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.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631589464875/

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. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631586164698/

The Northern Delta

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

This is the tour we decide on today: "Chain of lakes between Crisan and Mila 23: Bodaproste, Trei Iezere, La Amiaza, Miazazi, Miazanoapte, Cazanele, The Old Danube."

Breakfast is glum with no fruit or juice, but rather a huge platter of thickly sliced of greyish/white and yellow cheeses, tomatoes, cucumbers and all the white bread you can eat. I didn't think I'd miss fruit so much, but I do - and grains - and lightly cooked vegetables. But the day is beautiful, warmer than yesterday and sunny and at 11am we're off again with Adrian, heading for the northern part of the Delta. The original river curved like an 'M,' explains Adrian, and so when the Sulina canal was built it was made to be a straight short-cut, leaving the older river to smaller transportation to and from villages and to the many fishermen that we see. Not only do we see them in their camouflage-painted boats and their camouflage clothes, but we also see the heaps of plastic bottles some leave behind in that pristine nature spot. Since we're wearing, respectively, red and orange wind-breakers I ask Adrian whether the camouflage helps. "In their imagination," he says, "birds are more startled by movement and noise." Then I ask what they fish for. "Carp, mainly," he says. "How big?" I ask. "Oh, 7-8 kilos, sometimes 14-15 kilos," he says. I think a bit and conclude, "That's twice the weight of a new-born baby." "Is not always," he says and laughs, meaning fishermen tell tall tales. 

We putter along wider and older looking canals, lined with tall reeds on one side and poplar and willow trees on a manmade dyke on the other. "Look, a snake," says Adrian and points. A harmless water snake is swimming hard to get away from us

After a while we arrive at a wide lake where we see swans gliding across the water in the distance. The water is so shallow that waterplants keep getting stuck in the motor. Finally Adrian cuts the motors and uses the oar so we can get closer to the birds. It's very quiet and hot and the big birds are not afraid of us, although the smaller coots take off in clouds of spray and black birds. There must be at least 50 swans - I've never seen so many at once; usually you just see a couple. We even see some pelicans flying overhead. 

At the end of the series of lakes lies a little village, Mila 23. We get off the boat and walk along the waterfront finding a shop, where we buy provisions (we've decided no more pike-perch or carp dinner), and also find a Turkish style bathroom, which we have to navigate with our many layers - t-hirt, fleece jacket, windbreaker, backpack.

The town is quite cute with fragile old wooden houses and many flower. We befriend a couple of strays with our newly bought pretzels.

Meanwhile Adrian has gone off to hear fishermen stories from his pals, and then we all get back in the boat again to take a straighter canal back to our resort.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631579061210/

It continues to be hot and sunny and we decide dinner will be a bottle of prosecco and potato chips, taken on the deck of the hotel boat, where we can watch the sunset, which today is spectacular.

Then we go back to our room and pack, because we have to leave very early to catch the ferry back to Tulcea. http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631579134514/

Boating through the southern delta

Monday, September 17, 2012

"Trip in a wild area in the Danube Delta to be acquainted with the colonies of swans and pelicans, herons, egrets, cormorants, wild ducks, etc., but also with the true wilderness of the Danube Delta.
Crisan - Channel Long - Obretinciuc - Obretin - Cuibina - Litcov - Nest with swans - Iacub-channel Caraorman - Crisan." Duration 3-4 h

This is the trip we decide on in a 15hp open motorboat, manned by Adrian, a tall, young, weatherbeaten guy from Crişan across the Sulina Channel. He says he normally guides birdwatchers - his English is quite good, and he possesses a pair of Nikon binoculars and a bird-book - but his winter job is thatching roofs, and throughout his trip with us he's quietly working his phone to secure the purchase and delivery of thatch - a situation we're familiar with from our current problem in Porto Mauí. The thatched roofs here are very similar to ours in Angra. Wish we could use him there.

It's very quiet when the boat leaves the busy channel and enters a fairy land of narrow and shallow straights lined by old gnarled trees and reeds. There's a fresh mossy smell in the air and we hear birds shrieks overhead. After the first channel we enter a lake so shallow that Adrian stops and lifts out the motor and propels us forward using his oar as a stake.

As we slowly take in the scenery, we realize that cormorants are flying overhead and coots are gathered in a large groups in the water. When they suddenly take off, they whip up the water in starbursts of sunlit water.  Further in the distance float stately swan families with their rather large grey gygnets -they're almost ready to leave for South Africa -

 and way behind, there's a blindingly white and huge batch of hundreds of pelicans. 

At some point they begin to take off - to get lunch, says Adrian - and when they fly their wings are white on top and black underneath. Swans too pass us in the air, flying with their necks stretched out, and egrets, and more cormorants... all so wonderful and special -  we're quite overwhelmed with our little Canon Powershot Elph 300 HS, which has taken amazing pictues so far.

We press on, though the Litcov Canal, made as a winter alternative to the Sulina, not terribly interesting, but where, with the temperature dropping and the rain already splattering, we reach the last lake and see the maginificent pelicans, stranded because of the same rain, and the restless coots. A loud sound reaches us from across the rain. Frogs singing their "happy rain song", says Adrian.

