Home of Drucula! (cue scary music and dim lights.)
Trip Start
Dec 16, 2001
1
15
Trip End
Ongoing
Buchrest,
Romania
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Transylvania made it on the itinery years ago after one of those fanciful travel shows sold it to me. Presenters with large pearly white smiles, clearly enjoying their tour through the old country. I finished the trip wondering if we went to the same place! But then this is why I travel. A friend of mine once said she had no need to travel, everything she wanted to see could be seen on TV. I think this misses the concept of editing, but who am I to argue ;)
Romania is a country that is evolving from a relatively recent communist dictatorship into a potential EU member if all goes as planned next year. It is within Bucharest that you see the contrast between the two.
The first few days were spent wandering about the capital and it quickly becomes apparent that someone had an inferiority complex! You all know what they say about guys who own big expensive cars?! ;) (Actually, if I could afford one of those cars I'd love to have one so I might have to edit that out one day! I digress...) Now think on a much larger scale. During the Caucesue??? era an entire section of the city was bulldozed, displacing 70,000 people, for the purposes of building the 'the world's second largest building' in the form of the palace??? and a boulevard 6m longer that of the Champ de Elyes???. The end of the era was marked by conflicts that are still evident if you look around for the bullet holes.
The palace is a huge chunk of a building that dominates the end of the boulevard. A guided tour takes you through a small fraction of the rooms and most of it is a statistical run down of materials. Crystals in the chandaliers totalling 3.5 tonnes, tonnes of marble from somewhere in the north, oak wood panels costing such and such....you get the idea. The national office of statistics has had to set up across the road in order to deal with all this data! The final cost is still not available but it has been said to have been a significant drain on economy. Contrary to my initial elusions to dark and foreboding, the weather was hot and humid, especially evident in this building. Air-con was not anticiapted during the initial planning and the humidity is already starting to have it effects.
From the palace you can walk down the boulevard to Unrii Square, passing numerous small fountains in in the centre of the road, coming at last to a large cluster of fountains set about in a concentric pattern at the square. A shopping complex has formed on one side of the square. Large billboards atop the buildings surrounding the square light up come dusk. The city goes to bed late, there were crowds out until late every night.
As you start to deviate off the main streets though the buildings become far more asture and the communists housing blocks become apparent.
The historical quarter is worth a look.
Brasov has established itself as one of the key tourist destinations in the country. A small town tucked away in the mountains to the north of Bucharest, it offers that comfy experience with a large town square surrounded by cafes and small shops in neat cobbled streets. A cable car quite probably offers a good view of the city but unfortunately it closed early the day I was there. Brasov also serves as a connection to the widely touted Dracula's Castle at Bran.
Castle Bran does not have any solid connection to the historical figure Vlad the Impaler. It was the point at which my imagination of imposing fortifications and dank dungeons was dismissed. Instead, this is a home of a noble family, with it's quaint little cobbled courtyard and spire topped roof. Tacky souvenier shops line the entry, all pretty much selling the same things. It was the first sign of souveniers I had seen since being in Romania, and much of it resembled items you could get at any joke shop, fake blood and masks included. This is seriosuly over-rated. It takes about an hour to get there from Brasov on a rickety old bus and takes about 20mins to walk around the castle proper. On entry you don some cloth covers for your shoes, which I suspect are a cunning way of getting the floorboards polished! :)
Sinaia is another small town up in the mountains. Initial plans had been to go hiking up in the mountains. Tina had a local friend who knew the area, but the rain and fog soon put a dampener on this. It didn't stop a visit to Peles Castle, which as it turned out was the architectural highlight of the trip. The entry to the castle takes you up a staircase into a 3 story high foyer with hand-carved hardwood spiral staircase starting part way up the wall and pictures of various ancestral seats and and coats of arms carved into the wood up the sides of the walls. Two staircases then lead up into further sections of the castle. The rooms have an amazing amount of detail incorporated into all the finishes, even the window handles. Yet the ostentacious over-the-top feeling has not taken over. The library has the mutliple level arrangement with ladder up to a balcony area and a secret door recessed into one of the shelves that led to the King's private chambers. Other rooms have themes including the Turkish room, the Roman room, the war room with ancient weapons from past campaigns and the painting room. They flatly refuse to let you take any pictures. I thought this would mean a gift shop at the end would sell you one, but there wasn't any sign of any books selling pictures. It was one of the few times I would gladly have paid an extortionate tourist price to have some pictures to show everyone what i am trying to describe! Peles was substantially more interesting than Bran.
The mountain regions are beautiful and relatively unchanged. Horse-drawn carts and people using scythes to slash and stack hay were not uncommon in the rural communities. The trains from Bucharest varied from brand new style carriages with automatic doors and plastic bucket seats to the dog-cabin style complete with the draughty toilet, where the ground blurs by as you stare down the hole. Don't stare for too long! :) The roadside is dotted with cows and sheep tied to small pins and grazing under the watchful eye of a shepherd. If I was to go back in the future it woould definitely be with a view to hiking or riding in the mountain areas.
