Evening all, the post which is about to follow may not be very interesting, up to date or even carbon neutral but it will, unless future events contradict this, constitute the final and penultimate blog entry on the subject of mine and Kelly's European adventure. For the record and here I am speaking in hindsight I did not make any navigational errors during our journey, despite what the following picture may suggest...I hope all your lives are thus blessed.
Either side of seeing this sign but on the same side of the sign we spent amongst the best 2 (plus) hours driving of the entire trip.
So well, when I last graced this blog I like to call mine it was before we motored off leaving these petty bourgeoisie ladies eating their ice creams and talking about it in the dust. And believe me there was allot of dust, so much dust..

So where was I? I have just gone and got myself a drink and gone and lost my train of thought. Actually now I have three drinks in front of me; tea, whisky and water. Perhaps that needs explaining. It is all to do with our lack identity these days, no what rot! We have too many conflicting identities. OH I don't know, all I know is I couldn't decide which drink I actually wanted to drink. First I though 'it's late I need some tea if I am going to stay up and write this blog', you know for the caffeine. But then I though 'no I want to write a create, quirky post, I need to be more bohemian, I need alcohol', so I poured the whisky. By this time the kettle had boiled and I made my tea. Then I though no I need water, keep my self hydrated you know. So who am I, the hard working go getter who can't rely on his circadian rhythms and needs cAMP to keep up his overachieving? Or am I the bohemian type who eschews societies stereo types and drinks alcohol to do something or other and not just to get drunk, or am I am I aware of the needs of my body and living an enlightened and healthy life, possible in tune with 'nature' or something? I probably should have just gone with my first instinct and stayed with the tea and not over analysed it. Maybe that is the best tack to choose on life, give your subconscious some credit and go with that gut instinct. Or actually maybe just have it all, as I seem to have done, although come to think of it there may be some orange juice in the fridge too. Also notice I am British so I drink tea and Scottish so I drink Whisky. Anyway, ROMANIA, jeez get with the puh-rogram!
So we got the car and due to me taking what I though would be a teeney weeney little scenic detour we ended up driving on some seriously rough roads up in the middle of nowhere in the mountains where the only traffic was logging trucks whose drivers looked at us strangely. But we saw a nice sunset from up there:
And then the fog came down and we decided getting adrenaline rushes from dodging big thundering trucks on a road that randomly went from two lanes to one was not best done when tired and we finally decided to just pull off the road and sleep. One of the least comfortable and generally downright awful nights of my short life. Well at least the company was good...(and by the way sleeping in the car was my idea - sorry Kelly!).
What you see above is the small and seriously uncompromising bedroom we slept in on a very, very cold night. 'Slept' is also too strong a word to use in this situation. Moving on: ON a new topic Romanian houses are better than anyone else's, including the Turks. Here we have one entirely roofed in silver. Everyone know that silver repels werewolves, not everyone knows it has the same effect on vampyres.
I am deadly serious about their houses by the way. If you ever thought having cars and not being subsistence farmers was necessary to having a wicked house you were very much mistaken. The Romanian people have much the best houses I have ever seen AND each village had different ones. I kid you not, all different and all great. If that's what superstition gets you then sign me up baby! (I've started drinking the whisky now by the way).
So, if you were wondering what happens after everything that will happen to you does then here it is dramatically and unequivocally portrayed in pictorial form. (see below)
Where was this lurid and graphic depiction depicted? Well on a wall of a monastery run my nuns. As all monasteries in Romania seem to be. Maybe I am missing something, because the Lonely Planet is never wrong. So yes these are the famous painted monasteries of buchovenia or someplace sounding much like that depending on your ability to pronounce Romanian which is nigh impossible, I hear. I read in the ineffable guide book these paintings, painted to educate the illiterate pheasants on what happens if they don't do what the monks (or nuns) say. It was rather nice of them, here in Scotland we just shoot pheasants. Anyway it mentioned that the paintings have remained remarkably bright after all those centuries.

