Oh, Romania

Romania. From now on, I won't be able to mention this country without and 'oh' before and a 'sigh' after. So where to start.

Ok.

A couple of months ago, Vic sent through the Romanian national anthem. I had a laugh to myself because all I heard was some angry, 15th century, hatchet wielding men singing/yelling from deep within their bellies which had probably just been filled with meat and cabbage. Having just returned from Romania, I can confirm that these men still exist. They are scary and most of them are taxi drivers.

Oh Romania (sigh). What a land of contradictions, stray dogs and ugly people with the strangest hair growth. When we arrived we couldn’t find the bus stop. There was no information desk, so we asked the 2nd most trusted people, the police, where we might find it. They helpfully informed Luke that the bus stop was 20kms down the road. Not so helpful when you know for a fact there is a bus stop at the airport. So, we decided to catch a taxi. Not so helpful when the taxi driver is trying to charge you about £30 to go 10km down the road. We haggled, and then agreed on a price. After a 10 minute drive into the city, with tunes blaring from the radio that resembled my old keyboard’s demo mode, we stopped at the train station where the driver proceed to demand more money. In fact, he decided the price we had agreed on was actually per person. He just forgot to tell us. Ah, the hilarity. We ended up chucking the money at him and the legging it out of the cab. It was truly a great start to the country.

Then came the train station. As a general rule, most vagrants hang out at train and bus stations. Accepted. But seriously, when you’ve just been ripped off by a fat fuck of a taxi driver and then find yourself walking through gypsy children sniffing aerosol cans, stray dogs with patches of fur missing and generally unpleasant and scary looking men just to get through the front doors, there’s only one thing to do: head to Mc Donald’s. Those sweet golden arches provided the McFlurry and post mix Cokes to will us onto the next 6 hours of our journey; to Transylvania.

The beauty of the Carpathian mountains and the surrounding countryside was probably what made the trip. After another taxi ride from Brasov, through to Rasov and then Bran, we finally made it up the mountain into the Piatra Craiului National Park in Moeciu where our accommodation was. It was everything we needed it to be to start over with Romania. We stayed at a family farm, with about three generations of the family living and working there, including the 100 year old grandma who seemed to spent A LOT of time in the barn. There were cows and chickens as well as massive hay stack houses with pitch forks at the top, as well as homemade tables and chairs and old jars with wild flowers on all the tables. It was beautiful. We even arranged for a farm style breakfast that began with a glass of warm milk, straight from the udder. I really liked the idea of it, but when it came to the thick taste of fresh, frothy teat, it was a bit much. After breakfast, we walked down the mountain into Bran and had a look at the outside of Dracula’s castle. We didn’t go in as we heard that they had re decorated it Romanian style. We figured that probably included tearing up the floorboards and scattering rubbish around the interior, so we didn’t bother. We then meandered back up the mountain and had a traditional picnic halfway up that included cheese and pizza flavoured chip sandwiches, biscuits and many name games.

I think after our mountain time, we were all a bit reluctant to go back to Bucharest, but it wasn’t as bad as we were fearing. After waiting for our train which was almost an hour late, we got to our hostel successfully by avoiding all taxis. Our hostel was just near Cismigiu Park, which was lovely. It had rows of green benches with wrought iron backs and sides, where the old folks would gather to have a chit chat at dusk. There was also a space in the middle of the park for the local Romanian men to play a game that looked like Scrabble, but with number tiles and carpet on top of the table.

Most cities, even the most average, have beautiful old towns. It’s what saves the grime and the ugliness of the concrete. But, of course, because it was Romania, the old town was just as ugly as the rest of the city. There were no footpaths because they had all been dug up. They had been replaced with wooden slats that were so flimsy, the fat fuck of the taxi driver would definitely have fallen through. Surrounding the slats were piles, upon piles of rubbish, guarded by the manky dogs that roamed the city. Instead of the electrical wires being, I don’t know, underground or perhaps inside the electrical poles, they were just wrapped around the outside of the poles at least a hundred times over, with some even hanging down head height. As we continued to walked around, one thing became very obvious; these people like to get married. There were at least five wedding dress shops on every street, with the most hideous looking dresses imaginable. Think Borat’s mankini but with lace and a meringue bottom. Hot.

This entry is a lot longer than I intended, and I even skipped some stuff to try and save your eyes and attention span. I guess I’d like to wrap this up with, oh Romania (sigh). I’m glad I went and saw you. You were ugly, you had an old woman who kissed Vic’s cleavage with her gummy mouth and called me a Mongoloid. You had people with huge moles, the worst dress sense on the plant (red horizontal and pink vertical stripes in ONE outfit is TOO much) and hair spurting out of some weird places. You had people who would do anything to get ahead, people who crossed themselves upon going past every church, stray dogs and drunk gypsies stealing petunia’s from a restaurant. You were both weird and a little wonderful. I liked you and I hated you.