Last Day in Bucharest

Thursday, September 27, 2012

I wake up at 3am, anxious to miss the alarm and thus am showered and ready when Oswaldo wakes at 4. Marinel arrives punctually and we share the brown bag breakfast the hotel has provided. At the airport we join a straggling group of bleary-eyed travelers and Oswaldo gets thoroughly searched in security due to some little knick-knack attached to his bank token. When we enter the waiting area – it’s still dark outside – large screens show MTV videos with Snoop Dog (sound muted). Next video features Prince in a tight red outfit – before he changed his name. This is funny for many reasons, one of them being that I haven’t seen a single black person for 3 weeks.

Everybody sleeps on the hour and a bit flight and, as expected, Mihael is waiting for us with his black Mercedes at the other end. The hotel manager at the Siqua is relieved to see us. He had thought we would have been back after a week – even though I did say the 27^th… He’s also sorry to say there’s no room available. Eventually he arranges a smaller and much less attractive room, which Oswaldo moves into while I go off to the huge Unirea shopping center to get a much-needed manicure and blow-dry, as well as spend my last lei.

Predictably, I get cheated by the taxi driver going home.

We’ve arranged to meet Eleonore for lunch at the charming Caturesti restaurant behind an old bookstore and a cheerful Noah's Ark sculpture.

We arrive early and have huge glasses of lemonade and mint while we watch the happy customers serve themselves from the buffet. It’s great to see Eleonore again – she’s such a blast of energy -  and we share the stories of our many activities in the two weeks that have passed, while we move on to huge glasses of scarlet pomegranate juice and cannot resist the yummy desserts served in martini glasses. Then we part and we walk home, a little wan in the 30 degree sun, but at the same time unwilling to face another taxi battle.

This is our night to see “La Traviata” and we discover at the last minute the performance starts at 7pm and not at 7.30pm as we had thought. We hurry to dress in the relative finery we’ve brought for just this occasion and walk over to the opera house, which is almost next to the hotel. We’re admiring the pretty pastel and guilt interiors and enjoying our mid first row seats, when we realize we’ve not brought the camera. Didn’t even occur to us. And around us people are snapping picture after picture. Grrr.

When the curtain opens Violeta, the courtesan, is walking about in a white dress, shoulders bare, hosting a slightly risqué party. This is when she meets and falls in love with young Alfredo. From that moment our attention never wavers. The soprano has a lovely warm voice and is an accomplished actress as well. The tenor is less so but has a nice timbre, and his father, the base, is really good. The choir consists of an older amateur group, dressed in colorful vintage costumes with the women wearing heavy make-up over their bare shoulders. They sing and act with gusto and clearly enjoy every moment on the stage. In Act II there’s a moment of tension when the soprano’s heavy silk skirt begins to separate from the the back of her tight bodice and threatens to slide to the floor. Being so close, I observe the widening opening showing white undergarmenst and the various rescue efforts by other singers to fasten the snaps. Tremendously professional the soprano continues to act and sing, now gesturing only with her free left hand, since her right is desperately securing the skirt. Finally the count hands her a heavy ermine stole. Fascinated I watch her try to drape it on her shoulders, loooping it deep enough to cover the gaping aperture, while still not trusting the skirt to stay up. She’s laughing with embarrasment when Act Two ends and, after taking her well-deserved bows, she can hurry off the stage, always facing the audience. In Act Three she returns, ill and dying in a (safe) white shift and sings so beautifully and with such emotion that we’re both in tears. What a lovely way to end our amazing trip. We walk home wowing to read the libretto, in general see more operas, and so on. We’re so stimulated we almost give up on sleeping, because this time we have a 3am wake-up call and at 3.40am Mihael will come for us.

