We survived a great weekend in Romania. No sight of Vlad but plenty of roaming around the same haunts that he did. The legend has certainly been built after Bram Stokers book but the history is definitely there.

Its a stunning place for many reasons.

We landed on Thursday night and Relu and Luana took us on a tour of the capital - Bucharest. In Bucharest, we encountered the strange phenomenon of huge bundles of overhead cables everywhere - apparently the maps of the understreet ducts are have been lost in the war and never recreated so its too expensive for companies to dig themselves a new set. In places they are so thick the tree’s can’t grow through them.

Friday we cruised about and met the romania mafia (the team from ING Romania that helped us on the project) for lunch. Great to see everyone again and the burgers we had rocked. After lunch we checked out an outdoor museum of architecture - similar to the one in Kiev actually.

The trip really got going that night as we took off for the mountains. A few traffic jams and a bit of a snooze later we made deep into the Carpathians. We stayed at a huge resort complex but the place was popular without too many spare beds.

The area is quite stunning and we were hoping to run into some black bears - but alas, no luck. The area is really similar to the foothills to most mountains in NZ so it was great to get into the fresh air. We hired quad bikes and went for a blast into the forest and through a few small villages. They were fascinating as many villagers were still living as they did centuries ago. Cutting hay by hand, stacking it in piles like huge cigars, making their own cheese & milk products. Looked a nice lifestyle actually.

With all the beauty, you still managed to see the former eastern european traits come through - there was rubbish everywhere. It seems the Romanians love their softdrink in 2l pets - they were tossed everywhere - even at the top of the highest hills we reached by qaud bike we’d run into plastic pets everywhere. I think the average citizen dumps rubbish as soon as they finish whatever is in the package. A pity.

We did the usual castles and museums - many claim to be dracula’s but I have to say that none of them probably were. Still - some beautiful scenes and the region reminded me of NZ.

It was great to catchup with Relu and Luana and also to chillout and travel. The food was typical eastern european - i.e. meat lovers paradise - and the polenka as tough as usual.

Check out the pics....