Tales of the Old West (from the Old Eastern Bloc)

There's an Old Western saying: "Wide open spaces don't breed no chatterboxes."
I love those old pithy sayings.  Were people really more witty in the past or does it only seem that way to me because I'm aging and out of touch and don't always get young humor?
In any case, I bring up the Old West because often life in Obedin makes me think of it. The old ways. Ways people have lived for centuries and found it utterly unremarkable until modern Westerners come and stand around taking photographs while speaking some brand of Italian.  
It's really easy to romanticize rural life.  I've been guilty of it a time or two myself.  But the reality is that it's tough. Well, it's not tough if you don't like to bathe or are indifferent to the possession of a full set of teeth in your mouth. In that case I suppose its like life in any other setting.  But if you like to bathe and have all of your teeth (heaven knows we modern Americans are obsessed with both bathing and dentistry) then it's tough.
When we came in '99 Mircea was a baby and we had to get all of our water out of this well:

Take home lesson: when faced with the prospect of hauling water this way it's remarkable how quickly you can decide that your own stench isn't really rank enough that it can't last another day or so.  Or how soon you decide that shaving your legs is a highly overrated task.  Or even that your infant is pretty okay without a diaper on because it's sure easier wiping off a bare bottom than scrubbing out a bucket full of nappies.  I only had to endure the water-from-the-well thing for a short time.  I'd really like to think that if it were a permanent situation I would have learned to buck up and get with the program of weekly bathing and properly diapering my child.
Another thing: as much as I hate cars (and I hate them) it's funny how you find you don't mind them so much when it's 4 degrees outside, you have a 15 km journey ahead and realize you left the house without your gloves.  Cause riding in an uncovered horse-drawn wagon under those circumstances is nothing like watching Henry Fonda driving Linda Darnell around in one, no ma'am.  It kind of blows actually.
Our next door neighbor has a horse-drawn wagon.  As a treat when Sharon, Kelly and Todd were here he took them for a ride in it.
Happily it was a sunny day: no gloves required.

What was it like? There were moments wherein someone discovered that lo and behold, their hemhrroids had not in fact gone away and someone else thought maybe they would invest in a sports bra the next time they decide to take a turn in Nonu's wagon.  But there were moments of delight and total gratification such as when Luci grabbed the reigns (that is to say, Nonu allowed him to grab the reins) and yelled "yee-haw!" and took off down the road like a bat out of hell and left us all in the dust.  It wasn't the fact that he likes to go fast (he's a boy) or the dust he kicked up that was so awesome, it was the sheer joy in his face and the fact that for the first time he's taken an interest in horses as opposed to Lambroghinis and BMWs.

For us, these were just day excursions; little diversions to amuse ourselves and our guests. The fact is I got to jump out of his wagon and go inside to use my indoor plumbing.  And later that day I could go to the store in my Volkswagen.  These facts alone disqualify me from making too many more generalizations about what rural life is really like as a day to day existence or how desireable it would be to permanently live that way.  I don't really live a rural life, I just live in a rural area.  And as the old Western saying goes:  Polishing your pants on saddle leather don't make you a rider.

From there to here...

From there to here and here to there, funny things are everywhere...
-Dr. Seuss

When we left Santa Cruz a lot of people said they would really like to come and visit us and probably just as many thought, (but did not say aloud) "Why in the world would I want to go to Romania?"
I get it.
For those in both camps, I offer the following post:

What does it take to get here exactly?  

There are no direct flights from the States into Romania.  Don't waste your time trying to find one.  So you have to fly into one major European city and from there catch another short flight into Bucharest.  Flying overseas (particularly if you start from the west coast of the North American continent) is no small feat. That alone will leave you fuzzy-headed and dehydrated at best.  But plenty of people do it for the joy of seeing Paris or London so I've not got much sympathy.  Suck it up, folks, that's life.

