Hello friends!
Our 4th of July was a very long but rich travel day (the back of the bus spontaneously broke into America the Beautiful, the Star Spangled Banner, God Bless America, You're a Grand Old Flag, etc. etc. until the rest of the bus made them simmer down!) We left the city of Bucharest, which, with a huge new European-style tour bus took about an hour and a half, for the wide open countryside. We're on our way from the Eastern end of Romania, through the mountains, to the westen end and Timisoara, where a very enthusiastic Romanian choir awaits our arrival tomorrow afternoon.
The flatlands outside of Bucharest were bleak - a long drought and heat wave (the result of "global heating" as our guide Edward suggested several times) meant that fields were dry and plants (mostly corn and sunflowers) were struggling, except for the occaisional irrigated field (which made one field of several acres of sunflowers seem as brilliant as Van Gogh could imagine!) Edward explained that part of the problem was also the changeover from collectivisation of the lands. After the revolution in 1989, the government returned small plots of land to peasants, but they no longer had the means to purchase equipment to make the land profitable, and companies had not been able to go to the trouble of buying up or leasing all those small plots to make them productive. But it has only been 18 years, and this truly is a severe drought.
Soon we were in the mountains, though, and vegetation began to be more pronounced - rolling hills with mountain ridges in the background; grazing sheep, medieval fortresses on hilltops, villages along the roads with mostly well-cared for cottages. A complicated history of German and Hungarian and Turkish settlements along the ages, with the German influence being the stongest (the German cottages come right up to the street with the back wall of the house, hiding the courtyard from view, unlike the most common Romanian style, where the courtyard is in the front.)
We stopped in one walled-in medieval town, called Brasov (easy to remember because it sounds like "brush-off") that was beautifully preserved, including a massive 800 year old church called the "Black Church" because of a fire centuries ago. It started life as a Catholic church and changed with the Reformation, as with most churches in this historically German region of Romania (though most of the Germans left long ago). Next time we come (ha, ha) we'll be sure to schedule a performance here, where there is a massive and recently restored German tracker organ. (I forgot to mention in my last post, though, that the small Lutheran church we sang in last night was 850 years old - though very simple in style, the walls were massive and the ceiling high- we still are enjoying the feeling the audience gave us that night).
Our next stop was at the castle of Bran, where Vlad the Impaler (aka Dracula) once "slept", which was sufficient reason to make it "Dracula's Castle" (though his actual castle, eslewhere, is inaccessible). It was a fun climb, but made some of us long for the similar unexpected passageways and dimensions but much more quirky character of Doylestown's own Mercer castle!)
Our final destination for the long day of travel is the city of Sighisoara. Our final challenge was to find our way up a steep cobblestone street inaccessible to our huge bus to the walled-in medieval part of the city where our hotel stands on the highest point - fortunately for all, the food and the views were well worth the effort (and the help of the hotel staff who drove and carried all our luggage from the bus to our rooms!), topped off by local brandy in small ceramic snifters with a long spout.
So today was a long day of immersion in a rich countryside and richer history. Tomorrow we will have our first full engagement of the people of Romania, helped by the magic and power of song! - TL
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