GOM-ROMANIA

PAINTED MONASTERIES

On Wednesday we woke up quite early (8.30 h) because we had to drive for a few hours. We took our Skoda Octavia and… we arrived in Moldovita's Monastery (the first painted monastery we wanted to visit) at 13.30h !!! 5 h of driving in the worst roads you can imagine!!! Tons of road works, incredible bad asphalt, pot holes, carriages… I guess in 3-4 years they will have a good road and you'll be able to get the monasteries easily… however, by now isn't advisable at all !!! However, we enjoyed a fantastic crossing between mountains.

Moldovita's monastery was our first destination (we planned visit Moldovita, Suceavita and Voronet, the most famous painted monasteries). The location of the monastery is fantastic and also the monastery, it was nicer than I imagined!! Paints on the walls are extremely nice as well as the garden and the building around. There are monks still living there and taking care of the monastery. A worthwhile visit in a peaceful and lovely place in the middle of nowhere.

As we were a little bit hungry we stopped for a good meal in a local restaurant between Moldovita and our next step: Suceavita's monastery.
Suceavita's monastery is the biggest one and also great with lots of monks living there as in 18th century. As the other one was fantastic inside and outside, maybe with the pictures you can imagine how beautiful it is but I promise is much better to be there.

After Suceavita we went to Voronet. This one is also nice but not as much as Moldovita and Suceavita though is very famous for a paint that show you 30 steps to get heaven. Something funny was that 2 of my mates had to wear a kind of skirt cause they shorts were too short.

We drive back to Bistrita where we slept again through the same bad road.

CLUJ
On Thursday, we drove towards Cluj tfat is 2h far from Bistrita. We didn't expect a lot about the city but we were quite surprised because is nice, rich and dynamic cause of the university which attracts tons of youth, in consequence, is easy to find good parties all year, specially in summer and weekends.
We stayed there for 5-6h but we enjoyed the city, mainly because we met two fantastic friends with who shared a few drinks before continue our trip towards Sibiu – Capital European Culture 2007.

SIBIU
In this region close to Sibiu roads are much better thanks to EU help, you can see lots of panels with a short explanation of the project and the amount given by EU.
Once in Sibiu the first was t find a place to stay, it was not easy at all! Cause of being the Capital of European Culture 2007 all the hotels were fully booked, fortunately our Sibiu's friends (ILA) helped us a lot and we found a room for 4 in the house of an old, friendly and curious man. We rested there for 2 nights.

Finally we got ready to enjoy the fantastic city of Sibiu with our friends and it's what we did. You can not imagine the nice atmosphere of the city with lots of people and activities everywhere.

The city has been fully rebuilt cause of such event and I promise has became a great city to have fun and enjoy yourself just having a drink in any terrace or taking part of any activity. The gorgeous main square, catholic and ortodox churches, town hall, central street … a great city!

On Friday we woke up a little bit late, we toke the car and went to Paltinis sky resort

(the difference with more developed countries sky resorts is noticeable) before meeting our friends again and have an amazing experience in the salty lakes of Ocna. Incredible!! Cause of the high salt concentration in water we were flouting!! No efforts are necessary to stay up.

Later we had a fantastic time eating a barbecue in our wonderful friends house. Unfortunately, time was going away and we had to get up very early on Saturday, Bran – Dracula 's castle was waiting for us before driving to Bucarest and flying back to Barcelona.
We would have liked to spend more time in Sibiu with our friends: ILA – thanks so much for your help, your time and your friendship!!

BRAN – DRACULA 'S CASTLE

In our way to Bran we found lots of troubles on the road cause of a previous devastating storm. Once there you can easily realize is the most tourist place of a non-tourist country. The castle is on the top of a hill in the middle of the beautiful mountains of Transylvania, a fantastic place indeed.

I imagined the castle was bigger though, once inside, I realized there was tons of rooms, saloons, etc. Inside is bigger than it looks outside.

Nowadays it is too tourist to feel the magic castle that everyone hopes to find but nobody can leave Romania without being there. Romania is Dracula and in each part of the country you feel it, all related to Dracula, they know that if they are in the map is cause of Dracula’s legend and try to take as profit as they can.

Romania is not the nicest, funniest and most interesting country worldwide but I can tell you that I'm glad of my vacations there and I'll be back in a few years just to feel the difference because the country is going to change a lot in coming years.