Pete the Turtle!

Well, we arrived in Australia and we will upload the outstanding posts for Malaysia and Indonesia soon…until then just enjoy some random picture I took:

Pete the Turtle

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At the roof of the world- adventures in Nepal

Thanks to double entry visas for India, we could include a trip to Nepal into our itinerary- and it was absolutely worth the tour. We enjoyed every single day we had in the country- and just wished there had been more days in total. So, as with so many other places, we will have to come back here one day to see those tings we had to bypass now. Nevertheless, we were granted a very interesting impression of this diverse place.

We entered the country from the south, at Sunauli bordercrossing. Nepal can be roughly divided into three general areas: the flat Terai region to the south, the hilly center and the mountainous north with the Himalayan range. Many parts of the country, especially to the northeast and northwest, are still difficult to access, and some areas only had sealed roads built in recent times. Due to our limited amount of time, we had to restrict ourselves to the bigger towns in central Nepal- long hikes were not possible unfortunately, as they would have required better equipment, better weather (the monsoon hits Nepal as well) and yet again- more time.

Lady in NepalLady in Nepal

Our first stop was at Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha, located not far from the border. We went through immigration, which took no time at all (you can get your visa on arrival). The officials were very friendly and relaxed- “You have no passport photograph? Does not matter, a photocopy of your passport will do”. “You only have Indian rupees? That’s alright, just pay in India  rupees, then.” It shows again- everything is a matter of attitude.

We caught a bus that brought us to the small village- and our first bus ride in Nepal was an exciting one immediately, as we were seated on the roof, between our backpacks and some more luggage. To the great view from up there came the added benefit of not sweating for once due to the air flow. There is not much to Lumbini itself, but in the morning, we walked over to the compound that hosts the temple situated at at the exact spot where the Buddha was born- you can see an encased rock that marks his place of birth. The rest of the site has been declared a development area- the intention is to create a place where Buddhist practitioners can live, gather and study. A number of Buddhist monasteries have already been built, some are still under construction. Each monastery is from a different country (the site is meant to address Buddhists the world over). There are temples from places commonly associated with Buddhism, like Thailand or Cambodia, but there are also monasteries from countries such as Germany or France. It is interesting to see the differences in architecture and design of the buildings- one can see influences from the home country (even though, it has to be added, there was nothing particularly German about the German monastery- as German culture and Buddhism seem worlds apart anyways).

Next, we had decided to continue to Tansen, a mountain town further north. Three bus rides and witnessing an accident later (a huge rock had fallen onto the roof of another bus but everybody seemed fine), we arrived in the town and went looking for a place to stay before heading out for dinner at a Newari restaurant. Newari dishes are a particular kind of Nepalese food. Nepalese cuisine is otherwise mostly known for dal bhat- lentils and rice- or Tibetan momo’s- dumplings filled with either vegetables, chicken or waterbufallo meat. Newari dishes are often spicy (waterbuffalo with chillies is a favorite) and contain more meat.

And next, a new addition to the tale of disease and sickness: as Nico had made such a fulminant headstart in India, and then doubled that score less than 2 weeks later, it was time for me to follow in his footsteps- so I got sick that night, spent the better part of it hanging over the toilet and suffered from terrible stomach cramps. The next morning I munched some Buscopan and was ok enough by midday, so we walked up to an outlook on the mountain behind town- the Himalayan range, which you can see from there on clear days was unfortunately hidden behind a veil of clouds. So we descended back into town, strolled along the steep lanes and soaked in some of the town’s atmosphere- Tansen is a very pleasant place, the streets filled with the chatter of people, little shops everywhere, nice buildings and street eateries.

