Moving to Brasov, Transylvania

It's dark when I wake up aound 5am and stick my head out to see the sunrise lift above the marshes behind the hotel.

The frogs are beginning to sing and a few birds cry out as they swoop overhead. I hear the occasional splash of a fish. I dress and wake up a groggy Oswaldo, who notices a note stuck under our door. The ferry is 1/2 earlier! We race to get everything ready and run down to the non-English speaking lad, who's waiting by his small boat and takes us across to the Crisan ferry landing.

Did I say Romanians smoke a lot? Well, they do. Breakfastless, we sit outside and enjoy a strong cup of black coffee in a plastic beaker, bought from a deep-voiced man behind a counter at 2 lei (50 cents) as we try to turn away from the most avid smokers.

The next two hours pass like this until we dock in Tulcea and roll our duffels along the boardwalk to the 3-star, and restaurant, side of the Hotel Delta - shining marble outside, 50-60s Communist decoration inside - to get breakfast and wait for Bogdan Ghenoui, our driver from Brasov. Breakfast is a whole lot of white toast, canned orange juice, coffee brought in the cup....
1 1/2 hours later a cheeful Bogdan finally arrives in his black Hyundai van and immeditely turns around. He got up at 5am to get us - just like me, really. We drive through unremarkable landscape until we have to take a little ferry,

where he uses the break to devour a sandwich and smoke one of many cigarettes. I have warned him about not smoking near us, and he's obviously trying to be discrete.
We hit a couple of drab cities, where construction makes us lose our way, etc., but eventually - six hours later -we're heading up the mountains surrounding Brasov, where the landscape becomes spectacular

Before dark we're at our new home, a de-luxe suite at the Casa Granta, which turns out to be a palatial apartment on the 3rd floor of a house on a hill overlooking all of Brasov. We have a jacuzzi bathroom, an enormous living room with a dining table which could easily sit 12 people, a balcony and a huge bedroom. 

We'll be fine here. We break open a Scotch and relax on our balcony, then head down to the restaurant for a pasta dinner. Long day. 

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