Hi all,

We had a great time away over Christmas and New Years’ in Romania. We ended up staying in Transylvania – enjoying the Nairns’ excellent hospitality – for nearly two weeks! It took so long to travel there and back that we felt like we needed to make it worthwhile. We spent about 50 hours on buses and trains, and Google Maps tells me that we travelled over 1600km. And we thought BG and RO were neighbouring countries!

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A Romanian phrase we used quite often over our trip was “la mulţi ani!” (pr: lah mooltz ahn) which means “to many years”. It’s quite a pretty phrase, I think, but also very useful. It’s used for Christmas, New Years’ Eve and birthdays.

James went to a village for New Years’ Eve, so it was up to Texan Dave and Elly and me to have/find/create huge amounts of fun for the countdown.

Inspired by rumours of the stoic efforts of Romanian nationals who stay up to watch the dawn on New Years’ Day, we planned to stay out late. We left the house at 11:30pm and made our way to the centre of town, where we could hear loud and decidedly “traditional” music. Sure enough, a swaggering, middle-aged Romanian guy was crooning away with a backing band of clarinet, fiddle and accordion. Sorry Dad, it was nowhere near as good as that sounds. Nevertheless, it felt so authentically Romanian that we quite enjoyed it, even after Elly pointed out that we were probably enduring the Romanian equivalent of John Farnham or someone with equivalent mass appeal.

At 11:55pm, someone was welcomed on stage with sufficient polite applause to convince us that he was the mayor (or someone like that). He gave a rousing speech (probably), but was interrupted by a large projector screen lowering down in front of him. He chuckled and popped around the side of the screen to continue his speech, but before long all the stage lights went out and the poor mayor got drowned out by fireworks.

They started a lesser array of fireworks with a minute to go. This confused us, because all of a sudden, without any counting down, there was cheering and bright lights and explosions! So, of course, we cheered and yelled out “Happy New Year” to everyone… only to see a 30-second countdown display appear on the screen shortly afterwards. Impressively, the real fireworks display after the real countdown was much better.

After the countdown an enthusiastic (ie. slightly drunk) young performer came on stage to sing some traditional Romanian songs. Based on the average age of those who sang along with him, we’re quite sure that the songs being performed were of the Auld Lang Syne ilk. Again, we were blissfully ignorant to the uncoolness. The singer eventually got the crowd to chant “Radul, Radul, Radul…” so we’re fairly sure that was his name.

Radul spoke three words of English: “oh”, “my” and “God”. He had a very strange habit of interspersing his long-winded Romanian banter between the songs with cries of “oh my Gaaad”, as if it was another way of saying “isn’t it great to be in Târgu Mureş tonight?” or something equally inane.

At one stage we spotted a bunch of people our age who we quickly decided were not locals. They were dancing too exuberantly. Some red hair and a Guinness t-shirt made me think they were Irish. I think Dave guessed that they were German (or was it Scandinavian…?). Anyway, it turns out they were Croatian.

There were six of them, and they’d travelled to Târgu Mureş because they found cheap flights there! They all spoke excellent English, which impressed me. I asked how they’d learned such good English and they quipped that they watch a lot of TV and spend a lot of time on the computer! But I think they were being humble – I suspect the language is compulsory there, as it is in Romania.

After the Radul Spectacular finished at 1am, the crowd dispersed and the clean-up began. We followed a large crowd, who turned out to be returning to their cars (and not to party). So we walked back to the main strip and found our Croatian friends again. They were looking for a party, too. Like us, they hadn’t realised that all the bars and clubs are closed for private parties on New Years Eve. Since we hadn’t booked, things were looking grim.

Luckily, we managed to crash a party in a nearby restaurant. We’d walked in to ask if they were open but the owner said “sorry, it’s a private party” and directed us to a Michael Jackson-themed bar up the road (eww). But moments later he caught up to us on the street and said “hey, the people said you can come in if you like”. So we did!

Turns out the party was 100% Hungarian, which made for a very multi-cultural experience: 2 Aussies, 1 Yank, 6 Croats and several Hungarians in a Romanian taverna. (Hungarians make up about half the population of Translyvania, since historically the region was a part of Hungary.) They served us sausages with mustard and crusty bread, which was highly appropriate since: a) it seemed a very Hungarian meal and b) it was 2am and therefore the perfect time for such stodgy cuisine!

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We had a good time. Since then, we’ve returned to Bulgaria after an epic 2-train journey of 28 hours. We’re looking forward to staying right where we are until it’s time to catch a plane to ‘Straya! Here’s the plan until then:

- Start school (term 1) this coming Monday;

- Teach for about 8 weeks;

- Have a week off around my birthday (March 9);

- Teach another 2-3 weeks;

- 2 days after the end of term 1, we fly home (April 4)!