We manage to sleep around midnight and are surprisingly OK when we wake up 3 hours later. The ultra modern airport (oh, people responsible for Galeão, take a look at what's out there...) teeming with people, while we go sit in the business lounge. There’s a moment of drama when I am called to retrieve my wallet, which I left in the duty free store AND DIDN’T REALIZE. It held only my credit card, my euros and passport being stashed away on my body, but still… three armed guards are standing around it when I arrive in embarrassed rush, and I’m not allowed to touch it before they’ve checked my passport twice. They caught me in the nick of time, because minutes later we’re boarding the flight for Frankfurt. There we make a bee-line for the business lounge again and wait for our flight 2 hours later. Eleven and a half hours make for a long day-flight, but flying Lufthansa Business (on miles) makes all the difference. We eat, drink, sleep, watch movies, listen to music, work and think. We can’t wait to get home, but are happy with the adventure we had.

And look what joy awaited us:

Soon Victor arrives and we're all together again. So good to be home.

Downtime in Suceava

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Wonderful to wake up with no special program and no rush to get ready. Nonetheless I’m full of beans – “one of the all-time morning persons,” as Victor says - much before Oswaldo even wants to get out of bed, so I have a delicious breakfast by myself and then wander down the pavement-less street to a nearby mall. The sun is shining and it’s quite warm. From the hillside street I can see far across the farmland surrounding smallish provincial Suceava. It must be in the process of expansion, though, I pass two other new hotels and a couple of upscale car dealerships on my way.

The shopping center is also new and with many empty shops Those open are mainly clothes stores, where I join the local women, some in tight jeans and with straightened hair shopping for towering heels with leopard skin finish. They’d be quite happy in Brazil – except for the prices of course. More pedestrian, I end up at a supermarket where I find goodies for the dogs and for Nikita. How I miss them.

Back at the hotel Oswaldo has showered and breakfasted and we catch a cab to the 13^th century citadel, considered the main attraction of the town. It’s an impressive ruin, but quite featureless and in the early stages of being partly rebuilt and restored. I’m reminded of Brazil when we come upon workers on their breaks sleeping in the shade any which way. Across the road lies the wonderful Village Museum, a collection of authentic rural dwellings set amongst willow and beech trees. Some of them have tableaux representing traditional ceremonies, complete with sound. 

We call a cab (this is what you must do in Romania – the alternative is to be seriously ripped off) to the restaurant recommended by the hotel, Latino, where we share an excellent mushroom pizza and decide to forego our usual beer, because it’s just too hot. 

Afterwards we wander into a produce market, surprisingly like markets in both Bhutan and Mexico, 

and then find a lady in the little shop, who sells watchstraps. I’ve been meaning to replace mine and when I see the color I want, we enter the shop. Turns out this lady has a story to tell, and while she works competently on the watch, she talks rapidly in Romanian with many gestures and shows us pictures of her granddaughter (won a math competition?), her daughter (lost her husband or was it the lady’s husband), and a worn newspaper clipping (in Romanian, of course), which we gather is an article about her going to university at 47. Someone (daughter, mother, lost husband?) studied for 3 degrees – it’s really hard when you don’t understand the language at all – and even Oswaldo and I differ in our interpretations, but we smile and nod and add her to all the interesting characters we’ve come across on this trip.

The restaurant calls us a cab to get back to the hotel – the young and hip driver, who enters the street “na contramão” – the Brazilian way, doesn’t use the meter, tsk, tsk  and overcharges us– there’s just no winning this battle. We relax in the room, pack and then head down for our last dinner of smoked salmon and cucumber salad and call Marinel to arrange for the 4.30am pick-up for our 6am flight. We also call Mihael in Bucharest to come pick us up at the Bucharest airport at 7.15am. We’re getting very proficient here!  http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631630194725/

Museums and the painted monastery

Tueday, September 25, 2012

Experiencing wireless withdrawal, but also anxious about not being able to check in with things at home, we wake up much too early in our beautiful rural room, hung with Moldavian carpets, woven and/or embroidered with bright floral patterns on black background. Other cloths are of an almost white rustic linen, which you see a lot here, always with a little embroidered detail. The handwork is so fabulous in this country.