The following morning we got up at 5 am to catch the first bus to Pokhara. Bus rides in Nepal are, in general, an experience in themselves. We never took a tourist bus, but always went with local buses. Here, you can be lucky and find yourself in a vehicle that actually leaves 5 cms of room for your legs, but in others, you literally have to pull your legs up in order to fit into the seat- we tried several techniques, from letting the leg dangle into the corridor to sitting crosslegged, to pulling your leg up to your body and hug it with your arms to squeezing the leg up against the window or stick it between the two seats in front of you. Add to that the bumps in the road and the absence of shock absorbers, and you will sometimes find yourself flying up to the roof, only to then crash back onto the barely upholstered seats- poor buttocks. Yet, somewhat fun nevertheless. And the surrounding nature makes up for the inconveniences tenfold- lush green mountains, rice paddies in terraces at the slopes, rivers flowing deep below in narrow gorges and valleys (also a test of my nerves at times- I do not particularly like heights, and the buses maneuver along the streets dangerously close to the abyss- and there are no crash barriers). One problem associated with the farming and development in the valleys that one cannot help but notice are the frequent landslides caused by erosion and then intensified during the monsoon. Our buses often had to roll over heaps of gravel and mud to continue on the road- and at times, entire villages are buried by parts of a collapsing mountain.

We made it to Pokhara in one piece and found a place to stay. Pokhara is a very popular tourist destination as it offers possibilities for various outdoor activities, such as paragliding, and forms the starting point for Annapurna massif hikes. Hence- tourism is big business and as such, an entire scene catering to tourist needs has developed- there are tour operators that want to sell you canoeing, rafting or hiking packages, there are cafes, bars and restaurants, there are shops selling counterfeit trekking gear and your usual range of hippie dress, bags and other such knickknacks. And then there are massage parlors to complete the image. While it was surely nice to find a place where you can eat a good pizza and steak again, the discrepancy between this somewhat artificial world and local life could not be bigger. Nepal, after all, remains a very poor country- more than 80 % of the population survives on less than 2 Dollars a day, half of the people cannot read or write, most Nepalis live in the countryside and their life consists of hard work. In view of this, the prices in the tourist ‘ghettos’, to borrow a term from Lonely Planet, while being cheap to us Westerners,  are incredibly high for Nepalese standards. Yet, tourism also brings money into the economy and is as such important to Nepal- it is, as always , a mixed bag. We felt that as long as the touristic development is not exaggerated too much, then there can probably be a mutual benefit to both locals as well as visitors in all of this.

Row girl, row!

Paddle fight??

grfhr

defghdfhgfhgfhfghfghfghfghfhfghfghrhtrhrt

Our stay in Pokhara began with a visit to the hospital- my stomach still had not improved, and the cramps were quite nasty, but more importantly, allergy and eczema plagued me had developed a rash around the eyes that made me look like a jellyfish and I knew could only be cured by prescription strength cortisone cream- so I returned with a bag full of  pills and ointments and began my recovery. The next day we went on a hike in the mountains around Pokhara, to visit the world peace pagoda, a temple dedicated to peace as the name suggests- it was erected by a Japanese in memory of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings. There are several such temples all over the world as a constant reminder to the importance of peace in our world. It proved not that easy to find the place, as we got lost in the forest on the way there (then, it has to be added, it seems Nico and me are quite the masters when it comes to not finding our way- we have spent many a day wandering around a place with a confused expression on our faces…).

Buddhist Temple

We do, of course, never give up, so we happily wandered on- and then found ourselves headfirst in the middle of our next adventure. To give you a clue- it involves animals and first encounters. In order to bring across the beauty of the situation, here a little recount of the events that were to follow- for more immediacy, as a verbatim report. Nico (picks up a wet leaf from the forest floor and stares at it fascinatedly): ” Hehe, look Anna, that’s a funny worm on this leaf- it can hold on to it with its back end- looks like it has a suction cup there!”  Anna (comes over to have a look): “Cool, what an awesome thing, and look at the way it is wriggling around looking for something to attach itself to!” (Nico drops the leaf to the floor and the two of them walk on….until….) Nico: ” Shit, shit, there is one of these worms on my leg, no, two, no….damn it, it’s four!!! And they are sucking my blood!!!!!! Anna (lifts the leg of her pants as well to check): “Darn, same here, only one, but a really fat one!!!! And it won’t budge!!!”