Writing it down like that has really made it seem like no time at all! It’s less than 3 months until we leave! We are of course very excited to be going home, but I think as it approaches our feeling will become increasingly mixed. Stay tuned for our philosophising about that particular experience in later blog posts! For now, suffice to say that we’ve talked about it (what else do you do on 4 x 12 hour train rides?) and set ourselves some goals.

Essentially, we want to make the most of the rest of our time here. It will be very tempting to “tune out” towards the end of our trip instead of allowing ourselves to be stretched and challenged until our last day. We’ve barely scratched the surface of the various cultures (let alone languages) we meet every day, so there plenty more “experience” to be had by us before April. Feel free to ask us how we went with those goals in a few months’ time!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers

Stu.

Final instalment in our “Quick! Catch up with the blogging before we move on to Turkey” series… sees us doing a few touristy things around Romania.

After the onslaught of shopping that Humf and I endured – the same onslaught that Elly and Margot revelled in – we were very much ready to leave the city and take in some different sights. On the bus trip up to Transylvania we were surprised and excited to notice the huge differences between Bulgaria and neighbouring Romania – in landscape, in architecture, in the villages, in the people…! I guess noticing all those differences is what travelling is all about.

When Jon and Margot suggested we get a maxi-taxi out to Sighişoara (sig-ee-shwa-rah), a 12th-Century village where Vlad Dracul (yes, Dracula) lived for some time, we jumped at the opportunity.

It was about a hour from Târgu Mureş (ter-goo moor-esh) and we got there in the early arvo. It’s a great time of year to travel (depending on the weather) because it’s well and truly outside of the high season – there were plenty of others wandering around seeing the sights, but much less crowded than in summer (me thinks). The village was typically colourful for Romania:

Up on the hill was the Old Town – the part of the village that dates back to the 12th-Century. I guess we’ve almost become accustomed to the concept of an Old Town now, but really, it just wouldn’t be possible in Australia. Depending on your definition of “old”, of course.

This strange wooden tunnel leads from the centre of the Old Town to the top of the hill where there are some churches and a graveyard.

As if the village itself didn’t have enough charm, we were surrounded at all times by stunning autumn foliage!

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The other sightseeing excursion we made from Târgu Mureş was the Salt Mine at Praid (pron: pride). Apparently it’s been mined since Roman times and, more recently – as the mining has moved further under ground – the locals have opened up some of the disused mining sites to the public. Around the 1950s the salt mine became the site of an alternative therapy called speleotherapy – which espouses the health benefits of breathing in salty air.

Thousands of people every year travel down salt mines, including this one, to breath in the air. There appears to be some science behind it but I didn’t really read the plaques… It’s supposed to be particularly good for sufferers of asthma, and based on that, they’ve built a series of huge playgrounds for kids to stay entertained while they breathe the air! Apparently some of them spend four hours down the mine as often as three times a week.

There’s also a church down there where Catholic and Orthodox (ie. Hungarian and Romanian) services are held.

And when we returned to the surface (allegedly feeling much refreshed, or something), we went and got kürtös kalács which is some seriously tasty Hungarian sweet bread! They put dough on a wooden cylinder and then mount it on a spit. It is cooked over a charcoal fire and then coated in sugar, spices and nuts. You eat it while it’s hot and say “yum”. Not a Hungarian word.

Hungarian, by the way, is considered one of the hardest languages to learn (as a second language – for English-speakers). It’s loosely related to Finnish, but is essentially independent from all other languages (rare for Europe!). It looks like this: “Angolul beszélő magyar megtalálni nagyon nehéz megtanulni”.

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We left Transylvania on Friday morning, and I’m glad to say that we’re nearly caught up with our blogging!

We got another maxi-taxi back to Bucharest and stayed a night at the East Hostel, which is easily the best hostel I’ve stayed in! It was fitted out amazingly well. Incredibly classy bathrooms; it felt like a boutique hotel but instead of a king-sized four-poster bed per room, they have several bunks! A very nice surprise, we thought.

We got the train back to Haskovo the next day and that’s where we are now. Humf will be heading to Turkey tomorrow. Elly and I will probably hang back in Haskovo to nurse our wounded wallets for a few days before joining Humf to see Cappadocia! Looking forward to it!

You can expect some more philosophical reflections on our travels in the next few days!

Cheers,

Stu.

