Romania

Romania

I visited Romania on a trip across the Balkans in 2013. This post summarizes my impressions from this complicated country. Bucharest was the starting point.

Our hostel is situated in a weird street with strange open houses and funny families. Our rude host with no manners has been drinking and we don’t even get the room we booked. The only good thing about this hostel is a huge iron gate separating us from the rest of the street, even though it does not protect us from a loud party thrown by our host. These guys drink long and get up early, leaving us a pretty short time span for sleeping. Cockroaches and pest-control vehicles all over the city stop surprising me quite quickly. If you think I’m exaggerating in this paragraph, go see it yourself.

The world’s second biggest building, the Palace of Parliament, stands in the middle of this unprosperous city. Going inside evokes strong feelings, including astonishment in the first place, followed by doubt and disgust in the end. All this gold and marble was thrown away here in order to demonstrate the opposite of what Romania actually is – a needy country. A great deal of natural and human resources were invested in this building, which is a complete contrast to the rest of the land. Gray ugly blocks of flats next to a very old church give an impression of disrespect for culture heritage. There is enough space in the streets around me but due to the architecture I feel closely claustrophobic.

While spending the plastic Romanian money on a ticket to Tulcea we meet an English couple who are also desperately trying to communicate in the local language. English is not that popular here. The next day we take a bus ride to Tulcea and feed some skinny dogs, the symbol of Balkans.
Tulcea is rather touristy and we enjoy staying in a good hotel on the lake for a good price. The next day we get to Sulina, a place on the border into Ukraine. There is a guy on the jetty offering accommodation. He has mastered about 10 English words so far, but it’s enough to secure a room for us in a guest house not far from the harbor. Only a few people speak foreign languages and it’s very difficult to arrange a boat trip where we want to watch the unique birds of the Danube delta. The guy who arranged our accommodation seems to be everywhere at the same time. When he spots a chance of doing something for us he interrupts our difficult conversation with one of the locals who have boats. This time he uses the same 10 English words but in a different order, thinking that he can express more in this way. One of his favorite words is ‘patrón’ which he repeats rapidly when pointing at a guy. The meaning of it is a mystery. There are more fishermen with boats, but when we try talking to them, the 10-words-guy shows up yelling ‘patrón today’again and ruins it for us. He doesn’t care that he’s not wanted around and keeps bothering us. After meeting some cows on the sandy beach, we talk to our host and he agrees to take us for the boat trip. He explains that the 10-words -guy is making money by bringing tourists to guesthouses and guides.

It becomes more obvious that Sulina doesn’t have any tourist attractions except for the Danube delta. The English couple whom we met in Bucharest is walking down the street no. 1 (there are like four streets and they don’t have names, just numbers) and it feels good to see somebody who’s probably experiencing the same odd situations here, at the end of the world. ‘What do you think of this place?’ they ask us. We remain silent, looking at each other quickly and trying to find some civilized words. Strong laughter on both sides follows. ‘We thought the same’ they reply to themselves. We agree on a dinner together later in a nearby restaurant.

The boat trip lasts four hours. The guide takes our boat through a narrow channel where birds are scarce and water lilies flourish and blossom. Only tall weed grows above the water level yet it provides enough support for nests. We see the English couple AGAIN as their own boat catches up with us. Are we being followed by MI5? Later on we leave the channel and we enter the delta where we can’t tell the border between see and river anymore. Younglings on water lilies beeping for their mothers, thousands of seagulls, pelican family and all kinds of birds I can’t even name make this evening extraordinary. Coming here when the sunset starts is strongly advised! This was worth all the trouble getting here, to the edge of Europe.

After the dinner (and making sure that the English guys are really not following us) a drink of local spirits seems like a good idea, but the local bars don’t serve any Romanian alcohol. We’re spending the last night in a private house in the presence of its inhabitants. They are friendly people, but I will never understand how they can build a dry toilet in the yard where their children play. You see them run around when you’re sitting inside. Our bed is very old and the room is tiny, but we get to enjoy the place from the locals’ point of view.

In the morning the family makes tea for us, we exchange contacts and say goodbye. Although we don’t feel like going back to Bucharest, a train takes us slowly towards it. We spend one day in parks and the night in a well-known hostel to avoid even more unpleasant experiences in this city.
This trip has shown me how close a distant place can be and the other way around. The Balkans is full of unexpected situations and worth exploring if you’re ready to get surprised!

Serbia

Serbia

I visited Serbia on a trip across the Balkans in 2013. This post summarizes my impressions from there and the story begins on a bus from Bosnia.

We get a puncture and the bus stops in one of the villages to get a quick fix. Meanwhile we are free to explore this place which turns out to be a ‘water melon village’ in the middle of the harvest. Tractors loaded up with tons of melons and old workers chilling out on the top of them will always stay in my memory. At this point we don’t know yet that a true water melon week is coming.