Elena and Marinel prepare a delicious breakfast with Turkish coffee and a special fresh nut yogurt and muesli, as well as other delicious things. Outside it's a sunny cloudless day and Oswaldo goes to talk with a black and white cow tethered nearby.

He's obviously remembering the many summers spent on his father's cattle ranches. We say goodby to Elena and begin our journey northwards towards Suceava.

At this point we're looking more than rumpled. Although never having mastered the art of traveling light - the toiletries alone weigh a ton - we have now lived in the same 2 or 3 sets of clothes for two weeks. The strain is beginning to tell!

First stop is a charming little museum in an old border patrol house. It's closed, but an old lady is watching us sort of sideways 

(it's rare to exchange a direct open smile with a Romanian person) and she may be the one who sends a man running over to us to conduct an agitated dialogue with Marinel. I ask if they're mad at us, but he assures me they're not. This is the way they speak. The man runs off to get a school-master, who has the key, and while we wait we watch a rooster with his flock of chickens peck in an apple orchard, a horse driven cart on the road, and another - driver-less - working over the grass in a ditch. It's so peaceful. Soon a big man in a flapping coat strides across, "Peter," he says and shakes our hands in a crushing grip. If it were not for the setting and - frankly - his very ripe B.O., he could be an important CEO, such is his natural confidence. He is, however, local history teacher, and shows us, piece by piece the items in the lovely little collection put together by his 6th graders. 

Then we're off again to Gura Humorlului and the Buscovina Museum of Folk Customs, where the director, Mrs. Elvira, is waiting to show us around. We pass through an exhibition of cartoons from all over the world, to an impressive rendering of the major seasonal feasts in Romanian culture. Mrs. Elvira speaks only French, the version Oswaldo spoke with his first father in law, who was Romanian, so with my shaky Alliance Français we have to combine notes of what we actually understood afterwards. 

Nonetheless the exhibition is not only as complete as one could wish, but also put together with genuice love for the traditions of the country. We're very happy to have seen it.

After a quick walk through a local market we're off to see the famous painted monastery at Voronet. Sorrounded by parking lots and stalls selling artifacts the monastery is quiet and peaceful in a flowering garden behind a high wall. The outside paintings are incredible - the one below is of the last judgement

and inside, where pictures cannot be taken, the colors are brilliant beyond belief. Every surface painted and decorated. Wandering around the garden afterwards I see a yellow rose in full bloom and bend to smell it. This is when I see two bees busily working inside it - and quickly retract my nose.

In the parking lot outside I inspect the stalls wondering whether something will catch my eye. I am almost giving up with the garish sameness of everything, when I see an embroidered blouse in a stall manned by a young girl - she turns out to be 10 - the age when the feet are big, but the body hasn't grown yet. She is quite bossy, is willing to show me her merchandise hung on clothewire with pegs, but quickly rearranges everything I have touched. I find her very sweet and decide to buy one of her blouses, but ask for a discount. She reaches into a pocket - I think for a calculator, but no, it's her cell, she calls (Marinel tells me this) her father and asks him to put her mom on the phone. They discuss whether the discount is ok. It is. I buy the blouse and she smiles a tiny smile. When I leave, she is rearranging the other blouses I touched.
It's time for lunch and Marinel recommends a place back in the town. We order sparingly, but he doesn't and it takes a long time for the lunch to appear and for us to eat it. I have now mastered the art of ordering side dishes and the one traditional postato dish I was going to try the girl forgets to order....
Then we're off again to drive through the Carpathians near the Ukrainian border and to see the monastery at Sucevita. The cloud has turned a dark grey and when we stop at a lookout to take a picture of the view

we're splattered with rain and have to run to the car. By the time we reach the monastery it's raining so hard it would be hopeless to go in. We don't want to get drenched and it's getting late. So with a stop to buy ceramics from an old lady in black we go towards Suceava, driving slowly because the road is almost flooded. We reach the Sonnenhof hotel in the early evening. It turns out to be a really pleasant surprise. Quite new, cheerful friendly staff, a room with everything you could wish, and a restaurant humming with activity. When we later go down Oswaldo has a plate of excellent smoked salmon arranged around a delicious cucumber salad and I have lightly breaded and fried shrimp with a salad of wild rucula - I haven't had rucula since I left Brazil!  http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631625791707/

