Rear ended by the Brides of Dracula!

Written by JB jnr
It took an hour to get out of Bucharest and nearly 3 hours to make the 150km journey up to the city of Brasov (see Dad's entry on the city).

We were in the non too salubrious suburbs of Brasov (pronounced Brashofv), stopped at traffic lights and all of a sudden our car lurches forward and sideways, and my head hits the side window and then hard on to the head rest. Dad swears and I cannot believe we have been driven into. A car crash, in a hire car in the middle of Romania – bar serious injury there isn't much worse than can happen on holiday.

I am a bit dazed and in shock, head hurts a bit and so does my neck but I am fine, Dad is fine also and so we get out of the car and are confronted with a 3 car accident, where a woman in a Skoda has hit a Ford and then crashed into my hire car, we have a crumpled rear end and flat tire. I don't understand a word anyone is saying, the whole road is queuing up with cars and everyone is honking their horn and this is in the middle of a busy main road.

The woman who has hit me (Angela) asks if I am OK and says she has called the police, as in Romania any accident must have the police present. They arrive in 5 minutes and all the cars are pushed off the road. Angela tells me we have to go to the police station and give statements, her friend will give me a lift and my father must stay with our car and luggage.

Amazingly everyone is quite calm, no-one is shouting, I am playing quite dumb as I have no idea what happened, so just happy to go along with what the police tell me to do. I was more concerned about leaving Dad on the side of the road in this dreadful suburb not speaking any Romanian for what could have been hours....and it was getting dark....and we were in Transylvania! I had visions of coming back to him in his boxers on the pavement and blue from having the blood sucked out of him.

As your parents get older you feel this sense of responsibility for them especially when they are on your turf, traveling to remote and unusual places, I was genuinely more worried about him and how he would fare as the sun set and it got dark than I was about the car or me.
I call the hire car company and tell them the good news, then jump in the strangers car with 3 Brides of Dracula including the one who rear-ended me) and head to the police station, we nearly have 3 more crashes on the way, the state of the driving was so bad and I was with a local! At the police station there are no computer systems everything must be hand written in triplicate, I need everything translated and every 5 minutes everyone has to leave the room to have a smoke (I have been amazed at how many people smoke here and in Hungary!) Actually I was very impressed at how efficiently the police handled the whole situation.

Finally after 2 hours of paper work and breathalyser tests (not that long really) I am given the documents to say it was not my fault and the hire company can get the car fixed (in Romania the police decide who is to blame not the insurers) and then on the way out the woman who caused the fuss says she is sorry for spoiling my holiday......very sweet! Good job I cant say you stupid blind cow in Romanian!

The Brides of Dracula agree to give me a lift to the hotel (where Dad in the meantime has cleverly managed to change the tyre and limp back to the hotel) and on the way back I pick up from the smattering of Romanian I have learnt, that they have recently returned from Italy on holiday and so speak some Italian to them to which they all respond fluently and we have a great laugh as the whole process could have been so much easier if I had said I spoken Italian.....well sorry for it not crossing my mind earlier!

After you have been pummeled by Olnj the Hungarian masseuse, you can't let a bit of whiplash and a car crash ruin your holiday!

Romania

Written by JB snr
This journey was designed to provide increasing exposure to challenging environments as we progressed and this was driven home with our arrival at Bucharesti Nord station. This is the real 3rd world in Europe, shabby and dirty, everyone milling about with countless beggars, peasants and shady looking characters trying to get our attention. Eventually got our tickets for the next leg of the journey to Istanbul and then our rental car to Transylvania.

Every second car in Romania seems to be a Renault 12 this was a successful model in the 1970's and I have fond memories of driving one in Newfoundland, Canada in 1972 (Jonathon suck on that one you were 1 year old!) Here they are still going well 35 years later, even if like me they too, are looking the worse for wear.

So now we have the latest Renault (Dacia over here) thank goodness for SatNav, it brought us straight to the door of our hotel, well it brought me to the door of the hotel, an unauthorized and uninsured driver (Jonathon was at the police station....read on!) and this was on countless crowded highways and unlit back streets. I shouldn't be too surprised at this, as my SatNav on the boat gets me through equally scary conditions on the Solent on a sunny afternoon to a specific berth at the Lymington marina!

We are now in Brasov, in the Carpathian mountains (Transylvania) of central Romania. We spent the first morning strolling through the old town, it has some excellent treasures, such as Orthodox churches and 13th Century garrisons and some shabby back streets glowing in the morning sun. As a serious photographer, mostly black and white and infrared, I lingered while Jonathon went in search of yet more Illy coffee.

