Brasov, Romania – day 2

This place is a time trip… In a good & not so good way.

My initial impressions of Romania are this:

• they build things well, just don’t maintain them. So many houses, buildings, roads, basically you name it – are just falling down or have been abandoned. But right next door, they’re in the process of building something new. It seems people just say, “stuff it – too hard, let’s just start from scratch” and then go again.
• it’s a big case of the “haves” and “have nots”. There’s some serious money in this country, it’s just that so few have it. Some of the houses we drove past, particularly in the tourist mountain areas, there are some enormous private houses – 4 stories with amazing views. And that’s just their holiday house. But across the road from that, you have a street stand by some poor old man/woman who has a bunch of fruit/veggies/honey/flowers/home made wine that they’re trying to flog to people on their way back from a weekend in the mountains.
• there’s a big police presence – we’ve seen a heap of police cars everywhere we’ve gone, which is both comforting and not at the same time. We’re telling ourselves it’s just because they want to keep things nice. Admittedly, all we’ve seen them do is give speeding fines – although we’re not sure why… it appears to just do what you want. The car ahead of you is going too slow? Beep them and they’ll move over to the shoulder and pass them – 1 lane is plenty!

Our host family is really nice. The mum doesn’t speak a word of english, so our Romanian cue cards (thanks Laura!) are coming in handy! They had a good laugh but also appreciate us making an effort. The 2 other adults in the house (son/daughter in law) speak enough english, so we’re getting along ok.

The bedding is woeful, a very old pull-out couch with big bits of wood go across you in awkward positions. Everything is very clean though, so we’ll just put up with it.

Today we met with our Projects Abroad organisers, got shown around the city of Brasov which is very pretty for the most part, and got a Romanian sim-card (+40 720 355 115 for Glen – Deb’s isn’t working just yet. Feel free to SMS us, would love to hear from you!) and had a traditional Romanian lunch at a local top-notch restaurant. The food is here is different, but really nice. The tripe sour soup for lunch was ok, as long as you didn’t think about where it came from. The main though of turkey with goat cheese was delicious. Deb had a German stew which was equally as nice. With each meal, you get about 10 slices of crusty bread. We also had a shot of Tuica, the traditional Romanian alcohol. That stuff is strong! You can even ask the waiter what strength it is. Today’s was “only” 50% alcohol, in some parts of the country it is often 75% or higher. It’ll cure what ails ya the locals reckon. I don’t deny it – it’ll kill any bug known to man if the taste is anything to go by.

Also had a local beer – which come in the standard size of 500ml. Very tasty, a stout beer which was quite smooth. Deb had Romania’s other national drink – a little known “Coca-Cola”, also known as “Coke”. Not sure if you guys have tried it, but it’s quite sweet and fizzy.

We’ve walked around the town, seen the old city which is by far the nicest part of the city (Brasov is actually really nice) and much of the old city was built by the Germans. I’m no architecture scholar, but it has a very familiar feel to Munich.

We’re currently sitting in an internet cafe giving the feet a rest. Tomorrow we start our placement. Deb’s in the hospital tomorrow, getting picked up @ 8:30am where there are about 3-4 other volunteers whilst I’m getting picked up at 9am to be taken to the bear sanctuary. Apparently very few pick to work with bears, which is both exciting and unnerving, why don’t they pick it? Apparently a lot pick dogs – why on earth pick to work with dogs over bears? The head guy from Projects Abroad meets and greets us and grabs my biceps (or where they used to be) and goes, “perfect – they need some help up there!” So me thinks I’ll be in for a bit of hard work… which is good, that’s what I’m here for.

They also liked my run-of-the-mill jokes of, “apparently they’re the brown bears are quite similar to koalas” and “I’ve been practicing by feeding next door’s cat”. They’re either easily amused or can’t understand a word I’m saying. Meh – a laugh is a laugh!

Thanks to the mighty Australian dollar – stuff here is cheap. 500ml beer for around $AU1, main meal in a restaurant – about $6. The woman who took us to the currency exchange to get some local Lei said to get out about 100lei – that should keep us going for a fair while. I’d already handed over $AU70 and 50euros and got back 411lei and her eyes almost popped out of her head. Nice.

Apparently volunteers meet up most nights in the old city – and i can see why. There ain’t much to do with our host families, so going out to the movies, dinner, drinking/nightclubs are very popular. There’s another couple from Adelaide here as well as a couple of other Australians, a Swiss girl, a couple of girls from the UK and another couple from the US. Looking forward to catching up and sharing some stories!

Anyway, that’s about it for now. Sorry these are getting a bit long. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll get interwebs at our host family’s house and we can start putting up more photos and I can stop crapping on.

Thanks for the messages etc, really appreciate it!