Bucharest

We  stayed at the Athenee Palace Hilton. We heard from many people that this was the place to be.  Everyone spies one everyone else there.  Every room is bugged, and James Bond himself carved his initials in our room. Many beautiful women are sent here as moles to gain information from dupes who just happen to be hanging around loaded with sensitive information, yet don't have a clue.  You know, like Peter Sellers,  Mike Myers and me.  I personally had several beautiful women, and a couple of other shady characters, come up to me to try to glean some useful trail maintenance secrets, travel management strategies, and other sensitive government information from me.  Luckily I was able to foil them.  But I got their secrets. Heh, heh. If only I didn't have that piece of toilet paper stuck to my shoe.

One of the reasons Bucharest is known as the Paris of the East is that they have historical and social connections to France, let alone the similarity in the language. Arcul de Triumf, an obvious copy of the one in Paris has been here since 1878. Wooden versions have burned down until the current one was built in 1936.

Everywhere they were decked out for Easter, something you wouldn't have seen in the communist times, since they frowned on religion in general and Christianity in particular.

This is the police headquarters: notice the big rusty hole near the top of the building. The big red star of communism is gone, as are all other vestiges of that repressive time in Romanian history.

Here is Maggie taking a rest under a gift from Rome to celebrate the Italian connection to Romania as well. 

Sunday morning we had a bus tour of Bucharest and then went to the Opera house near our hotel. My parents seem to think that we went to a concert here in 1985, but I don't remember. This time we saw a guy demonstrating the acoustics with a trumpet. It was fine for a free show with a detailed description of the concert hall. Also a couple of blocks away was the government building where the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu tried to calm down the Romanians in late 1989. After he got booed off the balcony, he had to escape by helicopter, only to be captured nearby, and executed several days later.

After some free time, we drove to the Danube to board our ship, the Avalon Imagery.  We keep chuckling because the tour people pronounce it "Imagerrry", as if that's a real word.  

Transylvania

We went on a bus tour to Bran Castle, the most popular tourist attraction in Romania.  When we got on the bus, Maggie said, "I'm the only one here who doesn't have grey hair". This was a really big tour bus, but our driver was a pro, navigating through narrow Romanian town streets and hairpin switchbacks with cool aplomb.

We went north for more than an hour to Sinaia, named after Mt Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments. A monastery there was in the midst of celebrating Good Friday, as the Greek Orthodox church uses the Julian Calendar, rather than the Gregorian calendar that we use.  This year Easter happens to be exactly one week later.

We then drove up and through the Carpathian Mountains to the small town of Bran, home of the fabled "Dracula Castle". As this is the biggest tourist draw in Romania, they really cash in.  The tour guide said that twenty years ago these people were poor farmers, but now many are driving BMWs.

Bran Castle is part of the Queen Maria of Hungary legacy that led to the building of Maryhill Museum in Washington State overlooking the Columbia near Biggs, Oregon.


And today we didn't have any bad luck.

Short Hop

The United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt turned out to be hopelessly delayed, but we couldn't find out why. So Maggie and I decided that our best course of action was to plow ahead anyway.  We had to make our connection flight to Bucharest or lose it. 

Maggie waiting in Frankfurt

A short hop from Frankfurt to Bucharest

So we made the flight to the capital of Romania, went through customs for the first time, which was nothing compared to the previous time. This time they flipped through our passports, stamped them, and sent us on our way. Back in 1985 we had to have a prearranged visa, with actual paper tax stamps attached.  We also were required to purchase some Romanian money just to enter the country, which meant that one had to buy it right there at the airport.  We caught a bus that got us close to our hotel, wandered around for awhile. finally checked in, and went to bed. Just after midnight Oma Suzanne knocked on our door; they had made it.

Air Trip!

Well, it's been a long couple of days.  We stayed @ Dreyer's in San Mateo for a day and a half, then went to SF International airport on Wednesday April 11 around noon to see off Opa Dave & Oma Suzanne. They should be waiting for us in Frankfurt by the post.

Thorough security check, several passes through the scanner, all your stuff opened into big trays to be x-rayed.  The parents plane on United Airlines left about an hour and a half before ours. Right on schedule our Lufthansa flight took off to Frankfurt, Germany. It was a pretty crowded Airbus 380, but luckily we seemed to have scored one of the very few unoccupied seats beside us.  

  
Unfortunately the people in front of us were very inconsiderate, and when they had their seats reclined for most of the ten-hour long flight, we had very little space.  At some point, about two hours before touchdown, a woman asked if she could sit next to us because someone near her was coughing and sneezing throughout the entire flight.  So we were even more cramped at the end. Anyway we landed on time and deplaned expecting Oma & Opa to be waiting at the gate.  But they weren't.  So we found our way to the other side of the airport where we were to make our connection to Bucharest, Romania, expecting to meet them somewhere along the way.  Another security check.  Opa & Oma were nowhere to be seen.

Road Trip !

Heidi waves Good Bye in the back.

Maggie and I get ready to leave home Monday May 9 @ 0700.  South from Bend to California is driving paradise.  Watch for Deer!

   

We raced a train for many miles between Oregon and California.  The train kept catching up because we had a rest stop and an agricultural inspection. We would end up racing and using a lot of trains before this trip was over.

Shasta is a big mountain but a small town.

The hills between Sacramento and San Francisco, usually brown and bleak were green and rolling; spring is a nice time to see them. 


We drove across the Bay Bridge to surprisingly little traffic.  

But things got more crowded as we drove down the peninsula.  And people down here drive like maniacs.  We were going the speed limit and they were passing on both sides; they wouldn't even let us move over to the right.

We got to San Mateo @ 1630, well ahead of schedule, and  were able to help celebrate Cousin John's 14th birthday.