Vampires, Demons and Graveyards (Romania)

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.

 

The city was worth seeing, but to me the soul of Romania, as with many countries, is in the small towns and the simple life.

Thirsty in Hungary (Hungary)

A stuffy and delayed overnight train from Ukraine and we arrive in Hungary. Yeah, its had a better run economically, and it’s got all sorts of ties to central and Western Europe, but to me that just makes it a little less intriguing. In most parts of Budapest I felt like I could have been in any big city of the western world…even Sydney. After the last few countries it felt too…easy.

 

In Budapest (pronounced Budapesht) I ate the goulash, went cycling around the town and took a dip in the public hot baths.

 

After being spit roasted by the Nazi’s and Soviets, the country is a little bitter about the last hundred years. And rightly so, I guess, there’s an interesting museum dedicated to it, ominously called ‘The Museum of Terror.’ But does that warrant a local fella going off at me for wearing a shirt that I bought in China with a large red star on the front? Maybe. Soviets probably killed his parents, and here I was just thinking the star is a cool shape (that poor shirt is buried deep in my pack now).

My roommate Phouc (hilariously pronounced Fok) was heading to Vienna, so it was a sad goodbye. We had gotten along really well and have made plans to meet up again at some point before my odyssey ends. Seeing him off reminded me of all the people I’ve met on this trip. I’m only a few months in but I feel like I’ve had a lifetimes worth of experience just from the people I’ve met and become friends with. The girls in Taiwan were so good to me but now that feels like ten years ago and I might not ever see them again. It’s sad, really, that you have these great, short, intense bursts of relationships and then without fail the itinerary calls and I’m going South, while they’re going East. Bye. (Photo of Phouc and our Russian bride, I mean guide, Jyenya.)

 

Away from the capital we visited a wine region town called Eger. It was a pleasant spot with a really old townscape, but the highlight was going down into the cellars where the wines were being stored, sitting around big tables and trying the wine. These were gnarly, mould on the walls, squeeze through the narrow doorway, hundreds of years old cellars. And the lady who was running the show looked like she was hundreds of years old too. But that didn’t mean

 she couldn’t pour a drink…right into my mouth.

 

Honestly, I had less than a week in Hungary which is a total disservice to the country and to me. But I don’t think I’ll be coming back in a hurry; I know where I belong – I like my countries broken and backwards.

Bulgaria and Romania here we come!

Nuclear Peace (Ukraine)

The Ukraine…this is one place that I could never have imaged going to. And the only thing that I could bring to my about this country was Chernobyl, and the nuclear meltdown. That stereotype is a reality, with 10% of the country being radioactive to the point that it’s illegal to live there, though some squatters still do. Considering the Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe, that’s a sizable area of a ‘no go zone.’ A lot of people died, especially the ones who were sent in to clean up the mess, and many people are still dying from the longer term effects of radioactivity exposure. Despite this, the Soviet casualty count was/is 31.

Another ugly characteristic of the recent past is the fact they were only given back their independence from Russia in 1991. There was originally a Ukraine-Soviet war but there’s no stopping such a big neighbour like Russia when he shows up on your doorstep in the 1920s. It took the collapse of the soviet union, plus the realisation that a large part of the country closest to the Russian mainland was radioactive, to reinstate Ukraine as its own nation again.

But this country seems to be progressing. Yes, there are corruption issues which I have now taken to be a given with these ex-communist countries, but they are apparently handling better than some of those other countries. The land is clean and green, and there is a much more hopeful mood than the dreariness of Russia.

Kiev has a wonderful outdoors street scene, with plenty of buskers and places to buy beer and food and hang out. Plus its all so cheap! We went to the ballet one night, a fully-fledged performance of Sleeping Beauty at the National Opera House and it cost $2.50 for the ticket. (Actually, that’s one of the good things left over from soviet communism. They believed that all art should be accessible to all people, and that’s why it is so cheap. Now that’s a really good idea, like a lot of the ideas which formed the principles of communism, it’s just a shame that you need corruptible people to coordinate it). I explored lush green parks, and watched families have picnics. The Orthodox Easter occurred when we were in Ukraine so we saw how they celebrate Easter (a lot less commercial and family/ritualistic than ours). Also, it was cool to have Chicken Kiev in Kiev.

