LAST BLOG:  ROMANIA

We disembarked on Wednesday (Nov. 2) and had a lengthy bus ride, mostly through farmland, to Bucharest.  Upon arrival we drove through the city to the old quarter where we had a traditional Romanian lunch while being entertained by dancers

Bucharest is a large (over 2 million) but pleasant city with lots of green space and some very elegant buildings. 

However, there are always heavy traffic and many derelict buildings.  When the Communists took over after WWII they abolished private land ownership.  In 1989 the Communists were overthrown and President Ceausecu was executed after a hastily arranged trial.  The new government passed a law returning all properties to their original owners.  After 44 years it proved difficult to find many of the owners (or their heirs) and buildings have remained vacant until now the present day.

After arrival at our very elegant Bucharest hotel we were very tired so we ate pizza in the hotel Italian restaurant.  I asked the waiter to choose a suitable Romanian wine.  He chose an indigenous varietal called Feteasca Neagra (Black Maiden).  We liked this wine so much that we have ordered it each of the next two nights.

We left early Thursday morning for a lengthy ride over the Carpathian Mountains to Transylvania.  We arrived in the late afternoon at the largest city (Brasov).

and after a tour were taken to an “interesting” hotel for the night.  The hotel is brand new and upscale, but the designer had some rather odd ideas.  Firstly, everything is black, or occasionally dark gray.  This includes walls, curtains, urinals in the public washrooms; in fact, everything down to a black pencil sitting on the black desk alongside the black telephone.  Also, everything is designed to be square, including door knobs, light switches and even the toilet seat.  The only break is to look through the clear glass bathroom walls to one’s roommate’s light skin while showering or sitting on the square toilet seat.  (Sorry but there are no pictures.)

On Friday we stopped at Bran to see the Bran Castle (Dracula’s castle).  When the Irishman Bram Stoker wrote Dracula he had never visited Transylvania, but chose, from a painting, the Bran Castle as the setting.  It is argued that he based Count Dracula on the 14^th century ruler Vlad Draculea, best known as Vlad the Impaler.  Vlad, however, was ruler of Wallachia rather than Transylvania, and may or may not have ever stayed in the Castle.  The only downside of our visit was that a woman in our tour group fell or collapsed coming out of the restaurant and was left behind in a Transylvanian hospital.  We got back to Bucharest in time for a drink before dinner.

Romania is primarily an agricultural country but they do manufacture Dacia cars (Dacia was recently bought out by Renault).  One sees lots of these cars on the streets and they are Romania’s largest export, most of the cars going, interestingly enough, to Germany.

As we must leave the hotel at 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning to begin our journey home we celebrated a last lingering meal on Friday night at an American-style steakhouse, also in the hotel (we are back for two nights in the same hotel as Wednesday).  We discussed with the waiter what steaks to order and he brought a platter with each cut (uncooked) for us to examine.  As all the steaks were huge and as we wanted to share an appetizer the waiter suggested very kindly that we just order one steak and split that.

My last picture is of perhaps the most important stop in Romania.

 

 

BLOG # 10:  SERBIA TO BULGARIA

We had two days in Serbia; the first spent in the capital Belgrade.  Belgrade is a large, clean city but not as attractive as other cities we visited.  There is a bit of a drab, grayness about it.  The tour involved hours of walking, so Betty stayed onboard as I visited a church, a pedestrian area and a fort.

Trivia:  Unlike a Roman Catholic Cathedral an Orthodox Church has no statues, no organ, and no pews upon which to sit.

On our second day in Serbia we first stopped at the Golubac Fortress,

prior to our afternoon sail through the Iron Gates.  The Iron Gates refers to a 100 km stretch of water where the Danube narrows dramatically and the cliffs of the Carpathian Mountains rise sharply from the Romanian side and the cliffs of the Balkan Mountains rise on the Serbian side.  The huge carving shown among the pictures is of an ancient Romanian hero.  It was carved around 1900 and it took 12 sculptors 10 years to complete.

