My better half and I toured Romania for two weeks! Here was our itinerary:

• 3 days in Bucharest
• 1 night in wine country followed by an epic road trip
• 5 nights in Brasov
• 3 days in Cluj-Napoca
• topping it off in Budapest

Ever since booking our tickets a few months ago, everybody whom we informed of our travel plans immediately gave us the same reaction. They would say, “oh! … cool!” with a big smile and nod of approval. Then, after a pause and sometimes a head tilt, they said, “but why Romania?” 

The short answer to this question is obviously “because we can!” but the longer answer involves low-cost plane tickets and a place to stop over halfway between China and the States before a trip home. In any case, we have been in Romania for 3 days and have enjoyed every minute. (Well, every minute except for when we realized the car we rented was a manual transmission and Seth tried driving it around the IKEA parking lot. Luckily my mom raised a strong independent woman who knows her way around a stick shift. Thanks, Mom!)

Our time so far in Romania has been incredibly magical, in no small part thanks to some of our new favorite people: Simona and Bogdan. After I met Simona online through family, the couple immediately welcomed two strangers into their home, offering us a bed and an airport pickup at 1AM on a Tuesday. They went to work every day and somehow still had energy in the evenings to take us out for dinner, go for walks, have long conversations about Romania, travel, life, and everything in between, and just generally be down for a good time. As we say goodbye to them for now, we are so incredibly grateful for their hospitality and friendship. 

Day 1: Getting to know Romania

Our first morning in Romania was a slow start after about 24 hours of traveling from Shenzhen to Hong Kong to Moscow to Bucharest, then some welcome champagne upon our arrival at Simona and Bogdan’s apartment (they really are the best!). Finally we managed to get out the door around 11:30 and walked to the nearby Village Museum, stopping to pick up some cash and a sim card on the way. The Village Museum had actual 18th to 20th century houses and churches from all over Romania that had been taken apart, sent to Bucharest, and pieced back together on location. We learned about the way people lived in the times the houses were built, what people wore, and a bit about the different regions of the country. But mostly we walked around super old houses and wondered what it would be like to live in them.

We also met this man, named Ion Rodos, who made some of the most beautiful spoons I’ve ever seen! He didn’t speak English, but there was a little blurb about him next to the spoons where I learned that he was in the Guiness Book of World Records for making the “longest and most beautiful” hand-carved wooden spoon. After some detective work, I found an article in Romanian about it. According to the translation: “The spoon was made in 14 days and has 17.79 m (58ft) long and 1.50m (5ft) in the widest point (the length of the armhole) and was decorated with traditional folk motifs and the Mioveni logo. Master Rodos did not intend to make only the largest wooden spoon in the world, but also the most beautiful. His record has surpassed India’s own, where there is a wooden spoon of 12.06 m long.” The spoon is in his hometown of Mioveni.

After the village museum, it was time to go downtown and see the Old City. We had booked a bike tour of the highlights of Bucharest, which was a fabulous way to see the city. We learned a lot about the history of Romania from the time the Romans occupied it (which wasn’t actually very long) to the time of Vlad Tepes, to Charles the first and the communist dictator Ceaușescu (Chow-SHESS-coo, “shess” rhymes with “chess”).

It should be said that under the Communist dictator Ceaușescu, people were brought in to the cities from the villages and forced to do industrial work, kind of the opposite of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia but still in the name of Egalitarianism, in a crazy plan to pay off the country’s debts quickly. People who lived through that time in the 80s still recall with anger and frustration waiting in line for hours in the cold for their daily rations, barely enough to feed their families.

In the evening, Simona and Bogdan took us out to the most beautiful Romanian restaurant called Caru cu Bere (“the Beer Wagon”) where we ate traditional Romanian food including meats, fresh cheeses, bread, polenta, sausages, a kind of sauerkraut, and a ton of other dishes that melted in your mouth. 

The restaurant was also gorgeous on the inside and outside: a Gothic revival building designed by an Austrian architect in 1899. It is now probably the most popular restaurant for tourists and locals alike in Bucharest, and a must-see at least once. There is also a traditional clown that walks around the restaurant putting funny hats on people and taking pictures with them. Why not.

