Bucharest, Romania

I made my way via a $2 cab ride back to the Brasov Train station. My cabbie spoke English and had driven a cab in Chicago. He tried to convince me to let him drive me all the way to Bucharest for $25. While it seemed a reasonable fare for such a long drive, I opted for a 4 hour train trip instead, at the extremely cheap price of $6.
The ride to Bucharest brought me out of the green hills and mountains of Transylvania, down into the hot, flat, dusty plains of southern Romania. For the first time in the trip this year, I felt some truly hot weather. Bucharest is a big, loud, bustling city of 2 million. The scene outside the train station was shocking chaos. Cars were furiously honking. The pedestrians packed on the sidewalks were moving purposefully, all doing their best to pretend to not see the legless woman scuttling along in the gutter begging for change. Some stopped to examine the lineup of people selling bizarre selections of goods; one woman selling cartons of individually wrapped men's underwear all size small, another selling a mountain of black socks, another selling some unrecognizable food.
Once a got a few blocks away from the train station the city quieted and became managable. Bucharest has some wonderful green parks and lakes. The city is relativley clean and attractive considering the drastically lower economic level of Romania compared to my previous stops.

This monument remembers those who died in the revolution in December, 1989. Dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu had led a brutalized Romania for 24 years. He turned Romania into a police state. He enacted disastrous economic policies, like forcing all of Romania's farmers to put down their ploughs and work in factories, causing a famine. He built the second largest building in the world for his palace, while his people starved and froze. Finally by 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall propelled the Romanian people to have the courage to bring down his regime. Over 1000 people died in the month long revolution, with Ceausescu's capture and execution on Christmas Day 1989 ending the killing.

Above is a Dacia car. I'd never heard of the brand Dacia before, but in Bucharest, literally 50% of all the cars on the street are Dacias.

The People's Palace was built by Ceausescu in the 1984. It has 1100 rooms, and is the second largest administrative building in the world next to the Pentagon. To build it, Ceausescu destroyed one fifth of Bucharest's historic district. 28 Churches were demolished. The street leading up to it was widened by the mad dictator to make it one meter wider than the great Champs Elysee. The destruction of the peoples homes that had lined the street were of no consequence, nor was the fact that his palace's construction took up to 25% of Romania's GDP. So much marble was used that Romanians had to find other types of stone to use for gravestones.

Today it houses the Romanian Parliament, as well as the Museum of Totalitarianism and Socialist Realism.

Brasov and Bran, Romania

In Budapest Lindso and I parted ways. She caught a shuttle to the airport to fly back to Maui, and I caught the metro to the train station. I boarded a night train to Transylvania! I would be making a 10 hour train ride across Hungary, into Romania, through the Carpathian mountains and into Transylvania with a final destination of Brasov. This was my most exciting train journey yet. The train was pretty empty, and I had a sleeper compartment all to myself. I fell asleep in my little fold out bed to the clickety-clack of the tracks. I awoke briefly after midnight to show my passport to the Romanian border control. Around 5am I awoke to the sunrise over the foggy Carpathians. The landscape was green farmland, with many men walking along the road with fishing rods for some early morning angling.

I arrived in Brasov, a city of 300,000, early in the morning. A long walk through deserted cobblestone streets brought me to my hostel. This would be my first hostel experience, and though Kismet Dao was not the greatest hostel I'd see, it was comfortable enough at $12 a night.

Brasov has a picturesque old town. It also unfortunately has a KFC in the central square. Progress is coming quickly to Romania, as they enter the European Union in just six months. Construction is everywhere.

While in Brasov I slipped on some wet cobblestones and tore my jeans wide open. Since I had no other pants even remotely clean, I needed to buy a pair. As it turns out jeans are the only expensive item in Romania. I did get a chance to talk to the woman working at the clothes store and ask her what she thought of Bulgaria, as that was my next destination. "Oh, Bulgarians are awful, I do not like them." So I started asking her about Romania's other neighbors, following are her responses:

Hungarians; "I don't like them, they think they are better than us."

Ukrainians: " I don't like them, they drink too much and fight."

Serbians; "I hate them, they steal."

Moldovans; "They speak Romanian like us, but they are poor and dirty people."

Now I understand why there has been warfare in the Balkans for hundreds of years. I would find the same attitudes in each successive country I visited. Bulgarians hate the Turks, dislike the Romanians, and think the Greeks are too uppity. Romanians warned me not to go to Bulgaria, and Bulgarians told me I was lucky to make through Romania without being accosted.

On the other hand, everyone was helpful and friendly to me. They don't see too many Americans around here and everyone was interested as to why I was in Romania, and what I thought of Romania.

The second day in Brasov I caught a bus to Bran Castle reputed as Dracula's Castle. Bran castle is very pretty, nestled in the Carpathians. Dracula (Vlad "the Impaler" Tepes) was a real person who ruled Wallachia from 1456-1462. He was known for his brutal slaughter of the Turkish forces that bordered his lands, particularly by impaling them on posts along the road sides for miles. However, he was not a vampire, nor was Bran Castle his castle. He did spend two days in the dungeon here while a prisoner of the Hungarians in the 147o's. His original castle has been destroyed by time and the elements, so this well preserved 14th century castle is marketed as "Dracula's Castle". Fine by me, it was a fun tour.