Romania

Petar, our guide said, ‘travelling can be an exploration – not turned into a cliche’.  Visit Romania while it is still unspoilt by tourism; UNESCO World Heritage sites abound, the natural landscape is alive with a summer carpet of wild flowers and bears still live in the forests.

Budapest to Bucharest – 10 Days Hungary & Romania | Intrepid Travel UK

So, Romania came as a complete surprise to me.  I was expecting a third world country and found a rapidly expanding economy still unspoilt by tourism, but with so much to offer.

 

The countryside is extraordinarily beautiful.  There is a wide range of wild flowers in the fields.  The last time I saw anything like it was about 30 years ago in the hedgerows of southern Cornwall.

They love King Charles in Romania.  He has several houses there; one he has turned into a little museum celebrating all things sustainable.  He seems to have a sort of Prince’s Trust style charity there to support younger people learning the old skills.  There is a little museum in Viscri where they explain the projects and sell tea from Highgrove which made me laugh.

They have bears in the forests and increasingly coming into the towns.  I went to a bear sanctuary of some 140, initially rescued from decades in cages or performing in circuses.  Now the issue is they come into towns and people feed them so they keep coming.  Only last week a bear grabbed a young woman on a hike and she fell over a cliff.  They shot the bear.  In the sanctuary they sterilise them all and there is talk of a national cull.  Sad.

Libearty – Asociația Milioane de Prieteni (millionsoffriends.org)

There are less Roma begging on the streets than you would see begging on the London underground, because the police there beat them up, but they are there.  So too the children’s orphanages (still) due the Roma families of up to 14 children just leaving them in the hospitals after birth.

One good result of communism is that most young people have inherited property, but if it’s a flat it is usually in a block with no tradition of collective building maintenance so they are not a great standard.  There is a lot of graffiti.

We went to Bran castle which is the biggest tourist attraction in Romania and known as Dracula’s castle, even though there is no Dracula in Romania.  The closest is Vlad the Impaler who fought off the Hungarians.  The castle is more like their version of Buckingham Palace.

The group were interesting – all single – only 4/12 had ever been married.  The other two travellers from the UK were a doctor in her early 40s who had been on over 30 Intrepid tours and a Sri Lankan in her 50s who managed a chain of garages in Surrey and had been to over 120 countries.

It was very hot – temperatures in the late 30s, early 40s.  I have come back and England seems very grey, but I am still happy to be home!