Here is one of those great monasteries (with nuns). I think I might know why the paint was still so bright. The clue was the nuns with the paint and brushes redoing any paintings which were faded or chipped. Another curious detail which did not escape my sharp eye was that while the front of the monastery which all the tourists walk past and admire before entering was brightly painted in stark contrast to the back of the building where the paint had long since disappeared leaving only a few blotchy marks on a dirty white wall. Curious.
Please excuse my cynicalist tendencies and renew your faith in humanity and the glory of creation with this stunning photo of a monastery viewed through some Virginia creepers taken by Kelly. The next thing I did was wash my feet in a mountain stream and dry them by a camp fire. I won't sully the memory with maladroit attempts to describe the immense pleasure this gave me.


And then we totally gate crashed a Romanian wedding and it was totally awsome! And I got told off by some nuns for taking pictures of them....stupid proletariats.

And no dramatically out of sequence we went to some national park and saw some equally dramatic rock formations. But instead of showing and boring you with endless picture of rocks I will not. I will show you one.
Here is my singular and singularly dramatic rock in a canyon of which name I have in all my great wisdom deemed forgettable and in doing so forgotten. Enjoy.
So Rural Romania! What is it like I hear you think (out aloud)! Well, what are the stereo types? It's like that, no seriously! Look! Cloves of dried garlic hanging from the fronts of houses!

And people getting fresh milk delivered in pales in the morning. Pales of fresh milk, oh how I envy these people! I do, not only do they have brilliant houses they eat better than us. I don't want some exotic curry made in a factory out of reprocessed high fructose corn mush with a ton of added salt and evil E's! No I want the bounty of the earth, apples and pears from trees groaning under the weight of all the fruit and fresh milk in PALES and eggs from chickens I can see happily scratching in the dirt outside and a lovely piece of beef from Daisy the cow I slaughtered yesterday! And that is what the people of the Romanian countryside had. In abundance and how I envy them for it!

They deserve it all though, as far as we could see all farming was done by honest toil of man and beast. Here is a man plowing his field. Horses are the main engines of the Romanian countryside, once we got out of the towns horse and carts greatly outnumbered international combustion jobs.
What a fine figure this lady cuts. Look at her forearms as she tirelessly gathers in the hay. If I was Stalin I would have a statue made of her as an example of a good solid proletariat type.
And look how thick this man's belt is, you can judge the measure of a man by the thickness of his belt. Yes they cut the hay by scythe! And it is not hay as we know it, no! It is rich in flowers and herbs and all sorts, you would pay a pretty penny for such rich hay here, no wonder their animals are so strong. In fact I wouldn't mind a bowl full it with milk still warm from the cow for breakfast before I went out and worked the fields with my massive forearms. Is it coincidence our multicultural society produces monoculture hay and their monoculture produces multicultural hay...yeah I don't know where I am going with that.
And here we have it, a Sheppard. A real life Sheppard with a green felt had. A green felt hat ladies and gentlemen. I really wanted one of those but I never did find one. It hurts. It hurts.


So the roads in Romania are incredible. You go from perfectly smooth asphalt with markings to dust, to rough rubble, to smooth rubble, to perfect asphalt with no markings, to mud with deep ruts, to cobble stones with patches of asphalt, to dust with ruts to asphalt with huge pot holes and all in about half an hour. All the while switching from two lanes to one and back again! keeps you on your toes. The Romanian construction worker is a creature of habit and his habit is thus, choose looong stretches of road to work. Then dig all the holes needed and take up all the surface to be replaced along the whole length of the road making most of it tricky going for anything less than a SUV. Then slowly, and I mean slowly, start to work on filling in those holes and resurfacing the road. Also never ever use any safety gear, not even safety glasses, never!

And then we came tooooo Maramures. Oh Maramures how I remember you so fondly. Oh I was wrong to doubt you! This is when we had out greatest time, truly, but it is late, I will finish this blog tomorrow. If you have read my ramblings this far stop and think how you could have better spent your time. Have you thought? OK good I will see you back here tomorrow for the final section of this post. Goodnight!