The we chug on home, using old dry blankets to protect ourselves from the lashing rain. I've read "Along the enchanted way" by William Blacker to prepare for this trip and know to ask for the local prune brandy, Tuica, with a beer chaser and soon we're warm to the toes again.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631560872818/

After a long restoring nap we're ready go to again, and -without much appetite -we eat our ordered late lunch/early dinner

and go to the anchored hotel boat to enjoy the sunset and miss our boy and the animals - just a bit...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631564144083/

Tulcea and the Delta Danube Resort

Sunday, September 16, 2012

We wake up early and head down to breakfast before finishing our packing. We hoard food for the trip and say our goodbyes. Arriving before 9am our driver Mikael, a tall skinny young kid, waits outside with a black Mercedes instead of the promised Renault something-or-other. We do not complain, of course. Turns out he drove Richard, Patrick and Raymond to Transylvania. Mindboggling connections in Romania.
The highway is very good and we make great time through a flat, fairly uninteresting landscape. We doze. When I wake up there are rolling hills and people by the wayside selling whole fish dangling from their hands, and then others with bags of fresh walnuts. By the time we realize the latter (Mikael doesn't know the word for walnuts and googles a picture for me on his iPhone, haha) we don't see anymore vendors. We do find a family gathering the fruits by the wayside and they give us some - but we still need to find a way to crack them.

We reach Tulcea an hour before our 2.30pm transport 1 hour down the Sulina canal to our resort. We find shelter on the terrasse of the Hotel Delta **** - the Hotel Delta *** is the other half of the building....

The weather has been sunny and warm, but now we notice grey clouds moving in, the wind is picking up, and lightning streaks across the sky, immediately followed by thunder - I don't even have time to count 1,, then 'boom!'. If there's one thing I really hate it's being on the water with lightning.....

I'm texting back and forth with the resort, and they assure us we'll be in a covered boat and don't seem worried about the weather. Suddenly a small motor boat, 21ft, with red and white seats and a flapping 'toldo' pulls up, driven by a guy with a white kerchief tied on his head and carrying 4 bedraggled passengers, one of whom picks her way up the gangway in high-heeled sneakers. She's quite pretty and assures us, when we ask, that the resort is very nice, but that it was cold. With that info we get our bags and board the boat, ahead of a Romanian couple, who speak a tiny bit of French. Carrying my pillow - the one that has protected my hip so far - I grab the best seat and get comfortable. It has stopped raining and the sky is looking brighter.

We still have to wait for a young Spanish couple that arrives with a huge suitcase, and then the driver whooshes us off in what we'll later learn in the "ultrafast luxury boat" - the pride of the resort.

We are received with champagne served on a "hotel boat" anchored up in front of the resort, then walk past a pond with a lot of quiet frogs (not a huge frog fan...) on to our assigned spacious room overlooking the canal running behind the resort and the marshes beyond.  We have to order our lunch/dinner waaaay in advance and set a time for our meal - how long can it take to cook a fish? I wonder about the huge pieces of wood I can see in the kitchen entrance. But we get ourselves some big mugs of draught Heineken and go sit in the sunshine - it's so quiet and the air is super-fresh.

Dinner is perhaps unremarkable, I get brined carp wirh polenta and Oswaldo a better choice, perch-pike with mushrooms in a sour sauce (I am quoting here). We share a bottle of white wine and enjoy the dessert, pancake with jam. Then off to our room for a good night's sleep.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631559746091/

Oswaldo's talk and the IIP Dinner

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Last chance to organize our trip. When Oswaldo goes off to his morning talks I stay behind in the room manning my Romanian cell phone and my computer - the situation room all over again. I settle the transport by car to the Delta, where we already have reservations at the unknown Danube Delta Resort (I thought I was reserving at a similarly named hotel on Booking.com - whoops), and manage to determine our trip to Transylvania, where we'll do daytours with my new friend Bogdan (recommended by some lady in Seattle on Tripadvisor), and spend 3 nights in a castle, also found on Tripadvisor/Booking.com. Elena Klabin comes to the hotel to discuss the northern part of our trip and we arrange her brother in law will pick us up in Brasov for the drive to Suceava in Bucovina, land of the painted monasteries, stopping on the way to admire gorges and lakes in the Carpathian mountains. Our trip finally seems to have taken shape.

I forget to have lunch and when Oswaldo briefly returns to the hotel for his lunch break he is too hassled  and hot to do anything but  take a shower in preparation for his inaugural afternoon talk at the IIP - the last of the day in that hot room. As he leaves I am still handling calls and later catch a ride to the university with a kind French/British couple. Turns out there are extra talks and I wait for a long time in a side room with plates piled with pastry, which I nibble on while I read a book on my iPhone. Then it's Oswaldo's turn - and what a talk he gives - barely checking his notes, walking up and down in front of the blackboard - he travels a road in his mind leading towards a chosen destination. It's a pleasure to watch, and so funny, in that august setting, to see him 'talk' also with his hands.