 

One day I got blessed by a preacher who splashed my face with holy water and the next thing I know my debit account has been frozen…the big guy is onto me. So that was fun to have to resolve wondering if the Russian mafia were off spending my money on black caviar and fur coats. 

We went up to a village in the Carpathian Mountains and did a hike up into the forested hills. The meals we had in these smaller villages were absolutely epic; the best food I’ve had since China and you bet they had their own bootleg spirits which they poured endlessly.

For me, the best things about the Ukraine is being able to see groups of farmers working the one, small patch of land, all using ancient looking farm equipment, such as scythes. It felt like I’d gone back in time a hundred years. They villages are so humble and simple and everybody seems to be working together and helping out in the fields. The cities were quaint and relaxed and the people were pleasant.

Considering what these folks have been through with soviet times and the nuclear meltdown, Ukraine seems like it has finally come in to a little bit of peace and quiet. Like this old couple, who would have seen some pretty crazy shit in their day, but now are taking it easy playing chess by the river in the afternoon sun.

How to Drink Vodka (Western Realm, Russia)

After crossing the expanse of Siberia we came to the western realm of Russia. Here we visited the cities of Moscow, St Petersburg, and Novgorod. And there was more vodka…

Moscow:

 

The capital city is a beast. It took me a few days (I had six in total) to get some sort of grasp on the place. In my time I wandered the red square, which is the centre point of town which faces St Basils church (yeah, that crazy and colourful one above) and the Kremlin (ancient and present government headquarters). This part of the city was amazing and the onion dome churches blew me away. I also had time to visit a pro-communist march at the ‘Victory Day’ public holiday parade, in which I got caught on the wrong side of the barricade and for a while was walking down the street amongst the flag waving and song chanting communist supporters. And I even had a red shirt on that day! I was amazed and a little bit concerned to see how many young people, my age, who were marching with flags and photos of Stalin. They are a significant minority, but it just goes to show the communist old days are looked upon as the good old days by many people, some who weren’t even alive.

 

 

St Petersburg:

The ‘second capital’, known as the ‘window into Europe’, this was my favourite Russian city because it was like walking through a museum. And the museum in the city was one of the best ones I’ve ever been to. It was bloody cold at the time, but I was just happy walking around the canals and seeing the churches. I had never expected a Russian city to look so much like Venice.

Novgorod:

This is the ancient capital and the oldest inhabited place in western (and maybe eastern) Russia. Yeah, the heritage was interesting, the churches were cool, the graveyard was pleasant and the river was pretty, but all I wanted to do was get naked. And I did.

 

A Banya is a Russian bathhouse where you go for a thorough scrubbing, a sauna, a soap, and to be whipped across the back, legs, arms and feet by birch leaves. If your tough, they’ll bring out the oak leaves. I was the only one in my company who wanted to do this so I got dropped off at the place by myself and lets just say the hour that ensued was…memorable. I’m glad I did it because it was probably the most genuine and local thing I could have done in that town – judging by the looks of the forty something naked men, mostly old, they don’t get many foreigners into these places. And its a staple of Russian culture. But the things I saw, both funny and frightening, will stay with me until the day I die…

I don’t have a picture of forty naked men with me squeezed in the hairy and sweaty bunch, so here’s a picture of me wandering a graveyard instead.

What did I eat in Russia?

Buckweat, potato, Borshe soup (beetroot based broth), fish soup, piroshky, chicken kiev and the thing I liked most, especially with a vodka shot, was lard. Just good old fashion fat. Yum. For breakfast salami, cheese, tomato and hot dog style sausages were the norm. (oh how quickly I came to miss spicy Asian food).

