Romania

I traveled to Romania Oct. 23-26 for Hungary's four-day weekend and had a great time.

Romania: 22M people, Romanian language (Romance), Leu currency, 7% Hungarian nationality (due to frequently overlapping historical boundaries)
Bucharest: Romania's capital, 2M people
Brasov: City of 300,000 people in Transylvania, Romania
Bran: City of 5,000 people in Transylvania and home to "Dracula's Castle"

My first stop was in Bucharest to visit an old friend from the NU ice hockey team. The city was unlike any I'd seen before. Due to the former dictator's megalomania (wording given by a Romanian I met), it had massive squares, including one that housed a replica of Paris's Arc de Triomphe. The Parliament Building [pictured] is the second largest office building in the world, after the Pentagon. There was active construction everywhere: Romania is growing rapidly (5-9% versus Hungary's -1-2%, range due to reestimates from global downturn) and buildings are going up all over the place, including within old buildings [below right, shell is the former secret police headquarters].

Now, this was an interesting and memorable experience from the get-go. I walked through a filmshoot at the airport. I saw Chinese Army generals with Beijing 2008 shopping bags touring the massive Parliament building. And then I met up with my friend, and we walked immediately to one of her friend's book launches, where a speech was given by the ex-wife of Romania's 1989-91 Prime Minister (the divorce had made national headlines last year due to some kind of scandal). My friend was Romanian, which paid huge dividends when we grabbed a traditional (and delicious) Romanian meal - sliced meat wrapped in grape leaves with rice and fried doughnuts for dessert. I felt like I saw most of Bucharest's sites that first day (and really enjoyed it), and then headed to Transylvania on Friday.

Brasov is a beautiful, small town in Transylvania. It was located at the intersection of trade routes between the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe and was very strategically important. As such, it was heavily fortified; many of the walls and watchtowers still exist today. It rained most of the time I was in Transylvania, which just made the town's tiny winding streets seem even more picturesque. Brasov boasts one of Eastern Europe's largest Gothic cathedrals and (excitingly) Europe's largest collection of Anatolian carpets.

In Brasov, I made friends with a great Australian girl at my hostel and we palled around for the next two days (and she even visited me in Budapest a few days ago). Part of this adventure involved heading to Bran to visit Dracula's Castle. Now, Dracula is a fictional character. Vlad the Impaler, who Dracula might have been based off of, did not live in Bran Castle. But this does not matter, as the masses continue to call it Dracula's Castle. Our visit was rainy and mysterious, and the castle was small, pretty and on a hill. It boasted two crucial castle elements: a secret staircase and a full bear rug. [Much better pictures here than the ones I took in the rain.]

My favorite part of Transylvania was that several of the towns put the names of their towns on nearby hills in big Hollywood-like letters. This led to situations suchas:
-Jenny in minivan bus: Do you know where we are?
-New Australian friend: Point to hill and laugh

After the Transylvanian experience, I took a 10-legged journey to make it back from Brasov to Budapest, via Bucharest's Village Museum and my ice hockey game. The Village Museum is Europe's largest open air museum and contains 50 traditional Romanian buildings. The circumstances of my visit were intriguing, but this blog post is too long by far already. As mentioned, I went straight to a hockey game from the Budapest airport, backpack and all. We won 10-1 and I scored! You can see some pictures of me in the game write-up. A successful adventure all around.