At that point we had obviously realized that the cute, funny, and especially THIN worms  were not worms at all, but bloodthirsty leeches that were after our vital juices and had happily begun feasting on us (and transformed from thin to maggot-like fat in the process)!!! The suction cup quite simply being a sucker…The naive innocence of city people. What to do? You cannot flick them off anymore once they have firmly attached themselves, and ripping them off will just give you scars. I vaguely remembered that they are not particularly fond of fire and to our great relief, Nico produced a matchbox from the depths of his camera bag- so we burned the little fuckers off our legs. It still continued bleeding for a bit, but hey, we are made from steel. We reached the pagoda, by now out of water and thirsty, and enjoyed the beautiful view over Pokhara’s lake, before descending (yet again, on a wrong path somehow) and rented a boat to go rowing on the lake for a bit.

Heavy Rain

The next day saw our departure to Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. We spent nearly a week in the city and took daytrips to places in the surrounding valley. There is much to see in Kathmandu- narrow streets lined with shops, temples, stupas (Buddhist places of worship) and the magnificent architecture around Durbar square- the city’s old heart with the royal palace, surrounded by delicately carved temples- many of then multistoreyed. It is, in general, incredible just how many temples and shrines there are in Nepal- they are everywhere, if you properly look out for them you will spot one at nearly each streetcorner- or in backyards, courtyards… One day, we made the hike up to the so called monkey temple, or  Swayambhunath, a bit east of town, which is a religious complex with an impressive stupa, shrines and temples- and you have an excellent view over the city from up there. One remarkable thing about Nepal is that there are many temples that are used by both Hindus and Buddhists- speaking of religious tolerance: this is a very good example! Religion is very much a part of life in all respects anyways, it permeates all people’s dealings- something we are absolutely not used to back In Europe. We also went to Bodhnath, a very famous stupa west of Kathmandu- it is a huge structure, decorated with prayer flags, and you can witness devoted Buddhists circling the stupa in a clockwise motion.

Nepali guys having a lazy one

To dig a bit into Nepalese history (which was often turbulent- even up until very recently, before the people’s war was ended in 2006 and the king abdicated)- we went to the medieval town of Bakhtapur. It is a beautiful, well preserved place, full of old buildings, many of them have amazingly carved wooden windows. There are many temples as well (and a lot of them feature quite erotic carvings, much like Khajuraho in India), and you can observe people working on the street- making pottery, spinning wool, or knitting. Patan, just south of Kathmandu also used to be the seat of a king in the past and hence also still boasts a Durbar (king’s) square with beautiful temples and a palace building, which we visited on another day. (Additionally,  Patan provided me with one lasting memory of a completely different sort- while walking on the street, I was shat on by a bird- and big time at that, straight in the face. It is safe to say that this was one of the more disgusting moments in my life, and Nico did not look overly happy either, when he helped me wipe the bird feaces off my face.

Since one can, however, not always just engage in historical or religious pursuits or have nasty bird encounters, we decided to do something for our adrenaline levels as well- we went bungee jumping off Asia’s highest bungee jump- a bridge spanning a gorge with a river down below, at 160 metres. I did mention before my quite developed vertigo- yet since I consider it a stupid fear to have, I decided for a confrontational therapy of sorts. Nico was all excitement anyways. We were put in group 2, and after having waited for our turn made it out onto the bridge. I thought there wold be a bit more waiting to acclimatise and start coming to grips with the fact that I would be hauling myself of that bridge any minute now, but no, my number was called first, and so I had no choice but to let myself be tied to a long rope, stand over the abyss on a mini platform- and jump. And scream. Veeeery loudly. Nico made a much more poised job out of the whole thing, floating into the depths laughing, which I could watch from below, standing next to the river. Despite all the screaming on my part, we decided we had to do another round, this time a so called canyon swing. While during bungee, you jump headfirst, during the swing, the rope gets attached in front of your belly, not at the ankles, so you jump with your feet first and have a much longer free fall, before swinging through the canyon (as the name suggests). Asked myself again what the hell I was doing up there in the seconds before the jump, jumped, screamed again, and Nico as Mr. Confident joy-jumping into the gorge once more. We both liked the bungee better. All in all, an awesome experience- but I am afraid it did not cure the vertigo entirely.