Leaving Transylvania

Monday, September 24, 2012

We have a little battle with the shower again, which, although new and fancy, spews very cold water. On the phone Marinel assures us that the warm water will come eventually, and so it does, and we both shower satisfactorily and head down for breakfast in the quite luxurious and large dining room. We’re the only persons there and while we get our bearings amongst fruits, croissants, and coffee, a courteous waiter appears. “You are vegetarian,” he says. “Yes, why?” we ask. “We have prepared a surprise,” he says with pleasure. He returns with a dish of pureed peppers and eggplants, very tasty and – for us – perfect with drinks. But there’s the great country bread and I enjoy the mixture of flavors while Oswaldo huddles defensively with his warm buttery croissant and jam. The waiter appears again with a platter of sliced cheese. It looks like the cheese from yesterday and I ask whether it’s cow or sheep’s cheese. This goes beyond his English, so I ask “Moooh” or “Baaah?” He’s laughing when he says, “Not baaah, mooh.” Oswaldo obligingly samples the cheese, which is also very nice. Then we get ready to leave, not before meeting the dynamic manager of the hotel, who tells us it was opened only two months ago, and who also says bears come here regularly at night. He’s seen one with 3 cubs. Thus we confirm our suspicion that the covered garbage cans we’d noticed the day before were indeed to keep the bears out. We leave promising to send more Brazilians.

With Marinel once again at the wheel we head towards the Red Lake, Lacu Rosu, also known as the Killer Lake – legend has it that a piece of the mountain fell down and crushed a man in a boat at some point. The lake is at the entrance of the impressive Carpathian mountain range, not really red at all, but obviously a popular local tourist spot, with all kinds of vendors. While we’re eating a lunch of grilled trout and enjoying a large glass of Romanian beer we observe a lady feed large pieces of a Hungarian sweet, which looks a little bit like a cast for an arm, if that were made of dough. The horse doesn’t look at her as it eats the whole thing, piece by piece. She swats it lightly on the head and returns to her sweet-making station, where we later observe her dipping wooden rolls in batter and roasting them over hot embers.  

When they’re golden brown she drizzles them with sugar, nougat or coconut. We buy ½ of one and tear at the hot delicious dough.

Then we approach the hairpin roads and the forbidding rocks of the Bicaz pass and are awed by the wildness of the place. 

At some point we pass a farmer and his wife sitting on a mound of reeds pulled by a horse. They’re straining slowly uphill and we and other cars are looking to pass. When we later make a stop for taking pictures we watch them going downhill and wonder how the poor horse is going to make it. “The man has brake,” says Marinel, ‘this is very good horse.”

After the mountains comes a huge dam, the name of which escapes us, made in the communist era and obliterating many villages. Throughout our travels we’ve seen the effects of the summer’s drought on the wizened fields, the wilted maize, and the useless blackened sunflowers, but here it’s alarming to notice the low level of the water and the many surrounding dry riverbeds.

We’re now in Moldavia, and as we slowly circle the enormous lake we take in the difference in architecture, the careful woodwork and the many flowers. All over we see horses and cows grazing apparently on their own and chickens and ducks pecking at the ground. The number of strays has diminished greatly.

Since we’re not going to have internet at Fernando’s Hideaway, our next stop, we stop in a small town to check in with the house and Victor, where a innocuous café façade  - with wireless internet - does not prepare us for the red velvet chair interior with superior coffee and tiramisu, served in a portion size that that makes it dinner for us. Twenty minutes later Elena Klabin welcomes us at her house, set in the middle of fields and hung with beautiful Moldavian tapestries, where we chat on her stoop and watch a man walk his two cows home for the night, with his little matching black and white dog taking up the rear. The half moon is bright in the sky when we retreat to our room, tired after the long day in the car.

