This is now our 4th night in Romania and to be honest we are very disappointed to be leaving so soon!
This trip did NOT get off to a good start, we missed our 07:15 bus to Heathrow but managed to save that fail by getting Sam's sister to drive us to the airport! Thanks so much for that Jenny!
12 hours of traveling later we were in a taxi speeding through downtown Cluj.
At first it really did cohere to the stereotypical communist vibe, but once we broke free of the suburbs, we discovered a fantastic old town with a lot of character! We are a few pictures:
We met a whole load of amazing people. A British guy traveling to Africa, a punk band from L.A. and another rock band from Toronto. The guy who probably made the biggest impression on us was a 70 something year old chap from Florida, John:
You may have already wondered why there were so many bands in our hostel. Well it turned out that a 3 day Gypsy Punk music festival was beginning that night in the alley next door. They literally just closed off an alley in the old town and set up this stage. Awesome music with 60p pints meant that it was an incredible first experience of Romania and Transylvania!
There was also an ice cream festival (which was REALLY convenient at 25 degree heat).
We intended to take a night train to Bucharest.... and we missed it. Because I absolutely cannot read Romanian, I basically arbitrarily decided that the arrivals information board was the departure board, and as such we pretty much watched our train depart but then settled for a night train to Brasov with a connecting train to Bucharest the next morning.
What has been helpful is the surprising similarities between Romanian and Italian, Spanish and French. Being a Latin language, a lot of Romanian words can be accurately guessed, well, except departures and arrivals.
After arriving to Bucharest we Couchsurfed with Silviu and Bendik, two awesome dudes who took us out to sample the (insane) Bucharest nightlife.
This was a student club, which had a frightening resemblance to Potterrow (i.e. old school rock music).
Today we tried some more incredible Romanian food, Tochitura with Mamaliga!
This afternoon we visited the heaviest and 2nd largest building in the world (after the Pentagon), The Palace of Parliament, with a total volume of 5.6 MILLION CUBIC METERS. This badass building was built after the megalomaniac communist leader Ceausescu decided he wanted to replicate a building we saw on a state visit to China, but MUCH larger.
It has 12 storey's, 4 underground levels (including a nuclear bunker), a 100 meter lobby and 1100 rooms, 50% of which are empty. 4500 chandeliers (the heaviest is 1500kg). The layout of the building is symmetrical on all sides and the building was designed so that Ceausescu couldn't get lost. A Top Gear episode was also filmed inside when they raced supercars around the underground car park.
I got an impression that currently the government doesn't really know what to do this this building as it costs loads to maintain and the government can't even fill the building!
Well at the moment we are are planning to (try) and get to Turkey tomorrow. I really doubt this will happen as both our Romanian and Bulgarian is pretty weak at the moment and Bulgaria uses the Cyrillic script which will make communicating much more difficult.
Our planned itinerary will be via the Bulgarian border town of Russe, next to the Danube River, where will will attempt to catch a train or bus to either Plovdiv, Varna or Burgas. All traffic and rail transport from Europe enters turkey via Belgrade, Sofia, Istanbul. So I figure that if we can bisect this route (best done at Plovdiv), then it should, theoretically, be easier (and cheaper!) to get into Turkey.
Anyways I would've liked to have added more photos and video but this is all the time I have for now!
Guys, wonderful to read! If you get stuck an outdoor club just outside Bucharest is greatest on earth!
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work!