The eastern Balkan countries like Romania, Bulgaria and Moldova are probably not on the highest position on anybody’s travel list but there are some interesting things to see and do for those that have been there and done that. For this article, we’ll look at Romania as I have had experience there. Our initial reason for going there was to check out the country that was the mythical home to vampires.
Romania is also home to the Transylvanian mountains and hearing the name you can almost imagine the damp fog and meeting Christopher Lee or Bela Lugosi looming over you. Romania is also the birthpace of Vlad the Impaler, a 15th century Romanian king who defended the frontier between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire. At the time, the frontier bisected Romania and consisted of fortified towns established by the Teutonic Knights.
There are two main ways you can drive your car into Romania and follow the vampire trail. The first way is from Budapest in Hungary. You take the E60 east from Budapest to Debrecen and keep following until you reach the border at Oradea. Border formalities are perfunctory at best – maybe they were surprised that anybody would want to go there? Once inside the border you notice three things. Firstly, the standard of roads is more suited to horse drawn transport. Secondly, Romania’s main form of agriculture seems to be abandoned chemical factories and thirdly, there are two types of Romanian drivers. The first type is the relatively sane type. The second type is anybody driving a white van. They all appear to be rehearsing for a role in Star trek as they travel at warp speed wherever they go and deal with other vehicles as if they were Klingon battlecruisers.
Our first objective on the vampire trail is the town of Sighisoara. This is where one of the residences of Vlad the Impaler is located. The town itself is nicely presented but the residence is understated with a brass plaque outside and a souvenir shop inside. We overnighted in Sighisoara at the Hotel Korona as it had been a long trip from Budapest. The hotel was good value and clean.
Our next overnight was in Bucharest, which gave us the opportunity to visit Bran Castle on the way through, the setting for Bram Stokers novel, Dracula. Bran Castle is located to the south of the town of Brasov and you’ll be surprised by how small it is. Originally built as a summer retreat for the Romanian royal family, compared to Windsor Castle it is like the castle outhouse. You have to stoop wherever you go inside, so now you know why Dracula had rounded shoulders. There is plenty of free parking at the castle and an overwhelming number of trinket sellers flogging vampire’s blood and other paraphernalia.
Bucharest has a bit of a rundown feel about it. From the partially demolished buildings to the packs of dogs roaming about it comes across as being a bit seedy (don’t get bitten by a dog as rabies is a common disease in dogs in Bucharest). Mike Brady once told me that there has never been a statue of a committee, and I was glad to prove him wrong as there is a statue of the committee that formed the Common Market (forunner of the EU) in a park to the north of the city centre. Talking about the centre, it is dominated by the second biggest building in the world, the Romanian Parliament building. It would have been the biggest but the 11th floor hadn’t been started when the revolution overthrew the dictator Ceausescu. Another interesting fact is that the boulevard leading away from the building was designed to be 10m longer than the Champs D’Elysee and all the buildings you see are only facades to hide the real buildings behind (like a Hollywood set). 6 suburbs were demolished to build the building. Another curiosity is that the Metro has very few stops in the city centre as it was designed to take workers from their homes in one part of the city to the industrial parts on the opposite side.
The E61 is the way to leave Bucharest as it’s the only piece of freeway in Romania and heads east towards the town of Timisoara and then on to Belgrade. As an indication of how things are in Romania, we came to a stop about 6 kms outside the town of Pitesti. We thought it was a big accident that was blocking the road. After spending 45 mins crawling forward we found that it was an intersection between two main roads that had no traffic lights and no police, just a free-for-all with semi-trailers mixing with cars, horse drawn carts and whatever.
Timisoara is a big university town and the origin of the revolution that overthrew the Ceausescu regime. We stayed at the Best Western, supposedly the best hotel in town. It certainly was a good hotel with an excellent restaurant, but was decorated in 19th Century French Bordello style. Each floor had a different colour of velvet wallpaper, giving it a bit of an exotic feel. The final kms take you to the Serbian border, again with relatively perfunctory checks.
As a final point, the Transfagarasan highway, also known as Ceaucescu’s Folly is Romania’s number one tourist attraction. Known as the DN7C it appeared in Top Gear to dethrone the Stevio Pass as the best driving road in the world. It stretches for 150 kms north from Pitesti and is open from June to October, the highest point being 2047 metres.