Pick up Bikes, Bucharest, RO

Pick up of Bikes, Bucharest, RO

We called BMW in Bucharest (Otopeni) and made arrangements to pick up our bikes the day after we were in Snagov. We were close to Bucharest and so we were at the BMW dealership early. We took the wrong turn onto the A-3 highway and were going North in error. It took us 37 KM until we could get to the next exit. Is that a way to design a highway, just outside of Bucharest, the Capital of Romania?  To make exits 37 KM apart? All of this in hindsight did not matter, really, because at 11.00 AM at the BMW dealership, we learned that Carol’s bike is not ready for pick up, maybe tomorrow. 

No need to get upset. I told you, it’s a different clock in RO and I kind of anticipated this kind of customer service from this BMW dealer by now. We, again, booked into Hostel Taxi, and spent the time getting my bike out of storage, getting our suits lined up for tomorrow, etc. When I picked up my stored bike, the bike-cover was ripped to shreds. I can only guess a cat used my bike as shelter and when the cover moved in the wind it used its paws. The cover is a total loss, U.S. $80.-!

We just floated along, ate pizza in our room, did nothing because we had originally planned to be in Bulgaria today.

The following day started off great; our pick up taxi at the Hostel came on time and picked us up at 9.30 AM. We arrived at the BMW dealer as prearranged at 10.00 AM. The bike was not ready! They forgot a few things on the checklist, like the oil change we wanted. It took them 45 minutes to change the oil on Carol’s bike. While we waited we packed our luggage into the saddlebags (we had taken them off and had them in the waiting room). Finally, at about 11.00 AM, the bill came and Carol paid it. We were all set to leave when Romeo, the BMW service representative came running and told Carol he forgot to add the price for the new battery to the invoice. With all the back and forth, it was noon before we left the BMW dealer. 

By now, the ‘Ring’ road around Bucharest was totally jammed up. For the next 2 hours it was 1^st gear only. We moved along very, very slowly with lots of stop and go. The whole trip distance is just about 100 KM long for the day, but it took us close to 5 hours to make the distance and the Bulgarian border in Ruse, BG. The Ring road around Bucharest is the pits!

The border crossing was uneventful; just show your passport, the paper work for the bike and that was it. We needed to exchange our Romanian money (Leu) into Bulgarian money (Lev) and we did this immediately after the border crossing. I always take all the money of the country I am leaving and turn it into the money of the new county at the border. At each border crossing there is a whole lot of stuff to remember or to plan. Wherever the gasoline is the cheapest, get it on the correct side of the border. Try not to have ‘coins’ when crossing a border, the new country will never exchange coins; they will only exchange paper money. (I just give the coins away to anybody who stands around on either side of the border). Make sure you stow the paper work away properly, after you cross the border. Find out at the border if you need vignettes (toll stickers) for your vehicle. Write down the speed limits for highways, rural roads, and town or city streets. A lot of times those speed limits are not posted often enough for you to remember but they sure are reinforced, especially near the border areas. Each border crossing, no matter how ‘harmless’ the 2 countries are, always give me a new set of ‘rules’ to live by. Now we have Bulgarian rules and language which means I cannot read a thing. Everything is written in Cyrillic. 

To acclimatize myself to the new ‘rules’ and to see how Bulgaria is in a way I ask and find a Hotel near the border and just quit for the day. No, nothing special, just hanging out, watching traffic, watching how people interact, just watching. I do this a lot actually; just watch how people do things in a country I have never been to. It is different when I have been to a country before and I get back to it, but in Bulgaria, this is my first time in Bulgaria and I just hang back and watch for all kinds of things. Do the people smile?  Are they friendly enough? Do the obey traffic rules? Stop at a stop sign, make a right on red? Things I take for granted, things I am used to and take as a given are not always the norm in another country.

