Week 8 From the Carpathians to the Black Sea (Romania)

After happily falling asleep somewhere on the Carpathians on the Transalpina High Road at an altitude of 2000 meters and surviving the night without freezing, we got up early for the sunrise. And it blew us away. At first it was a bit eerie, as we seemed to have been swallowed by a cloud fog during the night.

But it quickly brightened up and the sun fought its way through the clouds. The view was absolutely beautiful and with the mix of sun and clouds, there was something different to see every few minutes.

Up here we felt really good and somehow alone. It was a great start to Kerrin's birthday. But where we went up the day before, we had to go down now. With a spring in our step but also a little nostalgic, we headed back down into Transylvania.

A long day of driving lay ahead of us. We crossed Transylvania and arrived in the small village of Honigberg in the evening. Here we were able to spend the night in an old monastery garden, under various fruit trees. When we wanted to return the key to the castle the next morning, the castle lord invited us to visit the castle grounds for free. It is a kind of fortified church that was built as a fortress for defense. It is laid out in a circular shape with a walkable outer wall. In the middle is the cathedral.

In the rain, we continued our journey eastwards. In Brasov, we first visited the third Decathlon in Romania, in search of small gas cartridges. Finally, we had some luck and our morning coffee was secured for the next few weeks. It's not so easy to get the cartridges here.

A suitable rainy day program was Bran Castle, or as it is also called, Dracula's Castle, which is sold to tourists as Dracula's Castle. It was quite amusing to entertain the thought, although there are said to be few parallels between the actual castle from Bram Stoker's novel and this castle. But as I said, the tour was fun. Upon arrival, you can already see the castle up high on a rock.

From the inside, the castle didn't look as spooky, it was almost cozy. Only the view from the window was a bit mystical with the fog.

We ended the day in a cute campsite with a TV evening, of course with...

For a change, there were no house cats or dogs on the campsite, but Zorro... The house pony.

In Romania, especially in the mountains, there are still many brown bears, but we haven't seen any yet, as Olli always follows the tip to clap his hands loudly in the woods ;-) (-; or maybe we didn't smell good either. Kerrin was already quite sad that she hasn't encountered one yet. But after some research, we found out that there was a bear reserve called 'LiBEARty' near us, which we visited the next day. This wonderful place was created by a Romanian animal welfare activist named Christina Lapis. In 1997, she founded the animal welfare organization 'Asociatia Milioane de Prieteni (Amp)', which translates to Millions of Friends Association. It all started with a shelter for stray dogs, which she still operates today. But she also became aware of the cruel fate of many bears in Romania, which were mostly exhibited as attractions in front of sights and kept in cages. It wasn't until 2005 that it was prohibited to catch and own bears here. With Romania's accession to the EU, the organization's guidelines for the keeping of wild animals changed in favor of Christina, making it easier for her to rescue bears from captivity. The bears not only come from Romania, but also from circuses and zoos all over the world where they were poorly kept. The local community of Zarnesti provided her with 69 hectares of land for her reserve. Today, 103 bears live there, each with a very tragic story of their journey to the reserve. For example, Max, to tell just one story, was kept in a cage in Romania for 10 years (until 2006) in front of a castle, and tourists were able to take a photo with him. To prevent him from reacting aggressively to the camera flash, his eyes were flashed and he was sedated with drugs and alcohol. His claws and teeth were pulled. In the reserve, he was cared for for a long time and was able to enjoy his life to the best of his abilities in the large enclosure. Many other bears had injuries on their paws because they had to stand on the iron bars of their cages all the time. Whether in the height of summer or winter. In the reserve, they made sure that the environment was as natural as possible, even though most of the rescued bears didn't know what grass feels like or how to climb. Visiting hours are only 3 hours in the morning, the rest of the time they do what bears do. You have the opportunity to financially support the reserve by adopting a bear.

The many stories of the brown bears touched us incredibly and made us pensive. It's great that there are people like Christina. We were allowed to take a few souvenir photos (without flash) of the bears. They are all so majestic and powerful. Sometimes just cozy. ;-)

