in addition to our arrival and our clinics, we did some other cool stuff in romania as well. a few people in our group were invited to be on romanian tv, and on the last surgery day, i got to play hookey for a while and be on buzau city's morning show. they asked me what i liked about romania, and i responded that the food was pretty good. they asked me what i had eaten. i said "i don't know, but it's good!" i think that made 'em happy. then andrea told them that in the us, dogs live inside the house, and hers sleep in the bed with her. and that if it gets too crowded, that her husband moves to the couch. they didn't really know whether to laugh at that or be disgusted: dogs being in the house is not something that happens over there. the day we were on the show was also "turkish" day, so there were belly dancers performing and lounging around the stage before and after our interviews. i'm not sure if it was supposed to be a serious, or if it's their version of the daily show...
we visited some mud volcanoes in buzau county and were pleasantly surprised at the lack of restraint offered to mud volcano tourists. i would have expected at least a bunch of "don't touch the mud" type signs, but no - a guy at the gate took our money and waved us on in to acres of mud/stone stuff. basically, there are some hot springs underground that combine with silt, which all bubbles up in a gooey mess and runs down the sides of the hills made by former mud. then it all solidifies and over about a billion years, i'm sure it will turn into sandstone. in the meantime, it made a whole bunch of awesome mountain/crevasse-y formations that reminded me a little bit of sand dunes at death valley. no hamburger-butt from these though - i was careful not to slide down any. we had some fun running around and climbing through the little mud valleys and making crude jokes (c'mon, they were "blup-blupping" like a bean fart in a bathtub).
our driver told us that there was a monastary on the way back to the hotel, and asked us if we would like to go see it. sure we would! then we learned that "on the way" doesn't mean the same thing in romania that it does here. so after we went over/around a mountain or so and around a bunch of curves (still at a ridiculous pace and again with the accordian music) we arrived at a monastary just in time for it to be too dark to see anything. after our driver asked around, he found a monk who was willing to let us in to see thier chapel and talk to us about it. turns out this particular monk used to work at the casino on a carnival cruise ship before he became a professional basketball player, but then he realized that something was missing from his life and he became a romanian orthodox monk. he explained that this was the newer chapel (only about 180 years old) because the 600 year old chapel had gotten too small for all the people who worshipped in it. the paintings and sculptures and stained glass were impressive. as we were leaving, he gave us all bracelets that had been blessed with holy water (except our driver, who had one already). then we made friends with a pack of local dogs in the parking lot before we drove back to our hotel.
that night, there was a banquet of sorts for blind people in our hotel. each blind person had an escort, and they started partying just after we got in. there was traditional romanian music and dancing, and we were invited to join in. several of our group did, and we had fun. after some liquid encouragement, more of our group joined in. eventually we all trickled away to get some rest before our trip to transylvania the next day, but the party went on long after most of us "crazy americans" had gone to bed. towards the end of the party, someone noticed a water leak, and several of the upstairs showers had to be turned off before it could be fixed. thank goodness our group had people on both sides of the hallway, and that we were willing to share. so in the morning we all got our showers in and packed our bags and got back on the bus. the drive took a couple of hours. there were some gorgeous hills in full autumn colors to watch along the way. sinaia is a tourist hotspot in transylvania with little coffeeshops and pubs and restaurants and whatnot, as well as street vendors and little souvenier shacks all over. we drove through the main area of town to get to our hotel, which was basically a 3-d ikea catalog. very nice stuff. we got all checked in and then started exploring the town. there ws a nice central park with random statues and benches and walkways around a fountain. downtown had food (cheesy noodles for me) and some guys playing ecuadorian music on a street corner - pan pipes and all. i got some wiener coffe in the grocery store (couldn't resist) and was really, really excited to find both kinder chocolate and jaffa cakes there! the jaffa cakes are already all gone, by the way.
that night, we intended to go out for dinner as a group, but the first place we tried turned us away because we didn't have a reservation. so we went somewhere else and were ushered in, given drinks, fed, and well taken care of. there was music and dancing, and fancy napkins and whatnot. it was only after we'd been served our meals that we realized we had crashed a wedding. whoops! then the musicians took a break, and all the dancers went back to their tables to light up. did i mention that romanians don't have a problem with smoking indoors? this wedding was one of heavy smokers, and the restaurant was not well ventilated. we ate, paid, and left coughing. there was an "after party" planned, but it fizzled into watching the second charlie's angels movie on cable. yay.
