White Chalet Suceava

We arrange for Monica to give us a tour of the painted monasteries. She is trained as a tour guide. Public transportation to these remote sites is very limited and would take several days to see the top 4. We take a beautiful route through the hills. The monasteries are surrounded by farms. We visit Voronet, Moldovita, Suceavita, Humur. They were built around 1500 with their exterior walls decorated in extensive and ...

... me with the info on the one bus and calls to confirm that it will be running. Until this point, I was not even sure that it was possible (without backtracking way South to get around the mountains). Valerie, the only other person at the hostel, is on the same bus. The bus is an experience. It is a 7 hour trip and apparently such luxuries as shock absorbers are skipped. The music is awful, a mix of 50% Romanian folk, 30% urban, 20% euro-pop. The ride itself is beautiful. The ...

... terestru, necesar
echilibrului biologic omenesc. Contrar unei idei foarte raspandite,
comportamentul lemnului in prezenta focului, este excelent. De fapt,
cand este cuprins de flacari, lemnul se consuma incet si-si pastreaza
toate proprietatiile mecanice timp de lungi minute, contrar celor mai
multe materiale de constructii. In Scandinavia si in America ...

... and where cows and horse-drawn carts are a very common cause of traffic jams on the road. Many of the young men of the region have gone to work in Western Europe and they send money back home which is used to built these new houses, but the old traditional culture is still very much alive in these parts. One wonders though what will happen to this culture when all the young men come back...

... have travelled to Suceava together and alighting from a seven hour bus ride, were met by Monika's helper from the hostel. What service! After a good night's sleep, we were up at 6 (ugh) to go on Monika's excellent monastery tour. The early hour was unusual, but four Japanese men were coming up from Bucharest by night train for a really long day trip and had to catch the 5-o-clock train back to the ...

... to YMCA. Look for the video on YouTube coming in the future. It was hilarious and very popular with everyone. Someday, my daughter will be completely embarrassed by her crazy dad's antics and infamous YMCA dance in Romania. I was pretty incognito with my sunglasses and wig, Most people didn't recognize me and that is good, but it is all on video for posterity and blackmail purposes. One more entry from Botosani for tomorrow. Noapte Buna (Good Night)

Wow, has today ever been a memorable day. Without question, it's been the most unexpectedly crazy days of this trip in terms of how events unfolded. What started as a seemingly straight-forward plan of a little looking around Suceava, followed by a couple daytrips out to nearby towns by bus, went terribly wrong somewhere along the way. It actually began perfectly according to plan. I got up at 8, got myself together and headed straight down to the ruins of Suceava's former Cetatea de ...

Beautiful weather again after an interlude of rain and cold, and I've now moved on to the northeast of the country. Getting from the Székelyföld to Southern Bucovina isn't the most direct of routes, but fortunately there was one relatively painless maxitaxi connection leaving this morning. The ride took nearly five and a half hours though, so my mp3 player saw a lot of action. Then as soon as I got in, I phoned up the hostel I'd arranged to stay in, and got a ...

... Anxious to get to our final destination and hotel, we wolf down the chicken sour soup (a Romanian specialty), stuffed grape leaves, and fantastic sweet cake dessert before racing off again. The Roman Hotel is clean and fairly new, and I am delighted to learn that I have wireless internet in my room. It will be the first time I have been able to post to my blog since departing Bucharest. I see a long night in my future, so I'd better get to it! Hugs, Dan

... three of the exterior walls had survived and the inside was completely covered with frescos from the same period. The original tomb of Toader Bubuiog is inside who ordered the church to be built and we found the picture of him offering it to Christ. There was a tower to climb too with beautiful views. The stairs were so small that David scraped his shoulders climbing up and down them! We shared a cab back with an older American couple that we had met. It was really ...