Teodora Palace, Our First Hotel in Bulgaria

Here is an example:

We found this hotel, like I said, very close to the border and it turned out to be a very nice hotel. The price was 38 Euro per night for 2 people. They had a restaurant, but the restaurant was not very busy at all. When we checked in for dinner, at about 6.30 PM we were the only guests in the place. Yes, they were open, the lights were on and the service personnel were ready for anybody who would eat there. We started off with a beer each and ordered from their menu card by pointing at each item we wanted for dinner. I pointed to what I liked (a pork dish), and then Carol pointed what she wanted (a chicken dish). All of this is very simple, right?

My dinner came and I waited a few minutes, thinking Carol’s would come, too. But then, Carol said: “Go ahead and eat, my food will be here shortly, there is no need for you to let your food get cold”. OK, so I ate. I was nearly finished when Carol had a chance to call the server again and ask for her order. But how do you ask politely in Bulgarian what happened to my food?  With a lot of sign language and shoulder shrugging we think a mistake was made. Carol’s order was never put in. Now, was that intentional? Do I, as a man, have to order for both? What is the right way to order food in a restaurant in Bulgaria? It could not have been that the waitress forgot, there were no other customers in the place, and she picked up orders at our table and then forgot half the order?  NO! Somehow there was a misunderstanding. Such small details can ruin your day. I was finished with dessert already when finally Carol’s chicken dish was served. Now we are guessing, does it only count when a ‘male’ orders? I have no clue, but we found out a few more times that I was served and then Carol had to wait or we had to ask for Carol’s dish. Those idiosyncrasies, those different ways is why I stop and try to get a handle on local customs. These local customs need to be observed before I dash through or into a new country.

Well, we are now in Bulgaria; let us see what this country has to show me.

Snagov, RO

Snagov, RO

Vlad Tepes, the Hero ?

The Story Told 

Along A Nondescript Gravel Road 

We started our day by driving on a dirt road, looking for the actual spot on the battlefield where Vlad Tepes died. The road was rough and bumpy but easy to follow. After some miles we found a sign proclaiming this was the spot. A nearby spring flowed out of the woods and it is said that this spring started flowing when Vlad (Dracula) was killed. Besides this spring, the location is very ordinary today. I could not even ’feel’ the logic of this spot being a battle ground. 

Walnut Fountain

But, since we are tourists, we just stood there and took pictures of what we saw. There were no guides, there were no buildings, and there was nothing but this plaque with the tale of Vlad Tepes written on it. We can now say we have been there.

Walnut Fountain Now Made Into A More 'Civilized' Spring

 After this stop we made our way to Snagov, the other location where Dracula is supposedly buried. Snagov is not that far from Comana.  Comana is south of Bucharest, Snagov is north. We had to drive ‘around’ Bucharest and boy was this a bad road. I am told Romania is building a new ring road around Bucharest and let me tell you, they need to do this. What they have now is as bad as it gets. The city is too large and too busy to have a 2-lane road that is designated as a main thoroughfare. So many potholes, traffic lights, trucks and traffic in general with bad road conditions that I wonder what is Romania thinking, having a beltway like that. I have not seen the new ring road, but the old one we were on is just terrible.

I found a B&B in Snagov that is by far, the best B&B ever. Our GPS found it for us, it was on a dirt road, and we had to use the dirt road setting, but what a gem. Pool, gardens, romantic gourmet dinner with soft music and a very large room were ours for the day/night. We were the only guests as they were closing for the season. Casa Radu is the name of the place, if you are ever in Snagov. And if you can, if you are in or around Bucharest, Snagov is a must see place. I did not know much about Snagov until the owner of Casa Radu gave us a tour and explained some intricacies of the town.

Our B&B, Casa Radu (Ours Was the Room With the Balcony)

When Romania was still in the strong grasp of Ceausescu, the late dictator, the city of Snagov was a guarded, closed off town, only for the political elite of RO. Even today, there are some parks, villas, compounds that are guarded and you cannot visit or even get near the buildings. The whole of the area is filled with old fashioned villas, hidden houses, fenced yards and snobbish looking elitism. Even our B&B is behind a high wall, away from roaming eyes. But so are most of the larger estates and bigger houses. If you drive through the town by car, you might think it’s a sleepy place but it is not. Romanian politics were and are formed here.

