm summer night, you can watch a concert or a play and see the stars at the same time.

There is no law against advertising. So many of these buildings have these huge advertisements hanging down several floors. The people whose view is obstructed because of these advertisements receive pay for their blocked view.

This building was the former communist party headquarters. Above the three arched doorways is a balcony. This is where Ceaușescu was giving a speech that turned out poorly for him. The crowd began chanting “democracy” over and over. Ceausescu and his wife left the balcony and ordered the military to open fire. Over the next few days, the protests spread to all over Romania. Hundreds were killed. To escape, he ordered a helicopter to land on the roof to fly he and his wife away. The helicopter driver flew a short distance but then dropped them off in a field. Ceaușescu and his wife were captured. They had a speedy trial three days later on Christmas Day and were executed by firing squad that same day. I remember seeing this on the news back in 1989.

This statue was someone that was a very important person prior to the communist era. He was deemed an"enemy of the state", imprisoned, and subsequently died there. The statue signifies that they may have broken his body (by all the slices) but not his spirit. The tree is the background shows that nothing organic grows with communism. There is no freedom of expression and it is just a bare society.

The building on the left was the tallest skyscraper in the 1930s. It was a communications tower for a telephone company. The building on the right did not exist, instead it was a beautiful theater. During the second world war, Romania was first on the side with the Germans and so the allies bombed certain buildings in Romania. In 1944, they switched sides and now were with the allies. The Germans ended up bombing the theater. It was not rebuilt and sat as an empty lot until the 1990s. Novotel hotel chain wanted to build a hotel and were told to keep it with the style of the neighborhood. You can see that the front succeeded but the back did not.

Robin has a sore throat and so we found a pharmacy to get some medication for her.

We finished the night with pizza!

Transylvania

May 1, 2024

Our driver, Serban, picked us up at our hotel for our 3-day trip to Transylvania. We already knew that we were on the same tour with Denise and her husband, Howard. There ended up being a fifth person, a 20 year-old student from the US that is studying in Finland.

The drive-through Transylvania was quite beautiful.

Our first stop was a traditional restaurant in a small village.

The place was packed for a Thursday afternoon.

Robin and I did not have traditional Romanian food, but decided on chicken schnitzel.

We followed along the river for a very long time.

Our drive was originally supposed to be through the Carpathian mountains that you see in the distance. However, the roads are still closed because of the snow. If we wanted to do that route, it would've had to have been done in July or later. We were just as happy with the views we did have.

We spent our first evening in Sibiu. In 2004 it was named a UNESCO world heritage site.

I was a little bit worried about the hotel since they were prepaid as part of this three day tour. This was our first hotel.

The room was totally adequate and had absolutely no issues.

The old town area was very interesting and had many alleyways with unique shops and other places to explore.

Sibiu has been nicknamed the "City Where the Houses Don't Sleep" and/or "The City With Eyes". The "eyes" are windows in the roof that were used as ventilation. They used to store food and other items that needed to have some cross ventilation.

Like every place we've been, they had many beautiful churches. I thought this baroque Cathedral was the most interesting.

You can see some eyes in the background.

As the sun was setting, it was almost as if the eyes got sleepier!

May 2, 2024

Breakfast was included at our hotel and our guide sat with us.

We stopped along the side of the road for various photos. These are our friends, Denise and Howard, from Portland.

We saw several vehicles along the side of the road. There was a group of people with fantastic cameras and drones. It turns out they were a travel group from Slovenia and they were taking photos of the mountains and an old train.

I also got a photo of the old train with my fancy camera - my iPhone.

Somehow or other, the train was also in this photo of a herd of sheep.

All of Transylvania was originally part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. Many Germans lived in these villages. When the communists took over in 1946, the Germans were allowed to flee communism, but only if they paid. They abandoned their fully-furnished homes and the squatters took them over. They eventually came back in the 1990s after the overthrow of the communists and tried to reclaim their homes. Many of these homes now belong to their descendants. However, these descendants want to sell them because they make better wages in other countries and don't want to return to Romania.

We're now in the little village of Biertan.

Many of the people in this village make their living by carving wooden kitchen products.

Of course, there are many stray dogs and Robin cannot resist making friends with them. Our guide warned us about getting too close to the dogs because one of the other tours (the same day as ours) could not leave because a person approached a stray dog and was bit.

Just about every telephone post has a giant stork nest on top.

