Up, Up and Away

Coke can gondola car

Brasov laid out like a map

Bug & SewDiva looking over Brasov

The Brasov sign - the previous photos were taken from the platform just to the right of the V

Braşov has a gondola that goes up Mt. Tamba right at the edge of Old Town. At the top of Mt. Tamba are a restaurant and the “Braşov” sign. Riding to the top sort of felt like we were riding in a Coke can, but, whatever. From the top of the mountain the city is spread out below. It was like looking at a map. We elected to ride the gondola back down rather than coming down on the trail. Not only were my knees not up to it but there had been sightings of baby bears on the trail and where there are baby bears there are momma bears. We didn’t want to meet either.

There are hiking trails all over the place. Romanians like to hike but they like to know where they are going so all the trails are marked by symbols painted onto the trees. You can hike the yellow triangle trail or the red dot trail or whatever. This doesn’t apply to just the trails in town but even to the trails up in the mountains.

Outside the Walls

St. Nicholas Church
Brasov: the old city backed by the new one

Since Braşov was built by Saxon traders only Saxons were allowed to live within the walls of the city. Native Romanians had to live outside the walls in an area known as Schei. This was true in all the cities the Saxons built and stayed that way until the 20th century. We visited St. Nicholas Church, an Orthodox church (as opposed to the Black Church which is Saxon and therefore Lutheran). It was very elaborate and ornate on the inside. Quite beautiful. The streets in Schei are even narrower and more twisted than those inside the city walls.

Romanian Foods

Farmer's Market

Are these fruits beautiful or what!

Ciupercute

About 1 mile from the apartment is a farmer’s market with beautiful fruits and veggies. As with our produce, much of it is imported. They did have bundles of horsetail ferns, what for I cannot imagine. And the patisseries! Today we got a liqueur infused layered wonderful thing: cake, custard filling, mocha frosting with pistachios and sesame seeds. And they had wonderful little cookies we thought they were super-cute, oh, and so did they! We are tasting our way across Romania trying mămăligă and papanaşi at every opportunity. Mămăligă is basically polenta but mmm, yummy. Papanaşi is a fresh raised donut cooked when you order it, served warm smothered in berry syrup and crème fresche. This is THE BEST! The schnitzel is wonderful, thin and crispy but still moist. I love the sarmale, cabbage stuffed with chopped meat except the cabbage has been brined like sauerkraut. The goulash soup is fantastic and the paprikash to die for. It is served with potato dumplings – try large gnocchi.

More pics from Brasov

Stoli gate
Elizabeth gate

"chicken house" - look on the roof

Str. Stroii

Str. Stoii - Bug disputes the Romanian definition of a street. This is really more of an alley. Can you just call yourself a street and then say you're the narrowest street in Brasov?

Probably the Best City in the World

Bug & SewDiva on the square
The Black Church across the rooftops

The Black Church viewed over the wall

More of the town square

Umbrellas on Str. Republicaii

Braşov (ş = sh) has a population of about 3 million and is located at the foot of the Transylvanian Alps on the edge of a large plain that is central Romania. It was originally built as a Saxon (German) trading center in the 12th century. The middle of the tourist area, called Old Town is the original walled city. Most of the architecture there is Saxon. The rest of the architecture in Old Town is Baroque from the 19th century. It is very beautiful and lots of fun. One of the streets, Str. Republicaii, is a pedestrian mall with outdoor seating for the various taverns and restaurants down the middle of it. All of the restaurants in town use basically the same umbrellas.

The streets and malls are paved with round stones and I don’t know how the girls in their very high heels manage. I had to change into my flats before I broke an ankle. We found Str. Storii, the narrowest street in Braşov. Just off the town square is the Black Church. It was built between 1383 and 1477 and is called the Black Church because of how it looked after a fire in 1648. It is now a Lutheran church and has pew boxes that belonged to the various guilds in the 15th century.

Our Romanian Home

Romanian toilet paper

Bug in the elevator

View from our window

Our kitchen

Bug's/living room

Bear had rented an apartment for us in Braşov. It is in a building that was started under the communists but finished after the revolution (1989). The apartment is really large and has been updated recently. There are a few quirks. The elevator is a tad small and although we are on the 3rd floor of apartments it is the 7th floor of the building (there are offices on the lower floors). So not using the elevator is not an option. And the toilet paper! It reminds me of the blue paper towels you buy at Schucks, but not quite as absorbent. We have a Non-Stop around the corner from the apartment building. It is a small carry-out and “non-stop” means that it is open 24 hours. It is our source for milk, cereal, water and such. As you know you get better service when the store knows you, well the guy in the Non-Stop knows us so well that when Bear went in to get more toilet paper the guy told him that Bug had just been by to pick up a couple of rolls.

The Longest Day

Lucien waiting for us at the airport - his sign has our name on it.
Sew Diva and Bug at the airport

The trip from Seattle to Braşov was one of the longest days of our lives. Bear, Bug and I all got up early Thursday to do our last minute things before leaving Seattle: Bear packed and cleaned house, Bug went for a run and I drove the homeless ladies from the shelter back to downtown. Then it was off to the airport to catch our flight. . I was hoping to have some photos to include with this posting but Bear was not up for following the guys into the septic system on the airplane to manually clean the sensors which were sending a faulty “full” signal – this shuts down the lavatories – not a good thing for a 9 hour flight. This required a 1 ½ hour sit on the plane at the gate. We were all planning to catch up on our sleep during the 9 hours between Seattle and Amsterdam but there was the matter of the small children making this trip. I knew there was a reason I didn’t fly with my children until they were older. There were several kids in our area and they seem to have divvied the screaming up so that each child got his own solo time. Instead we all watched more movies than we really wanted while drooling over the sound suppressing headphones in the In-air catalog. The wait at the gate in Seattle turned our 6 hour layover in Amsterdam to 5 hours. We managed food twice, a visit to the airport branch of the Rijksmuseum and some serious nodding at the boarding gate. We left for our 5 hour flight to Bucharest. Again, it was only nodding off and not any real sleep. Dropping into Bucharest was beautiful. It was evening so we got the beautiful late afternoon colors in the fields surrounding the airport. It reminded me of the Palouse – not rolling hills but all kinds of colors of green and brown. Bear had made arrangements for a driver, Lucien, to pick us up at the airport and drive us the 3 hours to Braşov. Traveling with Bear as he gets older is definitely an improvement. We no longer have to schlep our bags onto and off of busses and trains. By the time we got into our apartment and settled down it was midnight Friday – 2 pm Friday Seattle time. A long, long day!