The young man who owned Casa Radu had the day off and took us under his wing to show us ‘his’ town. His English was excellent and self-taught. His mother ran the kitchen; he ran the bar and served his guests. What a nice man!

Had to Be Approved By the Guards To Enter Ceausescu's Summer Palace

Huge Carpets, All One Piece. It Took 12 Women 10 Years to Make

. 

Each Thread is Individually Knotted

I Don't Think I Could Sleep Here

 Foyer Entrance Mosaic

Many Selected Woods Used to Make This Door

The Front Entrance

The Entrance Off the Lake 

Ceausescu - Nice Looking Guy But His Mind??? Was He Lost??

I drove and he was our tour guide for just one day. Our first stop was the summer residence of Ceausescu until he was executed for war crimes. This Palace was originally built  for King Carol I, but then later redecorated, revamped, rebuilt or re-assigned to be a show place for the then Romanian Political Bosses. Communism at its finest. Our guide knew the Manager of the Palace (which is normally closed to the public) and arranged for us to have a tour inside. The misguided opulence was scary. Huge, hand knotted carpets for large rooms that would take a dozen women 10 years to make were strewn about like leaves in a forest. Wooden décor, hand fitted doors in multi-faceted wood grains, silken wallpaper, and opulence you would not believe. Hundreds of rooms, all stuffed full with ‘stuff’ that is not my taste and, I dare to say, not the taste of most folks in the world. What a waste of money, what a waste of energy. What was this all about, what was this guy Ceausescu trying to show the world? I was told that the late pop singer Michael Jackson once rented the whole Palace for his ‘needs’. I had entered a strange, unreal world, in this not so well-known town of Snagov. Even today there are sections that are off limits to mortals like me. How I came to see this palace, with the help of our ‘guide’ was the weirdest experience in itself. I saw a side of the world I know nothing about and somehow I just know I don’t fit in at all with people like this. 

Not My Kind of Living Room

Michael Jackson Slept Here 

With pride, our guide pointed out the gardens around this palace, modeled after those in Versailles. I just stood and nodded, not knowing what to say about such a wasted effort. Definitely not my kind of place, yet yes, there are some weird places around this globe. Misguided as you can only imagine.   

Gold, silver and crystal shimmer and that might impress some people; but I am much earthier, way too much a simple creature to be taken in by this squandering of wealth.

After we passed the guards again, who opened the gates to let us out of this compound, we came to another resting place for Vlad Tepes,where the local people

Our Way Out 

believe he is really buried. Situated on an Island within Lake Snagov is a small Monastery and it is said, that Tepes is buried within its walls. Yes, there were plaques, signs and lots of tourists that needed to see this spot. But was Dracula really laid to rest here? We will never know for sure, all we learned was that his head, after he died, was pickled in honey and then shipped to Istanbul so that the Sultan could see that Vlad was really dead. So the corpse, if there is one, is a headless body, buried someplace in Romania. I let the experts try to find out what really happened to Vlad. I did what I could to get a view of Dracula, to get a feeling of the times when he was in charge and to see Romania and its people then and now.

I am glad we stopped in Snagov; I would have never believed this town could be so interesting.

We Found the Right Monastery.... See!

The Monastery Is On the Island 

Is This Really the Tomb of Vlad?

Read For Yourself

Supposedly Dracula's Tomb With His Picture and a Burning Candle

Comana, RO

Comana, RO

Through Some Very Swampy Areas

I Hope We Are On The Right Road

What a way to find the town, look at those roads. Yes, our GPS had them marked as 'roads'

Dusty, Windy Conditions 

Sand, Pebbles, Brush On The Road 

Our goal for today is the town of Comana, where scholars believe Vlad Tepes (Dracula) is buried in a monastery. We read that there is a plaque showing where he was killed and some kind of memorial park, too. The only thing was that all of this would be within a Romanian National Park, the Parcul National Comana. Inside the park are mostly dirt roads and in order to find all of these spots I set my GPS to allow the use of ‘dirt’ roads to get us there.