But here's an idea: don't pick a city in Europe that you have any interest in whatsoever.  Cause then you'll be tempted to make your lay over long enough to "go out and explore".  This will be about as successful as arriving at a Japanese opera half way through the performance while you are drunk and recovering from a bout of dysentery. You will enjoy the experience even less than you will comprehend it.  Just sit and doze at the gate until its time to board.
Wherever you chose, however, just know that the flight will be faster than the drive from the airport to our house. Think of us as living among a remote tribe in the Amazon basin, you know, those places where anthropologists go and National Geographic photographers follow.  Well...think of it more like a remote tribe where they're all dressed in t-shirts with English slogans or ads for American corporations and where plastic soda bottles litter the roadways. In any case, you'll feel like you're driving into the middle of nowhere.

And just when you think the drive can't possibly be any longer or more torturous, there will be another hour to go. But eventually it will end.  It will.  And then you'll be in Obedin and you can sleep.  Or you'll be in Transylvania and you can sleep.  Either way, you'll be too tired to pay much attention to anything until the morning.  And then the experience can begin.

You might wake up in Buşteni, Transylvania

with this view from your hotel window

We might bring you coffee in bed (or we might just take this photo from what appears to be a Folgers commercial)

 One thing will be certain: you will be wiped out. (although my son did not just travel across the Atlantic so I have no idea what his excuse is.)

But we will provide you with plenty of caffeinated drinks (or decaf if you are so inclined)

 You will drive (a lot).  On windy roads.  (You might even vomit when you arrive at a certain castle of a certain famous person belonging to the undead but don't worry, if you buy a souvenier from the vomited-on vendor, they will forgive you anything.)
But you'll get to see the Carpathian Mountains

You will see lots of horses and wagons.  Some appropriately located off the road like this:

others, not so much:
(and yes, these are our highways)

(he's off the road now but he'll be pulling on in just a minute and probably right in front of an 18-wheeler)

You will see random old stuff

and gypsies selling copper stills on the side of the road...

or just walking around town

you will see other Romanians selling stuff on the side of the road...

we might even stop to buy some ingredients for dinner and you can be proud of buying "locally grown and sourced" without having to wait in lines at Staff of Life (see Toamna post for up close photos of the produce)

and we will be happy that you came.

Hopefully by the end, you will too

Thanks, Sharon, Kelly and Todd for being brave enough to come!

Bran

Bran.
No, not the stuff you're supposed to eat more of so you don't get colon cancer.  I'm talking about the place where Dracula's Castle is.
Except Vlad Ţepeş was never there which means an argument could be made that it is therefore not Dracula's castle. But somehow everyone calls it that.  Why?  I don't know.  You'd think I would know cause I've been there enough times to have figured that out or at least to have read all of the little plaques that surround the place and explain the story.
Retention of trivia used to be my strong suit.  I used to be able to read useless facts and then later regurgitate them when it was least necessary and when people were the least interested, like when talking to strangers in doctor's offices.  "Hey, the name for that space between your brows is glabella" and "Sisinnius was the 86th Pope".
But now my brain is filled with memorizing adverbs, trying to understand how to correctly pluralize nouns and how to keep my kids from failing the 8th and 5th grades.  I've got no space left for long-dead rulers of Wallachia who liked to shove sticks up the bums of their enemies.
Usually no one else really cares about this either but now its October which means Halloween.  October would be my favorite month but Halloween ruined it.  It was okay when I was a kid and no one thought about Halloween until say, October 28th but now we've got orange plastic pumpkins dangling from store windows as early as the end of August and I'm disgusted.
By the way, I've decided that anyone who publicly announces that the sending of Halloween cards is a lame idea is pretty okay in my book.
But back to Bran and Dracula.
So there is no evidence that Vlad Ţepeş was ever at this particular fortress but somehow it has become Dracula's Castle (if you can't rest until you know how, ask Marius for the details) and if it's October and you're doing the Cliff Notes version of a trip to Romania, a visit to Bran and a tour through the castle is a must.
That's pretty much how we ended up there with Sharon, Kelly and Todd.
They did a Cliff Notes trip to Romania in October.
This was day one and two.  Days three through five will be coming soon...

Bran: its not just what's for breakfast.