After hearing stories of the war while in Croatia I was interested in the Serbian side.  While in Belgrade our guide seemed to avoid talking about anything beyond “the golden years” of Tito.  At one point I asked her if she were avoiding later history.  I noted that there are always two sides and she interpreted this as sympathy for Serbia.  She then unloaded an emotional defence of Serbia, but I must confess some of the arguments had a bit a Putin-like reasoning.  In the evening a wonderful lecturer came on board the boat to talk about the history of Serbia.  Even though he was even-handed in his description of the buildup to the war I was still left mostly with sympathy for the break-away states of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and now Kosovo.  Serbia is currently blocked from admission to the European Union because of its refusal to recognize Kosovo.

After breakfast I took a stroll into Vidin, Bulgaria.  Vidin has the highest unemployment in Bulgaria, yet the small city seemed quite pleasant.  In the afternoon we went to a winery for tastings  Even directly from the barrels the wines were excellent.  I am very impressed with Bulgarian wine, which unfortunately is not available in Nova Scotia, instead most of the wines are exported to China.

 

 

BLOG # 9:  FROM BUDAPEST TO CROATIA

On Wed., Oct 26 we boarded the Viking Vigar, our riverboat, that will take us down the Danube River to Romania.  The sail out of Budapest that the evening was spectacular.

We docked in Kalocsa, Hungary the next morning and took a tour of the Puszta (flat prairie).  Our first stop was at the Kalocsa cathedral where we enjoyed a short organ recital.  This church (Italian baroque style) has a magnificent organ that was first played by Franz Liszt.

We then drove to the Bakodpuszta Equestrian Center where we were served wine and bread with pork fat and onions prior to watching the show.  The horses and riders were in wonderful harmony and the feature was a single rider with 10 horses.  After the show we were served Hungarian brandy before leaving the seating stands.  All of this before lunch.

The next morning we docked at the small city of Vukovar, Croatia.  Vukovar was the first city in Croatia to be invaded by Milosevic and the Serbs at the beginning of the Balkan War, with the result that 81% of the city’s buildings were destroyed.  Despite the war having ended in 1995 the result of the bombing is still evident.

 

We then visited the larger city of Osijek (also heavily bombed) and attended a recital by a young soprano in the local church.

We drove to the tiny village of Oslovo where we visited a private home and talked with the owner (via a translator).  Our hostess works in a factory but shows cruise guests through her home as a way of supplementing her income. 

Most of the inhabitants of these three places became refugees during the war and only returned 7-10 years later.  Our guide on the tour told us that she was four when the war broke out.  Her father fought as a guerrilla and died after the war as the result of his wounds.  During the war, she and her mother lived in a basement, and sometimes in a tunnel, depending on the severity of the bombing.

This is the third day of our second river cruise (and probably our last) as we much prefer the bigger ocean ships.  We recognize that some tourists prefer river cruising to ocean cruising (such as some drink tea rather than coffee).  Ocean cruising offers nicer staterooms, infinitely better food, evening entertainment, etc.  River cruises do offer a chance to visit small places that are not on the ocean.  Our particular river cruise offers included excursions and wine and beer with meals.  Although the wine has been good in the evenings, all three lunches offered only Austrian or German wine.  Betty managed a teaspoonful the first day and I am developing a taste for beer.

                         BLOG # 8:  FROM HOLLAND TO HUNGARY

After a final magnificent meal on Friday night in Barcelona we got up early on Saturday to catch our short flight to Amsterdam.  Despite the taxi getting us to the airport 3 hours before our flight, we only made the flight with 10 minutes to spare (flying is such fun).

We chose a Marriott airport hotel (although not that close to the airport) because we could stay on points.  This choice allowed us to finally have our first dreadful meal in four weeks.  There was only one restaurant within walking distance (and it was closed) so we were forced to eat at the hotel.  The very, very expensive buffet looked very unappetizing, so we opted for pizzas.  The crust could easily have been made into long-wearing boots, the tomato was missing, the cheese insipid, and the topping of chorizo was so far removed from meat that it could have been safely eaten by a vegan.  We ordered two large glasses of wine, and although the glasses themselves were large, the amount of wine could just as easily been served in thimbles.  On our second night we ate at a nearby bowling alley.

