Brasov Bound

Rolled out of Bucharest mid-morning Tuesday for the trip to Brasov, in the heart of Transylvania. It was a long train trip, and while we're going, I'll tell you a few things I've picked up about Romanaia in the (now) four days I've been here:
*It seems, in some ways, more communist than Russia. I think it's because in Russia last year, particularly in St. Petersburg and Moscow, there were lots of signs of opulence, like people driving BMWs, wearing Gucci, and generally living it up two decades after the end of communism. Romania doesn't seem to have the money to do that, however, so it's been two decades since Ceauscescau was driven from power (and killed! Right in Bucharest!), but the buildings in Bucharest are still drab, gray, and cube-shaped.
*The old people here look rather communist for the most part. Old men wear dress shirts with ratty old v-neck sweaters and no ties, topped off by blazers that have seen better days and tweed hats. Women wrap their heads in monochromatic kerchiefs to ward off the fierce wind and hobble down the street, boots trudging along slowly, legs wrapped in purple or brown leggings under shapeless dresses.
*The middle-aged men look like Russian mafia; the middle-aged women look like Raisa Gorbachev mixed with Cruella de Ville...many of them dressed in furs.
*There aren't many young people. This country has severe Brain Drain, meaning all of the young people who could got the hell out as soon as possible. They are still around, the gen-xers, but not too many of them...

We got out of the ugliness of Bucuresti, as it is called here (there is a strong Latin/Romance flavor to the language: I can almost understand a good deal of it since words share roots with Spanish, which surprised me). In the countryside began the "real" Romania, according to what I'd read. And the real Romania is, in a word, RURAL. More horses-and-carts on the roads than cars...small villages that look like the opening to "Borat"...farmers in the fields spreading grain by hand or tilling the rich, brown earth with oxen...very cool.

Across the plains for a bit, with the Carpathian Mountains, snow-capped, looming in the distance, growing ever closer, and then we were winding our way through passes and ever upwards. The small villages began looking more...Transylvanian...as we left the Wallachia region and entered Transylvania proper. The houses had pointed roofs with crosses at the apex on each end. Each village had a large, gargoyled church. I would have liked to have stopped and dug it all, but I knew that there wouldn't be any restaurants or toilets that would agree with me, so I stayed on the train.

The snow grew thicker. It was piled on the sides of the roads, balanced on the outstreched branches of every tree, and half a foot thick between the rails of the train track next to the one on which we were steadily making our way. It was a bright and sunny day, but there was still something awfully spooky as I peered into the Transylvanian forest. I saw many deer but nothing more sinister as we crested the summit and headed down into the Brasov valley.

I grabbed a cab outside of the station. It was late afternoon by now. The driver took me to the guesthouse I'd lined up the night before. The new part of Brasov was ugly and not very exciting, but I was staying in the old-school part, where all the cool stuff was. The rows of buildings lining the streets were all five centuries old, two or three stories, with businesses on the ground floor and residences up above. My guesthouse, up at the top of a winding street, ended up being thirty yards into a construction zone. On Wedneday afternoon when I arrived, I had to lug my baggage down six feet below street level as they were doing major repair work and had torn out all of the road and foundations on that block. I made it through the mud and puddles and knocked on the round double-door at 16 Strada Postavarului. Nobody came. No noise, nothing. I pondered what to do, then, out of the blue, the door creaked open as if by its own power. I heard footsteps approaching and braced myself. Then came out the proprietor of the guesthouse and she was: a Singaporean lady holding an infant. She greeted me in perfect English, showed me to my room, and gave me an outline of what to see in the town. I rested for a while, went out for dinner at a restaurant around the corner, and went to bed fairly early.