Although Romania is so close, it has always remained somewhere in the back when it comes to travel plans. The reason was that i have always imagined that it is dirty, awful and depressing. Even though this May holidays we organized a road trip together with Vesi and Rado. The beginning was the 'unbelievable' road over Danube river, full with cars, trucks, smog, bad road conditions and whatever you can think of. But in a few kilometers we started passing through small nice villages filled with life, beautiful houses, people doing their daily activities, children playing around...A little bit less than an hour later we reached the capital of Romania. Bucharest left me speechless - huge boulevards, everywhere we went it was clean and tidy, well maintained public parks, working fountains, bike lanes all over the city - nothing was the way i imagined it.
We found the hotel really quick, which turned out to be located in a quite rich neighborhood, ten minutes from the old city. We were impatient to see the city so we just threw our luggage in the room and went out for a walk. It turned out that 1st of May is also a national holiday in Romania and pretty much everything was closed. After quite some time spent walking around looking for a place to buy a tourist map, we gave up and used the good old way - asking the people :) and at last we reached the old city Strada Lipscani.
In year 1400 most of the craftsmen from Romania, Austria, Greece and Bulgaria founded their craft shops exactly in this part of Bucharest. Soon after that the district became know as Lipscani, due to the fact that the majority of the German craftsmen were from Leipzig. We viewed the church Stavropoleos (apologies if it is misspelled), the a few museums from the outside (i was never able to understand how come the national monuments are closed on holidays when there are thousands of people wanting to see them), and we decided it was time to try the local cuisine. Well we could not do that as the place we chose turned out to be a German beer-house, but even though they had Romanian beer and wine :)
Next stop on the daily agenda was the parliament, the tremendous building that is famous for almost bankrupting the whole country and that still continues to 'eat' too much resources for maintenance. A huge boulevard leads to the main gate of the parliament, with a lot of trees, walking and biking lanes and of course fountains. The parking lot in front of the building was also enormous - i am not sure if it can be ever filled with cars, but it is for sure perfect for open concerts for example (Michael Jackson performed there a few years back) Unfortunately we could not go inside, as we had to have an appointment and of course it had to be a work day...but even from the outside it was worth seeing it.
The way back to the hotel was again through the old part of the city, where we could feel a lot of movement - the bars and pubs were full, there were a lot of people in the streets, life was thriving. We could not stay behind all that hustle and sat in a bar to try again the local wine with some fresh bruschetta, only for the same of the 'good sleep' of course :) After all on the next morning it was time for ‘Muzeul Satului’or the so called Village Museum. The idea of an open-air museum in Romania has come about in 1870s, but the project succeeded in 1909 with the showcase of a „complete authentic peasant households from every important area inhabited by Romanian people”. In the museum area they were selling a lot of hand crafted things - from sweets to magnets. It was full with Bulgarian tourists that were bargaining for prices, squawking,gobbling and making a lot of noise while we were drinking coffee in a house made of hay. In an hour drive, we reached the under ground salt mine in Slanic. The weather worsened and it started drizzling a bit, but lucky for us we had rain coats, which turned out very useful for the one hour wait at the ticket queue. The line was going really slow as the elevator to the mine is not working any more and all the people were transported 200m under the surface in minivans through huge tunnels. Quite an experience itself :) We were not sure if we should wait that long but i am really glad we did as it was totally worth it - the mine is a 'must visit' place. When i entered the galleries i had the feeling as i am stepping in the mines of Moria (Lord of the Rings) 'The mine is composed of 14 chambers with trapezoidal profiles, having a 10 m opening to the ceiling and 32 m to the ground, a height of 54 m and a wall inclination angle of 60 degrees. The shore difference between the surface and the base of the mine is of 208 m and it used to be covered by the elevator in 90 seconds' The first thing we did was to lick the walls - they were salty for real, the air inside the mine leaves a slight salty taste on your tongue and is really salutary. That is why there are beds if you want to sleep in the mine, they also had basketball court, football court, table tennis and a cafe. Awesome place i really loved it.
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