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Rural Tourism

Sunday, September 23, 2012

When we wake up, toasty warm under the thick covers in our 18^th century room, it is misty and cold outside. 

I’m first in the bathroom, which has a plastic shower cabin unit with curved doors, set in a corner. The shower itself is handheld, attached to a hook on the wall. When I turn it on I, and the entire bathroom behind me, are instantly sprayed with cold water, since the shower, I realize, is facing out. I am now really awake and have to dry to floor, naked and shivering, while the water gets warm, showerhead prudently laid on the floor of the unit. I explain all of this to Oswaldo before it’s his turn, but I even so I hear, “I HATE this kind of shower,” accompanied by the sounds of him banging into the walls of the tight unit as he tries to close the reluctantly sliding doors – he says more, but I cannot make out the words over the rushing water. He too is really awake when he returns, and we head down for breakfast in the ancient basement, where we share an omelet and a basket of country bread and have unexpectedly fancy ‘long’ expressos, served everywhere in this part of rural Romania in elegant red or white cups with matching sugar and cream containers.

Marinel is waiting to take our luggage and walk with us across the village square to the museum, where the lady in charge does not speak English. We are free to look at the collection, focused on the tools of the Hungarian guilds, 

which founded this town, and the heroes and weaponry of its history. Meanwhile Marinel is subjected to an excited flow of Romanian, which he looks into space and discretely shifts from one foot to the other. “You know everything now?” I ask. “Yes many times,” he says, “she explain many times.”

The high point is a collection of large dolls dressed in traditional garbs. 

Apparently the town asked 17year old boys and girls to clothe the dolls and to enlist their mothers’ and grandmothers’ help in the job. The result is moving in all the details we recognize from the museums we’ve already visited, but also in the clever way in which these kids were encouraged to resurrect the customs of the past. http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631605002167/

The fog is lifting as we head out of town and resume our eagle watch on the flat open fields, which stretch on either side. The birds are maddeningly difficult to get in the frame. The instant we stop the car they glide confidently off.

Easier to photograph are the sheep, which we now see a lot of in large herds, always guarded by a shepherd and a couple of purposeful dogs. 

Sometimes they flow like a stream of yeasty water across the road and down a bank. I notice a sheep straggling behind – she’s limping and followed by a dog. Every time she stops the dog stops also and just waits, looking around.

Soon we reach the Ozone Hotel, in the middle of a small resort town, surrounded by pine-covered hills and crystalline air. The hotel is perhaps modern art deco, with a lot of details in black and grey. It seems pretty empty, except for us, and very new – no massage in place, nor any spa treatments - but with a large indoor pool and a Jacuzzi. We take a walk around in the sun, explore a pretty orthodox church, and continue on vaguely in search of a river we’re sure must be nearby. We don’t find it, but instead share a beer in a modest place on an unpaved road, where you get your beer in a little store and have it outside under a parasol. That’s where I buy two sausages for the strays near our table. One eats it in one gulp and looks around for more and the other – a mother with hanging teats – steals off to eat it alone.

We call Marinel to get us and we head out of town to St. Anne’s s Lake, a sacred lake set in the mountains. Many legends are connected to this lake, which has no tributaries and basically consists of very clear rainwater. Getting there is a bit like driving through the Floresta da Tijuca – with different vegetation, of course. We are not disappointed when we reach the still lake in the sun with a couple of ducks floating on it. We take off our shoes and socks and stand in the cold water. Ahhhh.

