Day 4 - Sunday 11th October

Bucharest to Sibiu via the Transfagarasan Road

All being well I’ll throw a few photos in to this post.

After leaving the hotel at 8am we hit the road towards the Transylvanian Alps, aka the Faragas Mountains or the Southern Carpathians.

First stop was a photo opportunity to see Burg Poenari – first constructed in 1453 and one of the “homes” (fortresses) of Vlad III (aka Vlad Drucula or Vlad the Impaler), who lived from 1428/31 until 1476/7. Much more of Vlad later in this journey. I would have liked to visit, but the combination of the 1500 steps to get to the top, plus the time it would take, plus, I found later, restrictions on visitor numbers, canned that idea before it even started.

First real stop though was the Vidraru Dam. It’s presently only some half full (maybe less?) as the lake was drained about 12 months back to replace the 16 (?) 60-year old hydroelectric turbines and repair the some 42klms of water tunnels. It’s a pretty impressive structure, and we walked over the dam wall and up to see the statue I called electroman.

After the dam we stopped again at the mountain pass adjoining Lacul Bâlea, which at a little over 2,000 metres represents the high point of the Transfagarasan Road.

Let me talk about the bears. Along the road are multiple "don't feed the bears" signs. And guess what, people stop and feed the bears. Apart from the obvious reasons - it's not good for them and it can be dangerous (Victor gave us several examples of people losing a limb or even their life) - it also creates a dependency/encourages a lack of natural foraging/hunting skills. Apparently in the 60s or thereabouts Ceaușescu and his cronies liked to hunt the bears, and so put food out to encourage them to return to hunting spots. Hardly "hunting"; more like assassination as Janet said. The forests have bears, wolves, lynx, foxes, other beasts probably.

Lastly it was on to the mediaeval town of Sibiu, known colloquially as the Town of Eyes, or less politely, the Town of Spies or the Town of Lies (more of this later).

Today was the first day we spent any length of time with our driver Victor. He’s in his late 40s (although he looks probably 10 years younger), and has done many things over his life. He’s studied psychology, criminology (he worked for a while in the prison system), anthropology and history, has busked for a living (well sort of) on the Riviera, and has been an outdoor/mountain guide. He’s travelled extensively in Europe. He hates(yes, that’s a fairly accurate description) communism and the Russians. This is not language which usually sits all that comfortably with me, but as I’ve started to learn more of the recent times of Romania, and the policies and impacts of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu (who lived and died during Victor’s early life), I can start to understand how he feels the way he does.

That background aside, Victor speaks with knowledge and passion about his country’s history, and I have learned so much (and probably forgotten the majority of it already). And not just relatively recent history – we have talked about the Dacian kingdom 2,000 years ago [as an aside, the Dacia car, Romania's national vehicle, common here and seen throughout Europe, obviously derives its name from the original people], the arrival and retreat of the Romans at the hands (swords, probably) of the Goths, the arrival of the Huns, the impact of the Byzantine Empire and the Turks, the Mongols, Constantine, Vlad (again, more of him later), the amalgamation of Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia to form Romania, the Roman versus the Orthodox versus the Christian (mainly Lutheran) churches … you name it, we covered it. Oh, plus some, leading to the modern day post WWII and the Russian occupancy in 1947, the revolution of 1965, the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, his fall in December 1989 and his execution 3 days later, and the emergence of modern Romania. And then there's the gypsies, of whom we've already seen a few; that will be a larger story for later I suspect.

Tonight, whilst wandering the streets of Sibiu we chanced upon various members of the security service, and figured that there was someone important nearby. It turns out that the someone, who we walked straight past – less than 5 metres away – was Klaus Iohannis, the most recent ex-President of Romania. Victor holds him in low regard also, as he believes that many of Romania’s problems today were as a result of inactivity by Iohannis.

The Town of Spies or the Town of Lies labels are an oblique reference to activities undertaken (or not undertaken) during the Iohannis reign. Apparently one of his nicknames was ficus, because if you have a ficus plant in your house it looks good, you water it to keep it alive, but it does nothing.

Anyway, walking straight past the ex-President sort of brought all of the day’s discussions into a complete circle.

I have no reason to doubt Victor’s historical summary which I have found absolutely fascinating. Whilst the centre of the discussions has been Romania, the impacts are much larger, as they turn towards both European (Eastern and Western) and wider global geo-political matters which we are seeing played out in real time today. Thus far, this has been a fascinating trip.