Across the Danube to Romania

When I went to pay the bill this morning, I had exactly the right amount in my wallet to pay the bill and not a cent more…..which concerned me as I thought I had more than that last night…must have dropped it or been shortchanged somewhere…. but still I couldn't shake the idea that someone had diddle me. Anyhow, it was still cheap so no worries. I headed north towards Romania and came across this rather soviet looking sculpture in a field. I guess it exhorts the womenfolk to work hard, make babies and wine or something like that.

I struggled a bit to read the roadsigns. Away from the main roads, the signs are often is plain old Cyrillic so deciphering them was a bit of a chore. By the end of the day, I was slightly better at it but really, I was recognising patterns rather than reading it. I had a printout of the cyrilic alphabet with me earlier on but it has hone the way of many of my maps i.e. missing. I managed to get a local map for Bulgaria which has some dual lettering for the important town names which helps a lot.




I crossed the Shipka pass which is famous in Bulgarian history for being the location where the Bulgarians stopped the Turks in 1878. The road up and down is 30k of bliss but the view from the top was very hazy today so no pic. The monument to the battle is enormous and the effort to build something so huge on a mountain peak says a bit about its importance.





More Sunflowers all the way today. I started trying to calculate approximately how many I might have seen and gave up…a single hectare would contain about 100,000 plants and I have seen millions of hectares. My brain couldn't cope with the sums and I reverted to some music. Isn't it sad when your brain doesn't work as well as it used to. Did you know that each plant can produce between 1000 and 2000 seeds? And did you think that the flowers face the sun?…..I did and was proved wrong…they all face away from the sun. I think I have seen enough sunflowers for now.

I crossed the Danube into Romania. Why is is sometimes referred to as the Blue Danube puzzles me as it was brown any murky here and stuffed full of mid size ships and barges. You can take a ferry or cross on a bridge so I opted for the bridge which was free for bikes. I headed for Bucharest and toyed with the idea of staying there but realised it was too early in the day to stop. Bucharest is one of those weird cities that could be lovely and some of it is. It has the nickname the 'Little Paris' and I saw glimpses of that, but there is a lot of communist era concrete monstrosity getting in the way.


I headed for Brasov in the mountains where I spent a week drunk as a skunk on a ski trip the year after the revolution. Then the mountains took over and sent some thunder, lightning and then rain so I am stopped in a roadside motel, hoping for better weather tomorrow. It is 22C here and I am feeling the cold….I have got accustomed to blue skies and heat. This rain and cold sucks.

The Route
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