Back at the hotel a massage has been arranged for me at the nearby Tusnad hotel. With our inability to communicate and with some of the communist era relics we’ve seen around I’ve been haunted by the Bergman film, The Silence, which I saw when I was very young. Two women stranded in an unnamed Balkan country. The hotel I now enter could have been part of the scenery in that movie, dark, with a badly kept up 50-60s look. I pay 34 lei at the reception and a Romanian receptionist takes me in a creaky elevator to a floor, where after walking down many passageways we reach a spa area. She hands me over to a masseuse wearing a sweater under her uniform. This woman leads me through a series of empty treatment rooms, wooden contraptions, empty baths with hoses, all vaguely menacing, and leaves me in a dark wood paneled room with a massage table next to an ancient blue bathtub. All this in silence. She turns out to be a competent masseuse, if not very specific. I feel I’m in good hands.

Back at the hotel it’s time for dinner and the challenge of putting together a vegetarian meal. The waitress is astonished when we order an appetizer and five side dishes, and when she disappears down the long empty dining room, we hear the giggles of several women in the kitchen as they probably contemplate our choices. We sip an excellent Romanian Sauvignon Blanc while we wait – and wait – but the meal that comes out is excellent – moist rice, sautéed mushrooms, mixed vegetables in an egg base, potatoes baked with rosemary, and two fabulous thick slices of lightly breaded cheese, which burst open with melted cheese when you cut into them. Dessert is described as “fried dumplings,” but is perhaps beignets, with dabs of cream and fresh berry conserve. We eat every little bit.

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Morning in Brasov and on to Targu Secuiesc

Saturday, September 22, 2012

We wake up to a beautiful day, everything clean after yesterday's rain. We pack our bags after breakfast and head down to the old town, where we walk through the pedestrian streets in the direction of the Black Church on the other side of the historical center. Other tourists are beginning to walk around and the shopkeepers and restaurants are setting up for the day. 

We walk slowly, enjoying the sights, and even find an Italian 'antique' seller, in whose shop we'd seen a little bear with Bogdan, but hadn't bought it. It turns out the bear is now twice the price, but Oswaldo's Italian and gentle manner bring the price down to just a little over the original price - which the owner "doesn't remember at all." He's an irascible fellow, with white hair and bright green glasses, who says he doesn't like bears because they're stupid -"the only animal more stupid than the bear is the basset hound, belive me, I know," he says, "I've had two." Oh kay.... 

On that note we leave, happy with our bear and thinking they may be way more intelligent than this man. 

The Black Church is lovely, hung with Turkish prayer mats, which another intrepid lady took the initiative to restore. From the 14th century it's the largest Gothic church between Vienna and Istanbul. On one of the pillars we see bullet holes from the revolution in 1989 when people took refuge in the church during the fighting. The pillars and the lofty heights make me recall the wonderful Ely Cathedral outside Cambridge, which I saw years ago.

We stop to have a coffee and share a sandwich at the German bakery on the main square - we also share a Berliner Phannkuchen, a sort of German doughtnut, which tastes exactly like the ones I ate in my youth - and showers me with white icing sugar. While we eat the strains of a violin playing something very familiar reaches us. I look and I look and finally locate a thin young man playing in front of a bank. Suddenly I identify what he's playing - it's the tango from "Scent of a Woman" - Al Pacino, blind, dancing with that slender young woman. We go over to talk the him. He say's it was composed by John Williams and someone else, "Por una Cabeza."
Back at the hotel we get ready and at 1pm our new driver, Marinel, presents himself. He seems nice, has some English, but basically drives in silence. Great. He's accomodating when we spot eagles in a field and drives slowly while we're trying to snap pictures of them.

