Transylvania, Romania Oct. 1-4

Thursday, Oct. 1st.
I arrived back to my flat in Budapest at around 9:30am.  I was very cranky, having not gotten THAT much sleep on the train back.  I think it may have had something to do with the sleeping pills I took during my hangover, and the hallucinations that proceeded to occur.  I don't remember ever laying back down for a quick nap, as the roommates woke up and wanted to hear all about what happened.

Sooner than later, I had to pack up my things and head over to the meeting spot to catch our bus.  I showered, but still somehow felt very dissheveled as we made our way, stopping at a sandwich shop to pick up some food for the road.  Having not ate in what felt like forever, I grabbed three of them.

On the excursions held by API, we hire a driver and a large van/small bus capable of holding 17 people, so there only being 7 students, Reka, and 3 other tag alongs, we had plenty of room to spread out, and I opted for a row of 2 seats all for myself.

The drive was about 8-9 hours through the open grasslands of Eastern Hungary and the rolling hills and mountains of Northwestern Romania, before we arrived at our destination of Cluj-Napoca (Romanian) or Koloszvar (Hungarian).  The city has 2 different names because of the large minority of ethnic Hungarians who live all over Transylvania.  We were being accomodated in a fairly new hotel called Hotel 7, which was set up on one of the hills of the city.  We checked in and found our rooms, and proceeded to make our way down into the city center to find a place to eat.  Walking on the main strip, we found a fairly nice restaurant that looked like it catered to the more upper class customer, yet when we looked at the menu we were astonished to see the prices for meals.  Between the 8 of us that had a full me (soup/main course, sometimes both and a drink or two) the bill came out to be only 80 dollars.  We all agreed we loved Romania.

Proceeding from there, we decided to venture off to look for a bar to go to for a few drinks.  Kevin had asked the receptionist at the hotel about a good place to go, and attemped to navigate us to this place.  When we arrived, we all were clearly underdressed (Jeans and a tee shirt/shorts), but decided to try our hand at entering anyway.  We all made it in except the person wearing shorts, Kevin, so the group split up, with Erica, Cristy, Corey, Hannah and I staying and Kevin, Dan, and Claire heading back to the hotel.  Standing around at the bar, we all were convinced that everyone was staring at us, and that everyone knew we were Americans, but we ordered drinks anyway and huddle in a circle, laughing at the crazy Romanian's and their dancing.  I believe we were all on the verge of leaving anyway, when Corey decided to go party boy and accidentily knocked Cristy's glass from her hand, falling to the floor and breaking and in the process giving Erica a minor cut on her foot.  The girls ran off to the bathroom to patch her up, as I stood there and acted like nothing happened, trying not to draw any more attention to our group then already was.  I kicked the glass off to the side while waiting for the girls, and once they were done we immediately left and headed back to get some rest.

Friday, October 2nd
The next morning, we awoke to breakfast in the Hotel, and then met our guide for the remainder of the trip, Zolt.  He was born and raised in Cluj-Napoca, but is completely Hungarian in ethnicity.  The first part of our day consisted of a two hour walk around the city, seeing some of the major highlights.  Having spent the night on top of one of the hills, we first drove over to a lookout point and you could see almost the entire city.

After our tour, we boarding the bus and headed off on an hours drive to the town of Torda, famous for its underground salt mine.  I had never been in a salt mine before, so this was a first.  The temperature inside was a cool, crisp 45-50 degrees, so we all bundled up before heading in.  The tunnel to get inside the mine was really cool, and very, very long, as seen here. Inside, there was an echo chamber...we all agreed I had the loudest voice (go figure) and I was to yell something.  My echo was heard something like 26 times over, and our guide said that normally 17 is the approx number of times you can hear it.  Guess I do have a really loud voice....Inside, there was salt everywhere, as you can imagine.  A staircase encrusted with a few inches of salt, salt dripping down from the rocks on the walls and ceilings, salt everywhere!  It was a pretty neat thing to see, and a nice stopping point during the day of what was a day full of activity!

