"Are you sure? But it's Romanian!!"

Buna seara,

Romania, how many bad things did we hear about this country before we went there? Quite a lot! But it's all completely different and it is wonderful, the people amazing! Starting with Constantin, the owner of the hostel in Bucharest which was nicely located in one of those houses underneath:

kind of those houses at least, this is the view out of the window

The hostel didn't have a sign and just getting there, climbing the stairs in some random buidling was already an adventure. Only to be warmly welcomed by the most positive, but the least enthusiastic guy I've ever met. A typical conversation was like:
-Can you recommend a restaurant?
-Yes this one, it's okay...
-Is it good? (He didn't sound convincing)
-Hmmm yeah kind of.
And it was amaying.

The parliament, after some building in China the second largest in the world. We were lucky because there was a "free" concert of Robbie Williams. Free if it was enough to just hear, but not see him

kind of traditional dances in the village museum

Then we took the train to the Danube Delta. Getting the ticket was only mildly complicated as the not English speaking ticket vendor just refused to respond in any way after I pronounced the name wrong (appearently) and also reading (I showed her the train connection on my phone) caused the same effect. Sealed lips and pffff. She only understood train station. Until finally someone behind us in the line helped.

A romanian Brezel

So then we took the train, it was not the only time and always an experience. Sometimes they were modern, but dirty and hot and other times they were old and dirty and hot. It happened that we drove with open doors, in the night without any lights and we always drove just as fast that it was possible to keep up with a bike. Maybe a bit faster, but only if we didn't stop for storcks on the tracks or passport controls at 4:30 in the morning and then again at 5.

The Danube Delta:

one of two boats stranded due to heavy drinking. You must know that the Danube is quite narrow there and it's really hard to thread your ship in there

It was beautiful, and so many birds (even Pelicans... but Smartphone cameras lack a good zoom)

The village in the Delta, 10 years ago there were only two cars there and one road and guess what? Yes, they had an accident.

And then we took the train back to Brasov, Transylvania.

... just to visit Bran Castle, the Dracula castle where he spent a night in a prison... uhuuu

... and to eat some Papanas (@Fabi: You would have loved it), two giant donuts, with a fried bowl on top of it, soft cheese and sour jam and many many calories

Well, we ate already and were full. But as Marta is Italian she was used to order different courses, we got a dessert which was enough for a whole dinner, just after dinner. Luckily they were out of soup!

... or we went to the bear sanctuary (I wanted to see them before hiking not during)

Brasov (Kronstadt). If you think the Hollywood kind of thing is ugly you should consider that there was "Stalin" before.

And then we went hiking in Bugceci mountains:

view on what was ahead of us after the first day (also the view from the hut)

after the morning climb

this cow followed us for quite a while and when we stopped to expel her, she started to lick us and my backpack. Remember: never pet random cows, they might like you too much (this is for you Marta)

Then we hired a car with two swiss to drive the Transfaragasan. After Top Gear the greatest driving road in the world: https://youtu.be/OLAtcrB0GZg?t=4m20s
So I had to drive it.

lake on top

us and the road

back down some storcks

In some village we had dinner with the swiss. We got some wine that tasted more like vinegar. Is this a thing in Romania?

Sibiu (Hermannstadt):

Hostel in Sibiu, look at all the roof -eyes

some simple dinner

-Do you have anything to eat?
-Yes, but it's Romanian.
-That's okay, bring it.
-Are you sure?
-I guess, how much is it?
-3 Lei (70 cents)
-Just bring it!
-hmm, it's not even a soup, but okay.

Turda:

Salt Salina in Turda

The made a whole adventure park in there. On the stairs we met two Germans, one of them had birthday the same date as me so we celebrated together in Cluj. We had quite some time to get to know each other because the stairs were narrow and some old women tried to walk up instead of taking the elevator (it said, 6 minutes for fit people). We wanted to go down the same time, but behind them was a line of maybe 50 people that went terribly slow.

This guy had less luck

Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg):

best toilet sign ever

Happy Birthday

To relax we slept in the botanic garden of Cluj the next day. We found out that sleeping is not allowed there, so we got kicked out. Didn't know it was possible to get kicked out of a garden.

...and then was Untold Festival in the Cluj Arena and we had time, tickets were cheap

Our last stop was Budapest in Hungary:

They like big parliaments in this area

it was a very beautiful and diverse city, especially the bars in the jewish quarter were nice (not in the picture)

Prost in Hungarian by the way is something like 'I guess she can drive', but you have to say it quickly. And never say 'prost' in Romania, it means something like 'idiot'.

The bathes were rather full. A special experience was a really fat and tanned guy with a giant golden chain around his neck (he looked like Notorious BIG) in the Sauna. He made some really weird noices, left every two minutes for 30 seconds and was constantly winking. Unfortunately I couldn't film that.

A garlic soup under a Langos with the sonorous name of Fokhagymaleves teijfölös-sajtos lángossal

last but not least, in the train back to Germany I managed to let the ticket dissappear in the gap between the table and the seat in front of me. It completely vanished and wasn't visible anymore. So I disassembled half the train and finally got it... I could have never explained that story to the ticket inspector.

Bis bald!