Dachs Thoughts

Christmas Day

I enjoyed my first Christmas in another country. I had a lazy start to Christmas morning, and had a nice and (relatively) quiet and relaxing Christmas day at the apartment. Everything was closed so I got a breakfast cooked in. Enjoyed opening some presents and getting some surprises.

Spa Day in Poiana Brașov

The day after Christmas we went and spent some time at a spa at Hotel Ana up in Poiana Brașov. It was cold and snowy, but we went and had a swim and then some steam baths. I wasn’t brave enough to run outside (in the subfreezing evening) after the steam bath to the outdoor hot tub, but lots of Romanians seemed to be doing that. They’re definitely a very active people.

After a couple of hours of spa time, we had a light dinner at the traditional restaurant Stâna Turistică where we again saw singers dressed in traditional Romanian clothing serenading the crowd. The place is filled with stuffed animals like a hunting lodge. I again managed to get home with some of their delicious apple juice.

Brunch at Grandma’s

I got a special treat as my friend Maddy’s grandmother invited us over for breakfast. This was my first chance to experience some traditional Romanian home life. Maddy’s grandmother had lived in her apartment for decades. She didn’t speak any English, and I only had my handful of Romanian phrases, but it was very nice. She had me drink some Țuică, a traditional homemade plum liquor, and made a delicious breakfast for us that consisted mostly of traditional homemade foods. We weren’t there too long, but it was a very nice experience.

Local Hikes, Shopping, and Furniture

Maddy got tied up helping a friend who was sick. Even though she’s still a nursing student, she’s become a medical resource for a lot of people. I spent one (pretty cold and a bit snowy) morning hiking up the valley behind my Airbnb, and I seemed to be joined by quite a few people. It was quite pretty. I also hiked up the base of Tâmpa mountain and a bit down the trail where I’d seen lots of other people go. It looks like it would be a nice hike in the warmer months.

Another thing I spent a bit of time doing on this trip was helping Maddy arrange an apartment she was in the process of setting up as a combined salon and Airbnb apartment. I spent some time assembling some furniture she had gotten, and the place was starting to take shape. We were able to get the bedroom functional which was a good thing. I hadn’t been able to book my primary Airbnb apartment continuously for my entire stay in Brașov, so the day before New Year’s Eve, I checked out of the apartment, and crashed in Maddy’s studio for the few days I didn’t have access to the other place. I continued working on some of the furniture in one room while Maddy worked on clients in the other.

New Year’s Eve

On New Year’s Eve, Maddy and her friend Doina came over with some traditional Romanian snacks for the occasion. We had some champagne, grapes, and various smoked meats and cheeses. Maddy also brought her dog to stay in the apartment to protect her from the holiday fireworks. The Romanians really go for the fireworks on this holiday, and unfortunately later in the evening one of the building residents was having a party and throwing big fire crackers off the top floor that were exploding right outside my apartment window, and it scarred the dog quite a bit. So I spent the hours around midnight into the early hours sitting on the couch with the dog in my lap comforting her from all the noise. More noise than I would have liked, but spending the evening with a dog in your lap isn’t a bad thing.

Transylvania, Brașov, and the southern Carpathian mountains

After driving to Brașov and getting checked-in to the apartment, we went to a nice traditional barbeque restaurant, Roata Norocului, and were entertained by a middle aged singer singing American pop songs, and also serenaded by Christmas carolers who came through the restaurant.

The bulk of my time on this trip in Romania I stayed in the mountain town of Brașov, which is a major tourist destination in the country, and used it as my home base. Most of my time in Brașov I stayed in a stylish Airbnb apartment reasonably close to the historic city center, but tucked up at the end of a valley right next to base of Tâmpa mountain. It was at the end of the developed land, but many people came up to hike up the mountain or into the valley beyond the apartment buildings. I was struck by how active the Romanian people were, as regardless of how cold and stormy the weather there were always lots of people out walking and hiking on their own or with their families. My activities on this trip included visiting around Brașov, helping my friend setup a new apartment as a business studio / Airbnb apartment, various sightseeing trips around the countryside, and some castle tours.

Bucegi Mountains, Bolboci Lake

After getting settled in Brașov for a couple of days, and having some nice meals, we took a trip up to the top of the Bucegi Mountains which stand starkly above the Prahova Valley and the cities of Buşteni and Sinaia. The peak reaches 2,505 m (8,219 ft). There are many conspiracy theories and folk legends surrounding these mountains. On the way up, we stopped at Bolboci Lake and had a snack at Cabana Bolboci, which sits next to the lake. We ate outside, and a nice mama dog came up and got our leftovers.