Our last day in Kathmandu we just spent walking around and went to a brief Jazz jam session at night, before we boarded a bus that should form the starting point of our two day odyssey back to Dheli. We left the country the way we had entered it: seated on the roof of a bus headed for Sunauli border crossing, while the sun was setting over the rice paddies, and finally walked back into India.

Good bye, Nepal- and thanks for the good times!

Another temple

Nepali woman with tattooed legs

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Welcome to Bulgaria!

Whoop

Since we felt like spoiling you all a bit today, we are going to publish two new posts- our Romanian adventures have come to an end, and today Bulgaria greeted us with brilliant sunshine…

We arrived in Vidin around midday, and after a rather undelicious lunch caught a bus on to Belogradchik. The first thing apparent to the innocent traveller when entering this country is the fact that everything is written in Cyrillic- of which we are both experts, of course…not. So it will be interesting to see how long it takes us to master the different writing, in order to find our way around without too much trouble.

Belogradchik itself is a small mountain village, surroundeed by surreal looking rock formations (think of the Olgas in the Australian outback, or the Grand Canyon in terms of an approximation). It is a very beautiful stretch, naturewise, and we spent our day climbing around on the rocks, and exploring a fortress build in the middle of them- all concluded by watching the sun set behind the mountains (sounds rather cheesy, I know…).

Whooop

Tomorrow, we are thinking of heading down to the country’s capital, Sofia, and then on into the mountains to do somemore hiking and visit even more monasteries (maybe more monk stories to follow?).

We will keep you posted,

until then,

cheers,

Nico and Anna

 

Whoooop

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Romania Pt.2 – Mountains, monasteries and chillaxing in Bucarest

Since quite a bit more than a week has passed by now, it is high time that we provide you with the juicyest of news. So here comes: our time in Romania is nearing its end, and the second part of the tour has been just as eventful as the first.

Storks

We spent a day wandering about Sibiu, as mentioned in the previous post, a nice place, but rather quiet- the pimping up pre-world heritage year apparently transformed the inner city quite a bit. Due to unavailability of public transport in much of the area we planned on visiting after, we decided to invest into Romania’s car rental economy again- but alas, no car available in our price range in Sibiu. So we took the bus and headed on to Brasov, a village sitting on the entrance to Prahova valley, surrounded by mountains.

Rolling Stone hostel became the base of operations, but for the first time in a while, the weather was not on our side- pouring rain, which made the plan to climb one of the hills around Brasov impossible. Coffee and cake it was instead, and walking around the city for a bit, before leaving for the country side a couple of hours later, with yet another shiny white Dacia Logan, courtesy of the Brasov car rental branch.

John

Our path led us to Sighisoara, a pretty medieval town northwest of Brasov. The old city center is sitting on a hill, overlooking the surrounding area, and full of beautiful old houses, topped by meandering cobble stone pathways. We found a great place to stay, a tiny pensiune in the heart of the old  town, complete with chicken coop and a very friendly landlord who made us taste all of his self made liquors and wine. And yes, the palinka was strong. After an initial round of red wine and schnaps, we decided to stroll around town for a bit . Anna: “Nico, I know this is ridiculous, we did not even drink that much, but I feel really dizzy, like my head is in the clouds or sth…. Nico: “Ah, good, glad your saying that, I already thought I was going crazy here…”. Which is why, of course, when coming back home, we had to have some of the white wine as well ;-). The evening was then spent chatting away to John (if that is his real name, we do not know), and then venturing out to find pizza as a midnight snack.

Day two of our second road trip was spent driving around quite a bit. First, to the German heart of the country (Romania used to have a large number of German settlers, which is still visible in many places- we are talking German translations of city names and the like, but also architecture wise). Saxon land, as it is called, has many fortified medieval churches we had a look at. Then on we went to one of the, allow me to quote Lonely Planet, “ugliest places in Transylvania”- Copsa Mica, an industrial town

Oh beautiful Copsa Mica

that, due to severe pollution from its many factories used to have Europe’s highest child mortality rate and left many people severely handicapped. These days, it is surrounded by the blackened skeletons of former plants and is in general sitting in a bit ‘Mad Maxish’ moon-like landscape . Yet, we saw more places like that in the coming days, so Copsa Mica might ‘win’ hands down on pollution levels, but is by far overtaken by other towns in questionable aesthetic terms.