Going to the Maramures area was Kelly's idea, as was going to eastern Europe. Full of good ideas that gal! I first became aware of the area when Kelly showed me a touristic brochure on the area showing the predictable photos of Happy Romanian in their tradition clothes (frilly white shirts, fur waist coats, head scarfs and colourful skirts) doing dances and other traditional community based activities. Typical tourist bumph I presumed. In short I was wrong and it was really like that and what's more there weren't even many other tourists there, certainly much less than any other area of Romanian we had been to. They really did still live like that, not for anyone elses benefit but just because that was the way they lived. No doubt it will change as more tourists come and some locals notice the money they bring and start to cater for the tourist hoards. We noticed it starting to happen but it was still a very undeveloped area in terms of tourism. Go soon if you have the chance, although perhaps it is already too late.

When we first drove into the area it was foggy, here is a wooden church rising majestically through the fog. Wood based crafts are big in this area. All the churches are built of wood and houses had large ornate, carved wooden gates.

We arrived on a Sunday and as we drove along we noticed many old folks dressed in their Sunday best walking along by the side of the road. Likely they were going to church or into the big town for business or social reasons (car ownership was low to non existent in the smaller villages). Many were signalling they wanted a ride so after some faffing we stopped and picked up this guy. He spoke no English but sat very quietly and politely in the back of our car. We gave him some chocolate which he graceiously accepted. When we got to the big town he signalled where to let him off and offered us some money, we accepted a photo with him instead. Here he is:
Next on the list was the Cheerful graveyard. Two generations of woodcarvers (just two men, a master followed by his apprentice) created this unique graveyard. The wooden grave markers were carved and painted in bright colours, on each there were one or two pictures represnting the person as they were in life (if they liked drinking it showed them doing that) or perhaps at the moment of their death (for instance being hit by a car or in one case rollerblading next to a train). They also had written on them a humerous poem about the deceased but those were in Romanian so we couldn't partake fully. I liked it though, it was far from crass and came across as rather tender and certainly more personal that the usual sombre affairs. This lady it seems had two men as lovers? On the other side she is shown as a repectable house wife.
As we drove our charge to his destination we passed this mounted procession. Oh how I yierned to give them a good drive by photo-ing.




However we did return this time armed with a Swiss. The parade has been in honour of this man, Brian Blessed the King of Romainia!

Did yah thing he was a king, did yah? Just for a moment? Silly! He's an orthodox priest (and not sir Brian), but yes he does have a rather kingly attire. As far as we could tell the whole village was out in their Sunday best to hear him speak.
Here I am with some smartly dressed youngsters. And below walking past some smartly dresed mademoiselles. I wore my kilt so that they would have something to look and point at so I wouldn't feel so bad looking and pointing my camera at them.
Another of our sything insights was that what people mostly did for most of a Sunday was sit on benches (which they all had outside their houses) and talk and drink (bootleg acohol and coffee liquer). All the women wore skirts and head scarfs and the men all wore hats too. How civilised! Here are two hatted men in action.
Kelly I must say was quite taken by this bench sitting, so we approached this group and asked to have our picture with them. You could not imagine what trouble and down right fun that got us into!

For instance it led to this:

The following picture partly explains how the above came about.
The above also led to the horrific scene you see below, viewer discresion adviced.
All I can say is that Romanian hospitality is legendary. That guy is the Swiss backpacker we picked up btw. As he was single our Romanian host felt bad for him and took us all to a bar to try and get a girl for him, that's hospitality! There was only one girl at the bar, the bar maid, but he made her come talk to him for ages which was cool. We ate and drank and laughed with his family and stayed at their house. We payed but by the amount of food and especially the amount of acholhol they threw at us they did not make a profit (we left a little extra when we left the next morning). It was great and all done with NO common language at all. Although I did try to use my pictionary skills to limited effect mosty what happened is we talked to each other and then laughed at our mutual lack of understanding! And then drank some more alcohol. One memorable moment was when the father gave us some napkins with our food but they were scented ones so not really appropriate for use around the mouth. As a result the mother gave him a good yelling at and sent the little boy running to the shop to get some normal ones. She did allot of yelling at the father after which she would always turn and smile sweetly at us. He would do the hurt puppy dog look and drink some more. We figured they were drinking so much because it was a Sunday but when they rocked up at 7am the following morning with our breakfast the father has some beer.
Here we are in the glorious Romanian countryside.

