Breathtaking Romania
Hey
there! As you may know, we've taken a loooong break since our biking
trip, and so many extraordinary things have happened in the last
months.
But
to continue with our story, let us catch up at the Serbian-Romanian
border...
The
story begins in Belgrade, it was a chilly autumn morning at 5 am.
With
the first breaths of the day we lifted the bikes and grabbed them
downstairs from the second floor. Still sleepy and silent, we gave a
warm goodbye to the lovely vintage apartment and started biking towards
the station.
We
pushed uphills, downhills, crossed the greenlights, zigzaged in the busy
streets and finally got on time for the train.
As
much as we love biking, there is something magical about trains. It's
like a moving café.
You make yourself comfortable, look through the window, have snacks, walk along the corridor, chat with the passengers, nap, repeat.
You make yourself comfortable, look through the window, have snacks, walk along the corridor, chat with the passengers, nap, repeat.
Sometimes time goes by veeery slowly and
sometimes you almost loose the stop!
Within
a few hours we crossed the Romanian border and Serban and I can't
stop loving it! We enjoy the discussions in Romanian, he teaches me
some new words: 'salut', 'ce face', 'un pahar de
apa, va rog', 'Poafte buna!', 'varza', 'mult
frumoasa', 'me piace foarte', 'te pup!'....
Romanian
is a romance language and hence it shares some features with French,
Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. They say it's the closest
living language to Latin; it has three genders, five declinations and
a lot of sounds we don't use in Spanish...
It's
a fast-pace language, with short vowel sounds, sometimes it reminds
me to russian but with an italian accent. Or like italian with a
strong slavic touch.
They
use a lot of expressions related to food. A Romanian wil not be
"extremely tired", he will be "cabbage". His life
is not "chaotic"... it's "cabbage". And his room
is not "a complete mess"... it's also "cabbage"
(varza). There's cabbage everywhere. 😄
Trains in Romania teach you to be patient, and many times we see the cars
driving faster than us. But we're not in a hurry, we are on a s a b b a t i c a l !
Sometime
after the sunset the train announces our stop: Alba Iulia. We're so
excited about meeting Serban's family and me to discover his country.
Also, we realise it is the 4th of November: it's been
exaclty two months since we begun our trip by bike... it seems like
we've got a lucky number ;)
We
lived so many things during the six weeks living in Romania.
The
first days were the most festive ones and everyone seemed having
something to celebrate, so we celebrated together!: a family
rencounter, cousins meeting, new jobs, studies, politics, ... and the
two of us celebrated with special joy surrounded by lots of delicious
food, homemade red wine and the traditional Țuică plum spirit.
Sweet surrender.
But
all good things come to an end, and so it became time to move
fordward again, from Alba Iulia to Brasov, our final destination! I couldn't wait to see the city where boyfriendo grew up.
We are so grateful for having stayed at Ileana's beautiful apartment, where she lived with Serban for two or three years before moving to France. From the living room and the kitchen we could see the Carpatian Mountains. Impossible not to fall in love with that.
We enjoyed a lot our new lifestyle, having a fixed home, a real kitchen to cook and the most vivid local food markets. These markets were definitely one of my favs. Also I could practice my new Romanian skills so definitely lots of fun.
Serban's
dad took us to a clay molding class, a private atelier where we got
the opportunity of getting our hands dirty and on the side learn
about his hobby, wood sculpting and painting. We both are
handcrafting-fans and it's an activity we can spend hours on without
realising it.
Another
part of the family was Auntie Rodica and her family. Iulia and Sergiu
grew up toether with Serban so they're almost siblings. With them we
spent the most of the time. They showed us the city, their house in
the countryside, and of course... the romanian way of hiking. In
Romania it's not considered a "hike" if you don't loose
your breath.
As you might know, Romania, and specially the region of Transylvania, is a country of NATURE where the culture turns around mountains, forests, trekking, animals, ... and they take a lot of care about it. The forests and the wildlife are a real treasure for them.
Even
though the hikes were LITERALLY breath-taking, we did had enough
breath left to make a lot of jokes and spend such good moments
together. And once more, we had the sun on our side. Luky us.
But
also in the city we walked for hours. Brasov is a fortified city with
many medieval monuments, towers and churches. In the evening the
city-center got full and there were so many vintage-style bars. The
food is quite healthy, soup is a must at lunch and polenta is one of
the star dishes.
Climbing
the Tâmpa Mountain was easy peasy after the bike trip. Our leg
muscles were stronger than ever and our heart pumped like a machine.
The reward was a spectacular and refreshing overview of the city from
what was a key point in protecting the city back in time.
Brasov
= Kronstadt = Stalinstadt, the city of many names, originally part of
the roman Dacian Empire, later on governed by the Hungarian Kingdom
and populated by the german Saxons during the 13th
century, who made Brasov one of the seven citadels in Transylvania
and who built the famous Bran Dracula's Castle... Constantly
threatened by the Ottomans, Brasov rebuilt itself throughout the
centuries and witnessed moments of glory as well as many wars and
revolutions. On the 1st December of 1918 the Union of
Transylvania with Romania, as well as other regions, took place. This
day has became the National Holiday in the country, and we were there
to be part of the celebration!
Sadly
the country also witnessed the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu
during the Communist period, from 1965 to 1989, which came to an end
with the the 1989 revolutions and Romania being the last country
within the Warsaw Pact to put end to the 42 years of communist rule.
The
third week of our stay Serban went to visit his grandparents in the
north-west city of Baia Mare. Tata Petre and Mama Rina were so full
of energy, making jokes all the time, teasing us and challenging us
to finish another piece of cake. But I can hear the emotion in their
voice everytime we talk on the phone...
During
the free time we found out a very amazing group of yoga where we went
once or twice a week and started diving into the yogic science,
kundalini, prana, muladhara chakra, ...
We
experienced a totally different yoga from what is commonly known in
the West, where it's mostly seen as a relaxing sport or stretching
before going to sleep. Far from that, yoga looks to awaken your
senses and mind, driving you to an understanding of the body-mind
functioning in a way we never learned at school. We will talk more
about it... :)
Apart
from these activities, we enjoyed going to the hipster restaurants,
dancing contemporary with IDanceYou and paraglide jumping:
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