I also ate pickles.

I drank vodka, and I know it sounds dumb and typical, but this Russian stuff was actually way better than anything I’ve ever tried at home. It was smooth. And this is how you drink it. Pickle in one hand, vodka in the other. Three steps:

1.       Sniff the pickle until that salty stench is all the way down the back of your throat;

2.       Gulp down the vodka until your eyes water and you’re on the verge of gagging;

3.       Bite into the pickle and chew it vigorously, neutralising the burning effect of the spirit.

When there’s no salami and cheese, this is the breakfast ritual.  And that’s how life expectancy can reverse.

From Russia with love.

The Tran Siberian Railway (Siberia, Russia)

 

After a six hour wait at the border, our train rolled on through into Russia.

Russia is a mystery wrapped around an enigma inside a riddle, said Winston Churchill. Classed as neither European or Asian, the world’s biggest country straddles the continent with its expansive wilderness, Siberia, known as the ‘lungs of Eurasia.’  It’s a truly epic country to venture across.

But you know what? This country is a joke.

Where do I even start?

Thanks to corruption, which festered out of control in the communist times and has carried on since, this is a country going backwards. Once a superpower of the world, Russia now has a crumbling economy and a life expectancy that is decreasing each year. For a country with so many natural resources and former wealth, which is funnelled to a small per cent of corrupt individuals in the cities to west, its bewildering how many people in the west and backwaters of the country are starving.

The government runs the media and has no valid opposition. That's a problem. In Russia you don’t talk about corruption – you don’t even say the word. Don’t even think about questioning Putin. People go missing, and that’s no exaggeration. Russia ranked second last on the World Transparency list for 2012. Political critics call Russia a ‘mafia run state.’

After China and Mongolia, I’m sick of government overcontrol and corruption, but here we are again, at the world capital for both. New pet hate.  

On our first morning off the train we visited a small ‘Old Believers’ village. These folks are descendants of the people who were exiled to Siberia because of their religious convictions; communism tried to exterminate religion and even turned a few churches in the big cities to the west into Atheism museums.

This village was interesting to see, and we met some of the local grandmothers (babushka’s) who took us into their little home, fed us up with more food than we could eat and poured us shot after shot of homebrew vodka. Yep, this was lunch time. The women complained about their pension and spoke about their grandchildren and how their husbands had died (probably from drinking too much of this drain cleaner, I thought. And it’s true, alcoholism is absolutely rampant in Russia, especially Siberia). Of course, they spoke only Russian, but we had a guide who translated for us.

Next we went and spent a couple of days on the shores of Lake Baikal. This is the world oldest, deepest and largest freshwater lake. It’s as big as a sea and it’s easy to spot on any world map. The whole thing was frozen over solid, and it was so endless that it looked like Antarctica. It was so beautiful to see it at the different times of the day and just go walking around on the big white plain. Not far from the shore was just pure silence punctuated by the occasional creak or crack of ice.


There were plenty of cars driving across the lake and many people ice fishing – the rewards of which we had for dinner one night (with the compulsory vodka shot, of course).  Baikal blew me away.

 

The Trans-Siberian Railway is the world longest railway and our longest stint between getting of was 3 nights. That’s a long time to be cramped in a small, four person sleeper cabin. And I would love to say that the scenery was breathtaking, but for the most part it was a boring blur of pines and birch trees. I occupied my time by reading, writing, trying to learn some Russian and sleeping.  I took of my watch because we were passing through a different time zone every day, and added with the really long dusks this high up, my sense of time became so warped in nearly felt like I had jet lag without even being on a jet.

For food we stocked up before we boarded and thanks to the availability of water at the end of each carriage I had noodles for most meals. I got as creative as you could with no refrigeration and limited space for three days; see photo of my glorious carrot and pepperoni noodles. That was by far the best part of that particular day.