Yes, he was stuck in her!

Saxon Land is bordered by Szekely Land, the Hungarian equivalent to the German area. Tirgu Mures, one of the bigger cities in the region, forms a gateway to the numerous Hungarian communities living in this stretch of Romania. Place names are written in both Romanian and Hungarian, and a difference was visible even to us mere passers by: already in the way people dressed and looked.

We finally made out way via Gheorgheni to Lacul Rosu- a lake whose waters appear red, and have ghostly tree stumps sticking out of the surface of the water all over the lake. We did  not see much red, as the lake was still frozen, so instead there was ice pierced by wood. The road, from here, meanders into the Bicaz gorges, quite a stunning canyon with huge rocks stretching out over our heads to height of more than 150 metres.

Bicaz gorges lead into a broader valley that brings you up to the town of Bicaz, and this stretch of land, thus far, has been the least appealing part of the country- highly industrialized, run down, huge cement and asbestos factories scattered across the little towns. We drove on to Piatra Neamt to stay for the night.

Dumitru

The region, Moldova, is famous for its many monasteries, which we intended to visit the following day. And it turned out to be a rather interesting day. We began by having a look at two monasteries inhabited by nuns, who were working in the garden when we arrived. It felt a bit strange to wander around in their midst, and due to the language barrier, we could not really communicate with anyone. We had read about a smaller monastery up in the mountains, inhabited by monks, so we drove up a winding forest road leading to Sihla monastery. Initially, it looked as if our visit would turn out to be much the same as the previous two- having a look around and leaving. This proved to not be the case. When walking up a flight of stairs leading to a small church build against the mountain behind the monastery, and to an adjacent cave formerly inhabited by a saint, we were followed by one of the monks, who opened the church for us, and, upon figuring out that we were obviously not orthodox christians (this would have involved kissing the many icons in the church as well as crossing oneself repeatedly) he took it into his hand to teach us something about his church (and convert us???? We are still not sure on this…).

One of the Relics we had to kiss

His knowledge of English was meager, nevertheless, with much

signing, we managed to communicate alright. And now, where to start in recounting the events? Without judging here, I feel like just sharing our experiences. My own view on religion is known to many, as is Nico’s,  nevertheless, gaining insights into the views of someone devoted to a faith is a rather interesting experience in itself. As a baptized (if not practicing) protestant, I was informed that it is a bad religion (the fact that Nico is not baptized at all we decided not to disclose). The fact that we are not married was pitiable as well of course.  Orthodox Christianity, we were told, is the only true religion, and its version of the bible is the only complete one, and the only one able to help people avoid a life of sin and painful suffering in hell. This fact is also known to the Freemasons (an this is were it started getting interesting), who are doing everything to destroy Orthodox faith by such means as implanting mini chips into people to be able to remote control them like robots- we were recommended some websites and books to read up on these atrocities….talking about conspiracy theories.

Some of Dumitru's gifts

Dumitru talked to us for a good while-actually hours- providing recommendations on such things as the number of children we ought to have and the places we should or should not live in (cities are bad, obviously). The day went on by him suggesting we go to some other monasteries- which we did, so we drove around with an Orthodox monk in our car. Things started to get fairly serious in the next monastery, when, upon spotting me, one of the apparently more influential monks called me the devil. You might wonder why- well, I sport a nose ring and piercings, earrings- all considered to be the sign of Lucifer in the Orthodox church. Talking about awkward moments. Dumitru took on an interesting role- while obviously not approving of our faith and lifestyle either (you should have seen his face when I told him I believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution), he nevertheless had set his mind and heart to showing us around and did not seem to dislike us, so he risked getting into trouble with the other monks by taking us to see relics, and beautifully painted chapels- much to the anger of the monk sitting there guarding it. We were also introduced to a rather interesting painting depicting the vices and sins, and where each of them would lead us (the latter obviously straight to hell). The painting was a rather recent one, so it included people with piercings, rock and heavy metal music (all the more I could now understand the monks previous contempt…) and such things as money, soccer and medicine (for the abortions, obviously).

