Romania: Parks, Mud Volcanos and Snowy Mountains

One of the things I learnt from going to Romania is that I am not a good tourist. I don't mean in the sense of urinating up famous monuments while being stupidly drunk, as the British have been gaining a reputation for doing recently, but rather that I don't tend to find myself by the famous monuments in the first place. If I did happen to end up by a monument or an important building I would arrive at the scene lacking the item most treasured by tourists the world over, that being a camera, and I must confess I actually have an aversion to saying 'cheese' in front of whatever assemblage of stone, concrete or metal I find myself by.

Like most I do have a curiosity about my surroundings, I enjoy exploring, and find glimpses into the past interesting. So well I do think the creations of the rich, the powerful, or the pious, that were built to show just how rich, powerful or pious they were may well deserve the drunk Brit treatment, overall I enjoyed having a nosey around the towns and cities I visited. But like I said, I took no camera! All is not lost however for those of you who at times enjoy life through these colourful rectangles because on a couple of cool trips I went on someone's kind father had a pretty awesome camera to record things, and later, back at Forest Garden our hosts kindly took up the rectangle capture duty.

So this is my very delayed photo blog of Romania.

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One of my first priorities, indeed my continued priority, in Bucharest was finding the best places where the green stuff grows. The nearest and the best of these was Herăstrău Park (I don't know how this is pronounced, to me it was just 'the park', or if there was any confusion over that it was 'the big park'). The park comes complete with many trees, a huge lake, lots of little paths, big bushes, and beautiful and sometimes weird wild dogs. In short, many cool places to explore. There is a difference there compared to parks in England that I noticed. I was walking around Hyde park once (which is nowhere near as good what with the Victorians needing to loosen up a bit), and there was a tree stump that had been cordoned off! Presumably the local warden had deemed this tree stump a danger to the public! In Herăstrău Park in one place they had dug a small but long trench, maybe for some piping or drainage, and it was quite amazing, without there being any warnings, cones, or fences, people managed not to fall in! Actually, one thing I miss about Romania now that I am back in the UK, is being able to pass from one railway platform to another by walking over the rails, it is such a hassle having to use bridges or subways!

So...

Me hanging out with one of the locals :) :P

Random views of the park...

A really cool game of table tennis...

Trying (and failing) not to hit the wild dogs that came to chill with us...

Part of the big lake in the park (who's water looks strangely computer generated up close!)...

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One weekend Sophie's family took me to the corner of the Carpathian mountains to see the mud volcanoes, that was a very cool trip! Forget what man can create, show me what nature can create, and keeps on recreating!

It needs no comments...

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The photos of the first time at Forest Garden Sanctuary I have already shown you (here). But I returned a second time (and will return again :D ). This second time was a slightly different experience, because this time I had company in the cottage. To begin with there were four of us volunteers, chopping wood, cooking, painting, doing a little stone masonry (for free, so does that gain me entry...?!). Although we were given two rooms between us, being sociable creatures we all ended up sharing one. It was nice, and the cottage became more alive and much less scary at night. Good company can certainly make some aspects of living in the near wild less of a challenge!


The two girls then left, leaving me and another lad. We decided it would be fun to take up the challenge of digging a two meter deep storage well for rain water, which we did, and it was.


The well needed concrete rings to line it, big heavy concrete rings, that usually need some kind of machinery which we didn't have to lower them into the hole. What we had was one short bit of unconventional looking rope, and a couple of trees standing about. A trip to a shop later and we had a long bit of conventional but not so thick looking rope, but it was the best the shop had.

The best laid plans...
...may often work, but, there we all were, ready to let the rope slowly loosen from around the tree, the ring was slowly moved into position next to the hole, and the rope snapped...A little bit of rubbing our heads together and we got the ring to where we wanted it...But you live you learn...And much to our collective surprise, perfect...

So, I am lying nice and warm in my comfortable bed, it has not long got light and I am waking, coming slowly into full consciousness, feeling quite relaxed and refreshed. I roll over then sit up towards the window to open the curtain. I am dressed in a second, it has snowed! We knew it was going to get colder, but we hadn't expected this! (For me England is a damp failure in this regard, so often disappointing in the snow department!)

So we were up and out in no time, and I had the suggestion that we go and look for bear tracks in the snow. Now there is one thing about looking for bear tracks in the snow, and that is that you don't expect to find them, it is like looking for Santa's sleigh marks on the roof. But no, this is not England, this is Transylvania and I am up a mountain in a forest, there are bear tracks in the snow! And although it must have been a fairly small bear, no other animal has footprints that big here (though thinking about it now I wonder whether a lynx does, though I doubt it would be big enough). This was maybe 150 meters from the cottage at a rough guess!

I learnt something else that morning too: soap doesn't work when it is frozen! I had got into the habit of getting some water out of the well in the morning, tipping some into a bowl on the wash area and having a quick wash there. Well I had left some clean water in a bowl out from the night before so I found the mound of snow I thought that was, and found the soap under more snow. Then after breaking the soap away from the frozen wood I plunged it and my hands into the bowl. The soap scratched my hands a bit and that was it, no bubbles, nothing, just very very cold hands!

Well here are some pictures from our morning walk to the spring (sorry, neither me or the lad I was with when we went looking for tracks had a camera)

Our pack brothers...
Bobby has just seen a tasty ankle to bite...
Apples, now with 20% snow at no extra cost...Yes click on the picture if you want, zoom in on my hand if you have too, yes that is a pair of my socks on my hand, yes there is a hole in it...Ah, to be in a forest in the snow...Its a good day when you find a half eaten carcase on the ground...At the water hole...:) ...The end (for now)...
Lots of thanks to all the really cool people I met that gave me company, fed me, took me to interesting places, or often all three! I had a really good time and have many happy memories.

And thanks Sophie-Sophie, for being awesome!