Soon we reach the tiny an ancient market town, which used to be Hungarian, but became Romanian after the Trianon Treaty in 1921. It has a name that we simply cannot remember - something which is true for many Romanian words - Targu Secuiesc (or Kézdivásárhely - if that's any better) meaning the Black Pearl. We're installed in an 18th century house on the main square. We take a walk around the area, which seems unusually deserted until we remember it's Saturday afternoon. We pass a young couple where the girl has broken down in hysterical laughter. She's watching a little dog dealing with an itch on its back, slowly sitting and standing with its butt against a corner. Maybe more intelligent than the Italian man ;)

We're in the mood for a cold beer, and ask some young women in an Indian (why in the middle of this town?) souvenir store - not the owner, who refuses to get off her cell-phone, but these customers who turn out to have no English. "Ursus?" I then ask, referring to a famous beer brand. She points. Round the corner we see the sign and the ambience of the place is such I make Oswaldo go in first. First impression is a stout farmer type sitting up asleep behind a big beer bottle. Second impression is that people have been smoking here for a long, long time. So we leave. Fortunately, further along we find an open air beer garten, where a very nice Romanian waitress with some English helps us to 2 hefty 1/2 liter bottles of Heineken and an order for a cheese and mushroom pizza. 

She, like the other women in the shop, has very bad teeth, which is startling to see nowadays. It's also sad, because many, many Romanian women are seriously beautiful. We're happy sitting in the sun drinking our beers and watching the scenery. A young woman with flattened hair (and bad teeth), pushes a pram with a tiny baby into the bar, sits down and lights the first of 3 cigarettes. She drinks a coke and is served a huge burger with a Danish flag stuck in it. 

Why is she alone on a Saturday afternoon - later we see two other young mothers alone with their babies - and what's with the Danish flag? We amble home, satisfied but not too full to stop briefly at a Hungarian bakery for coffee and a shared pastry. 

Then we return to our room. We hadn't realized how exhausted we are from days of traveling and climbing hills and stairs and doing things all the time, and we both conk out for a long time. 

Oswaldo is still sleeping as I write this. Tomorrow we go to the O3zone spa - I hope they have massages. http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631597516233/

Viscri and Sighisoara

Friday, September 21, 2012

We can hear the rain pattering on the windows when we wake up. Instead of the sunlit hills surrounding the old towns, we see drenched roofs and low clouds. It feels unsually cold when we open a window. After our breakfast Bogdan picks us up again at 9.15. First we go to a huge modern home depot type store where we find the soap-dishes I need for my soap holders in Brazil. Mine were originally bought in Denmark. Over the years they all broke and I could never find replacements, but my hunting instincts were awakened when I saw several in Romanian hotels. I had to hold myself back from simply stealing them! But I did the right thing: I asked my guide for help. Bet I'm his first tourist looking for soap dishes.

That accomplished, we have about an hour's drive to Viscri, an ancient villiage with the world's oldest fortified Saxon church, which Prince Charles was instrumental in saving and for which he and a fierce old lady, Caroline Fernolend, whom we meet in the church, started renovation projects. He has apparently bought several properties in the area, which is very remote, rural and untouched and Prince Harry recently spent a week here (Maybe he was sent after the Las Vegas debacle?)

We approach the church on foot in the rain and are impressed by its size and bulk.

We see the inside of the church, the men sat on the sides to protect the women in the middle - the unmarried maids top left, and the married and widowed behind. The panels decorating the church were all made by local people. There is no electricity, only a huge chandeleir for candles, which someone brought from the US. We climb many stairs to the top and to stunning views of the church itself, the cemetery next to it and the surrounding countryside.

A side building holds a charming museum which has incredible examples of local embroidery, housewares and tools. 

From a window we spot a tree full of small blue plums, and, once outside, Bogdan leaps up to get plums for us all. They're hard, but very tasty. Later we see pear trees and get all wet doing the same, since the branches are soaked. The village is now overwhelmingly Roma (gypsy) - there's about 8 thousand hardworking Saxon descendants - in the pretty houses fronting the muddy main street, where geese and ducks are having a great time - and another 30 thousand gypsies living in rundown buildings on the outskirts, as close to favelas as anything we've seen in Romania, and who, according to our guide, live on welfare. 