Some nun

Eventually, Dumitru told us we should have dinner with him at the monastery, and sleep there as well. After the day could not possibly get any weirder, we agreed to do so. Strictly separated bedrooms, of course (we had to sleep in different buildings even), made it an early night for me, but there was more action to be had for Nico, who, attempting to sleep, was visited by Dumitru 3 more times to get the lastest Orthodox music, check out an Othodox magazine and to receive 4 loafs of bread baked by the monks themselves. We had previously been given some crosses, pictures of saints and some choir music. And roseoil. 2 little containers, one of which exploded in my bag the next day, making all my clothing  smell like church (and they still do).

The Forest witch (Anna)

The next day, we got up quite early and left for the mountains to do some hiking. We drove along a huge dammed lake up to Caelhau massif. It is described of one of the remotest in Romania, barely touched and indeed we found the hike to be an amazing experience of wilderness. We choose for a trail leading us up to the summit of one of the peaks and meandered our way through the forest (it was damn steep in the beginning). The higher we got, the more you could see winter has only just passed, so the path turned into quite an icy track at times, making us crawl more than walk- actually, relatively dangerous at times. Cabana Docha greeted us at the top, a hut open year round,

Snow

where we decided to spend the night and walk around in the deep snow some more. The next morning, we were greeted by fresh snow and started our descent into the village, where our car was fortunately still waiting in one piece. Back we went to Brasov, and then on to Busteni by train, a small village nestled in Prahova valley. Sinaia, a place 5 km further one, was explored the next day- the region is famous for its mountain range and skiing opportunities, so we took a cable car up to 2000 metres- and indeed there was still a lot of snow and people taking advantage of it.

Tall Anna in a wine bar

After all these countryside experiences, it was surely  high time for some urban strolls again- so our next destination was to be Bucarest, also to visit my dear friend Ana, who lives in the countrie’s capital. And what can I say- we spent an utterly relaxing 5 days in this part of the country, not doing much except for chilling in the park, talking, reading, going out for nice dinners, drinking wine, seeing a theatre play and the like.

Yesterday, we finally shouldered our bags and borded a train heading to the Bulgarian border- the second part of the journey (spent in one of the regional, slow trains) was an interesting experience in itself , sharing the wagon with many a number of beer drinking man, straight from work it seemed. Our last night in Romania was a quiet one, before we took the ferry crossing the Danube into Bulgaria this morning.

Farewell Romania, and thanks for the good times

Small Ana in the parc

In the Winebar

Traditional Romanian Restaurant

Snow again

Ana

The toilets start looking nastier

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Map

If you click on the Map button on the top of our website you will find a google map from now on, on which you can follow our exact route.

La Revedere

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Touring remote Romania

A week has passed since we shared our last musings, so we thought it was about time to provide you with some updates on our whereabouts and latest adventures.

Street Scenery

We left Budapest headed for Oradea, a town close to the Hungarian/Romanian border. Means of transport was a tiny bus that meandered its way across Hungary’s vast plains.

As Romania is one hour ahead of Western Europe, we arrived at a somewhat dodgy station after dark and made our way into town to find a place to crash for the night. After the town’s hostel no longer exists, we ended up in Hotel Parc. Sounds fancy. It isn’t. Lonely Planet’s description of the hotel as a “place of former art nouveau grandeur, yet well past its best days” is quite a spot on way to put it. Imagine beautiful colored glass, frescoes, golden paint, huge rooms, wooden floors- but all smelly, smokey and run down. Nevertheless, surely an experience in itself- made us think of the Shining a bit.

The plan was for us to leave town as soon as possible to head out into the Romanian wilderness, in order to see something of the country itself- and its people. Since public transport is meager in remote areas, to say the least, we ended up deciding to rent a car. This proved to be somewhat of an adventure in itself, as all the car rental companies the internet had promised us to be located in Oradea where nowhere to be found (at least we got a good idea of the city while searching).