A throwback to another century!

Welcome to Hotel Transylvania. You can check out, but you can never leave.

We are headed to the birthplace of the real-life person who is the inspiration for Dracula. The town is pronounced ciggy-schwar-ah.

SO happy to be out of that damn van!

The town is very touristy and everything revolves around Dracula.

The real life person that was the inspiration for Bram Stoker's novel Dracula was Vlad the Impaler. Dracula was never a real person, and Bram Stoker hadn't ever visited the castle that came to be known as Dracula's castle. This was supposedly Vlad's birthplace.

This is a painting of Vlad the Impaler.

His cruelty was legendary. He burned the old and sick alive, and impaled tens of thousands of enemy soldiers.

Inside Vlad's house was this pitch black room where furry creatures dropped out of the ceiling, a screaming scary clown, and a woman's corpse lying on the sofa. (None of my photos turned out.) It was a totally cheesy tourist trap. The only thing to be afraid of… were the stairs in the dark.

Our guide bought a pair of sunglasses and the case is in the shape of a coffin.

The only other thing to be feared in the village were the railings. One trip and fall and you could've been impaled on the railing. Vlad the Impaler lives on!

Now we are in the town of Bran and this is the famous Dracula castle.

Here it is at night. Not terribly scary.

Our guide took us to another "traditional" restaurant.

The place was absolutely huge! It had three floors that must have sat 300 people total.

However, we had no idea that we ended up at the Romanian Chuck E. Cheese.

There were creatures roaming around and at least a hundred squealing children running throughout the restaurant.

Our guide explaining to us the specific food he is eating and why the Romanians love it. He was a very talkative guy.

May 3, 2024

Our final evening and next morning in Transylvania was spent in the city of Brasov.

Again, I didn't have very high hopes for the hotel of a prepaid tour. This one was a way less fancy and parts of it were under construction.

The room was okay except the shower leaked all the way into the hallway and on the carpet. We hadn't eaten much all day, so Robin and I went to the grocery store and picked up some cheese and crackers.

We explored the old town area. Robin's number one priority was seeing this building. It was considered a fashion house when it was built in the 1970's. The building is considered to be "an example of expressionism of the highest quality".

Right next to it is the Hotel Capitol and it is definitely from the communist era.

We were down in the old town area early enough in the morning that I was able to get photos with no one in them.

This store had many cats inside, including some that were walking on the jewelry table. I suppose you could buy a hat that a cat may have sat in. The one in the basket looks very comfortable.

This church is known as the Black Church. It is over 600 years old and received its nickname because it has been attacked and burnt so many times.

After we left the town of Brasov, we continued on our way to see the castle of Romania's first king, King Carol I. What should've taken us an hour turned into a few hours when we hit bumper-to-bumper tourist traffic.

Apparently, I have a beer house in Sinaia, Romania.

We paid quite a bit (too much) to see the very elaborate castle of King Carol the first.

Every room had very intricate carvings, and the woodworking was amazing.

Apparently, Carol had a great love for weapons. This photo is just a fraction of all the weapons that were in the Weapons Room. Our guide reminded us that probably every single one of those weapons killed at least one person.

It really was an amazing castle…

…but it would be extremely depressing to live here.

What was very impressive about this 19th century castle is that it was one of the first places to have working indoor plumbing.

It even had hookup vents for vacuum cleaners! They could turn on a motor in the basement and attach a hose to vacuum the place.

If you were a frequent visitor (as this woman was), they'd build a room specifically for you and also have your oil painting on the wall.

I found the story behind this room quite interesting. The room was built specifically for Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the presumptive heir of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. No cost was spared, and even the carpet exactly matched the carvings in the ceiling. However, he never visited it a single time. He was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914, and his assassination is considered to be the starting point of World War I.

OMG! Not another traditional restaurant!

We took a less scenic route back to Bucharest and thus concluded our 3-day trip to Transylvania.

Bucharest

May 4, 2024

We are back in Bucharest in front of the former communist party headquarters for our walking tour about life during communism.

In front of the headquarters is the Monument of Rebirth. This was the square in front of where Ceaușescu was giving a speech that eventually turned violent and started the revolution. The Romanians call it Potato on a Stick.

You can see on the wall all the names of the people that died during the revolution. It's hard to see… but the walkway consists of Oak saplings that were cut down. This was symbolic of all the young people that were killed during the revolution.