We stopped at small towns to break up the journey. At one we wandered around the small river town and visited a lady who did a little cooking demo for us. She then called her daughter downstairs and they sang for us. At another, less pleasant stop, we visited a Gulag. Gulag were the prisoner camps of the communist times, set up across the whole of Russia, but mostly Siberia for common crooks, but mostly as a form of exiling the intelligentsia; writers, artists, professors, scientists, etc, who went against the communist values. They were simply arrested and shipped out to one of these camps (or if they were a real threat then they were killed). That was the communist solution to the problem of dissent. And it worked for a good. Shockingly, the last ‘political prisoner’ to leave the Gulag we visited was 1992.  As I said, this country is a joke.

But I say that not in reference to the common people. The woman and her daughter who sang for us, our hosts at Baikal, the people we met on the train, the old ladies in the village: these are all normal people like you and me but they are so caught up in the system that they just have to suffer the consequences and get on with it. Russians have the reputation as being grumpy and cold – and for good reason I think! But the locals I met were warm and friendly if you could get past that protective exterior. And that’s just more reason to be angry about the few people in power who are letting the rest of them down.

Once again I’m brought back to the thought that Australia is a good place to be born and Japan is downright utopic. And even though I think it’s a ridiculous thing to do, I’m glad that in Australia the Prime Minister can get pelted with sandwiches from school children. I think it’s important.

And the Trans-Siberian express rolls into the West…

Life in a Tent (Mongolia)

From Beijing I boarded a train that would take me nearly 10,000kms to St Petersburg, Russia. To get from China to Russia the train goes via Mongolia. This is a country that I’ve wanted to visit for some time and it didn’t disappoint.



A Buddhist prayer shrine in the hills

After the torturous middle-of-the-night immigration and customs processing, our train rolled on into Mongolia. Waking up in Mongolia it was interesting to see the landscape change so dramatically; this is high country of rolling hills. There are no trees, just grasses, and it’s all pretty dusty. Even in the train, the dust from the Gobi desert got into our compartments (which sleep four people) and into everything.

 It wasn’t too long before I started to see what I’d be seeing the whole time in Mongolia – Gers ( the tent like nomad homes) occasionally on a hill in the distance, and bands of horses roaming the lands. It’s the lowest population density on earth, purely because the soil is so unproductive that folks have to graze their animals on an enormous land area to survive. And that dictates their diet, which is largely meat (lamb and horse mostly, beef and chicken sometimes), without many vegetables save for potato. One night I ordered a lambs head and it included everything; eyes, brain, and most interesting to eat, the tongue.

What surprised me was the soviet era apartment blocks seemingly in the middle of nowhere. This would be the beginning of a long stint in ex-soviet countries, and unfortunately for Mongolia these hideous building (and corruption) are apparently remaining keepsakes from the old commie days.

Ulaanbaatar is the capital and it says a lot about this country. It is very quickly developing, and you can see multi storey building being built right next to Gers. For 2012 Mongolia had the world’s largest GDP growth rate. This country is going through a massive mining boom which is powering their economy. Another trend is urbanisation; people are moving from their nomad country lifestyles into the cities, or should I say the city. And strangely, some are still living as they would in the middle of nowhere, with their Gers right next to busy roads, soviet apartment blocks and interspersed throughout the city and its immediate countryside.

Interesting, just out of town we saw anti-ballistic missile launchers being set up on a high hill. Even the Mongolians were nervous about North Korea.

We went out to a national park which had more dramatic, alpine scenery and did a hike and stayed in a Ger. It snowed but the Gers were perfectly warm and quite cosy. It was a beautiful location and my stay in the Ger was one of the highlights of the trip so far.

 

 

 

 

Oh, did I mention how crazy they are about their warlord ancestor Genghis Khan? Yep, he's even on their currency (which I had to use as toilet paper in one very unfortunate situation).

It’s a cool way to live and I’m glad to be able to see it before the country modernises and blends into the rest of Asia.

And we continue on the train headed for Russia…