In this week’s guest post Kathryn Bullock describes her recent experience of spending Easter in the lesser known parts of Romania. In fact I suspect all of Romania is unknown to the majority of travellers. After reading Kathryn’s account you might agree that it’s worthy of a closer look.
The 12 day break between Good Friday and the May bank holiday proved too tempting not to take a flight to somewhere different. I had never been to Romania so we settled on a flight via Amsterdam to Bucharest and were somewhat surprised to find we had this beautiful country to ourselves. It’s a forgotten part of Eastern Europe with some amazing medieval towns, ancient wooden churches and stunning green landscapes. This is a good time to visit as its ancient customs are changing fast. Where else in Europe can you still see 17th century daily farm scenes with wooden ploughs and horse drawn carts?
Otopeni
We spent our first night in a gigantic room at Hotel Charter near the airport complete with balcony where we could hear the local stray dogs howling in unison; a common Romanian sound.
Curtea de Arges
We set off North East to Curtea de Arges in the region of Wallachia, famous for its colourful and atmospheric Orthodox church. Romania has a devout Orthodox Christian population so many of the locals were armed with candles and flowers heading off to mass. It’s a tradition to hang branches outside your home and decorate boiled eggs at Easter which you crack together chanting “Christ has Risen”. One of the strangest sights we saw in the church was of elderly people scrambling on all fours under a table to pay their respects with candle in hand. A local priest enlightened us to the significance of this act as it was a Good Friday tradition to emulate climbing out of the tomb.
Poienari Castle
Following the most amazing breakfast feast at friendly Pension Ruxi we headed for Poienari Castle, the real home of Vlad the Impaler otherwise known at Dracula. It’s a tough climb skywards for 1400 steps and the views from the top were worth the climb but there’s not much of the castle left. Romania has a fascinating and gory history as Vlad was a bit of a sadist and enjoyed impaling his victims on stakes and leaving them to die.
Călimăneşti
We crossed into Transylvania and stopped off at this spa town and stayed at the decayed but characterful Hotel Centrale. It reminded me of a French Chateau. The place is enormous but we had the place to ourselves and the hotel café was a great spot to watch the world go by.
Finding dinner was a challenge as eating out has not yet gone mainstream outside of the large towns. We finally found a motel with a lively local gypsy band and a fried chicken dinner. Romania was a bit of a culinary challenge and is not yet ready for “foodies”, although pizza and pasta were fortunately in plentiful supply.
Boita
A highlight of our stay was a delicious Easter lunch with roasted lamb, care of the very generous priest called Alexendru and his family in Boita. The meal was of special significance as the family had been fasting for Lent and it was the first meat and dairy they had enjoyed for a while. The meal was washed down with our new friend’s delicious pear schnaps, distilled in the village. The Boita church is not to be missed as it has beautiful paintings.
The local brew
The Romanian beer, largely brewed by South African Breweries is definitely a national treasure and very tasty. Every shop is packed with the largest bottles of beer I’ve ever seen – 2.5 litres of beer for the princely sum of £1.20. I can see Romania becoming a very popular stag party venue although don’t expect the beer to always come cold. Many shops and restaurants use their fridges like cupboards and they were very rarely turned on.
Sibiu
Our next stop was the lovely Saxon town of Sibiu with its beautifully preserved buildings and main square. The town is run by a German and the local economy is doing well. Romania suffers from a history of corruption which may delay its full entry into the EU, but it has some of the healthiest economic forecasts. The local currency is still the Lei which makes for a bargain trip. Don’t miss the huge, open air Sibiu museum which features buildings from all over the country, reconstructed in a leafy park with a lake offering open air concerts in the summer.
Sibiel
We were unable to stay at our first choice of Pensiunea La Llana run by a local priest Peter who speaks great English, but enjoyed the delicious homemade dishes in their restaurant, specially prepared for Easter. Apparently Good Friday is a holiday there to allow women time to prepare all the special Easter food. We met some interesting natives on holiday from Bucharest who were less than impressed with the level of hotel service they had received whilst on business in the UK, suggesting we have much to learn from the Romanian work ethic.
Look out next week for the second part of Kathryn’s Romanian adventures. In the meantime you see more of Kathryn’s pictures from Romania on her Flickr site.
Kathryn Bullock is a frequent traveller and a social media expert and entrepreneur who has worked in the travel industry for the past 25 years. She runs Face Marketing providing social media guidance and marketing to travel and financial service companies. She is also a regular blogger at Enterprise Britain.
Hi, Kathryn! Thanks for your lovely photos and reminders of our trip. We were there in 2007, when Sibiu was designated the European Capital of Culture for that year (that was when the main square was renovated and painted to its current lovely state). Our visit was in the fall, and I remember most homes outside of the really urban areas had vines with grapes growing on the gates, and a monk walking through a monastery with a bucket full of grapes just picked from the monastery wall and sharing some with us. I wonder if you’ll be talking about the Painted Churches of Bucovina in your next post – they were an absolute highlight of our trip! Nora
Not quite sure if i get your point right,but….since the UK,like Romania, is not part neither of the Schengen agreement nor of the Euro zone should I somehow consider that the UK has not…”fully entered”in the EU?…Pretty good post for what is worth considering it is the first visit.The name is “Curtea de Arges”,not “Cortea de Arges”so you might be willing to fix it.No offence intended,best of luck from Romania!
Words like “culinary challenge” and “eating out that has not gone mainstream’s” like music to my ears. I would kill to go to Romania and immerse myself in this different food culture..! Great post Kathryn and thanks for sharing it on ur blog Andy;)
Great post. I spent a few summers in Romania when I was growing up, and really loved it there. It’s nice to see the country getting some coverage!
Thanks for all your great comments and our regrets about not having enough time to visit the Bucovina monasteries are covered in part 2 of my blog next week – it was such a shame we had to miss them.
@claui2002 Thanks for the typo about Curtea de Arges and will ask Andy (the editor) if he can amend. Yes good point that UK is not fully in EU either so we have a few things in common with Romania – I’m personally quite pleased the UK is not right now, given the recent issues with the euro!!
Do share, “like” and keep your comments coming as it’s great to hear them as it was my first visit so I’m keen to hear from anyone else who’s been to Romania … how was your trip? When someone says Romania, what image do you have?
Thanks for the reminder Kathryn – have corrected the typo now. Really pleased to see Romania getting some good coverage. My only experience there was back in Bucharest in 1996 and from your account it seems to have moved forward a long way since those uncertain times.
Kathryn:I am Romanian and I used to work in Italy and previously in the USA,so my opinion about any trip to Romania would be subjective .The best I could do was helping through my comments those who instead of asking for detailed information from those who know,prefer to simply presume they know better and actually end up re-enforcing the stereotype of the “ignorant and arrogant Anglo-Saxon traveler” whenever they post articles on the Internet.I would recommend you to check Sam”s blog titled I”m more Romanian than you” and his book(available on Amazon) “The complete insider”s guide to Romania” for a more accurate image of the country from the point of view of an Anglo-Saxon cultural mindset(Sam is an American expat).Best wishes!
Hey Kathryn, great post! Love to read more such post. I really enjoyed your Romanian trip, I would love to visit Romania somewhere in future.
Hi Paul
Thanks for your kind comments and sorry I did not respond sooner as I only just saw your post last year!! Hope you got to plan a visit to Romania.