Just down the way is an area called Revolution Square. It's also called the December 21, 1989 Square. You can see that most of the graffiti on the wall references the 1989 revolution, including the similarities to Tiananmen Square. It's still where people protest today.

Kids between the ages of 7-14 could become Pioneers and good children of communism. If you were a Pioneer, you got to be out front at parades. Your parents would also be very proud of you. Then, from age 14-18, you could be part of the Youth Communist Party. At 18, you could officially join the communist party. Your chances of getting into university were much better if you've done everything you've been told and do not come from a questionable family. However, you were very limited on what you could study. Forget journalism, the arts, or religion. Things like engineering or medicine were valued. Once you finished university, you had no say on where you wanted to work, but instead had to go wherever there was a position needed. If that was on the other side of the country, so be it.

The Dacia car was the great vision of Ceaușescu in the 1960s. I didn't really realize how difficult it was to own a car. First of all, if you weren't a member of the communist party you had to get on a waiting list. If you were a member, you could get one right away. But the others had to wait as long as three or four years. Once you had your car, it didn't mean that you could go anywhere or on holiday. Gas was heavily rationed. Also, you may have had money to buy a car, but then you had to explain where you got the money to buy it. Dacia is still a favorite car company in Romania today.

Our guide told us a great story about media and censorship. In fact, the story is such a legend it was apparently told in a documentary on Netflix called Chuck Norris vs Communism. There was a woman that worked as a translator of TV programs in Romania under the Communist regime, and is known for secretly dubbing over 3,000 banned movie titles on VHS tapes smuggled in from the West over a period of five years. One of the movies was The Terminator. Instead of hearing Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Romanians would hear a woman's voice speaking in Romanian. She also came from a conservative family and did not like to swear. So the line in the movie, "Motherf**ker, I will mess you up!" became a woman saying, "You upset me very much and I'm not going to talk to you again." She became one of the most recognized voices of Romania.

We finished our communism tour at the Palace of Parliament. It is the heaviest and largest administration building in the world. It's called "the iceberg", because in addition to what you see above ground, it also goes 96 meters below ground. It is sinking every single year. This building was the main reason that tens of thousands of people that lived in this neighborhood lost their home.

On our walk home, we stumbled upon a Mexican restaurant. We were both SO happy not to be at a traditional Romanian restaurant!

Although I have liked Romania, Bucharest really is an ugly city.

All the advertising is an eyesore, but honestly, it may be better than the façade of the building.

This particular church had to be moved to make room for the parliament. If the church was in the way for Ceaușescu's ambitious reconstruction plans, they raised the building, put it on a railroad tracks, and moved it to a different location. This particular church is now very much hidden with the taller buildings around it. Religion was mostly discouraged, but not completely forbidden. Ceaușescu did not like Religion at all, but did not destroy all the churches. The communist party would blackmail priests into becoming secret informants and reporting on people that may be enemies of the state. The party would tell the priest that they would leave them and their church alone, but they needed to report on anything they heard in a confession that might be detrimental to the party. Most of the priests resisted, but there were a few that did not.

A great ad for a bicycle repair shop.

Don't ask me what the statue means. It's a wolf and those are human babies underneath. There is no explanation about it.

We are out looking for a place to eat at 9pm.

So many restaurants to choose from in the Old Town area.

Tomorrow is the Easter holiday and so it's quite busy.

This was in a glass case at a restaurant. French fries on pizza! They also put french fries in the burrito we had earlier at lunch. So, we decided that we are just going back to our hotel for something light.

One last photo of a (finally!) beautiful building.

May 5, 2024

We weren't sure what we were going to do on our last day of vacation since most places are closed for the Orthodox Easter Sunday. So we opted for a 4-hour bike ride tour. It consisted of all Americans and one Dutch couple.

The building behind me was where high ranking communist party officials lived (near the Parliament House).

This was a giant church complex where the Romanian pope was being broadcast over the loudspeakers for Easter mass.

Later, we stopped at Van Gogh Cafe for...

... the national dessert of Romania - papanasi. It consists of three donuts, sour cream, jam and berries. The diet starts tomorrow!

Robin is unhappy that they brought her warm sparkling water AGAIN. Throughout all of Europe, you must ask for cold. Sometimes that doesn't even work.

On the weekends, they close one of the main streets so it is for pedestrians only.

What a way to finish up another fabulous trip on this warm summer-ish night!