In contrast to Bosnia the religious buildings are orthodox with typical shapes and colors. Finding the hostel near the main square in Belgrade isn’t very easy, but with some help of locals we manage to enter an old building with an elevator that’s very hard to trust to, but it works.One bathroom for three rooms seems insufficient. Nevertheless we are satisfied with the room even though I’m surprised with the bubbling aquarium.

The host reassures us that parking the car anywhere we like is not a problem because Serbia is not a member of EU and the police can never track the owner of the car. He mentions the EU two more times, giving me an impression that it’s something sacred in his eyes.

We take a free Belgrade walking tour which takes us through neighborhoods with so-called Kafanas. Our young lively guide tells us that they are basically pubs that were meant for men only in the past. One can smash his glass against the floor after finishing the beer (nowadays permission from the waiter is needed). This tradition wasn’t convincing enough to get me into trying it. I also skip a free shot of rakia (spirits) offered by the guide which is very popular overall in the Balkans.

The view from the city fortress is quite nice. From what the guide says I only remember the story about NATO bombarding the TV building in a non-destructive way, leaving the pillars untouched and destroying only the equipment (and windows). The tour ends at the National Bank where everybody can have a photo of himself on a bank note, reminding the times of the second greatest inflation in the history.

It’s very hard to find a bar out of the party district. Instead of a bar we find cockroaches and many closed doors. We get to know our host better when he learns that we understand Serbian. His overly friendly high voice makes you think you’re the love of his life. My friend makes up a nickname for him – Koko the creepy guy – when he shows up in his girly night-gown. However he’s an excellent host and the most useful source of information.

Visiting the huge marble cathedral turns into a disappointment at the very moment of entering it. The inside is under construction and the visitors don’t get to see anything but scaffolding and plain walls. Lesson learned: In Balkans it doesn’t matter what is inside as long as it looks good from the outside.

Before we leave Serbia’s capital we buy new watermelons. Looking for a CNG gas station after leaving Belgrade turns out a very poor decision and we spend hours looking for it. There’s a lovely old couple selling watermelons not far from our next destination, Djerdap national park. Their field, hut and tractor seem to have been big parts of their lives. They don’t even want money for the melons. How humble! While my friends communicate with them (in the local language), I notice that there’s also a bed in the hut. Do they spend night here, in the middle of the fields? We take pictures of them and gratefully leave a big tip for which we get yet another extra watermelon.  There are hardly places for sitting in the car and we have the watermelons on our laps as well. I can’t stand watermelons anymore.

We must stay in a hotel in Golubac this night because of a heavy storm, but it pays off well. They happen to have a sauna which I’m fond of since my stay in Finland. It seems to be a good way of spending the evening with all the thunders and lighting around us. The wanna-be-strict sauna keeper lets us go out to the pools with an ongoing party even though he forbade it to begin with. Perhaps our Slavic languages softened him, although he says it’s easier to talk English to a Czech guy and I must agree since I don’t get a word he says in Serbian. The strangers invite us to join them and we don’t hesitate to jump into the cold water. Following our example everybody jumps in and the real party starts now!

The look at Danube from our hotel is truly magnificent and we don’t know yet that the best is yet to come. After exploring the ruins of the famous fortress in Golubac, we head down the stream to go for a hike later that day.
We discover a breath-taking view of Danube separating Serbia and Romania near Donji Milanovac. The summit we stand on offers us a great spot to have lunch. One has to walk only a little bit uphill to get rewarded with great moments at this beautiful place.


Later on we travel again, but in back in time. We find a camping place that in fact is a youth camp from the Yugo times and it’s full of children. The only way to get a shower is to go to the swimming pool. A tough guy watching over the hall tells us to buy tickets first for which we must find a dark spooky office with a velvet-like purple carpet. There we find an easy-going middle aged woman who seems to be in charge of everything in the camp and we get our tickets and permission to stay overnight. The water smells of chlorine more than it should and we don’t spend too much time there. The desired showers are in the underground, supplied with cold water only. There’s water all over the floor causing us discomfort when taking showers. This place has probably never been reconstructed since the 70’s, although a bench with a table nearby and a lot of place to pick a tent are appreciated.

We have to make a great distance to get to Bucharest. Our car goes through Bulgaria because there and only there we can get CNG. The roads in Balkans are horrible and I wonder how we even made this part without getting a puncture. Going through the border from Serbia to Bulgaria is another time travel since nothing has changed here since the Yugoslavia era. After a proper check-out the officer smiles when she sees my picture in the passport and we enter Bulgaria in order to get to Romania late in the evening.