To cut a long story short, thanks to autonom car rentals, we found ourselves on a bumpy road headed south at 7 pm that evening. And bumpy it was indeed- many Romanian roads have given a whole new meaning to the word ‘pothole’- making anything called pothole in good old Germany pale in comparison. Our white Dacia Logan proved to be a good sport, however, and in combo with our advanced driving skills 😉 (some of the drive felt more like a slalom), we managed to avoid axle fracture or exploding tyres.

Snowangel

That night, we made it into a small mountain village just below the entrance to a cave- one of the most beautiful in entire Romania, we were told. We found a pensiune for the night, were surrounded by stray dogs in the dark (imagine opening the door of your car, stepping out into the pitch black village- no streetlights- and all of a sudden having something sniffing your leg…) and got a good night’s rest before venturing out to explore the cave the next morning.

Bear cave, or pestera ursilor, is full of magnificent stalagmites and stalactites- rather impressive. Taking photos cost extra, so we relinquished. Throughout our explorations we were accompanied by a guide, who unfortunately did not speak a word of either English or French, but instead just followed us like a shadow.

Apuseni Mountains

We headed on into the Apuseni Mountains, along a beautiful, winding road, which took us so high there was still snow everywhere. Next destination was the Ice Cave of Scarisoara. In order to get there, we had to leave the main road and drive up into the mountains proper. And this is where the fun started for real. The road, by now unsurfaced, became narrower and steeper, and, thanks to melting ice and snow, soon turned into a veritable mud puddle. Slipping from left to right, we made it through without getting stuck (for now…). Yet, the color scheme of our white car was somewhat altered (it should maybe be mentioned that the car was more or less brand new, 2000 km was all it had driven- so that sort of road was surely news for the Dacia).

View from our balcony

Eventually we arrived in a tiny mountain village (which can hardly be called a village, more a conglomerate of houses spread out across the hills) and to our amazement, we discovered a pensiune and decided to stay for the night. We communicated this to the old lady minding the cows (sign language turns out to be an essential tool in many places) and soon found ourselves in a cute little room.

Anna in the Ice Cave

The ice cave itself turned out to be nearly as exiting as the ride up there. We had been warned that

the descent into the cave might not be up to international safety standards- yet we had not quite expected to find ourselves crawling down an incredibly steep metal staircase covered in ice and snow… The cave was quite beautiful, with huge ice sculptures and icicles everywhere.

Ice Cave

Scary Stairs

Back in the pensiune, we discovered the old lady’s son and his wife spoke French, so we had a pleasant night chatting with them, being served palinka (a sort of schnaps) and playing table tennis- Nico versus the host and his son.

Scary Cave

On our descent from the mountain, via a different road, we got stuck in the snow for a bit and explored yet another cave- this time a less “official one”. Pitchblack inside, but thanks to our flashlight we ventured on- nevertheless, it was a bit freaky alright. After all, there are bears in Romania…

The night, we spent in Cluj Napoca, a student town with lots of bars and cafes. We discovered a nice jazz place with live music and had our share of alcoholic beverages before heading north the next morning, to Maramures.

The region is famous for its traditional looking villages and wooden churches, which are unique in the country. Meandering through the landscape (which is very beautiful by the way), sometimes gave the impression as if time stands still in this spot of land. Horse carts, wagons pulled by oxen, old ladies and men sitting on their porch chatting, the smell of burnt wood in the air- quite the idyll to the city eye.

 

Funeral Romanian Style

Wooden Church from the inside

We visited a number of churches and their surrounding graveyards, and managed to get into one of the churches to see the magnificent wall paintings (an old man followed us with the key). The night we spent in yet another pensiune, whose owner, surprisingly enough, spoke a bit of German. Our plan to ride on a steam train did not work out, as there was a public holiday and the train did not run. So we decided to visit two more villages before washing the car and heading back to Oradea to drop it off…

Wooden Church

Church from the inside

So much the plan. But, as reality bites, things turned out somewhat differently. Having been to village and church number one, we went on to Botiza. The map said that the street would make a loop and eventually lead us back onto the main road. So we drove on. Took a right at a crossing. The road turned from asphalt into gravel into a proper forest road, bumpy as hell. It got narrower, there were stones and pieces of wood in the way. We decided to turn back and take a left instead. Same game, only that it turned into a dry mud road at first, soon followed by a wet mud road that had been pierced by the massive wheels of a tractor, creating depressions way to deep for our car- keyword: underbody. So we scratched along for a bit- and then we got stuck in the mud. Big time.

