Day 3

by Tim

By the cruise boat calculations, we are already on Day 3. I guess the first day was traveling on the plane. Day 2 was arriving early in the morning at the airport, checking into the hotel, some free time and then an orientation in the evening. We had dinner last night at an Italian restaurant adjacent to the Concert Hall followed by a relatively good night of sleep. I woke up every hour while Teresa made it through the evening with hardly a movement.

This morning's breakfast buffet was as good as I have ever had. The spread was amazing and delicious. I knew I was in Europe when I found the breads. Yum. Following, we boarded a bus and spent 4 hours traveling northward to the Bran Castle. While it is called a castle, it is really a stronghold, or fortress on an ancient trading route. Details about the history of the Bran Castle can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bran_Castle. The castle was made famous by the writings of Bram Stoker in 1897 when he created the fictional Dracula from the real life person Vlad the Impaler. To read more about Vlad the Impaler go to http://www.brasov.ro/history/dracula.php3.

Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and informative. We listened to her for the entire four-hour ride to the castle on wide-ranging topics including politics, communism, the revolution, health care, demographics, housing, schooling and much more. A few tidbits that I personally found interesting, but have not independently confirmed are:

• Current total population of 18,000,000
• Decrease in population due to outmigration in the last 10 years 3,000,000
• Doctors are paid around $600-800 per month in Romania but are being attracted to leave the country with salaries 5 times that amount.
• Nicolae Ceausescu, the communist dictator of Romania from 1965-1989, passed a law that every women was required to have four children. The women thought he had lost his mind.
• A large part of the citizens of Romania thought Ceausescu was an idiot toward the later part of his reign. They were mostly fearful, particularly of his wife.
• In the 1980's, the state-run TV station was the only station allowed to broadcast. It did so for two hours each evening and only showed one thing, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife talking to the people.
• Ceausescu was put in jail at age 14 because he was a street thief. Our guide said that he was lazy as a child and his parents were alcoholics. In jail, he became the errand boy for a fellow inmate, a political prisoner and leader of the communist party. Ceausescu had minimal schooling. You can read more about him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceauşescu
• A typical senior citizen receives an average pension of $200 per month and struggle to survive.
• There are likely 3,500,000 gypsies in Romania.

On the return trip, we went into Transylvania. The scenery was spectacular. Our big fancy tour bus was often brought to a standstill by house-drawn wagons. Wild dogs seemed everywhere and we saw a few goat herders that seemed to be doing the work of their ancestors. We also traveled through a ski resort town named Sinaia that looked like any other ski resort town, except for the holes in the sidewalks and partially crumbling infrastructure. It was a juxtaposition of old and new. Once in the mountains, it had the feel of a "poor Austria." The road were at times smooth and at others, barely passable. The beautiful scenic stops had their share of gypsy vendors and trash strewn on the ground. Despite this critical analysis, it was very very beauty. Here are some photos.