Dear All,
For those of you in the UK who seem to be enjoying a dull, fairly wet July and August you may not want to hear that it is HOT here in Bucharest. Everyday for the past month it has been at least 90F and reached over 100F a couple of times.
So most of Bucharest gets out of the city in August. It's great. The streets only have 200 cars per square metre rather than the usual 1,000s. Due to the heat even the dogs only have enough energy to lift their heads slightly off the pavement and take a chunk out of your leg. Life is much more peaceful. But there is still the lure of the seaside and the mountains even for those who stay behind. Every Friday afternoon the roads up to Brasov in the mountains and Constanta at the Black Sea are bumper to bumper with cars, this procession repeated on the Sunday evening returning to Bucharest.
We decided we would go to the mountains last weekend. To avoid the Friday rush we left at 6.00am Saturday......that's right, a Saturday morning at six o'clock!!! Of course the road was clear which was a good job because most of the way I had my head resting on the back of the seat snoring.....and I was driving.
As we approached the mountains so the clear blue sky became increasingly dark until one almighty storm broke over our heads. There were blinding flashes of lightning, stomach rumbling crashes of thunder and rain pouring down like a curtain. I was driving Tibi's mum's car, a Tico, which is small and compact. Having the windscreen wipers on full speed, the fan on high to clear the condensation, the headlights on due to the darkness and the back windscreen heater on so I could see out of the back there was little power to keep the car moving forward. So even though we were struggling to get our speed up to double figures it was still good to be overtaking the Bucuresti - Brasov train and to see their sweating jealous faces looking out at our breath-taking speed...going downhill.....with a strong wind behind us.
The storm changed our plans. We had intended going on the 'telecabina' (cable car) to a cave high in the mountains, but the storm has closed it. So we went to Brasov deciding to stay there the night and go to the cave in the morning.
Thankfully the Sunday morning dawned clear and sunny. So we headed off to Busteni from where we got the cable car. Even though it was not yet 10am when we arrived the queue for the telecabina stretched to the outskirts of Paris. Since each cable car took 25 people we calculated that it would be a week next Thursday before we reached the Romanian border and it would be two weeks after Christmas before we arrived at the front of the queue. But having been defeated by the storm the day before we were not going to be put off so easily.
Having shaved five times, had a hair cut, bought new clothes because I had grown while waiting and spent two years in prison for killing the person in front of me who continually blew smoke in my face even though we were outside in the "fresh air", we reached the front of the queue. It was at this point that Tibi informed me of two things.
Firstly this was only the first of two cable car rides we would have to take to reach this cave. Secondly, this cable car system was from Ceausescu's communist era and by the looks of it the most attention it had received since his demise 20 years ago was the new nail polish on the hands of the lady who sold us the tickets.
So I, along with 24 others, was hauled hundreds of metres into the air on a piece of wire strung between two poles sometimes placed very far apart. The scenary was stunning, the height of the cable car and the steepness of the mountain sides breath-taking and the smell of the arm pits thrust into my face something unbelievable.
By sheer luck we made it to the top, where we changed cars and went for a shorter and less crowded ride to the famous cave. In fact the cave was a 15 minute walk from the telecabina station. But you knew you were getting near to it because you could hear the priests singing.
Being Romania, the Orthodox Church had somehow laid claim to the cave by building a church in its entrance. There was also a "hotel" where the Orthodox faithful could stay. All down the valley you could hear the monotone drone of the priests over the loudspeakers. Just as we reached the cave entrance you heard a gun shot, the priests' droning stopped abruptly and a huge cheer went up from along the valley.
Eventually we managed to enter the cave having passed the icons for sale, the prayer beads, the holy water coming out of a tap in the wall and the endless candle sellers. The cave was spectacular. It went on for quite a distance ino the mountain. Wooden ladders and steps had been made to help you on your way. Unfortunately due to the fact they seem to have been made by blind nuns with no ability at all in woodwork, it meant that they were unstable, the steps were at very strange angles at times and of course very slippery due to the constantly dripping water. Add to this the huge number of people visiting the cave and you have a rather perilous trek into the heart of the cave. But you need to add in one further factor. The Romanians have the patience of a hyperactive maniac on speed. So as you are carefully negotiating a particularly difficult and steep ladder with half the steps missing and the other half at impossible angles to keep your feet on, a sweating Romanian man is climbing over your shoulders to get in front of you while his son climbs between your legs and his wife simply bulldozers her way through.
Needless to say with a church at the entrance, the furthest accessible point of the cave is adorned by an altar to the Virgin Mary. I'm sure she's pleased to be stuck in a damp cool cave in pitch darkness. But the cave is extensive, spectacular and definitely worth a visit, even by two death defying cable cars, a wooden ladder system that makes Its a Knockout look like a stroll in the park and being trampled under foot by hoards of manic Romanians.
On our return it started raining, so when we reached the second cable car to take us back to Busteni most people had decided to return as well, meaning there was yet another enormous queue. This provided the Romanians with another opportunity to demonstrate their remarkable lack of awareness of personal space. Queuing on the stairs up to where the cabins arrived, this woman behind me was almost climbing into my ass. Really, she had her leg between mine so when you looked down it seemed I had three legs. She was pressed up against me, but one step below.....being fairly short her face was just above the level of my ass.....and I had eaten a lot of spinach the day before......lots of roughage and fibre.......producing lots of gases.......it was what she deserved. By the time she reached the front of the queue her hair was bleached, her t-shirt looked like it had been dyed and her nostrils had blisters on them.
Eventually we arrived on solid ground back in Busteni and the 3 hour drive back to Bucharest. However you have to wonder if it's not safer in a cable car up in the mountains than it is in Bucharest because two weeks ago we had another earthquake. This time it occurred mid morning while I was at work. I wondered why my computer monitor was shaking a lot and then realised what was happening. Like the last one it was not a major quake thankfully, again about 5.5 on the Richter scale. What was unusual about it was that it originated just of the coast by the Romanian Bulgarian border approximately 20 kms into the Black Sea. 95% of the quakes come from an area called Vranchea in the east of the country. So this was rare and caused a tsunami warning for the Black Sea coast.
Apart from that it's been a quiet summer! Hope you are having a good one even if the weather has not been exactly what was forecast.
Take care,
Andrew xx
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