Stuck!!!!!

No moving forwards nor backwards. Many of you will probably think: what made these morons attempt a muddy track with a Dacia Logan, which is anything but a 4 wheel drive??? Well. I guess we like adventure. And paid for it. All whining was useless, so we rolled up our sleeves and started digging. I have never dug around in mud like this before, not even as a child…Long story short: eventually we made it out, with much pushing and maneuvering. The car looked like an absolute mess of course and smelled faintly of burnt rubber…After the track did not get any better, we had to realize we needed to drive back the way we came, again having to cross that huge mud puddle.

All of this obviously took a while, so by the time we were back on the road, had found a car wash and gotten the vehicle back into a presentable state, time was running against us. 6pm drop-off time in Oradea, us: 250 km north in Sighetu Marmatiei. It was 4:15. And the road felt like joyriding on the moon. So, introducing our first big fail: we did not manage to drop it off in time and had to pay and extra fee :-((finding a phone on the way to tell that to the rental company proved more difficult than imagined as well).

So, at 10 pm, exhausted and tired, we arrived in Oradea, checked into our beloved Hotel Parc again, and slept like babies. Yesterday, we spent most of our day in a bus headed south to Sibiu, from where I am writing these lines at present.

Sibiu turns out to be quite a pretty place (it was Unesco world heritage city a couple of years back). We felt like communicating these things to you first, and will now be heading out to look for a nice cafe to sit and chill for a while, and read a book.

Part two of the Romania cruise will probably follow in a week or so (more remote areas ahead, as well as Brasov, Sinaia and Bucarest), before we head into Bulgaria.

Cheers,

the travellers

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Rainy Budapest!

Szent István Bazilika

Four Seasons Hotel

Well, the sunshine didn’t last for long and the rain took over again-big time at that. Nevertheless, we are enjoying our stay in beautiful Budapest. From the first moment on we were impressed by the breathtaking architechture. The city has a somewhat Parisian flair to it, regarding its boulevards and stunning houses.

In general, there are a great number of magnificent historical buildings and lots of cozy cafes and bars, as well as spas (thermal water) scattered around the city centre, in the middle of which flows the mighty Danube river- the views from the hills surrounding the city must be really amazing in good weather, but are impressive even in the murky grey.

Anna

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We found a very cute little hostel right in town, from which we went on exploring for the last three days. On the first night, we just strolled around the streets and went down to the river- photosession time. Yesterday was devoted to Buda, the more historic part of town, with its castle and citadel, today we went walking in Pest and on the Danube island.

We had to realize Hungarian is a language really impossible to master. Many words, to us ignorant people, resemble tongue twisters and are, even if read from paper, impossible to pronounce…

Tonight, we are planning to enjoy a drink or two in one of the many bars, and will head on into Romania tomorrow afternoon.

More soon…

cheers

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!!

Paddy's Day Budapest

Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day! Happy Paddy’s Day!

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Vienna, thou art beautiful

Aaaaand: the first live, on the road insights to be shared.

Vienna has been very kind to us, greeting our humble selves with incredible sunshine and spring-like temperatures, making us wonder why the hell we had to pack that extra fleece (yet we are sure colder times will come).

After a rather relaxing overnight train journey to Austria’s capital, we spent the last 2 days strolling around town, sitting by the Danube river and sampling some good Austrian cuisine. The inner city is full of horse carriages (much to Anna’s displeasure- allergy sends its regards  😉 ), and features incredibly beautiful old buildings. We cruised around the museum quarters, had ‘kleiner brauner’ (milky coffee the size of espresso) in a cafe and stumbled over the Voodoo cafe- some smokey rock bar/pub with walls covered in postcards dating back to the 80’s it seems.

All in all,  a rather pleasant start to our tour, which will continue on to Budapest by bus tomorrow morning.

More soon…

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Good Bye Frankfurt, hello Vienna…

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