We then had a long drive to the next highlight ahead of us, but the journey didn't go entirely smoothly. Our front right brake had been whistling happily for a few kilometers and when we checked it, it was also a bit hot. It seemed to be stuck. Of course, it was Saturday afternoon and we were in the middle of nowhere. We paused twice until the brake cooled down again, but we couldn't continue like this. But in a tiny village, we were lucky... There was an open workshop. It seemed a bit like a few private individuals working on their cars there. But despite the language barrier, they were very helpful. The youngest of them was sent as an English specialist, but he really couldn't speak English. But the hot brake was obvious enough and they started searching for the problem. After about an hour (letting the brake cool down for 20 minutes), we overheard that the seal on the brake caliper might be broken. Or not. However, they made the brake movable again and told us that we could drive with it to Germany. No problem... Drum bun (Have a good trip). When he told us the price, the good man had dollar signs in his eyes when he said... 80 €. In EURO??? In a country where you pay with lei? Yes, really 80 €. When we claimed that we didn't have euros and would pay in lei, he apparently didn't know the exchange rate and said uh 300 lei. That's a little over 60 €. That's fair because we would have paid that in Germany and the Romanians in Germany would have paid the same. We drove on hesitantly, but contacted a phone-a-friend who knows about VWs (thanks for the quick response). The tip at that point was: 'better replace the brake caliper'. But on the rest of the drive, we had no problems with the brake and decided to wait until we could find a suitable workshop in a suitable area. However, we gave the bus a thorough wash, as the entire braking system was pretty dirty from the many gravel tracks and sandy roads.

After a loving hand wash, we continued to the mud volcanoes of Berca, where we arrived in the late afternoon. We were quite curious about what awaited us there. According to the travel guide, they are a natural phenomenon, but we had read in various reviews that the mud volcanoes were rather disappointing. But as they say, 'it's best to form your own opinion'.

Said and done!

For us, the mud volcanoes were really a sight to see. The landscape itself was amazing. Everything looked like you would imagine it on the moon. The volcanoes are a few meters high and are created by gases that rise from a depth of 3000 meters through clay and water-bearing layers. On the surface, the liquid mud dries and forms its typical volcano shape. Since the gases are salinity and sulfur-bearing, the entire environment is hostile to vegetation, and only a few rare plants survive. The entire area was declared a geological and botanical reserve. But now the scientific stuff aside. We didn't just find the volcanoes beautiful to look at, but also very funny, because they were farting all the time! ;-) You had to be careful not to get sprayed with mud from behind at any time. Too bad there can't be a smell recording at this point, because the volcanoes also had their own sulfur notes.

After an unspectacular night in the parking lot next to the volcanoes (yes, you also have such nights on a tour), we continued to the Danube Delta. This is a biosphere reserve, just before the Danube flows into the Black Sea. With an area of ​​around 5800 square kilometers, it is the second largest delta in Europe after the Volga Delta. 72% of the area is under nature conservation.

On the way there, we kept thinking about our brakes. Will the seal and the brake caliper really last until Germany, or should we replace the parts in Romania? As fate would have it, we arrived in Tulcea, just before our destination in the Danube Delta, where we passed a Bosch car workshop and made a pit stop. However, due to lack of capacity, we were directed to the colleagues across the street, with whom we were able to discuss the problem in English very well. They immediately checked the brakes of the Bulli and to our surprise, they declared the seal and everything else to be intact. So it was not necessary to install a new brake caliper. Hmmm. That sounded good. We were happy. For checking the brakes, they only wanted 50 lei. That's about 10€. That also sounded like realistic Romanian prices. And yes... we will continue to keep an eye on our brakes attentively.

Arriving in the Danube Delta, more precisely in Murighiol, we drove to a small cute campsite. Here we stayed in the backyard of a fishing family. We chose this place because the fisherman and campground operator offered tours into the delta with his own boat, so we didn't have to rely on a tourist booking agency. Of course, we didn't want to miss that. The tour was supposed to start at 7 a.m. the next morning. But when it started to rain, the tour was postponed to the next day. The weather improved in the afternoon and we were able to do a few things. But the next morning, it really started. In Dan's car and off to the fisherman's harbor. We spent about 4 hours in his fishing boat exploring the delta. It was freezing cold but beautiful.

It was incredible how many different birds live there. We saw, among others, sea eagles, various herons, swans, pelicans, cormorants, kingfishers, and many more. We probably didn't even notice many extraordinary birds. We are total ornithological philistines who have no idea. ;-)

Nevertheless, it was cool to experience so many birds there.

Oh yeah, in the Danube Delta we didn't just admire birds, but also a very cute but incredibly demanding little kitty. For those who know the movie '50 First Dates', this cat surpasses 10 Second Dave by far. If you throw her out of the bus, she turns around after two seconds and jumps back in. We could play this game 100 times and eventually gave up.

After spending another night in the Danube Delta, we continued south the next morning. Our destination was the Black Sea, near the Bulgarian border. We headed for a small town called 2 Mai. On the way, we crossed a truly great landscape, where we stopped several times.