Day 2: Architecture tour with Food

Our second day in Romania was a 5-hour food tour where we actually learned more about the architecture in Bucharest than about the food. But it was beautiful and we got a better understanding of the influence of different ethnicities in Romania’s history. As I mentioned above, the Romans conquered present-day Romania briefly about 2000 years ago, but when they retreated around 270C.E. they brought their record-keeping with them. As a result, there’s not much information on what happened in the area until the new millennium. For a long time, the country was divided into 3 parts: the famous Transylvania to the northwest (usually occupied/influenced by Hungary or Austro-Hungary), Wallachia to the south (usually occupied/influenced by the Turks), and Moldavia to the northeast (usually occupied/influence by Russia). The three main regions were united under one rule relatively recently in history: in 1859, Wallachia and Moldavia united, joined by Transylvania in 1918. The result is a beautiful, eclectic mix of people who mostly seem to have a clear lineage from one of the three backgrounds judging by their appearance. They might have darker features like the Turks, stocky features like Austrians or Germans, or very blonde features like Russians. It’s actually fascinating. 

The influence is also seen in the architecture, which is filled with Turkish arches but art nouveau motifs with “sculpted vegetation” as our tour guide called it. It is really a cool mix of all these different cultures. For a while, Bucharest used to be called the “Istanbul of the East,” and then later the “Paris of the East” as the style started to shift toward what you can see today. 

The Romans did leave their lasting impression, however, with their language. This is my favorite part to learn about, obviously. Romanian is also known as the forgotten romance language, with many similarities to Spanish, French, and Italian. There are still words that are used from Turkish, with similarities to Russian as well (but they are not interchangeable). The language also went through a revival period at some point and re-romanized itself, so “merci” is used for “thank you,” and “la revedere” is used for “goodbye” but sounds suspiciously like “arrivederci.” I have also heard many words similar to their Spanish or French equivalents, but again, not to the point at which I can understand the language. Finally, the language used to be written in cyrillic and was later changed to the latin alphabet (a big relief to us), but you can still see cyrillic writing above the doors of Eastern Orthodox churches, usually detailing the construction of the church and who helped raise money for it.

We rounded off the food tour with a trip to the Atheneum, a building originally started to house the circus. Then the circus didn’t finish it because they ran out of money, so the King of Romania commissioned a theater instead out of the foundation. The result is a concert hall with the second best acoustics in the world after one in Milan.

Day 3: Korean food in Romania?

On our last day in Bucharest, after a morning run and some exercise to try to burn off maybe 1% of the sour cream that I’ve consumed since my arrival, we took a Bolt north to the airport to pick up our car that we would be using for the majority of our trip (Bolt is the local ride-sharing app, and it’s amazing). After signing all the paperwork and the payments and examining the car, we realized it had a manual transmission. This is, by the way, the first driving experience for either of us, ever, in Europe. And all I can say is thank MOTHER I already have the muscle memory for it. I honestly think we would have had to cancel the rental and maybe look for a new rental company if neither of us knew how to drive stick. 

We demolished ate lunch at a restaurant called Vatra outside the city center where, for the second time in 3 days, I had a dish called Mămăligă cu brânză și smântână which is polenta with sour cream and fresh cheese, sometimes with a fried egg on top. That’s literally all it is. But it is so simple and filling and savory and delicious that I have become a monster whose taste buds can not be satisfied to stop consuming it. 

We also had Romanian tripe soup (ciorba de burta) — also with sour cream, a pork dish also with polenta called Pomana porcului, and a dessert that we also can’t seem to get away from called Papanasi, or Romanian cheese donuts with sour cherry jam. Yes, people. Get ready to see fat Patrice at the end of these 2 weeks.

After lunch we checked out the famous bookstore in Bucharest called Cărturești Carusel. It’s an instagrammable place, to say the least.

Then we went to IKEA I tried to teach Seth how to drive a manual transmission. After about an hour… we needed a new car. The first gear stopped engaging. So that was neat. Then for dinner we took our new favorite Romanians out to something we knew how to do: Korean Barbecue. Seth manned the grill, so maybe that helped out his bruised ego a bit.

Soon it was time to say farewell, and toast to the beginning of a beautiful friendship!

Today we drive to the “Tuscany of Romania” — Dealu Mare! We will spend the night at a guesthouse at one of the vineyards. So far, I have actually been blown away by Romanian wine!!! Now, I know what you’re thinking: “whats the hells??” But yes. It is true. Romanians take a grape called the Fetească Neagră, which nobody knows about, and they do some truly beautiful things with it. And that’s been my introduction to Romanian wine. I don’t know what to expect in the region where we’re going, but I can’t wait to see what it holds.