Swamp Bridges, Very Narrow And Rickety 

All went well until we came to the small town of Luica. Until Luica we had tarred roads, but then……our GPS lead us to roads I can only describe as farmer’s roads. I drove on just the faintest hint of a road in some spots, grassy, overgrown areas where not even a tire track was visible. I came to bogs where I literally drove the car through a corn field to get back on the ‘road’ again. Pointy, rough gravel here and there that made me glad we had good tires. A flat in this nowhere land would have been a real problem. I felt my way through those paths, rather than really knowing which way to drive. 

Trying To Find Our Way 

The GPS was not really a help, because it told us the general direction, but all the details by this time were gone. It was a tense drive in a car; I would not have done this on my bike. The setting on the GPS allowed ‘dirt’ roads now, but what do you do when you don’t even see the road?  Or when you come to a fork in the road and you have no clue which leg to take? I could swell with pride and tell you yes, we made it without incident, but we must have had a good luck charm someplace in the car. It sure was not my driving alone that got us through this. Maybe it was good to have Carol in the car! Even the end, just before we got to the hill town of Comana, was a drive up a hill that was so rutted and steep that I had a hard time picking my way up this lane.

Comana Monastery Church

Comana Monastery

But then, all of a sudden, we came to a tarred road and we were in Comana. We had made a reservation via Bookings.com and found our place for the night. What we did not find was any restaurant in town. It is such a small town, that we had to stop in the middle of the road to let the cows pass us by. The cows were being herded to their stables for the night to be milked and we got caught in the return of the beasts. Everybody knew what to do in this town, except us. We were the total outsiders. As soon as we drove into this town, everybody looked and immediately knew those are ‘tourists’. The store where I bought some bread and cheese for our dinner even knew. We walked to the Monastery and everybody gawked, we were the tourists.

There is much controversy over the location of Vlad III's tomb. It is said by the local people that he was buried in the Monastery Church on an Island in Lake Snagov, on the northern edge of the modern city of Bucharest, in accordance with the traditions of his time. But recently, historians have questioned whether Vlad might actually be buried at the Monastery of Comana, between Bucharest and the Danube, which he founded and built and which is close to the presumed location of the battle in which Vlad was killed, according to ProfessorCurta.  

Comana has one Monastery; a rather large complex that is now being re-furbished. Construction was going on all around the court yard. Some holes were dug around the outside walls, some electrical lines were being installed, and it was a bit of a mess within this monastery. Inside the church however it was peaceful and one could forget all the chaos outside. Carol was looking for the grave of Vlad Tepes. Scholars believe the actual grave site is within this monastery or even within this church. Along with Tepes there were 3 or 4 ‘other’ famous people buried here, but we could not read the tombstones in the floor because they were all covered up with rugs or cloth. We knew the battle ground where Tepes fell or was murdered was not far from this spot, but that is what we have to search for tomorrow. Today we just try to find the actual burial site. We asked workers outside, we asked the proprietor of our hotel, we asked anybody we saw but nobody spoke English and our Romanian sign language did not get us anywhere either. We looked for any kind of map, brochure, sign, etc. yet found nothing to substantiate the claim of Comana that this is the final resting place of Dracula.

Do I Go Straight Or Take A Left ?

We sure drove in a crazy way to get to this town. Comana is on a bluff, overlooking a huge swamp. We came in the back way, alongside this swamp, through fields.

 A battle was fought centuries in the past, near this small hamlet of a town and Vlad Tepes was killed somewhere nearby. The details of his death are sketchy at best. Some say he was murdered, some say he was slain in battle by the Turks or by his own soldiers. Who knows, it was a long time ago.

They Have The Right Of Way, They Live Here 

Going Home To The Barn

Tomorrow we will take another dirt road to the actual spot where it is believed that Vlad Tepes died.

Hotel Baden, Calarasi, RO

  

 With our rental car we could not leave Romania. So while we were rural, we thought let’s see what it is really like in Romania without any tourist areas nearby, without destinations one can look up on the internet, without hotels or Restaurants. Rural!

Oh boy, we saw Romania!

The Road is Not Wide Enough for Them.

