Bucharest:
So, this is how behind we are…we spent Halloween in Romania!
Stavropoleos Monastery
Our trip to Romania was part of our grand scheme to spend some time outside of the Schengen zone. We spent the entire day traveling by train and bus from Vernazza to Torino, where we caught a flight to Romania. The plan was to spend a day in Romania, and take the rail to Istanbul. We had done extensive research on this trip, and found that the rail was under repair in Turkey. No problem, we could rail from Romania to Bulgaria, and switch to a bus in Turkey. The train was to leave Bucharest at noon and arrive in Turkey at 7am the following morning. The worst part of the trip would have been the switch from train to bus at 1am in Turkey, but we thought it was doable, so we flew to Romania with this plan in mind. As a side note, we tried to book this trip online, were unsuccessful, and therefore decided to buy everything once in Romania. Here’s what actually happened…
sex shops. many in Bucharest
We arrived in Bucharest in the early evening. We had read blogs on the dangers of the city, and it seemed that it was relatively safe, with the exception of some possibly aggressive stray dogs. Well, Javier is from Cusco, and I spent a few months there, so we don’t mind the furry, four-legged neighbors. We were more worried about trying to find our hotel at night in a strange and unknown city. From the airport, we traveled on one of the nicest buses we’ve ever been on. They had a screen that showed a map of the city, highlighted the route of the bus, and zoomed in on the next stop, so you could see the streets immediately surrounding the stop. Very, very helpful. As we rode the 45min bus to the city center, we saw some rather dodgy looking areas, as well as some very nice areas, and lots, and lots of sex shops. This place is inundated with sex shops and everything else sex. At first, I was shocked, and then disgusted, and by the time we left, I hardly noticed them…kinda sad how quickly I became used to it. When we stepped off the bus, we were on a very lively street, so we felt a bit of relief, until we started walking to our hotel. It was only one block off the main street, but it was dark, and our directions weren’t exactly clear. So, there we were standing with our huge backpacks, on a dark corner in front of a bar, looking at the map on Javier’s phone, when this drunk guy comes up to us and asks where we’re trying to go. Well, no use in lying and saying we were fine, because clearly we weren’t, so Javier gave him the name of the hotel. The guy told us exactly where to go (we were nearly there already). We said thank you and he started walking with us and asked where we were from. Javier told him Peru, and he became really excited. “Ah, PERU!!!” and proceeded to speak his two or three words of Spanish. As we arrived at the corner, he joined a group of guys who were all looking at us, while the guy continued to speak his Spanish. I don’t know about Javier, but I was pretty nervous at this point- like, is this the point where they beat us and take all of our stuff? We just kept smiling and walking and thanking him for his help, and as it turned out, he was just a happy, helpful, drunk guy. Phew!!
MJ!
Our hotel was actually a nice restaurant/ lounge with rooms above. So, since the manager (who also doubles as the receptionist) was not available, the servers offered us a table to sit and wait. At first I couldn’t stand being in the place, it was a cloud of cigarette smoke. The servers said we could wait in the nonsmoking area, where we ended up having an appetizer, which was so good, we went ahead and ordered dinner. Upstairs, there was a large sitting area. Around the sitting area are about 5 doors that lead into the different rooms. The problem with this setup is that, while our room was nonsmoking, you could smoke in the sitting area. The smoke seeped through the space under the door, and through the cracks around the door, so it was like someone was smoking in our room. We opened the window, but it was in the 20s at night, so a little too chilly to keep the windows open. We ended up wetting a towel and trying to seal off as much of the door as possible, which helped, but did not take care of the problem. I already had a headache at this point, so we showered, took some advil and tried to sleep. Now, I say “tried” because there was a club across the street that started up sometime after we were already asleep and didn’t stop until sunrise, and even then it was loud because of all the drunk people just hanging out outside. So, it was intermittent sleep. In the morning we joked that we should have just gotten up and joined them since neither of us slept anyway. Ah, well. Welcome to Bucharest!
We had purchased our Turkey visa with the train in mind, so we set our entry date for Oct 31. The plan was to buy the train ticket (Oct 29), leave the following day (Oct 30), and arrive in Istanbul on Oct 31. So, on the 29th, we walked to the train station, through a slightly shady area of town, and spoke to the ticket sales person. Well, there was actually very little speaking, since the woman did not speak any English. We told her where we wanted to go, and she slid this little piece of paper over. We should have taken a picture of the slip of paper. It was about twice the size of a fortune in a fortune cookie. It included two trains and four buses. Each journey was anywhere from 1.5-3 hours long. Apparently, the tracks in Romania and Bulgaria were also under renovation. So, we could leave at noon the following day, and after changing buses and trains all night long, arrive in Istanbul around 7am. Well, it took us all of 1 second to decide to fly to Turkey, so we went back to our hotel and booked a couple of flights. The only problem with this was that we had another night to spare since we couldn’t enter Turkey until the 31st, so we spent another night in Bucharest. Our hotel was booked, so we found another place close by that looked pretty shabby from the outside, but really nice on the inside. As it turned out, the building was actually at a “seismic risk,” but more on that later.
