If you asked me when I first came to the Northern Hemisphere if I'd visit Romania, I would have said it might be nice to but its not a priority on the list. If you asked me the same question a month before we booked the trip, my answer would have been the same. So how did we end up going there over and above the other destinations? Well it was simple in the end - The Netherlands was pricey, we were still not flush with cash and we think we want slightly more time in that country; Denmark had cheap flights, but anything there would not be cheap; while Romania was cheapest flights, and everything there would be cheap. Over a year ago Sasha and I had considered a 4-day Halloween tour of Romania, but had been too poor to do it but the idea of getting to see Dracula's country still had an appeal. It would actually be cheaper than going to Cologne or Koblenz, so why not?
Tickets booked, accommodation booked, a rough idea of what we'd do while there and we were set to visit a slightly off-the-beaten-track country that few of our friends had been to. We wondered what it might be like - perhaps like Riga more than Budapest? And herein led to a bit of a joke, because I started calling Bucharest Busapest instead because I kept getting mixed up - and no matter how I tried I couldn't stop doing so!
Day 1 - To Bucharest, Not Budapest
We were flying Ryanair, so had to get our boarding passes Visa checked (done at a special counter 5min before it closed, and we would otherwise have had to join the long queue for the normal counters!), through security and then out into the terminal. We got breakfast, even though the food options were not great and I checked the departures board to see whether our gate had been assigned yet. I had to do a double take - our flight was 7.15 to Bucharest with Ryanair, but there was also a 7.15 to Budapest with Ryanair. How confusing! It ended up that our flight was Gate 9 and the one to Budapest at Gate 12 - so very close to each other. Someone surely was having a laugh?
After nearly 2 hours in the air we started descending towards Bucharest and suddenly out of nowhere the cloud disappeared and we could see golden brown hills and plains below - rather scenic looking. I don't know why, but this struck me by surprise as I never expected Romanian scenery to be anything but flat, featureless and boring. We hopped off the plane, onto buses and were taken to the terminal. Romania is EU, but not a part of the Euro Zone (yet - supposed to join in 2020) and so we needed to get some Romanian money. Just before passport control there was a currency exchange place, and we decided to change our money there - getting in first before everyone else followed suit. Sasha wanted to change a lesser amount but I insisted we change €200 - getting 836 Lei in return, so we used a 1:4 rough conversion rate for the money when converting back in our heads. Romania is also not a part of the Schengen Zone yet either, so we got our passports checked and stamped.
Bucharest was founded by Romans, as was Romania in general (probably something in the name - and while the Romanian language is commonly assumed to have Russian roots, it is a Latin-based language and does not use Cyrillic characters) and has long been the capital of Romania and Dacia before Romania was officially formed. It was also home to Vlad Dracul, the notorious ruler better known as Vlad the Impaler due to a penchant for impaling enemies and their forces on quite a large scale. Vlad is well known in popular culture, thanks to being the inspiration for Dracula. Romania had another notorious ruler, one that took power after Romania fell behind the Iron Curtain - Nicolae Ceaucescu who ruled Romania as a Communist state for over 40 years, along with his wife Elena. Following an earthquake in the 1970s, Ceaucescu transformed a large part of Bucharest building new buildings and boulevards to match his massive Palace of the Parliament building. Ceaucescu was deposed and killed before the Palace was finished, and instead of Ceacescu being the first one to stand on the grand balcony and wave to the crowds below that honour fell to Michael Jackson - who performed a concert from up there and yelled out to the crowd "I love you Budapest!" - something the populace of Bucharest didn't like too much, strangely enough. He hasn't been the only one - Madonna did the same, as did Metallica. About 400 football fans ended up in Budapest when the final that their team was playing in took place in Bucharest also! It seems I'm not the only one prone to confusing the names, but at least I don't book tickets to the wrong place!
Somewhere during the tour another member of the tour group asked me where I was from, and Sasha and I got chatting to him and his friend throughout the rest of the tour. He was Vijay and his friend Sam, they were travelling around parts of Europe (with other people who were elsewhere for the night), had been to Oktoberfest in Munich (going a few days before we did) and had driven through Romania over the last few days. They were going to Belgium next and were quite keen to hear of our suggestions. They were wanting to check out a nearby free concert we could hear and then go to a market in front of the Palace, and invited us along. The concert was aimed at the Jewish community, and although nice enough we didn't stay long before moving to the market, swapping travel stories and suggestions on the way. At the market Sam suggested we try a tasty blueberry juice from one of the stalls, so we did - but we established it wasn't blueberries but grapes, some kind of non-alcoholic freshly squeezed grape juice. Sasha and I decided to purchase a glass but the line was long, but I saw another stall selling the same thing with virtually no line so I went there. The grape juice from the other place tasted different and after Vijay asked a few questions from the stallholder, we found out we didn't have grape juice but red wine. A rather plain, but extremely cheap glass of red wine! We glanced at some of the stalls wares, looked at the food options and couldn't make up our minds - ending up getting some kind of large doughball thing each with a red fruit in the center which was surprising filling and also cheap. Feeling weary, we parted ways with Sam & Vijay and walked to our accommodation along the Palace's boulevard with its dancing fountains which were lit up by changing colours.