Finishing up at the salt mine, we again boarded our bus and began our journey to the town of Segesvar, or Sighisoara in Romanian.  This town is best known as the birthplace of one Vlad Tepes, or as you all know him Vlad the Impaler/Dracula.  To preface what I am going to say next, Romania has a very large minority of Roma people, or Gypsys.  For the most part, normal people think of Gypsys as poor/nomadic people always on the move and scam artist masters.  However, in this particular part of Romania, the Gypsys are very rich.  The men wear a tall, black hat (similar to what was worn by Abraham Lincoln) their whole life, and the price of such hat is upwards of 100 Euro.  Also, they build extremely large houses, larger than any of those that a normal Romanian would build, to symbolize their status and wealth.  This is one reason why they are not very liked in this part of the world.  However, these 3, 4, and sometimes 5 story houses are never fulled occupied.  The Gypsys only live in the basement or ground floor, and all other floors contain absolutely little to no furniture at all.  I snapped a picture of such houses as we drove by on our way to Segesvar.

We arrived in Segesvar at around 330-4pm.  We walked up to the old town and visited the clock tower, walked up to the lookout of the clock tower (obviosuly), visited Vlad Tepes' birthplace, grabbed a bite to eat, and before we knew it we were leaving and on our way to our accomodation for the next two nights in Zetelaka.  Zetelaka is located in an area where there is a very high percentage of ethic Hungarians...I believe about 90% of the county was made up of them, specifically, the Szekely Hungarians.  Zetelaka was not that far from Segesvar, about an hour and 30 minute - 2 hour drive.  We arrived in the village, and after navigating a few dirt roads, we found our street with the host families we would be staying with.  There was another, much larger tour group arriving at the same time, and we all were invited into the yard of the head businesswoman in the village, Olga.  Welcome drinks and snacks we given by children dressed in traditional clothing, and we all stood around and socialized for a few minutes before heading off to our respective families.

The houses on this one particular street were actually very nice.  There is a program called Rural Tourism that many towns in Transylvania take part in, providing homestays filled with nice beds, clean sheets, and excellent meals.  For some areas, including the one we were staying in, this is the only main source of income they have.  That is because Romania refuses to use funds that are sent specifically by the EU for the development of the Transylvania region.  However, Romania does not like the fact that Hungarian minorities are using their ethnic heritage as a tourism device, and the governments ultimate goal is to assimillate all minorities into one, Romanian-centric culture.  They do this by refusing to allow ethnic Hungarians to be educated in Hungarian schools, attempting to abolish the use of the Hungarian language, etc etc.  And it is such a shame.  But anyways, our home was very very nice...nice furniture, fairly large, and our host was a lovely woman named Erika.  She didnt speak much English and kept out of sight, and only really appeared when serving us food.  Speaking of food, it was absolutely amazing.  We were given two flasks of Palinka, one Cumin flavored and the other Sour Cherry, and our meal started off with this Paprika infused potato soup that was to die for.  The soup was followed by a Schnitzel of sort, with rice pilaf and pickled cabbage and peppers.

 After dinner, our tour guide Zolt rounded everybody up, apparently to go look for bears or something.  Well, we didnt find bears, and it was cold and raining, but we did find this very scary bridge over a small river, with some A-Holes deciding it would be funny to swing it back and forth when no one could see more than a foot in front of them coughKevinandDancough.  After our little walk through the village, we walked towards the main road and headed to a bar to enjoy some drinks, before heading off to bed in preparation for a long day on Saturday.

Saturday, Oct. 3rd.

We awoke to the smells of breakfast, but before that, I proceeded to take a shower in a tub with no curtain.  If anyone has ever done that, they know the challenge that situation poses and the extremes you have to go to not to flood the entire bathroom. But anyways, after a nice helping of friend eggs, meats, and cheeses, as well as 5 cups of coffee, we again loaded off the van and were off to an obscure location in the Eastern Carpathian mountains for a hike. Something like three hours later, and after a quick stop off at the top of a mountain to galavant around for a few minutes...

