Romania (days 10, 11, 12)

Romania was, in many ways, the first country in which our adventure began in earnest. In all our previous countries, communication wasn't much of an issue (I have a tenuous, but assable grasp of conversational German, which seems to work whenever English fails, and both Czech and Slovak bear enough similarity to Ukranian that I can get my point across eventually), the drivers were, for the most part, orderly and law-abiding, and the context and culture were familiar.

Romania was different. None of us could make heads or tails of the Romanian language, and our only recourse to the confused look was to add gestures and mimes to slow, fragmentory english phrases. As for the drivers... what can I say? We saw a few cars marked as student drivers in our progression across the country, and each time I couldn't help but laugh at the irony. It seems that the only extant driving rule is: "Go as fast as you possibly can." Moreover, everything from quaint horse-drawn wagons to lumbering semis, and smoke-belching Dacias (the Romanian Lada equivalent) to brand-spanking-new BMWs share one lane in each direction on some of the most winding, treacherous roads I've ever seen. Passing (or being passed) is a harrowing experience - cars (or motorcycles, semis, whatever) will swerve into the oncoming lane (be it on a straightaway, or at a blind corner) without notice, gun it, and swerve back into the smallest of spaces. I counted some 7 ambulances over the course of our 3 day trek through Romania - we even witnessed a crash only yards away from us when a car slammed into the back of a horse-drawn wagon (fortunately, he had slowed enough before the impact that no major injuries resulted).

As for the context, I have this to say - the Romanian countryside is breathtakingly beautiful. On the first day, our course took us through the rural countryside in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, into the mountains of Transylvania, and Nestled amongst the foothills were countless small villiages that looked as if they had been lifted straight out of the Ukranain storybooks I had read as a child - telephone poles were topped with stork nests; goats, chickens and cows wandered the streets; and elderly women - their hair covered with a cloth I'd always called a babushka - ambled between the wood-frame, whitewashed, thatch-roofed houses. The air was filled with the smells of the rural countryside - animals, straw, flowers and dust. Here, as we wound our way from villiage to town, up into the hills and back down again, we would stop to take action shots of our bikes rounding various bends - our bikes captured in a lean against sweeping, panoramic vistas.

This was also the day that we first lost Tom. He had gone on ahead of us, and as we had no definitive plans to meet anywhere we decided to stop after a while to have some dinner. Our thought was that Tom would eventually turn around, having not seen us for a while, and see our bikes parked by the road, in front of our restaurant (if it could be called that). 10 minutes passed... then 20... then 30... and still no Tom. Text messages were sent out and phone calls attempted - but we were unable to get a response. After an hour, we really started worrying... 20 minutes later, Ted went out to see if he could find him. not 15 minutes after tha, he returned, with a bewildered and upset Tom in tow. As it turns out, he had found a (better) restaurant of his own just down the road, and had decided to wait for us there. We ended up eating a very long dinner there (including one of the best desserts I have ever had - the truly mouth-watering papanasi. This was first described to me as a "heavy doughnut", and how could I say noi? Though heavy it was not, it certainly was tasty - picture a warm, light, fluffy doughnut with apple jam and fresh cream, and dusted with icing sugar. Wow.

On the second day, as we ascended into the mountains of Transylvania, the climbs grew increasingly more vertical, and the driving more treacherous. However, the vistas were awe-inspiring - it's easy to see why this place engenders so much romance, myth, and legend. Broad mountains are blanketted with lush, emerald green forests, and tiny medieval towns perch on their broad shoulders. The roads wind tightly from one to the next, thouh we stopped at only a few, and there only briefly - Sighisoara (the alleged birthplace of Vlad Tepes, the man behind the legend of Dracula) and Brasov - the archetypal medieval mountain town.

Brasov. Tyson had wanted to visit this town ever since he had read its description in Lonely Planet, and we were all looking forward to a lunch off its famous central plaza. Alas, fate intervened, and our visit had to be cut short... and our enjoyment forestalled by anxiety at the fate of one of our party. Tom had blasted on ahead of us some time before, and he had expected to meet up with him before entering the city. However, we passed sign after sign, turn-off after turn-off... and he was nowhere to be found. We half hoped that he had decided to leave us, and book it to Istanbul, since he was pressured on time, and half-feared that he might be pinned under some over-zealous semi somewhere. Thus, it was quite a relief to us when he called - just as we were about to check our e-mail for any sing of his supposed departure (the texts and phone calls still weren't getting through). As it turns out, he had set up for a shot at exactly the point which we had detoured around - this stretch of highway was apparently new, and signs still showed the way to Brasov as passing through a village, rather than along the main drag (which we hooked up with just a bit farther on). One can imagine Tom, his excitement at having set up a beautiful shot for us to pass through fading with each passing moment of our too-long absence. As he relates it, he actually thought we had stopped somewhere in a repeat of the previous day's events - he thus turned back and tried to find us... only to give up in frustration when we were nowherre to be found. We met up with him, all of us confused and upset, just past Brasov... and headed towards the coast.

We blasted down the supposedly toll highway (the toll booths had not yet been built) and ate up the milage from Transylvania to the coast. Here, we got off at Cernavoda to find a place to eat, and a place to camp, sine light was fading fast. We decided to drive along the river, and eventually came to a paking lot across from some factory or other, beyod which stretched a good-sized swath of parkland. This place seems nice, we thought, and Tyson went off to scope out a decent campsite. He came back about 7 minutes later, looking somewhat frazzled - he gone quite far inot the parkland, and had come across a pack of dogs - Cujos, all of them. They gave chase, but apparently, were happy to stay far enough back that Tyson thought they wouldn't pose a problem if we decided to camp. We were just entering a waypoint into the Garmins so we could find our way back after getting a bite to eat when a security guard from the complex across the street sauntered over. He was talking to Tyson, saying that we couldn't stay here - Tyson was doing his best to conviince him otherwise. He kept saying something about "stancia", and it slowly dawned on me that he was, in fact, speaking russian. About the same time, my eyes drifted over to a sign positioned just above the entry to the complex that I had somehow overlooked - "Stancia Nuklearenergia". Ah. We had decided to camp directly across from a nuclear power station - in fact, Tyson was still arguing that we should.

In the end, we ended up staying in a little hotel in Medgidia - a blue-collar town if ever there was one. Less damatic, to be sure, but just a little bit safer.