A Day Touring Bucharest

Today (Saturday 9/13) was the last rest day on our trip, spent in Bucharest, a city of 1.9 million that is the capital of Romania. We spent several hours walking around the city, both to see the sights as well as to restock on items such as cookies and candies that we carry along with us while cycling. These items come in handy when we’re ready for a snack break but are miles from the nearest eating establishment or food market.

Our walking was mainly in two areas: the old historic district and the region around the massive Parliament. The historic district is a mixture of well-preserved older buildings, crumbling older buildings, and trendy street cafes. The streets and cafes were full of tourists speaking multiple languages. Nightlife was hopping, including free street concerts.

At one time, the extravagant architecture and cosmopolitan culture of Bucharest led to its being nicknamed "Little Paris" or “Paris of the East”. Much of this heritage was lost during the despotic rule, from 1965-1989, of the Communist dictator Nicholae Ceausescu. His regime was brutal and repressive, even by Soviet-bloc standards, and his megalomania led to the razing of one-seventh of Bucharest to build the Parliament and adjacent grand boulevard. The Parliament is the world’s largest and, in fact, the largest administrative building and the heaviest building of any kind in the world.

Scenes from Bucharest:

The massive Parliament building. It is a square structure, and this is one of the four equal sides

Templul Coral (Choral Synagogue)

Plaque in front of the synagogue

Outdoor concert

Outdoor dinner at the Micul Paris ("Little Paris") restaurant

Carpathian Bear for dinner

Stray Dogs and Other Wildlife on the Roads in the Primitive Romanian Countryside

Our first three days cycling in Romania were spent mainly on fairly large roads, one step below major highways. The buildings and towns on these roads are generally in poor condition. Today’s ride (Friday 9/12) was mainly on smaller roads through the countryside, and we were struck by the primitive conditions around us. The conditions were far worse than what we saw two years ago biking through a number of other ex-Communist countries – Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

Stray dogs were everywhere. While most of them were quite small and ignored us, the few that showed interest in us caused a problem for dog-fearing (and–hating) Peter. At one point, when a dog of questionable intent stepped onto the road, Peter braked and, unable to get his bike shoes out of their clips, fell to the ground and scraped his left knee (matching a scraped right knee from a few days ago). After that, Carol “rode shotgun”, riding in front watching for dogs, making sure to place herself between dogs and Peter at all times.

Besides dogs, there were horses, chickens, turkeys, geese, and ducks on or right beside the road. We also saw quite a few horse-drawn vehicles and a couple of human-pulled carts. Workers in the fields used old-fashioned hand-held tools such as scythes and picked corn by hand. The houses beside the road were in dreadful shape, and the roads themselves were very rutted and full of potholes. We hit one 2.5 mile stretch of unexpected dirt road, something that our skinny tires don’t deal with very well.

All in all, it was a challenging and eye-opening day.

Scenes from our ride today:

A Brief Detour into Serbia For Lunch

One of the enjoyable and educational aspects of all of our bike trips is that we read about the places we’re about to see, often a day or so before getting there. Occasionally, we alter our plans somewhat based on what we read, though our ability to do so is quite limited because all of our accommodations are booked months in advance. A day or so ago, we read about a huge dam – the Iron Gate Dam – that spans the Danube, connecting Romania with Serbia. The dam, which can be driven or cycled across, is located about 10 miles from Orsova, Romania, where we spent Wednesday evening. Based on that information, we decided to modify our Thursday ride to cycle across the dam to Serbia, have lunch there, and then return to Romania. To accommodate this detour and make it to our destination town of Craiova, Romania, we had to take a train at the end of our ride today.

The Iron Gate Dam was built in 1973 to tame a portion of the Danube River that runs through a narrow gorge called the Iron Gates, with cliffs as tall as 500 meters flanking it. The currents in the Danube were so strong through the gorge that it was extremely difficult for ships to travel upstream through it. Until the Iron Gate Dam was completed, ships had to be dragged upstream by locomotive. The dam is also a huge source of hydroelectric power.

Our lunch town of Kladovo, Serbia, was delightful, and the food was excellent. It was a big change from most of the towns we’ve seen in Romania over the past few days, which have been notable for crumbling buildings (even the fairly new buildings have cracked concrete and rusting metal) and poor food.

On the way to the dam

Continuing towards the dam

Walking our bikes through a tunnel on the road

Cycling to Serbia across the Iron Gate Dam

Entering Serbia

The Iron Gate Dam, viewed from the Serbian side with Romania in the background

Kladovo, Serbia

Lunch in Kladovo

A crumbling, rusting apartment building in Romania

Craiova City Hall

Cycling Over a Mountain Pass, Through the Carpathian Mountains

Our rides on Tuesday and Wednesday, both in Romania, were as different as day and night. Tuesday’s 67-mile ride from Timisoara to Caransebes was flat, with little scenery of note, and ended in a fairly nice town with a picturesque central square. Wednesday’s 60-mile ride was mountainous, with beautiful vistas in the Capathian mountains, and ended in the dreary town of Orsova.

The mountain pass we took through the Carpathians is the same one that the Orient Express used to cross these mountains. The train stopped in both Caransebes, an important rail hub, and Orsova. The road we took was never far from the railroad tracks, though we only saw them occasionally, when they ran right beside the road or when the road and tracks criss-crossed, with the road passing under rail bridges.

The mountain pass has been called the Oriental Gate, since it connects Western and Central Europe to Southeastern Europe and the Middle East (formerly called the “Orient”, or Near East) in Roman Empire days and subsequently. This terminology explains why the train from Paris to Istanbul was named the Orient Express.

On route to Caransebes

In the town of Lugoj, Romania

Main square in Caransebes

At the end of the main square


Pictures from our ride through the Carpathian Mountains:

Train tracks on a bridge over the road

Lunch in a small mountain town

An elderly couple stopped by to give us a handful of plums for our lunch

Into Romania, Despite Warnings from Peter’s Mother

“They are wild places. Please come home now.” Those were the words we heard from Peter’s 97-year-old mother prior to heading to Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Despite that, we crossed the border from Hungary into Romania today, 20 miles into our 71-mile ride. This goes to show that there’s no age limit on acting out to assert your independence from your parents.

While our first day’s experience in Romania hasn’t turned up anything wild yet, we did notice a clear drop in apparent prosperity as soon as we crossed from Hungary to Romania (just as we did when we crossed from France/Germany/Austria to Hungary). Buildings and towns in the Romanian countryside are quite dilapidated, and people’s clothing is often drab and ill-fitting. Our impressions were corroborated when we checked GDP per capita information (2013 International Monetary Fund data, measured in “International Dollars”): Germany 40,000; Hungary 20,000; Romania 13,400. Bulgaria and Turkey, the final two countries on our trip, are both at about 15,000, quite similar to Romania.

Things changed entirely when we reached our destination town of Timisoara, Romania, whose population of 320,000 is the third largest in Romania. The main square in the town is full of trendy shops and restaurants, and, based on dress and use of electronics, the people in the square look indistinguishable from those in Western Europe and North America. Timisoara is the main social, economic and cultural center in the western part of Romania and is a candidate to become the European Capital of Culture in 2021. The European Capital of Culture is a city designated by the European Union for a period of one calendar year during which that city hosts a series of cultural events with a strong European dimension.

In Hungary this morning, on route to Romania

Biking in Romania today:

In the main square of Timisoara: