2nd week: Transsilvania, Carpathian Mountains, Black Sea, Arriving at European Borders

as of now I try to put a map at the beginning of each post
(I also added one for the 1st week)

We are at the Black Sea! Warm like a bathtub the kids love it. We will go along this sea the next three weeks.

Last week started with a high-school visit in the East-Hungarian province capital Kecskemét. Robert teaches German at this school for secondary grade. He shows us around and introduces us to some school traditions. One of these traditions can be seen in the hallways: at every wall and corner hang huge class pictures of every graduated class since the 50ties, including pictures of their teachers. And since Robert already teaches quite some years we admire his I-am-a-serious-teacher-in-suit-pictures on many class memories.

The class of 2015 looks brave and smiling down on us: what a bright Hungarian future.

class rooms individually decorated by students 

Nice tradition: students start to write VOCACIO letter-by-letter backwards staring 7 days before vacation start. The teacher has to cope with the space left on the chalk board ;) 

Read this!

Paul not yet ready for school ;)

We say good-bye to Robert and at the same time also to Hungary.

@Klara&Robert: Thank you so much for the wonderful time which we spent together. Days after leaving you the kids were still day-dreaming of your garden, delicious food, water-games, ice-cream, …. You set the benchmark really high for us ;)

With a lunch box of traditional Hungarian food we were sent on our way eastwards via Békéscaba to the Romanian border, were we experienced our first border control, reminding us of both that Roumania has not yet become a member of Schengen and that travelling seamlessly through central Europe is a great achievement.

Lunchtime!

cheese stop.

Fast Food Religion: Contrasts in the Roumanian Country Sit.e

Most travel guides about Roumania start with their insights not before Sibiu (Hermannstadt) and mention explicitly that there is not much to see before. We make different experiences and enjoy a lot the authentic villages. It’s certainly a rough life, which people here experience every day, but it all feels very real and down to earth. Maybe this impression comes also from a chat with a 16-year-old in Chriştineu-Criş, while Susanne was getting some food. His openness and positive spirit, but also the dreams he shared with me were contrasting the sphere spread by the communist architecture in the center of the town.

For the night stay we pick a nice place at the riverside close to Ineu, before we continued next day (Tuesday) our trip to Sibiu. Our travel book indicates some parking's, where we could stay with our truck. However somehow we accidentally end inside the widely known Astra Open-airmuseum (website), where we were welcomed very warmly. The museum itself is a MUST when going to Sibiu. It shows in a marvellous way traditional wooden buildings from all over Roumania. The visit of Sibiu itself we postponed for a later dedicated Roumania discovery.

First impression in teh Astra Museum

Where is the water?

Faszinating basic technology.

Teamplay.

Water halfpipe for distillery

Chill-out.

Wednesday: After a long visit in the museum we continue eastwards to Brasov where we actually planned to add some protection to our plastic fuel repository and some means to lock our diesel repository. Unfortunately we arrived late so the garage we were supposed to contact was already closed. Ultimately closed was also the one and only campground of the town, so we have to be creative again in choosing our night stay. Our map showes us a nearby lake in a housing district, which turns out to be an awesome recreation area, with play grounds, BBQ-places

The race can start!

and … an advantage park (Park Aventura) with different climbing tracks in the tops of the trees. People received a harness (with two safety locks and a pair of wheels which you can hook at some places to a metal rope to slide from one tree to the other) at the entrance and choose their level of difficulty to cross the woods in 60 feet above the ground.

Thursday: After I arranged and scheduled the welding session to add some metal-protection to the truck, Johann and Antonia insist that I would come with them on the tour through the trees. People knowing me are aware that this is not my cup of tea – NOT AT ALL! After safety instructions and an already rather challenging beginner track, Johann managed to convince Antonia for the tour designed for at least 12-year-olds. Without doubt it was a little too ambiguous for me and I fought a lot of times the fear to bridge the route from one tree to the other. Entirely devastating for me was the fact that none of the kids had any problems; and just to avoid misunderstandings: The task was to bridge in 10-30m height around 25 trees securing yourself with two safety locks. The track ended by hooking yourself in a tree-top to a metal rope and sliding at 50 km/h for more than 300 meters over the lake. Questions?

When returning our harnesses to the staff I mentioned that Antonia (8 years) did the tour without assistance, four pairs of eyes were staring at us from paralysed faces. After a while they assured us that she was for sure the first 8-year-old who had the courage and manage to do this track.

Ready to climb!

12 year-old ... pah, I can do that!

The easy part.

The expert!

Toni climing through teh tree tops like a monkey.