They Have the Right of Way 

Lots and Lots of Pigs 

The Makers of Good Down 

Another Sow 

She Owns the Road 

Dilapidated Farms and Housing

Buying Lunch on the Side of the Road

A Parliament of Starlings 

The drive South towards Mangalia was still a bit touristy, we even saw some motorcycles when we had lunch. The local road we took along the Black Sea has some beaches and tourists, some restaurants, etc.

But the drive from Mangalia going west was an experience. I felt like stepping back a few decades, maybe even a century. We saw many horse or donkey drawn wagons, but also saw pigs, geese, cows, goats sharing the road. The whole of the road (391) from Mangalia west to Calarasi was absolutely the poorest area we have seen in Romania. Yet the people were smiling, I guess they did not know any other life.

For me, it was devastating to see so much poverty, neglect or lack of knowledge along the route we chose today. I understand having pigs, but do they have to roam along the roadways? I do like geese and flocks and raising them for down or feathers or food makes sense, but do they have to be on the street? Sure you can train a cow to graze all day and then come back at night to be milked, but do they have to impede traffic while doing it? The housing we saw was substandard, the fields not neat and orderly. I had the idea it was the Middle Ages and someone forgot to tell the folks it was 2015. There was not a lot of car traffic. The area felt forlorn, exploited, forgotten.

Yet in some way it was the most interesting part of Romania for me. I still do not understand how people can live that way, look at their own crap all day and do nothing about it. The large farms still show the layout of communism. There are huge tracks of land without a house in sight. There are no small farms or houses amid the fields or pastures. The only habitations we found were in the spread out towns along the only road crossing this area. Normally I see a farm with a house. Normally I see small sheds, barns or any buildings strewn among the fields. Not here, not in most of Romania in fact. The acreages are being used purely to grow produce or grains. We passed some old State based communal buildings, now totally abandoned and forgotten. I don’t know and I cannot tell what farmer owns what parcel of land. The tracks of land are so huge that one person cannot own them, nor do I remember reading that there are very large corporations in Romania that own all this land. So who owns this land? Who decides today what is grown on what plot? Who plants, who reaps? It is easy to see who owns what land in most of the world, but not so in Romania. There are very, very large fields devoid of any trees, just fields forever. Most had been harvested but I could not tell you who did it! I did not see silos, I did not see tractors, and I did not see people on the fields. All I saw were dilapidated villages time forgot.

I saw animals along the way that someone owns and, I am sure, cares for, but who?  I could not tell you.

The few people we saw in front of their houses, all the houses being within a village, were dressed but would never make it into a fashion magazine. There were no restaurants; there were hardly any shops to buy groceries. It was a very, very poor area we drove through most of the day.

Hazy Shorelines Along the Danube 

Our Ferry

Before the day was out, we did have to find a Hotel, though. In Bookings.com we found the hotel Baden near Calarasi, but finding it was another issue. We literally had to approach the Bulgarian Border; I could see the Toll booth, when on the left, after crossing the ferry, was a rather large hotel. It was so close to the border with Bulgaria yet far away from civilization; a strange place for a nice hotel like the Baden. The room we received was nice, the A/C worked and it even had a Restaurant; even an additional Restaurant next door to it. After what we just saw, the area we came through, this was a paradox. The check in was a bit more complicated, the Hotel asked us for Passports, etc. but explained that this is ‘normal’ since we are so close to the border, they have extra requirements to see all the paper work from each traveler. OK with me, I have nothing to hide.

Baden Hotel

Happy to Have Found a Restaurant

At the Restaurant next door we were given our own ‘dining room’ with a view of the Danube River. The main part of the eatery was prepped for a wedding reception, so they did not want us to be in the way. Again, OK with me, the service we received was good, the food even better, and the prices reasonable. It was fun watching the preps for the reception later, but we did not see the whole festivities.

River View, too

We heard nothing of the dance music when we slept that night and in the morning the parking lot was empty and the restaurant was as if there was nothing unusual happened. Hotel Baden is a good place to stay when you get stuck in this area.