There was even more flying fun on Monday.  We got up at 4:15 a.m. to catch our flight to Budapest via Munich.  We navigated the airport in Amsterdam relatively easily and got to the gate with time to spare.  Because of Betty’s mobility we were then taken out across the runway by a forklift-type vehicle.  There we were hoisted to a half-size door on the side of the tiny plane.  Once onboard we were informed that some “a—h---” had checked in his luggage and then not boarded.  An hour and one-half search of the luggage compartment caused us to miss our connection in Munich.  Eventually Lufthansa got us a flight on Air Dolomiti.  After being forklifted again we had several moments of panic when we discovered that our boarding passes indicated that we had seats in row 33 of a 32-row airplane.   We were seated in row 32, nonetheless, and the guy who was supposed to sit there got shuffled elsewhere on a full plane.

Earlier Betty had called an emergency Viking number and they arranged to send a driver to collect us at the airport, many hours after we were supposed to join up with other Viking guests.  After a long drive we got to our beautiful hotel right on the Danube in Pest.  The first pictures below show night and morning views taken from our room window.  They show some of the Buda side of the river.

After most others had finished their meals we stumbled into the hotel restaurant and ordered some random food.  Betty fell asleep over her chicken and was sent to bed, while I tried to a finished a bottle of cheap Hungarian wine.

Budapest is a quite spectacular city with lovely 19^th century buildings, none allowed to be higher than the parliament buildings.  The river is crossed by many bridges rebuilt after WWII.

Although Betty has a cold we hope our second night in Budapest will be more pleasant.  At least the start will good as I shall be pouring what a wine merchant told me was his best bottle of Egri Bikaver (“bulls’ blood”).

 TRIVIA:  One of the most popular names for a man in Hungary is Attila.

                    BLOG # 7:  FOUR DAYS IN BARCELONA

We repeated our stay, from a few years ago, at the Hotel Continental, directly overlooking La Rambla, Barcelona.   Not only did we have a balcony overlooking the street, we had a 24-hour free beer tap in the lobby.  Ice cream is also free.

La Rambla is a great people watching area, which for us could be done either from our balcony or by sitting in one of the chairs conveniently provided right on the street.

Two pictures of Betty our first day in Barcelona (one showing her with her first glass of the evening and the other showing her with her last) indicate from the second picture grin that she cheered from her disembarkation downer.

Because we had been in Barcelona a couple of times before, and with Betty’s mobility issues, we stuck fairly close to the Gothic Quarter.  On our second night we attended a guitar concert at the Basilica del Pi.  Betty asked Google for directions and Mr. Google commented that it was a 6-minute walk or a 22-minute car drive.  It took Betty considerably more than 6 minutes, but she did beat the cars’ time.

After 21 days of rich food on the ship we basically ate tapas while here.  Although prices of tapas have increased since our last visit, they no longer bother to charge for wine (usually a Rioja Crianza).  Before the concert we had an excellent tapas meal outside the Basilica.  Two large plates of tapas, excellent Crèma Catalan for dessert, two bottles of sparkling water and four large glasses of wine came to $ 40. Canadian.  That included a service charge and a supplemental fee for eating outside.  In Antigonish that would have gotten us no food and a bottle of very rough wine. 

On the other hand, if one wants to eat at Canadian prices, within a 3-wood distance of our hotel are a McDonalds, a Burger King, a Subway, and a Five Guys.  Perhaps American tourists need places where they feel comfortable.

On Thursday we bought tickets for two routes on the hop-on-hop-off bus.  On the first route we saw lots of nice sites, including some gaudy, Gaudi sites, but seemed to spent most of our time sitting at stop lights.  We skipped the second route.

Barcelona has a very good underground, but surface travel is quite slow, even with the 10,000 plus registered taxis, and the city only allowing low-emission cars.  I think to live here one would need a place close to a subway entrance.

On Saturday we will try and catch a Vueling (unheard of discount airline) flight to Amsterdam (fingers crossed), and two days later we will fly to Budapest.  After that Viking River Cruises will look after us for the last two weeks our trip.