Driving for the unknown

Trip Start Aug 27, 2011
1
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Trip End Sep 09, 2011


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Where I stayed
Hotel Ciao
What I did
Palatul Culturii
The Citadel

Flag of Romania  , Mures,
Saturday, August 27, 2011

Coming to Romania by car we've had all kinds of fear. Despite being in the European Union now, Romania seemed distant (while it's only a few hours away from Krakow), seemed poor and quite dangerous - and as usual I was mostly afraid of taking my own car east in fear of it being stolen. We had not idea what to expect. We had booked the accommodation in advance seeking places with private parking spots as well as those close to the city centers and the sights that we were curious about. The country welcomed us with a nice weather and surprisingly good road infrastructure. Strange combination? Well, anywhere you check and anyone you ask, you'll hear that the roads in Romania are awful and full of holes and you must be crazy to take your own car and risk it. That's very far from the truth actually. Admittedly, there are some roads that need repairs (being Polish, I can't believe I'm writing this), but in general you'll be positively surprised. The drive was good and went pretty fast, with some short stops in Slovakia and Hungary
Economy housing
Economy housing
.


The plan was to reach Tārgu Mures, as the starting point of our trip, the heart of Szekely Land (or Tara Secuilor in Romanian). Before we got there, we went through a deserted village with a brand new housing complex all in red, yellow and with silver rooftops. 20+ houses built by Roma people apparently was a fabulous view, as they so much did not fit the surroundings. A need to show how expensive they are (supposedly, cause silver rooftops were obviously not made from silver) was unbelievable. It seemed like some wannabe architect or rather Sim City lover went beyond his imagination and noone reacted in time to stop him. Well, that's not us who'll live there...


Anyways, we've booked a place called Hotel Ciao http://www.hotel-ciao.ro/home.html, which currently hosted a wedding party by the time we arrived. I suppose that's common, judging by the size of the restaurant room (2-floored). We have had a rare occasion to have a totally diverse breakfast the next day with all the leftovers from the wedding party (some still fresh). In overall - good choice cause the hotel was a 30 minutes walk from the city center (and Aga likes walking).


Tārgu Mures fails to offer anything truly interesting, as much we could tell, so we just wandered around the center, dropped into a Orthodox Cathedral and the Culture Palace (a very nice piece of art itself), taking a look at the huge concert hall inside. The Citadel turned out to we a pile of rocks inside and a place that have not seen many people around since the Middle Ages, so we were disappointed we had to climb the road leading to the Citadel gate
Palatul Culturii
Palatul Culturii
. Then we struggled a lot with finding anything decent to eat (we did not want a pizza, while it seemed to be a main dish in Romania).  Then... we struggled with ordering anything, cause we did not find an English menu. There wasn't any chance of changing the place, since most of them were reserved for wedding parties (rings a bell). We were even thinking of crashing one of them, but then there was a language barrier ;)


Day was saved by finding out that Tārgu Mures was hosting the Tuborg Greenfest the next day with a concert from Within Temptation. We had been thinking of going to see them for a while, so it was a chance not to be missed. We decided to come back again the next morning and buy the tickets.
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