I know I went on vacation over a month ago but I have been busy. It takes up a lot of my time to play in the snow, read, knit, work out, etc. So this part is about the first part of my vacation, before I ran the marathon. It all started way back in October, the 29th to be exact….Our vacation started at 7:00 in the morning on October the 29th. We awoke early to jump on board the 7am bus to Iaşi, Romania. It took us less than 2 hours to reach the border and say goodbye to Moldova for 10 whole days. We would have arrived in Iasi within 3 hours but of course boarder crossing can never be a quick and easy process. Instead you have to disembark on the Moldova side and show the officials that you are only smuggling smîntină (sour cream), cabbage, milk, and brînza (special yummy Moldovan cheese) instead of drugs. I kid you not, that is what people’s luggage was full of. Why pack clothes when you can pack fresh milk from the cow to bring to your relatives in Romania, because Romania obviously doesn’t have milk or cabbage. So anyways, we have to get off the bus again on the Romania side of the border and present our documents and bags again, maybe they don’t trust the Moldovans did a good enough job. We finally arrived in Iasi. Finally. We were on vacation and out of Moldova. Hurray!
We celebrated by seeing a movie, in English. I repeat, in English. And t wasn’t some bad Steven Segal movie that they play on the TV here but an actual new, good movie- The Reckoning. Anyone see it? It was good, I recommend it. We also splurged and ate at a Chinese restaurant. Though we regretted it as soon as we bit into our food because of the huge chunk of glass I found in my rice after Jeff had chomped through (and swallowed) something very hard and crunchy. You’d think that would have been the end of our meal. But no. We picked the glass out an continued eating. We are still alive aren’t we. We ended our night early with a 9pm bedtime because we had to be at the bus station by 6am the next morning for our bus to Braşov. We were going to see Dracula!!!Waking up wasn't such a hassle and making the 6am bus wasn’t so bad either. But the 8 hour ride through the mountains without heat was a killer. We froze!!! The woman in front of us kept yelling at the driver that we were all going to die and muttered to herself almost the entire trip. We made our bags lighter though by putting on all the clothes we brought along, which wasn’t much. In the early afternoon we finally pulled into a dingy bus station and we announced that it was Braşov. I was ready to go home. I had pictured a town like Whistler, Canada. Jeff and Sharon drug me away from the ticket window and we rode into the center of town hoping for something better. It was amazing. Braşov is beautiful!!!! There are tons of old buildings and huge hills around with mountains in the distance.
The Brasov sign in the background.
The Brasov sign in the background.We came to Braşov with the sole purpose of spending Halloween in Dracula land. And of course we made Dracula costumes especially for the occasion. The 30h, or what was left of the day, was spent walking around the town. Annie and Anastasia met up with us and the 31st was spent having fun. First we hiked up the mountain to the big Braşov sign (just like Hollywood).
We could see all of Braşov and beyond up there. Not to mention a bear. I swear to god! And it was less than 50 yards in front of us. It was sleeping though and wouldn’t wake up, no matter how much we yelled at it. We even tried to call it in Romanian, hey, a bear in Romania probably doesn’t speak English. But we could only get it to move a little bit. Just enough to prove it wasn’t dead.
The brown spot in the middle is the bear!!!
The next day I had to head to Buchareşti to so I could catch my early flight the next morning to Athens for the marathon.
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