Romancing the Vampire

Trip update: Cycled across the border from Bulgaria and along the Romanian coast north, to Constanta. Then we took a train in and out of Bucharest and spent a rainy week bicycling west on the Transylvanian plateau.

In the city, it's easy to imagine that Romania will join the E.U. as planned in 2007. Foods of choice are pizza, spaghetti and schnitzel. Everyone seems to speak some English, German, Italian, French. Many people have spent time abroad and they've been very kind to us, offering directions or a place to stay. One hostel owner drove us around Bucharest in a personal tour guide. Another teacher offered for us to stay in the gymnasium (by far our largest accommodations!).

On the down side, I got pickpocketed at 9:00 on a Sunday morning in Bucharest. Just your usual drunken thugs bumping into me on the street. Annoying, but didn't suspect a thing at that time of the day. Very professional in that respect. So, spent the day making expensive phone calls to the U.S., cancelling credit cards, bank cards, etc. A real pain in the butt (and I do know about pains in the butt with some authority). Tragic but some consolation that even the Romanians get taken. It's a rough and primitive country, in some respects.

Then into the Transylvanian Mountains. Ahhh... the beautiful mountains. Streaked with snow, shrouded in rain clouds and dark forests. Castles, vampires, beer, did I mention the beer? Lots of beer. And really, really good sausage. More of the 8 AM beer crowd. Not so bad, so long as you don't have to be anywhere real fast.

The total lack of infrastructure, is an uncomfortable reminder of Caecescu's tenure, even if while we were in Bucharest they were holding a beer festival in the park in front of his former castle. The major highways are potholed, single-lane affairs running through small villages, the air foul with exhaust and littered with the bodies of dead animals. Once we got off the highway, though, we had some of the best riding of our lives, through mountain passes, green and marked by outcroppings of pock-marked limestone. Small, red-tiled roofed villages every 10 km selling 30 cent espressos. All following a long and winding road, following a mountain stream swollen with unseasonable rain. (The Danube is still at a 100-year record levels and global warming is on everyone´s lips.)

It seems the countryside didn't change quite so much during the Communist years, and it hasn't changed so much now, either. In the villages everyone was on bikes and the bicycles and horse carts far outnumbered motorized vehicles. It's strange to see a Europe where the horse-drawn cart is alive and well, houses that received electricity in the 21st century, and scythes and pitchforks carved from branches. We imagine bicycling through the villages has the same appeal that bicycling through rural Ireland had in the 1970s.

So it was with mixed feelings, that we headed to the border and bicycled out on to the windy Hungarian plain.