Train to Brasov

Weekend in Transylvania

In part because our recent weather in Bucharest had been spectacular (brilliantly sunny days with the temperatures pushing seventy Farenheit), and in part because I’d not actually stepped foot outside of Bucharest, we decided to take a kind of little spring break in Transylvania with the kids. Our plans involved a lovely journey by train through Wallachia, into the Transylvanian Alps, then several days wandering colorful Saxon towns, raiding castles (in search of dragon paraphernalia, on behalf of our dragon-crazed kids), and weaving our rental car down rustic detours whenever we felt the whim.

The reality has been profoundly and hilariously different. First of all, just about the moment we boarded the first class train to Brasov, winter returned and we had the pleasure of speeding through an absolutely grey and snowy rural Romanian landscape, which looked suspiciously like Meadville, Pennsylvania in early March (e.g. dark and probably about to snow). The outskirts of Bucharest are as filthy and depressing as anything we've ever seen.

By the time we entered the Alps, all the windows in our cabin were entirely steamed over and we huddled in our seats wondering when they would turn on the heat. The kids watched an episode or two of Clifford the Big Red Dog on their tiny DVD player, much to the amusement of every passenger who passed their way on the way to the bathrooms.

Along the way, the rugged landscape would break and we’d clatter past a tiny cluster of lean-to shacks propped in mud. There would be parked the iconic massive wooden wagons tethered to depressed looking draft horses, the occasional bundled figure hanging laundry, and endless fields of garbage. It was almost a relief to see a tidy looking nuclear power plant loom up over the horizon, and much more of a relief to enter the narrow mountain passes of the Alps proper, where we knew huge numbers of black bears and wolves still lived.

If we wiped the window with our sleeves, we'd get a momentary glimpse of the density and beauty of these forests, which spur the imagination in the direction of the Medieval almost immediately--I wouldn't have been much surpsised to see a line of figures on horseback, in full armor and animal furs, plodding toward one of the hundreds of castles in the area. Then the window would fog back over and we'd be listening to Clifford on the DVD player again.

Brasov is surely a lovely town, unless you end up walking the wrong way "toward the historic center" and end up in the industrial nastiness, with one crabby kid in a stroller and another begging to be held. Unless, that is, you then take a cab into the heart of said "historic district" and tumble, starving, into the first restaurant you see.... a four star joint where we are the only customers, ordering at random nearly every dish on the menu to placate our little beasts.

Once fed, the kids settled into their swanky surroundings nicely: to the horror of our two rather stuffy waitresses, over dessert we made farm animal noises and Sophia (wired on a rare glass of Pepsi) made up long narrative songs about her stuffed animals back in Pennsylvania. The kids passed out about the moment the lights went out back at Hotel Ambient and I'm not sure we remained conscious much longer.

Christopher