So, we had an extra day in Bucharest…what to do, what to do…
Bucharest
We walked around the city and found it to be pretty nice. They had random street art, including this really cute Noah’s ark complete with colorful animals. I can admit, we were both very ignorant in regards to Bucharest, and we didn’t expect it to be a nice as it was. One huge downside was the smoking. EVERYONE SMOKES. We would see children..yes, like 12 year old children smoking. It was incredible. We stumbled into a small cinema that played only films from the Cannes Film Festival. We were curious, so we spoke to two young men working there, who were really friendly. When we left, we decided to try and find some local food. One of my students was Romanian, and told me to visit Bucharest and eat the food. She told me that most people don’t know it, but Romania has really good food, so we decided to give it a shot. I went back into the theater and asked our two friends where they go for local food. We like to say…where does your grandma eat when she goes out? They both laughed and conferred with each other, and came up with this place called Sarpele Roz (Red Serpent). I asked what we should order, and they gave me a couple of items to try. I thanked them and off we went! Since it was already late in the day, and we were planning to join a free walking tour that night, we decided to eat there the following day. Somehow, my wires were crossed, and I mixed up the starting place of the free tour, with the meeting place of the Bran Castle Dracula tour, so there we were at 8pm in front of the Opera house waiting for the wrong tour…oops. SO, no tour that night. We decided to wander around a bit on our own, and eventually grabbed some cookies and after three different stores, found some milk, and went home. We’re so wild.
yummy. Sarmale Stuffed Cabbage
The next day we checked out of our hotel, into our apartment, and made our way to Sarpele Roz. Thank goodness the place was not crowded for lunch, because…you know, that smoke does not know how to stay in its section! The place was very eclectic. Most of the walls and tablecloths were pink or red, there were random knickknacks all over the place, accordians mounted on the walls, and a stage where they have live music and dancing. Very charming. And the food!!! Delicious! I started with a plate of eggplant, which was amazing
restaurant
and quite filling, and we moved on to sărmăle- minced meat rolled in cabbage leaves. It was so good that we decided to come back and try something else for dinner. When we asked if we could make a reservation for the evening, the owner said that they were celebrating the restaurant’s anniversary that night and he had one more table available. It was going to be a special event with food, music and dancing. Perfect!! The one thing he mentioned was that it was a somewhat formal affair…huh??? We asked what he meant by formal. Basically, our clothes were not nice enough, and Javier would have to buy a dress shirt and pants, and I would have to wear the only dress I have, which is a light summer dress, not something you want to wear when it’s 20 degrees outside. Our clothes were acceptable for the Venetian opera, but not for the Sarpele Roz. Who knew?
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sidewalks
We spent the rest of the day walking around the old town, which we noticed was relatively dead. That evening we made our way to the correct meeting point of the free tour. While walking around, we saw these long lines in front of storefront windows. There are these tiny bakeries that are maybe 6ft in width with only a window to serve people. On the way to the tour, we decided to stop at one for a quick snack. The ground in front of the bakery looked like a war zone. It was completely destroyed, sticking up at funny angles, and definitely an insurance nightmare. We laughed at the ridiculousness of it. But the sour cherry baked yumminess was well worth it!
The night tour was well great. We learned all kinds of cool thing about Bucharest and Romania like…
The parliament building in Romania is the second largest municipal building in the world, the first being the Pentagon.
The name Romania is a combination of two names- Romans and Dacians? The Dacian kingdom being conquered by the Romans during the first two centuries AD.
Dracula
The name Dracula means “son of Dracul.” Dracul is Romanian for dragon, or devil, and was the name given to Vlad the Impaler’s father. Apparently, he belonged to the Order of the Dragon. It’s all king stuff. So, naturally old Vlad the son was given the name Dracula thanks to pops.
Vlad received the infamous “Impaler” addition to his name because, well, he preferred the method of impaling as a means for torture. The story really gets exciting when the Turks were
Dracula? who? ..Vlad.
attacking and Vlad had fled into the mountains. His army was significantly smaller than the opposition, so he took all of the prisioners, had them impaled, and lined the road with them. The Sultan saw all of the dead and turned around. According to our guide, he did some other crazy things like eat his meals surrounded by hundreds of impaled bodies, and drink blood.
All sorts of fun facts. He took us to the Central Committee building where the last dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu gave his final speech, the people started to protest and riot and within a few days, he had to flee by helicopter. Eventually, he and his wife were picked up by local authorities, and executed on Christmas day. After this, there was a time of unrest where the people believed that terrorists were going to invade them at any moment, so everyone went out and purchased guns to protect themselves. As it turns out, they were never invaded, but in the meantime, they killed each other out of fear, so more people died in the following days after Ceausescu’s death than during the actual overthrow. Enough history.
watch out!
Our guide told us that the old town has recently (as in the last 10 years) been built up with restaurants, bars and night life. It is still a relatively new idea for Romanians to be free to enjoy the night, so that would explain the lack of people we saw, or didn’t see. He also gave us some safety tips while in Romania. Some of the buildings are not up to code, and could quite possibly collapse in the case of an earthquake, or you know, a strong wind. These establishments are marked with a big red dot on the front that says something like… this place is bad, don’t live here, in Romanian. Well, when we went back home, lo and behold, a big red dot on our apartment! Talk about living on the edge.
Oh, I almost forgot. Apparently, Bucharest has the longest street in Europe. When Ceausescu was in power and built his palace, he asked which street in Europe was the longest? At the time, it was the Champs Élysées in Paris. So of course, he had to build his street longer. 🙂 Lastly, there are plans to build a massive church behind the palace, which will basically dwarf said palace. I can’t imagine…
nice
After our tour, we made our way to Caru’ cu bere, the first brewery in Romania. Historically, Romania was a wine country. Someone from Vienna, moved there and started a brewery, which is now a restaurant, serving the same beer as well as many others. The place itself is really cool and historic. At 10pm, it was packed, and we had to dodge the dancers while we waited for a table. The food was good, the dessert delicious, and the dancing was fun and entertaining.
Before we left to the airport the next day, we said good bye to the can of tuna. I’m not sure if you remember the tuna, but it was purchased in Sweden, and had since traveled to 11 countries, and became the source of many laughs. It was simply time to say goodbye. So long tuna and so long Romania, it was weird, but loads of fun!
To see more pictures of Bucharest, click HERE.