Romania

Today is our first full day staying in the town of Sinaia, Romania. The Romanian language is quite close to Italian, etc., so we can at least read the signs and understand quite a bit of what's written. Not much of what's said, but since we're on a tour, we never actually have to talk to anybody anyway, except to buy souveniers.
Romania is a country that our guide describes as cursed with bad genes, in that he feels the people are lazy and suffer from the "latin" outlook on life. Manana. He is a Romanian, by the way. An example of this is the roadside. It's a beautiful country, but mostly agricultural. For whatever reason, there are lots of picnic tables beside the roads, and next to all of them are huge piles of garbage.

Additionally, as we are riding along, we see lots of people camping, again, right next to the road, or maybe 100 feet away, but still within sight of the road. My personal theory is that you frequently see people stopped beside the road relieving themselves in the bushes, so only the area that's visible from the road is marginally clean enough to camp in -- at least you aren't as likely to be pitching your tent in excrement.

Farming is likewise very labor intensive, seems to be done with horses and a lot of labor. We saw people walking and herding sheep, feeding cattle, and the cute little haystacks on our way to Bran Castle, which is supposed to be Dracula's castle but actually has nothing to do with Dracula except that Bram Stoker stayed there for three days once and incorporated the castle into his book.



Zoe and I enjoyed our visit.