First morning in Romania and I’m standing in a graveyard
looking at a painting of a farmer being beheaded. The next picture shows a
young girl being hit by a car.
I’ve had a good look at graveyards and cemeteries throughout
Asia and other parts of eastern Europe, but this one takes the cake. Above the
burial mound there is a headstone that details how the person died. I’ve never
seen anything so interesting at a graveyard - some of the paintings are quiet extravagant. That’s
when I knew I would love this country!
We enter Romania through the region of Transylvania, staying
in a few misty mountain towns. Very local and very cool to see. The scythes are
out and people are cruising around in horse drawn carts. They are drinking the
local spirit (raki) like water and washing their clothes in the snow melt
streams. These small towns are very cool and what I was hoping eastern Europe
would be like.
Small town Transylvania:
Smaller Town Transylvania:
We stopped for a couple of night at a town called Brasnov,
which had a big beautiful gothic church right in the middle of the ancient
town. Here we were told that bears come down into the town often and one local
said that about one person a year gets killed from a bear attack. After hearing
that some of us went on a hike up into the forested mountains for a great view
of the town and region. 
It’s in this region that Vladimir Drac originates. This was
the guy who held the Turkish invaders at bay by horrifying their much larger
and stronger army by setting up displays of impaled Turks. He shoved a spear
through their body, A2M, and could do so in a way to avoid all major organs and
have the victim moaning in pain for hours and even days. Arriving at a
battlefield to see their fellow countrymen in that sort of state sent the Turks
back, and Vlad Dracul, Vlad the Impaler, won the fear of all of Europe. This lead
to the Dracula myth, with a lot of creative licence from English writer Bram
Stoker. We visited Draculas castle, which ‘he may or may not have visited once
or twice’, avoided all the tacky vampire souvenirs, and saw a lot of business
trying to align with this market. Vampire camping anyone? 
Near Draculas castle is a great castle ruin with great
mountain views.
It had to be Transylvania that I got possessed by a demon.
That demon was most likely e.coli. And it really messed me up. After hearing
that the local water might be drinkable I decided to give it a go. Bad move. At
first I thought it must have been some food so I kept on chugging this tap
water to rehydrate myself. But that just gave the demon some buddies with whom
he could wreck up the joint. And I’m sharing a bathroom with another poor soul!
I checked the internet and for the town I was there were warnings that the
water supply is likely tainted by biological pathogens from human waste. It
left me drained and wilted, looking like a ghost, but I still dragged myself to
see everything and only vomited in public once.
(The symptoms would ease considerably but I wasn’t back to
normal until a month later when I decided to kick it with a stern course of
anti-biotics)
Apart from destroying me from the inside Sighosuara was a
lovely town.
Okay, so I’m getting a little bit churched out, but that’s
okay because I’ve found new faith and every time I go into a church I find my
man and thank him for all the great rock and roll in the world. Here he is with
JC:
The capital, Bucharest, is pretty low key and uneventful;
its parliament located at the centre of town is the world second largest building
(after the Pentagon), and then there’s a few nice parks and bullet holes
speckling the city. In a nutshell, crazy leader in soviet times when people are
starving uses all countries money to build himself the biggest parliament on
earth, loses the people, cue revolution in 90’s, cue death of him and his wife,
civil unrest and gun fighting in the streets follow, adaption of democracy, now
democracy with severe corruption but more hope. 
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