We made our way up towards the peak that held a cross that overlooked the valley below. Driving the TransBucegi the road was narrow and windy, and at the top got a bit snowy which seemed to confound some of the tourists who had come unprepared for driving in the snow. Up top there were many people out enjoying the snow. We got out to take some pictures and I was passed by a line of people on snow mobiles out on a tour. We traveled a ways further up the mountain, but decided to turn around as too many tourists were getting bogged down in the snow on a very narrow road. After coming down the mountain we spent a little time in Sinaia doing some Christmas shopping.

D.O.R. and Cheile Grădiștei

On Christmas Eve we decided to go out for a drive in another area of the mountains in Bran county. We started with brunch at the wonderful restaurant D.O.R., which at that time was only serving a fixed menu four course meal. It was delicious and gave me a chance to experience some special local (somewhat gourmet) dishes. Afterwards we went past the famous Bran castle and headed up into the mountains towards the mountain recreation and tourist resort area of Cheile Grădiștei. As we headed up into the mountains, it started snowing pretty good. We got to see some beautiful scenery in the fog and snow, and by the time we got to Cheile Grădiștei it was pretty socked in with fog. The ski area at the top has apparently hosted many international winter sports competitions. We walked around a bit and enjoyed the wintry weather, and then headed back down. For me, it was another nice dose of snow and mountains.

One big surprise about Christmas time in Romania is that they seem to love fireworks like the 4th of July in the U.S. Starting a few days before Christmas I started hearing loud fireworks going off in the valley where the apartment was, and it got louder on Christmas Eve, trailing off for a few days after Christmas.

Despite all the 25k+ miles of traveling I’ve done this year, I decided to squeeze in one more big trip over the holidays. I left for a long day/night of travel arriving in Bucharest on my birthday. My plan is to spend my birthday, Christmas, and into the New Year in România. This is too long a trip for lots of posts (e.g., every day), so I’ll consolidate the high level of my travels into a few posts. This will be the first time I’ve spent the holidays outside the US. I was interested in seeing how the holidays passed in another country, but it’s also a chance to experience December and January in the snowy mountains for the first time in a long time.

I left home in the morning traveling by bus and BART to the airport, and arrived in the late afternoon of the next day. The flight was long but bearable. Flying in, I transferred planes in Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, which was my first time in France (if the airport counts). Too hectic a changeover to be an enjoyable first visit. Despite diligently disinfecting myself and wiping things down, I was starting to get queasy again as I landed in Bucharest. This may have partially been do to lack of sleep leading up to my trip. In strong contrast to when I visited (arriving over a holiday weekend) in the spring, the traffic in Bucharest was insane when I arrived. It took me a long time to get picked up as my ride couldn’t even get into the airport, and it took a while for me to find her. Then, traveling back through town was also a mess. Despite the traffic, the town was illuminated with Christmas lights all over town.

București

The first few days of the trip were spent in Bucharest, to give me a chance to recover from the trip with one major site seeing tour planned. The Airbnb apartment was in the same building I stayed in previously, but it was higher up and looked towards the Palace of the Parliament, which was the main planned tour for this leg of the trip. We managed to hit a few nice restaurants including the historic Hanu’ lui Manuc where I also ate last time, and another restaurant in the old town Caru’ cu bere where we had a nice breakfast before the tour of the Parliament building. This was a beautiful old restaurant, dating from the end of the 19th century, with wooden furninshings and lots of spruce trees hanging from the ceilings decorating the place for the holidays.

The Palace of the Parliament is the 2nd largest administrative building in the world (behind the pentagon), and is the largest by volume. It is where the government meets, and where the federal bureaucracy is based. It also has a number of large venues that can be used for conferences and meetings. Construction was started under Ceaușescu but not completed till after the revolution when he was killed. We managed to get a tour that include the first few floors and the basement. It is beautifully adorned with marble and gold and is almost entirely constructed out of materials from Romania. They had some interesting historic displays in the basement depicting the communist era. After leaving, we came across a nice Christmas market.

One evening before we left we got an emergency notice about a fire in the area. The next morning the fog was pretty thick, and you could smell the smoke in the air. After a few days in Bucharest, we made our way up into the mountains of Transylvania where I would be spending the majority of my trip, based out of the city of Brașov.