And here we are being respectful travelers and not ruthlessly drive by photo-ing inocent babushkas.

We left Romania after seeing some more splendid scenery and me having a day of violent food poisoning.

Here we are in one of Budapest's famous spas. All very nice except I was pretty grossed out by being in water with all those other people. I won't be doing that again. Communal bathing is not in my cultural heritage.
Kelly looking lovely in Budapest, that is the Hungarian parliment in the background. Oh Hungarian food is excellent by the way, if you are in Budapest eat at a restaurant called 'Mensa' or 'Menza'. The best meal of the whole trip. But don't try Polinka the local booze, worst stuff ever.
Out of order, but here we are in an ice cave in Romania (underground glacier).
A day spent energetically walking in the lovely hills of Romania, the day after my food poisoning day. It was an intense experience, eased by Kelly's skillful nursing.
Just look at this old Romanian Lady's face! Don't you just wanna pinch it and go 'oh your such an adorable little babushika, yes you are!'

After all that we went to Germany to visit my relos whome I have shamefully neglected over the past few years. This is my grandparent's house there, they live in half and my uncle who runs the farm lives in the other half. Just as it looks it is a very old house.

This is the house we got to stay in. It was so nice to have a house all to ourselves, THANKYOU Uschi (and Uschi's father). Es war schon ein hause fur uns aleine zu haben, dankeschon Uschi und Friederich.
If you look down to the bottom right of this photo you see a church, but what are we looking down from, what could be so much higher than a church tower?
Cologne Cathedral that's what! It is big, very big. Too big to really take in.
A sleeping pussy. Nuff said.

We spent some time cycling around the german countryside, here is kelly mid cycle.

And the best thing about Germany aside from seeing my relos? Fresh Brotchens! Little bread rolls which are the best thing. Nothing is quite like them especially when they are delivered fresh. Here is the delivery Van. German food is not really famous for being amazing or anything but it is the only food that I can just eat and eat and eat. That may be allot to do with Meine Omas cooking but if I were living in Germany I would be fat, no doupt.
Soest the nearby town where my father went to school is very picturesque, my favourite church is this one which has a warped spire.
Here is my Father and Kelly.
This is the oldest house in Soest.


And then we were off to London! The BIG city were your money mysteriously evaporates. Aside from the siteseeing I got to meet up with many old friends which was really great. Thanks Ed and Sahra and Ellen for having us to stay!

Here is a big crack in the floor of the Tate modern what people call art. It is called Shiboleth. Actually I quite liked it but only after I read what it represented. I was kind of cool because it made use of the whole building (not just the floor).

Oh lovely British weather! How I missed you!



Back at the Kelvingrove gallery in Glasgow, what a wonderfully evocative machine this is!

While visiting my Uncle and Aunt in Wiltshire and while having a lovely time there (Thanks for having us!) we managed a day trip to Bath for Kelly's birthday. Actually it rained all day but hey it's Britian!
The guerkin, I spotted it in the distance while we were hunting for a Market and had to get a closer look. It is the first building that has ever made me stop and audibly utter 'woah,'.
The London eye. Didn't ride it, too expensive.
Some other well known London sights.

And that's it! It has been lovely having you, I expect my next blog will be about volunteering in Peru! That is the plan from Feb to July next year. After that I hope to study Environmental science/ conservation in the UK, fingers crossed I get accepted and hopefully get some funding!

Take care!

Craig