We had heard mixed reports about travelling to Romania, most of them negative but we decided go to Bucharest the capital as it was so close to our final destination, the Black Sea.
We travelled all day by train (with reserved seats) through very pleasant countryside, around or through mountain ranges and occasional meeting up in places with the Danube River and following along its banks for miles. The further east we travelled the more noticeable the decline in the peoples living standards. Homes and farms in the rural areas were at best rudimentary and farming practices, from what we could see from the train, were labour intensive with grass being cut by hand with scythes and hay being stacked using big wooden pitch forks. Obsolete, redundant infrastructure everywhere to be seen near, and in, the towns and cities. Where new factories had been built there was little thought, effort (and probably money) put into removing the old stuff. The railway station buildings were literally crumbling, tracks and sleepers covered in weeds and rusty and dilapidated rolling stock crowded the marshalling yards.
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| Mountain stream cascading down to the Danube River. |
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| Traveling through the Carpathian Mountains on our way to Bucharest. |
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| View from the train following the Danube. |
We arrived in Bucharest close to midnight, we'd pre-booked a room in the Ibis Hotel close to the station. We'd been advised that many people were doing it tough and living rough in Bucharest and to be careful of pickpockets, people begging and even wild dogs that were said to be roaming around the seedier areas.Well we saw a few people begging and many people sleeping in cardboard boxes around the station area but no dogs to worry us.
The city of Bucharest turned out to be a pleasant surprise, we really enjoyed our time there looking around the historic buildings, learning a bit of the history (enough to wet our appetite to know more) and exploring the "old town" lane ways and street restaurants. Another city that we both agreed we'd like to revisit and to go further out into the country.
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| Ceausescu's (obscenely decadent) Palace. An iconic building in the centre of the city that led to his downfall and execution in 1989. |
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| There are a number of YouTube clips showing the interior of the palace, it's worth having a look to see where the peoples money was spent. |
Our final cycling destination was to have been the Black Sea Port of Constanta at the Danube Delta but now we're travelling by train we decided to head to Istanbul and head to the Black Sea by boat up the Bosphorus Straight between Europe and asia in Turkey.