In the afternoon we wandered deeper into the mountains to Bran castle of Count Dracula fame. Perched on a craggy outcrop and dating from the 14th Century, the rooms are well furnished and presented and it was used by Queen Marie of Romania well into the 20th Century. There are many original photos of her and the rooms she used, looking much as they do now. In the grounds there are several traditional rural dwellings. The whole place is a gem, despite there being no evidence that Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) ever stayed there.

Mercifully there was no evidence or commercialisation of the Dracula legend here, just as well then that we brought our own garlic, silver crucifixes and wooden stakes (no silver bullets needed as they are only for Werewolves!)

The simple if hard rural life,is still prevalent in much of Romania, with horses and carts everywhere and peasants wearing Caciula hats and serious hardship in their demeanor.
As we set out to do, we continue to sampled local dishes wherever possible, tonight it is traditional Romanian cuisine, Pork in a mushroom sauce for me and Pork in a Carrot sauce with Polenta for Jonny, both were excellent. The wine is the local Prince Mircea 2004 (100% merlot) rich and smooth but dark and purple like the puncture wounds on the neck of sleeping Dracul virgin. I have had more disappointing expensive Clarets.

Footnote:
Jonathon's response to our unbelievable incident with the car is very reassuring, he was calm and business like in the handling of the other drivers involved and relished the “new experience” factor of his time with the Romanian State police, the good humor with which he saw it all through, is a lesson to us all. It is almost the ultimate nightmare – an accident in a rental car in Transylvania.

There is a line from an insurance company advert that springs to mind “Don't turn a drama into a crisis” he didn't and neither, thankfully did the Romanians. Considering that I am a risk adverse Irishman in the “prime” of life, fatherly pride is well to the fore, after that, also but don't tell him this, I am less apprehensive than I was about his plans to cross the Greenland icecap towing the sledge in August, but once a parent always a parent.

A sleeper in Romania

Written by JB jnr
10:30pm at 'Keleti Pu' train station in Budapest is not the best place to hang around with your Dad, it doesn't feel the same place as it did in daylight a few days earlier. The nighttime tends to bring all sorts of undesirables to train stations.

Our 'sleeper' arrived a bit late, but we found our comfortable couchette and settled in for the mammoth 15 hour journey to Bucharest Nord station. As we were quite tired (and I was still sore from the massage) we bunked down quickly and the 'Wagon Lit' attendant came and told us that at 2:15am we would have our passports checked by the Hungarian police and then half an hour later by the Romanian Police. Dad gave me his passport and said I was in charge and not to wake him!

I awoke at 7:00am to the sunshine trying to eek its way through the blinds and the compartment was heating up. Dad was asleep so I opened the blind and lowered the window to let in some fresh air, as I was on the top bunk I could lie and look out the window and watch the remote lowlands of North Eastern Romania click by. It was warm under the duvet as the fresh cold air blew in through the window. I could smell the smoke from the scrub fires and the indisputable perfume of spring that comes as winter falls away. I was still groggy from the long previous day and a fitful nights sleep so this was a great way to enjoy the countryside.
We were still more than 5 hours from Bucharest and this is a region of the country that few tourists would ever get to experience, too far to drive from the capital on unsealed roads and no airports up here so really only available to train tourists or hardy travelers. For the next hour, before Dad awoke I got too see some of the poorest villages and the most rural way of life that Europe probably has to offer.

At first count I saw 12 horses and carts before I saw 2 cars, fathers taking their kids to a school no doubt miles away, the horses looked strong and rugged and were often accompanied by a foal, trotting to keep up. Old women bent double in the fields with hoes and tills working the soil, wearing the traditional woolen skirt, thick tights and heads covered in scarves colourful. Skin tanned and leathered from a hard life in the outdoors. Old men asleep in the fields tending their animals, some with a single horse, sheep and cow all grazing neck to neck. In the distance I could see the snow capped Carpathian mountains on the edge of Transylvania. I couldn't help but visualize Dracula's castle and wondered if his coffin was hidden somewhere on the train to be returned to one of his Brides. Stupid I know but the tale of Dracula left a strong imprint on my childhood memory, as I was always allowed to stay up and watch the horror movies on ITV in the 80's – Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee portrayals of Vlad Tepes scared me so much that Mum had to put the camp-bed up in their room as I was too scared to sleep in my own.
More fields swept by, more ploughed with horse than with tractor – as we stopped at some of the larger stations, I saw a man walking his cow on piece of rope and talking to it. Probably the most important thing he owned.

As the train passed through the mountain and snow capped peaks of Transylvania, I thought I was back in the ski resort of Val Gardena, where I had left only 3 weeks or so before. We passed very close to Poiana Brasov – Romania's most successful ski resort.

Then the lowlands of Southern Romania appeared and then the suburban rundown industrial sprawl of Bucharest. Oh yes we had left the Europe I was familiar with and this would be a new chapter to the rest of our holiday.