From Viscri it's another 30 minutes to a larger Medieval town, Sighisoare, know for its famous clocktower and for being the birthplace of Vlad, the Impaler. One has to wonder that a huge tourist industry can be based on a man, who did unspeakable things...The rain hasn't decreased when we start walking uphill to the old town around the tower,

so we search for a hot coffe and find a lovely German bakery with divine cakes - we each have a huge slice and devour it in a matter of seconds - and great coffee. Then we walk some more, trying not to slip on the wet cobble stones. Prone to dramatic falls I remember my son, exasperated, "Look DOWN when you walk, Mom!" We manage the many steps inside the tower, mainly due to interesting stops at every level with artifacts from the town, the remnants from the guilds being the most interesting, such as this advertisement for a hat-maker

We decline to see the torture chamber - supposed to be the real thing - the room in the prison where they stretched and burnt people - and instead walk around the battlements admiring the old buildings and towers. On our way to the car we spot a matted stray squished into a corner. He gets the piece of dogstick, which has been nestling in my pocket since Brazil. 

Then we ask to be driven home, forsaking even a trip to the Black Church in Brasov. We say our goodbyes to Bogdan, and later enjoy a quiet dinner at the hotel.

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Bears and Dark Ages

Thursday, September 20, 2012

As usual, not matter where I am un the world, or in what time zone, I wake up at dawn to see the sun rise - here beautifully above Brasov

After a while we go down to have breakfast - wonderful country bread - and at 9.15 Bogdan arrives with his van. First stop is the Zarnesti Bear Sanctuary, which I discovered on the internet, http://bearsanctuary.com/libearty-bear-sanctuary.

which has managed to free 65 bears from small cages behind restaurants, in circuses, or even private homes. The foundation has a huge area with powerful electrified fences and plenty of forested land for the bears to explore. We visit at feeding time, so the bears are near the fences waiting for food. These bears have never learnt to forage for food in the wild and don't even hibernate - they have eaten people food all their lives, even ice-cream. We have a guide, Mariana, who walks us around the enclosed areas and points out all the names of the bears inside. Most of them have been there for 5-6 years, but one bear is in quarantine in a small cage behind us. I notice her because she's playing with her food, throwing it up in the air, and when I go over 'to have a chat' she's suddenly standing on her water bucket towering over me. This is when Mariana calls be back to the group... She tells us how all the bears have heart-breaking stories and says how intelligent they are. The fences have to be not only electrified quite high on the bear side but also dug 1 1/2 meters into the ground. All trees near the fences have funny contraptions on them, so a bear can't climb up and jump out.

One young bear lies close to the fence gnawing noisily on his front paws. This is Sammy, who was found in a forest by a family when he was a tiny baby. He was spoilt and petted by a whole village, slept in the bed, and so on, until he (and his claws) got so big he destroyed the house and the garden. When the family came to the decision to leave him at the foundation and he was brought there, he cried - loudly - for days. When the family visited he cried again. Now he has decided to suck on his feet for comfort and he follows people around as best he can from the other side of his fence. 

We walk the perimeter of a half-finished enclosure, which will have a look-out in the middle, and we're hot and tired when we see the rather moving movie about the bears and their benefactors at the centre. 

Next stop is Bran's Castle in Bran, traditionally assigned to Vlad, the Impaler, aka Dracula. The castle was inhabited by a Royal family at the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, until the Communist take-over. It is more like a quaint residence, 

until we go see the exhibition of torture instruments, which is just vile. I have to leave, but not before I know exactly what impalement means, or water-boarding for that matter, also used in those dark ages.

Then Bogdan takes us to a fun place for lunch, outside of the city, with a great view to the castle. We have the first rice we've eaten since we left Brazil and a Romanian Ursus beer to go along. This may be why we feel unwilling, both to climb the stairs to another fortress or to go for a walk in the woods of Poiana Brasov. We observe it all from the car and doze fitfully until we reach Brasov, where the wind has picked up and we join the many tourists in walking through the pretty city looking for Dinu Lipatti cd's, nail varnish remover, mouthwash, German pastry and fruit for the room. We're going nowhere and having no dinner tonight. We're just too, too tired.

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