300 meter flying over the lake

Friday: Paul wakes us up at six in the morning and we are ready for the welding day. The workers arrive around seven and welding starts to give Emma a new (under-)dress. In an old farm building outside of Brasov four experienced metal workers start to tear off parts from our truck in order to wrap our plastic fuel repository and make a metal box for six additional jerry cans. First guess was 4 hours. Soon they corrected their estimate and asked us if we were interested to visit Brasov, since it would take at least ‘til the evening.

Building the fuel-tank-protection 

Work in progress.

We agreed and co-owner of the company gave us a ride and showed us around in a personal tour starting in Prejmer (Tartlau) with its wonderful and very famous fortified church, then taking a great view over Brasov before visiting the historical centre with the black church and beautiful marketplace.

Fortified church in Prejmer from teh outside ...

... and from the inside.

One room for one family.

Great view over Brasov

Marketplace in Brasov

Time-out!

During all that time we had long discussions about Roumania in the past, present and future as well as personal topics. Somehow we overcame the supplier-customer relationship and ended up in the garden of the owners eating ice-cream and eating all kinds of fruits in their garden. The sun went already down when we returned to our truck where the workers had just finished the paint job. Incredible what they managed to do within one day!
Although the work took much longer than expected we decided to go for some kilometres in the evening hours and Emma climbed up – together with many other Romanians ;) – the Carpathian mountains to about 800 above sea level. We took a turn from the main road in the village of Buşteni into a small little valley where we stopped next to riverside.

Breakfast at the riverside.

Saturday: We had a couple of mosquito's in the car that night, we really need to find out where the spots are that they can sneak in. Paul has pretty strong allergic reactions to the stitches.The kids play in the water and we do some laundry in the river (of course with ecological detergent ;)). Since I was up early I took a walk further into the valley, where I found out that together with us 1000s of Romanians had chosen this place for camping ;) I also discovered that next to the people some animals visited the site: brown-bears! Trash containers were flipped over and screened for some good bear food.

The 'real' campers

Traces from a brown-bear visit last night

After some playtime in the river we crossed the Carpathian mountains and passed the capital going on to the Black See, namely to Constanța (there is nothing to say about these 350 km – just wheat, corn, sun flowers, “Basarabia e Romania” slogans at the highway bridges … oh yes, I forgot … and the one and only Romanian nuclear power plant which we passed in Cernavodă).

Arriving at the Black Sea was quite emotional for me, not only that this was my first time there, but also to realise that we just crossed Europe. Johann and Antonia suffered hard times, while I was repeating over and over again how overwhelmed I am when realising what we did.  We stopped on a concrete road next to the share, just in front of an old semi-demolished bunker facing to the sea (if anyone knows what they were for, I appreciate your comments). Johann did not like the shore at all and rather preferred the party beach a couple kilometres to the north, insisting very firmly … experiencing our first adolescence discussions ;).

After finally convincing Paul to go to sleep (in the meantime he manages to crawl in his sleeping bag from his bed and opens the door of the car with a ta-ta-waving of his milk bottle, sometimes ten times until he finally falls a sleep...)  some neighbours, who also put up their tent at the shore invited us to sit around a fire chatting about questions of life. What a wonderful evening at the shores of the Black Sea!

Arriving at teh Black Sea.

What a great place to dinner.

Look at me.

Sun shower is warm ...

... for some washing.

Ready for the night.

Sunday: The night was quite hot, but it is wonderful to wake up with the sound of the waves.

Breakfast

discovered by Johann.

But after a couple of hours the heat makes us once again leave and we head further south to the Bulgarian border. We do not have air condition in the car and need the wind of driving to stand the heat.
Before leaving the country first an homage to Romania and its people: We leave a magnificent country with a beautiful landscape, very open and friendly people, with places (e.g. Astra-Museum, Park-Avontura, …) which you can find as well elsewhere, but just not as special as in Romania. We are already looking forward to our dedicated Rumania-Discovery-Tour sometime in the future.

When crossing the border to Bulgaria no Bulgarian official was available to check our Passports. People seem to get prepared for Schengen Membership.

We head on to Golden Sands, which has not the best reputation of being crowded with tourists … . But we were prooven wrong! We spent a lovely afternoon at the beach and enjoyed a delicious dinner in a great ambiance.

Let it grow.

Hungry after playing in the water.

We decided to continue our way some more kilometers southwards into the sunset, with open windows and classic music. Unfortunately the week ends with a minor accident. When trying to find the access to the campsite in Obsor I touched the mirror of a parking car in a narrow road. After settling the damage I ended up in a decent conversation about life in Bulgaria.


So to sum up (Susanne): It is great to be on the road, to see the great landscape and meet nice people and their interesting stories. At the moment we are making a lot of kilometers, since we want to slow down and take time in Turkey and the countries that come afterwards. The driving is exhausting sometimes and our biggest challenges so far are: the heat, mosquito's and 24h-unchained-energy-Baby Paul. Order can be exchanged.