that was saturday. sunday was halloween. halloween was castle day! we started with castle pelles, a fairly modern castle, which was walking distance from the hotel. vendors upon vendors plied their wares while we trekked up the hill to the castle. and it was pretty impressive! the exterior is in good repair, and really looks like a castle. there are statues and towers and all kinds of fun stuff. then we went inside. the opulence was ridiculous. fancy carved stuff plated with gold decorated with crystal, piled on more fancy carved stuff. i couldn't even imaging living in a place that ornementated. i'd be afraid to break the whole thing. it was fascinating to see how much decadence can be crammed into each room. for example, the theater room, in addition to having carved cushioned chairs and velvet curtains on the ornate stage, also had murals painted on the ceiling. and fancy carpet.
the grounds were lovely. woods and hills and a stream beside the cobbled road... as we walked back down from the castle, i purchased a woolen poncho from one of the vendors. it was all fringey and awesome, and i (as usual) was cold. i got some candy from another vendor (again, big surprise, right?). after pelles, we went out for lunch (at the irish pub, where i ate spaghetti and listened to the ecuadorian guys' music) before getting on the bus for bran castle. dun dunnn dunnnnnnn! dracula's fortress, here we come! along the way, we saw the gypsy village where part of borat was filmed. exciting stuff...
so we got to castle bran and i should have expected it to be crowded, but this! i've been spoiled by living in the middle of nowhere these last couple of years. there were masses of people milling around, tourists, vendors, locals, and dogs in between begging for food. we waited in line to pay for the castle. then we walked up the hill in a herd. then we waited in line at the heavy door (with a gargoyle doorknob - pretty awesome). then the crowd moved into the castle. yes, it was a castle. yes, it was pretty cool, but the best part by far was when cristina put fake blood on her face and fake fangs in her mouth and whirled around growling and hissing at the hordes of children following behind us. their screaming and fleeing was a delight to witness. then we had a little more space for the rest of the castle. whereas pelles gave us a guided tour (probably to make sure we didn't touch anything) bran let people pretty much just wander around and explore. i found several windows that weren't sealed shut, and let a little fresh air into some of the rooms. i found the wooden swivel shutter thing that made room for archers to aim at enemies. that wasn't sealed shut either. then i found a door that was locked, and it was annoying. oh well. if one locked door and screaming hordes of children are the worst that happens, i guess that's not too bad. probably the most disturbing thing i saw at the castle was the epoxy-encased vampire bats for sale in the gift shop. i was appalled and i was fascinated. i very nearly purchased one, they were so gruesome. (shudder).
after we'd all had our fill of crowded castle, we went back to the bus and learned about "satisfaction bread". the bread dough is wound around a wooden dowel, doused in some sweet syrupy stuff, and then roasted over live coals. the finished "loaf" is shaped like a big toilet paper roll, but oh, the goodness! three loaves lasted about four minutes, and that was just because the passing them around took time. and, thanks to the guys on our trip and its unique shape, the bread was named for its potential uses "when you're lonely, and you need a snack". yes, they meant it that way.
following that, dinner was at the steakhouse (where we said goodbye to new jersey, who had an early flight in the morning), followed by an after party at the irish pub, followed by a bunch of shivering people chattering our teeth back up to the hotel, where a few of us warmed up in the lobby and said goodbye to aurash, since he would be leaving early in the morning.
speaking of morning, that's when some of us went up to the cable car/gondola place to see if we could get a signtseeing ride. we couldn't because they were closed, but it was still a nice walk. then there was another walk to the train station to buy our tickets for that afternoon's train ride. then there was some shopping and another irish pub and some satisfaction bread before we collected the luggage and went back down to the station. the train was delayed a few minutes, so we got to watch some construction guys jauntily build while balancing on girders way up high... and we got to feed some stray dogs wandering around on the tracks. eventually our train showed up and we piled on and piled in and off we went. it took a couple of hours to get to bucharest, where we checked in to another hotel, and then walked down the block for dinner. we went to a romanian restaurant, where we were served traditional romanian specialties, and boy did the vegetarians luck out! we got bean paste and eggplant paste and some sort of ratatouille, and roasted peppers. om nom nom... the poor meat eaters got pork rind and chunks of pork fat and fish paste and yeah. heehee. there were local musicians at the restaurant and lonnie proposed to the violinist on the spot after he serenaded her. so that was dinner, and then we went on back to the hotel and set up our wake-up calls since we all had to leave pretty early. except taryn. she stayed a few extra days in bucharest and brought marius (the dog) and bobbi/el presidente back stateside on the airplane with her. the rest of us met up with cristina in the morning. she had gone back to buzau during the night to pick up mika the puppy and bring her out to us so that she could fly on the plane with jennifer to san jose. we made it to the airport, but it took a long time to finalize the puppy's paperwork. long enough for her to throw up in her carrier anyway. lucky me got to hold her while other people cleaned it up (as soon as we got through security). then it was goodbyes all around, as lonnie went home to va, the california folks all flew through paris, and us amsterdam-bound folks headed on out that way.
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