....we arrived at the Bekas Canyon.  We walked the 3 kilometers through the canyon, admiring the scenery and and such and stopping to pick up a souvenir or two.  I bought a winter hat because it was mad cold, and also a traditional Szekely knife...crazy sharp.  Here are some pictures of that!

After walking through the canyon, we made our way back up the road towards Lake Gyilkos, or Killer Lake.  Legend has it that a shepherd and his heard were swept into the like by an avalanche/mud slide, and his image can still be seen in the moon light at the bottom of the lake.  We grabbed a bite to eat, a few of us getting fresh grilled stream caught trout, and also chimney cakes, a cylindric shaped pastry that still had smoke coming out one of its holes after it was cooked, hence the name.  After we left, we stopped in a few small towns on the drive back to Zetalaka, one town Szovata, is famous for its helio(sun)-thermic lake, and another, Korond, is famous for its handmade pottery.  I picked up a few pieces because they were fairly cheap.  I also enjoyed a very nice sunset and a "moonrise?"

Dinner at the home-stay was even better the second night then the first.  The soup to start it off was amazing, and was followed by some cabbage stuffed with minced meat and sour cream, again, amazing.  After dinner, we all agreed we didnt want to walk back to the main road to go to the same bar again, so our guide called the head host family lady to see if there was a bar in the village, which there was.  It was "right across" the large wooden bridge, so we ventured off to see if we could find it.  Crossing the bridge, we didnt have the faintest idea of where this bar might be, so we continued walking in the direction of the wobbly bridge we had crossed the other night.  I decided it would be fun to cross it and actually know where it goes/hold on and not be in the rain, and we had all but given up on the fact that we couldnt find the bar and were going to head back.  In a sense, we did one large loop through the village, and on our way back passed the same bridge that we were told the bar was across.  I told everyone to stop and that I was gonna walk back over to see if I could find it, and I came across what looked like a large barn with a HORSE parked outside and a bunch of noise and commotion coming from within.  I went back to my tour guide and told him of the horse parked outside, and he said yes, that is the bar we were looking for.  So strange haha.  But anyways, the bar was a small hole in the wall inside a courtyard to what I thought was a barn.  The bartender was very friendly, but we apparently picked the night when the village drunk decided to show up as well.  Not even our tour guide, who speaks Hungarian, could understand what he was saying.  But we managed to make friends with Ferenc (the village drunk), Bela (his friend who may or may not have been embarrassed by Ferenc's actions) and another man who just sat quietly at the table drinking as we all attemped to converse (which was a fail, because we dont speak Hungarian and none of them spoke English).  Another man showed up at the bar, and proceeded to buy every one of us at least 2 rounds of drinks, maybe 3.  He was younger than the other 3, but was missing teeth and was creepily hitting on the girls lol.  This night in its entirety may have been one of the funniest nights of my life.

Sunday, Oct. 4th.

We woke up feeling greatttttttt (NOT).  Many of us were hungover/still drunk.  We got on the bus and drove to the city of Tirgu Mures and walked around the city for a few hours (most of us).  We visited a few churches and the cultural palace.  The city center was very quiet but that was most likely do to it being early Sunday morning.  We left to head back towards Cluj-Napoca and drop our guide off, before heading back on the 8 hour drive to Budapest.

 

All in all, Transylvania was about 35% what I was expecting, with the other 65% surprising the hell out of me.  I knew there were going to be old villages, I knew there was going to be a strange mystique associated with the land, but some of the information we all learned and the sights we took in were invaluable, unable to describe to someone unless they visit there for themselves.  American's thoughts of the area consist of Vampires, and thats about it, but there is oh so much more to discover about this wonderful, naturally beautiful area in Eastern Europe

All pictures of my Transylvania trip can be seen here: Transylvania Pictures!