Day 2 - Out and About in Transylvania
"Did we just get upgraded to First Class?" Sasha remarked to me after he left. "Seems like it" I replied - and we remarked how lucky we were to bump into a conductor while trying to figure out our ticket situation. About now, the train lurched a bit - I knew it meant something had coupled up to the train, which would be the locomotive. But I wondered if it might be more carriages as well - and I mentioned this out loud, as I saw people start wandering up the platform past our car which when we hopped on had been the last carriage - why were they wandering past our carriage if we were the last carriage, unless more had been added? About now too, George came back into our compartment again, telling us how he was from a railway charity which raised money for orphans, flashing his badge again at us but this time for longer. There was no train company logo on it, and he thrust the clipboard he was holding at me asking Sasha if I was her husband. The clipboard seemed to have a lot of official-looking Charity registration information, and George started saying something about people having died in a night club fire and his manner had changed. By now we had both twigged - George was not a conductor, he did not work for the train company, he had led us into the empty first class compartment to try and get us to give him money. It was Sasha who got us out of there - she interrupted him and said "No, we need to go find our carriage, I think its just been coupled up" and we grabbed our stuff to go. George, luckily, conceded the game was up and did not try and block us from leaving the compartment. We went to the end of the carriage, saw that they were attaching the other carriages, and hopped aboard the now-joined up Coach 8. Finally in our proper allocated seats, the train left a foggy Bucharest full of people and we recounted how we got in, and out of the little jam with George (if that was really his name?).
Brasov Old Town was really charming, and we got some lunch at a cafe in the main square sitting outside in the sunshine. Brasov's architecture is Germanic rather than Old-timey Romanian but nevertheless was quite picturesque. After eating, we started wandering through the square which was buzzing but not over-run. One little bit of entertainment during the square wander was the parents who hired a little powered quad bike for their child to ride - only for the child to start driving off in it the minute their bum hit the seat and food got on the pedal, surprising the parents and then the child did a big semi-circle and drove the bike right into the legs of a man who had stopped to look up at the town hall!
Back in Bucharest in the darkness, we decided an easy dinner was preferable because of the time. Que the McDonalds in the station, which had a fairly standard menu but were offering the "Grand Mac" - a Big Mac with a bigger bun and wider patties. It was rather filling! We ventured to the metro and caught it to the Palace of the Parliament where we visited the market as we were't sure it would be there the next day - and sure enough they were packing up while we were there. We perused the stalls, got more of the dough balls as a dessert and Sasha found herself a rather nice brooch. Following that, we wandered past the fountains again and called it a night.
Day 3 - Edifices and Revolution
Romania under Ceaucescu started seemingly prosperous enough, partly helped by loans from American Banks that Ceaucescu secured. Apparently he didn't understand how encumbering the loan repayments would be on the Romanian economy and when he finally did realise, he got the country to "vote" and agree to austerity measures in order to repay the debt off quicker. This led to a rather poor and struggling existence for the populace - constant rationing, 1 hour of heating per day (even in the freezing winters), electricity only for certain periods etc. While Hungary might have been "The Happiest Barrack", Romania could probably have laid claim to being "The unhappiest barrack" but unlike Poland never got a chance to try and do anything about it (not that Poland succeeded, but they tried). This austerity lasted nearly 40 years, believe it or not.
Bucharest was Ceaucescu's seat of power and following an earthquake in the city which ruined some of the city's buildings Ceaucescu decided he wanted to transform the city during the rebuild - and build a new Parliament building which would house all of the Governmental functions in a single building, so that he could more easily control everything (as you do, when you are a Dictator). This led to the insanely large and expensive Palace of the Parliament - supposed to take 2 years to build, but took 10 and Ceaucescu had new buildings built around it in a style to match along a large boulevard that was wider than the Champs Elysee in France. Demolishing many buildings that weren't damaged in the earthquake in the process too, or in some cases the buildings were shifted - one, a Church was shifted purely on money raised by the people of Bucharest who wanted to keep it and the second, a large apartment block was shifted purely as a vanity project of Ceaucescu's to try and show the world how capable and cutting edge Romania was by conducting the worlds largest building move. It took 9 months, and the people who lived in it stayed in their homes the entire time - fearing that if they moved out for the move, they'd never be able to move back in. All of this expenditure took place while the people were living through a long sustained austerity. The end for Ceaucescu and Communism came against the backdrop of a less dominating but disintegrating Soviet Union, but it basically came down to one fateful speech conducted to a crowd in Bucharest following a crackdown elsewhere in the country. Fed up with austerity and everything else, the crowd found the courage to boo Ceaucescu and his wife during the speech which was broadcast live on television - days later the Ceaucescu's were dead. Ceaucescu's right hand man won the elections which followed, but didn't last long before he was replaced and Romania started finding its feet in the new world. Today its economy is growing healthily and it is part of the EU. Perhaps the final irony is that two months before Ceaucescu was killed, Romania had paid off the last of its loan debts - he could have easily started improving the lot of the people, but did not and they the price.