Previously, on The Grants’ Bulgaria Blog…

“We left the three intrepid muskateers in Bansko, amidst the mountains of southwestern Bulgaria. Unbeknownst to them, they were being pursued by a giant green dragon (common in Bulgaria, don’t you know?) as they packed their bags and headed for the bus. Will they survive this encounter? Read on…”

Friday 23rd Oct: Boris seemed to get quite sullen after we told him we were leaving. I wonder if he was disappointed to hear we were ready to leave Bansko? He’s a Banskovite born-and-bred so perhaps he thought our 36-hour stay didn’t do his lovely town justice. We told him we’d try to come back in winter! Are you keen for that, Mum and Dad?

We jumped on a nasty old bus to Sofia in the morning and chugged our way west from Bansko and then north towards the capital. As you can see from the map above, we were sidling around the Rila Mountains which are just south of Sofia. We would have liked to visit the Rila Monastery (a stunning, thousand-year-old monastery about 1100m up in the mountains) but these things are hard to access by bus. We should have taken the lead of some of the backpackers we met in Plovdiv and done more hitch-hiking!

We made it to Sofia in the early afternoon with about 5 hours to waste before our train left. Elly and I don’t really like Sofia. It seems to have all the ugliness of a large city (smog, traffic and lots of busy, grumpy people) without the usual benefits (like good shopping, a larger range of shops/cafes, great architecture etc). Maybe it was our whingeing beforehand, but Humphrey took all of 3 seconds to take a strong dislike to Sofia. It smells bad; I think that was his main impression. I think it’s a telling statistic that we failed to take a single photograph of the city… except the horrendously Communistic train station:

Then we jumped on the train! Best part of Sofia we saw all day. (Sorry, that’s a bit mean.) We had debated all day whether to take the train or the bus… but once we saw our cabin we were glad we chose the former! It might not look much, but it’s so much more comfortable than a tiny, upright bus seat! Eauch!

There was the extra cool factor for the train: it was bound for Moscow!! The surprisingly friendly lady at the ticket office told us to make sure we set an alarm for approximately 5:45am – the ETA for Bucharest – or else we might end up in Russia. We thought that sounded quite appealing, in some ways.

The train ride was uneventful. We got up at about 3am to hand over our passports – firstly to the Bulgarians and then to the Romanians (who looked at them and said “kangaroo?”, to which we all laughed). We also stayed up to watch the crossing of the Danube River. I think a few of you even got special international SMSs as we did so!

Saturday 24th Oct:

The train arrived slightly early. That may sound like a good thing, but it meant stumbling off the train at 5:30am. I even have proof; check out the glorious expressions on their faces! Oh, did I mention it was about 6 degrees C?

We wandered around the train station for a while until a sudden realisation came to us: we literally didn’t know a word of Romanian; nor did we have even the vaguest clue of the layout of Bucharest… Time for a quick google to find some of this essential info! So we found ourselves in McDonalds drinking some very ordinary coffee so we could use the wi-fi internet.

Before long we’d scratched a map onto a piece of paper and took ourselves and our 15kg packs out onto the streets.

Immediately we noticed that Romania has a very different feel to Bulgaria. While we saw glimpses of the same rows of faceless concrete apartment blocks that characterised Bulgarian cities, Bucharest still has oodles of buildings with character!

The language is vastly different, of course. We didn’t find this out until later, but quite a large proportion of people in Romania actually speak Hungarian – especially in Transylvania (the northwestern third of the country), where we were headed. It was quite a thrill to hear a Latin-based language and recognise a decent percentage of the words because of it!

I’ll talk more about our thoughts on Romania in another post, I think.

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We decided to walk to the bus station from the train station. Doesn’t sound too hard, does it?

Well, it was a daft idea. Luckily, we don’t know who to blame for it, but we do know (don’t we, Humf and Elly?) that I, Stu, was the one left to do all the navigation in the streets of Bucharest.

After three-and-a-half hours of resolutely refusing kind offers from greedy taxi-drivers, we arrived on foot at our bus station. Within half and hour we’d jumped on our maxi-taxi (which is what Romanians call mini buses) and departed for Târgu Mureş. It was a very strange way to make an impression of Bucharest. I don’t recommend it; we’re hoping to be able to see a little more of it on the way home!

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Ta-da! We had made it to Târgu Mureş. It was there that we met up with our good friends Jon, Margot and James Nairn who are living and working in Romania.

We had adventures, some of which Elly will thrill you with next time. Stay tunes for descriptions of the wonders of shopping in Romania and possibly even how fun playing paintball is!

Cheers,

Stu.

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