Roadtrip Romania

Hellow Hellow,

The highlight of the week was a road trip to and through Romania, the local neighbour. Even though Romania entered the EU some years ago, I think many of us still have a certain prejudice when it comes to Romania, no? Anyway, I had my thoughts and so did the other 11 that came on this trip. As soon as we crossed the border many of these initial expectations were confirmed, to say the least. Romania is not particularly developed, it’s underdeveloped even. There are enormous differences between Hungary and Romania, let alone compared to Western Europe, and it is practically on our doorstep! In some parts it’s as if time has stood still since the middle ages, colourfully mixed with the odd communist and 21st century influence. However sad really, for some reason, mostly through historical events, Romania has not been able to develop economically. Nowadays, there’s a strange mix because the cities are actual cities with all of today’s modernity’s whereas 10 km’s down the road people live in truly poor conditions. We only managed to travel through Transylvania, aka the land of Dracula (we didn't make it to the Dracula castle but we did visit Vlad Tepes' birthplace, not to be missed) as travelling requires lots of patience in Romania. Transylvania lies in the west , borders Hungary and is enclosed by the Carpathian Mountains on the east and south and is considered the most developed/westernized region of Romania, which makes me wonder what, if anything, is beyond those mountains... It is clear from the many 'EU-flag signs' that any improvements in the country's infrastructure, urban planning and tourist attractions are funded, at least partially, by the mighty Brussels.

There are no highways in Romania, you're lucky to be on a descent sealed road that winds its way through small villages and a gorgeous landscape. From Budapest it's a 4 hr drive to the border and we then travelled to Cluj-Napoca, Sighişoara, Sibiu, Timişoara and back to Budapest; a round trip of about 1300 km which involved approx 25 hrs of driving... People come up to your car at gas stations trying to sell iPhone boxes that contain Blackberry look-a-likes (?!). Heavy, heavy blackened industrial sites pollute the pretty views from time to time and have a depressing feel to them, huge exhausts literally stand in people's backyards. That cannot be good for mind, body or soul! Another mind-boggling sight is when you first overtake a horse & wagon transporting entire families, hay, random car doors or absolutely nothing. As the journey progresses you get used to it though which tells you something about the frequency of these occurrences. They've even got license plates! Also, I've seen a few tractors but a lot of the agricultural work is still done by hand, with the help of a horse & plough, amazing sight! Sheep and cattle can roam around freely and you see many shepherds walking their flocks to green, grassy grazing fields. They prefer Euro’s to pay for anything in Romania but you use Lei. The notes are pretty but made of plastic and the smallest coin is 5 Ban (which we renamed mini-lei) which is worth about € 0,0135. All in all we had loads of fun with 3 cars & 12 people exploring Romania. There was definitely the occasional heavy discussion, as you would have with 12 strong minded people, but as it was Halloween as well there were plenty of parties, painted faces and pumpkins to sort out any arguments!

Many crazy stories are told about tourists being pulled over by corrupt and/or fake police demanding money, cars being broken into while sightseeing, children begging, stealing and robbing etc etc. I’m not easily frightened or scared off by any such stories because people are people and things can happen everywhere. We took some common sense precautions and all went fine, no dramas. There was some drama at the border though... I had decided that I won’t need my passport as Romania is part of the EU these days and it can only get stolen. A driver’s license will suffice, right? Not right! The other road trippers were giving me a hard time for it but I didn’t have any troubles getting into Romania which led me to believe it was all good. However on the way back, in no-man’s land between Romania and Hungary the troubles started... Turns out that although Romania is EU, it doesn’t fall under the Schengen Treaty, which is the one required for free transport between the EU states. Right then and there I got some EU facts and lessons are learned, bring your passport! To be fair, I didn’t actually think they were not going to let me into Hungary but they did let me stand there for a bit, making a point I suppose. Mind you, they had sufficient grounds to ship me off to The Netherlands which would have been a bit of a pain.

Anyway, I made it back to Budapest and life is back to normal, gym, uni and dinnerparties. One of my close friends here is from the UK but he’s actually half Hungarian and he had promised to make us goulash soup. Many weeks have passed since that promise but last night we had traditional Hungarian Beef Goulash soup!! We had a laptop in the kitchen so he could talk to his mum on Skype for the exact family recipe, cooking times and what to do when, cooking just entered the digital era! Tonight we another promise will be fulfilled, true French crêpes by a Frenchman! Another close friend Clem, short for Clement, has been raving about how crêpes are sooo French and how he makes delicious savoury and sweet ones. He’s in our kitchen right now preparing the mix and 10 of us are meant to get a taste of heaven tonight... Haha, we’ll see! Let’s face it, a crêpe is just a pancake right?!

Tomorrow I’m off to Bratislava for the weekend so more stories to come!