Romania

Well now I am at the airport with some time to kill, so I figured I would jot down a few more things about Romania.

If you go to a fast food joint, which are very very popular here, you generally pay extra for ketchup for your fries, or whatever sauce you want. Beer is very popular here, and quite cheap, you can get massive 3L bottles for about 4cdn. Makes the 40oz bottles back home seem small! It is a shame that they only recycle glass, everything else goes in the trash, or is burnt.

Driving trough the country lots of farmers would sell there fruit and vegtables on the side of the road, and wine in plastic water bottles, I can just imagine how good that stuff would be. But the fruit was great, pesticide is rarely used, and you could tell in the taste, it may not look perfect on the outside but the taste makes up for it!

Internet cafes are rare, probably because home internet is very fast and cheap, 50MB/s is the standard offer it seems.

Beaches are topless or nude, however the nude beaches weren't busy at all, as it is still slow season, not sure if I would have went butt naked or not

Romanians seem quite proud that they are in the EU, they have signs all over the place, they don't use the Euro yet, but they do have some nice money, it is all made of plastic, which is great stuff, especially at the beach, they are the only country I have been too where ALL the notes where plastic, Mexico and Chile only have some plastic notes.

That's all that I can think of for now, I did enjoy it here, and would certainly return!

Posted by Jason Willock

Well another update from my Ipaq.

Today is my last da in Romania, I really enjoyed my two weeks here. It is a beautiful country, wit friendly people, and very attractive women.

I spent a few days in the black sea area, pretty nice beaches, and lots of great little resort towns, wit names like Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. Unfortunately it was still slow season, so many hotels and restaurants were closed, but the beaches weren't crowded so it was a nice place to relax and get a good tan. Until the rain came.

So I decided to drive up north, to a city called Suceava, where there are lots of Orthodox monasteries, and I figured it would be a good way to see the country side, it was about 550km away, and took just under 9 hours, that was way to long of a drive, but it was fun. I even got pulled over for speeding, which was a bit scary, te police either didn't speak english or chose not too. They took my license and car paper work, and had me wait for what seemed forever. The other officer came out of his car, spoke something in Romanian, shook my hand, and had me sign something, gave me back m papers and said "loento" which I assumed was slow down, so I thanked him, and was on my way.

Driving on the highways is interesting, and at times a bit scary, but driving in Bucharest is crazy, I am glad I have a small car to weave around the chaos, there is a lot of construction going on, which makes it even worse.

Anyhow the nortern part of the country was nice, but the monasteries didn't excite me a whole lot so I drove back to Bucharest, got a nice hotel in treat for my birthday, and had a massage and a nice meal. Nothing to wild, although the massage was quite enjoyable.

Now I am just reading up on my next destination, Vienna, Austria. Where hopefully I will get my laptop repaired, I was going to start the process here, as I have next business day support, but I know that doesn't always pan out back home, and I already had bought my plane ticket.
Now I just have to find a place for my laptop in my suit case, I normally just carry it on board, but since it won't power on, I can't risk it, as I have been asked to turn it on a couple times before.

Well that is enough typing on this little keyboard.

Posted by Jason Willock

well some bad news, my laptop has died, it got dropped in Istanbul at
the airport, it was working fine, but seems to have decided to give
up.

this was just after I booked a car rental and a flight to Vienna. So
once I get to Vienna I will see how the HP global warranty I bought
works out.

so don,t expect a lot of updates this week.

I am truly enjoying the black sea area of romania and am looking
forward to driving my little Ford Fiesta around.

sorry for the spelling, typing this on my ipaq

Posted by Jason Willock

Well yesterday I went with a bunch of people from the hostel on a tour of
three castles in Transylvania, including Bran Castle, which is comonnoly
known as Dracula's Castle as in Bram Stokers book. However that was not
really his castle, his was actually the Poenari Castle, Dracula was also
known as Vlad the Impaler, not an overly friendly chap.

Anyhow the castles were allright, nothing quite what I had envisioned for
Dracula's castles, not dark and creepy at all, I also thought there would be
more goth type people here, but I haven't seen a single one. However this
area of Romania is very nice, nice mountains and lots of forrest, the view I
have as I type this on the balcony is very picturesque.

After the castle tour a few of us went for dinner, some nice Americans, and
one guy from England, we had some beers and some good food and conversation,
and then more beer, and more beer. Tossed a frisbee around for a while in
the main square of the city, went back to the hostel and had more beer, all
in all it was a pretty fun night, however I am not feeling overly energetic
today! Which is fine as I was planning on just having a relaxing day
anyways.

Tomorrow I am heading to the Black Sea coast, I am looking forward to that,
not really looking forward to the 8 hour train ride, but at least the trains
are pretty comfy so it shouldn't be too bad.

Posted by Jason Willock

Well not a whole lot report, Bucharest didn't really excite me, it is an
all right city, filled with lots of attractive women, who like to wear
provocative clothing, which is great, but I felt pretty uninspired there,
the buildings were all very similar, and pretty much all the old city was
destroyed. I was staying in a dorm room, and had a couple nice Finnish
girls as roommates for a couple nights.

I was very close to renting a car and driving around Romania, but I decided
against it, and took a train to Brasov, it is a city in Transylvania, I have
been here a few hours and quite enjoy it, even though it is now raining.
It's a nice little city in the mountains, nice clean air, tomorrow I am
going on a Castle tour, including Dracula's castle, so that should be
interesting, and since I am doing a tour, I will probably actually get to
see castles for a change, rather than my usual castle luck.

I'll probably spend a few nights here and then head down to the Black Sea
coast, in the city of Constanta, where Kevin's girlfriend Elena grew up.

I'll do another update tomorrow after my castle tour.

Posted by Jason Willock

Well I had a full day in Bucharest yesterday. Got up nice and early and headed twords the Palace. Which was started in 1984, and then stopped during the revolution in 1989. And was restarted a couple years later and finished in 2005. It's the 2nd largest building in the world size wise. The only thing bigger is the Pentagon. And volume wise it is the 3rd largest behind a couple pyramids. So it's a pretty huge place.

It was fairly impressive, the enforced tour cost $7 but to take photos it was another $15 so I passed on the photos. I did sneak a couple when on the balcony with a nice view of the largest boulaverd in Europe. It was international childerns day yesterday apparently, and the place was swarming with kids. It was also funny because in the palace there was a surgical convention with a couple areas on breast implants, so all these little kids were walking by implants, and photos of breasts.

The rest of the city that I have seen is pretty ordinary, lots of communist buildings that look very similar, but there are lots of nice parks and fountains about, so it is a nice city.

I headed out to a nightclub last night, it was called Twice, it was nothing special, very smokey. But there were lots of dancers wearing just nipple pasties, and a very short skirt.

Today I am planning on checking out the revolution square. I don't have access to internet with my laptop, but I get to use a computer here that has very fast internet. Upload speed of around 400k/s and downloads about 10,000k/s pretty impressive for a cable connection! So I was able to upload a few videos to youtube.

Posted by Jason Willock