A bravura performance and I am very proud of him.

Philosophers can be quite fierce in the way they make their points, and when the questions come after the talk, Oswaldo swats them off, haha, so confident of his position. What a guy!

The pictures, btw, show what I have come to suspect - that I made what Victor would call a rookie mistake when I bought that pink camera in Frankfurt. It takes blurry and overexposed pictures. Won't use that anymore. http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631545758513/

After closing remarks we're driven back to the hotel to be able to change for the ensuing dinner - again in the university club. 

Readers may know I have a big mouth and in the bus going there I cheerily ask a man I think is a German philosopher, whether he thinks the food will be the same as the other night - as in, not for the vegetarians we happen to be. Turns out he's Romanian and part of the organizing committee. When we arrive I see him confer with another Romanian organizer, who then takes me into the room where the many food-filled platters are

and we determine that I can eat as much eggplant paste as I want - and some chopped cabbage, haha - and, oh, there's also some cheese... Of course it doesn't matter - there's plenty of wine and a great dessert

and I get to talk to Jaako Hintikka, who is working on the story of Merrill, his late wife, also a philosopher, who apart from playing competitive bridge from a very early age, mastered the blackjack system, which was known to the casinos where she played. They let her play because they understood she enjoyed the game and never abused it, as in: took all their money. She must have been really something. http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631545620098/

My Day with Eleonore and dinner at Caru su Bere

Friday, September 14, 2012

When Oswaldo disappears into the bus for another full day of talks at the university I get ready to go meet my new Danish blogger friend, Eleonore. Texting back and forth we agree on a meeting place and explain what we're wearing - which, oddly, turns out to be the colors of the Romanian flag: red, blue, and yellow. It also turns out we both like to talk (a lot!) and soon the conversation is rolling in the shady garden restaurant Eleonore has chosen for our meeting.

After a tasty lunch of pasta and salad we decide to walk around and pass the Danish ad I'd mentioned before (and share a Danish laughter about it):

Eleonore has lived for a year and a half in Bucharest in Bucharest and knows cool details, not immediately visible to the tourist. Behind an amusing sculpture of Noah's Ark on a busy avenue,

and through a huge bookstore in a beautiful old house with many rooms, lies hidden a lovely garden restaurant. We want to cross the huge avenue just where we are - it seems pretty empty of cars - but then I notice a cross with fresh flowers at the roadside and realize somebody died doing just that - and we quietly walk up to the corner to use the green traffic light. Romanian drivers are on a par with Brazilian. Pedestrian lives are not hugely important.

Eleonore suggests we take the tourist bus, from the roof of which you get a general impression of the city, its layout and monuments, but on our way to the busstop it turns out we share a fondness for bargains and dive into Minimix, a discount clothing store, where we go through the racks with great concentration. Later, on top of the bus, my hat blows off (another passenger catches it for me) and because the sun is really strong I tie it firmly with a scarf, now looking very strange to my new Danish friend, who is plainly enjoying the sun on her face. It's one of those subtle cultural differences:  although Danish I live in a country where you rarely expose your face to the sun.
The bus makes a slow circle around the town and towards the end we cross the river to see the megalomaniac structure Ceausescu built for himself - looks like a combination of a hotel and a casino without the lights - certainly not a speck of color adorns the largest building in Europe. Apparently he razed everything around this building, and indeed, the surrounding apartment blocks lining his grand avenue are all alike, grey and vaguely French.

Back across the river we hop off and walk through the old part of town, stopping to have a delicious 'Exotic Iced Tea' with fruits I've never heard of in the Van Gogh pavement restaurant. We quickly enter the Caru su Bere fin de siecle restaurant and then an old monastery - nunnery really - with a wonderful courtyard, through which walks quickly a slender intelligent-looking young nun -  much like an Oxford don - dressed in a black cassock and with black veil and scullcap. So interesting - wish we could speak to her.
Further down the road they're setting up a stage for live music and we stop to watch the sound test at the same time as admiring a nearby cloister garden - so many impressions all at once.
It's time to say goodbye - and I hurry home to the hotel, stopping briefly to buy multigrain pretzels standing in line with the locals, and to photograph a huge Beethoven-like bust in an abandoned garden. When I stop 3 young black cats run towards me, but alas, they don't want bits of multigrain pretzels, which is all I have.

Photos from my day with Eleonore: http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631542670610/

Back at the hotel David Wiggins and Phillida Gili have made reservations at the Caru su Bere, I'd just seen, and we join them for a merry dinner, with a show of slender young  dancers - 2 couples - who later spread out and ask selected members of the audience to dance with them.  A sweaty and slender 18yr old boy dancer asks me, and, like the good sport I am, I get up to dance with him in front of everybody, making desperate conversation with someone who has no English. Oh well - all part of the game. Still, the 4 of us have a lot of fun dealing with huge platters of polenta with cheese and poached eggs, carp with more polenta, wild salmon and some brave grilled evegetables washed down with the house wine. I get to talk to an iconic philosopher and his very lovely wife and we all get to dance - Phillida and David even dance in the street :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631543114231/