Expat In Romania

This was several years ago, but a recent reddit thread brought back the memories... I finished reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in a sweltering, Soviet-era bus traveling between Mangalia and the port city of Constanta , or Tomis, as the ancient Greeks had called it. It was at the height of summer, early in August, and the temperature inside the rickety old bus had to beat the 38°C reported outdoors. Sweating profusely, along with every member of Marlow's jungle expedition, but wholly immersed in their journey, I couldn't keep from running a palm across my damp brow and upper lip every few minutes, leaving dark marks of perspiration in the corners when turning the pages.  There was a period of respite, somewhere around the part where the crew boarded the river boat (but not sure if the first or the second time), as the driver had taken pity on us and opened the rear doors, allowing for the odd, lazy breeze to soothe our flushed and frazzled countenanc...

The sun shines bright and clouds are sparse in an otherwise clear sky. The dash is showing 23℃ as our car dips and weaves between the green, yellow, and fallow fields of Neamț county. It is a quintessential European drive. Vaslui county, the Wild East, is just around the bend, or at the next straightway, I'm not sure where exactly but I know it's coming up because Roman is twenty minutes behind us and the small white and red mileage markers are already indicating Negrești, our destination in Vaslui, is 35 kilometers ahead. Then I see it, a large billboard coming up on the right side of the road. All county borders have signs of this type, usually affixed to long poles, illustrated with the Romanian and EU flags, the national and/or local coat of arms, and, in block letters,  Bun Venit in Judetul _  ( Welcome to _ County ).  Not that we're expecting a welcoming committee, but...Pulled over on the right, no more than ten meters beyond the 'Welcome to Vaslui C...

The snow crunches under the the sturdy Hucul's marbled hooves as fresh flakes drift all around, steady, fat, soon to cover the evidence of our mid-winter ride. I'm riding 'Cyklon', a 9 year old bay, bred for life in the mountains. He is calm and patient, but has a tendency to stop mid-stride for mouthfuls of sparse, dry leaves hanging from the shrubs and trees lining the trail. I  tsk, tsk  and pull on the reins to get us back underway, sympathizing with the craving for a snack. The landscape is desolate at this time of year. A  gusting wind whistles over the plateau as a white panorama stretches ahead and below us, peppered with brown and black copses of dormant trees, and dark woods in the foothills beyond. It is what sad, poignant poetry looks like. It is death. It is rest. It is a prelude to life. We're on a 'horseback hill tour' with a group, about an hour's train ride from Cluj, in the village of Stana. The guide told us the horses don...

I started writing this post in September 2014, not long after coming back from vacation. I dropped it because I got sick of going through the hundreds of pictures we took just to pick the perfect ones for this post. But, like a seed once planted, it needs some water and the right conditions to flourish. In my case: an email from a reader, asking me about road-tripping through Romania, and the chance to lift this weight off my back. So here it is, a summary of one Romania road trip, from Cluj and back. The Itinerary ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2,656 Kilometers. 188 Liters of gas. 2,919 RON. That's more or less the tally for the Romania road trip I took with my roomie/wife Roxana. We could have booked an all-inclusive vacation to Greece, Turkey, or Bulgaria at about the same cost, but how could we resist a road trip? A unique waterfall , the ' tunnel of love ', the best dri...