Romanian Road Trip

Romania. I love Greece eleven months a year. So, this year as well, we kept the family tradition of leaving Athens in August and did a seven-day, 1300 kilometres road trip in… Transylvania. Visiting Romania was a pleasant surprise. Sinaia, Brasov, Fagaras, Sighisoara, Turda, Alba Iulia, Sibiu and finally the famous serpent-like mountain road, built in the ’70s, in the Carpathian Mountains.

Romania is a comparatively poor country, but unexpectedly clean. With no anarchic and arbitrary building constructions. No garbage next to the roads, no broken pavements, and no perforated (from bullets or graffiti) road signs. Old castles and mansions from medieval times and the pre-communist period, clearly demonstrate a territory of rich history. Churches everywhere, both Orthodox and Catholic.

Romania is a country with roads that lack holes (and dead dogs on the asphalt) but has very patient and well-behaved car drivers, (the amount of huge X5 & X6 BMWs is truly amazing). Whilst the Soviet-style mega-apartments do exist, on the outskirts of all cities, it is wonderful how the old city centres have all been kept intact. The rural areas are well cultivated without a trace of the plastic packaging of agricultural aids. The six different small boutique hotels, in fortresses and old towns, we stayed, all represented excellent value for money.

In the rainy vast forests under the Moldoveanu peak, we met the world-famous Romanian Brown Bears.

Mothers and cubs sat seamlessly and tolerantly observing the cars and voyagers pass by. While alerts from the Romanian Civil Protection were constantly received on our mobiles with instructions on how to deal with these loveable wild species. Today more than 60% of the European brown bears live in these mountains.

In contrast, on the wide central roads of Bucharest, the “Palace of the People” (now Parliament) raises towards the sky, this totalitarian architecture building, conceived by Nicolae Ceausescu, was built by 100.000 “volunteers”. Life takes strange turns, as the main top balcony from which Ceausescu had hoped to address the masses, never materialized.

The only one who ever stood on that balcony with huge crowds’ underneath was another - dead today – person, Michael Jackson. From the living, it was Robert Murdoc, 1990 who tried to buy this pharaonic building but was unsuccessful. Today 70% of the Ceausescu building remains empty. His family house remains intact and politely awaits its visitors. The fact that the revolution of 1989 only lasted one month (December) and was not totally destructive nor divisive, enabled the country to recoup fast and today Romania is at ease with its past.

Most, or nearly all the voyageurs we met in the tourist areas, were Romanians. And of course, every Romanian we met, had, or dreamt of, going to Greece for the summer holidays. Once again, the thoughts of how fortunate Greece is for the generosity of the Creator in terms of climate, biodiversity, and scenery, travel in my mind. Now back home in Athens, the radio boosts that this year Greece will surpass an all-time record in tourist arrivals, I wonder what we can do as the inhabitants of this country. I think of the inaugural speech of John F. Kennedy where he uttered the challenge, “ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.”