Welcome to Romania. Feel Free to Cheese Pie

As we were taking the bus into Bucharest from the airport I noted lots of Vatican flags hanging from the light standards lining the road and wondered aloud "the pope isn't visiting or something, is he?" As it turned out, yes he was.  

His official visit was the day after our arrival and lots of streets were closed off.  To get a spot anywhere along the official motorcade route or in the park around the church where he'd be holding the audience you had to have prebooked tickets.  So we didn't get to see his holiness.

With no papal visit on the cards the immediately obvious place to visit in Bucharest was the old town and indeed we'd picked our hostel for proximity to it.  Unfortunately, pretty much every building in the old town was a bar or restaurant and virtually all of them seemed dedicated to serving overseas stag and hen parties.  

With the pope and old town options out we had to find our own fun in Bucharest.  And although Bucharest is far from the most interesting or engaging European capital, we actually managed pretty well.

We spent some time in a big park in the city's northwest, enjoying the greenery and dipping our feet in the water (and admiring the weird circle of giant busts of the "founding fathers" of the EU).

We had some spectacularly good soup.  We'd actually followed directions to the wrong restaurant, but on our way there it started pouring rain.  So hot soup and shots of plum and blueberry brandy seemed like the perfect thing. On the way home we picked up a jalapeno and hibiscus IPA at a specialty beer shop that served notice that Romanian craft beer had a lot potential.

We did a mini architecture tour.  Just like (say) Warsaw or Prague, Bucharest has its share of pre, during and post-communist architecture. But it also seems that every turn in architectural ideology (from French Renaissance to Postmodern) has been implemented to one degree or another, so all of these things are scattered throughout and leave it feeling like a city without a focus.  This isn't quite true, as two places we visited shone as jewels of their styles that drew focus no matter what they were surrounded by:

The absolutely gorgeous Stavropoleos Church (which had a visiting German choir tour group singing in it while we visited) reminded me that with the possible exception of some gothic structures, I much prefer Orthodox churches to Catholic or Protestant ones.

And the monstrous white marble Palace of Parliament, which is apparently the second largest administrative building in the world after the Pentagon.  It's interesting that it's garish hugeness feels more like post-communist Turkmenistan than like any other communist era architecture I've seen in eastern Europe.

But the very best thing we did in Bucharest was visit the charming little museum of maps.  It had a focus on Romania and the Balkans (I had no idea just how long the Russo-Turkish wars went on until I saw the military maps of them).  When you entered you were given a magnifying glass so you could pore over the collection (including several original maps by Mercator) in greater detail.  The building itself was great too.

After two days on Bucharest we went to the train station and bought tickets to Brasov, a few hours north, then some fabulous salty-sour cheese pies at a nearby market while we waited for our train.

The trip up to Brasov is supposed to be fabulous with some of the highest peaks of the Carpathians all around.  Unfortunately it was cloudy so all we really got were views of the towns and villages at their bases (this weather would become a recurring theme.  During our twelve days in Romania I was constantly looking for opportunities to go hiking in the Carpathians, but there were thunderstorms in the forecast in the mountains for every single o

day in the country.  This showed in the very high river levels everywhere we went).

Anyhow, Brasov.  It's actually a pretty big town, but virtually all tourists ever see of it is the charming little old town and the famous castle in the outlying village of Bran. We did indeed experience both of these, but our strongest memories will probably be of our hostel dorm-mates.  The memorable ones were two Romanian guys. Now I've no problem mixing and mingling with local folks. In fact usually I love it. But on night one we shared our room with a guy who played dance music on his phone speakers until 00:30 (about 90 minutes after everyone else was in bed with lights out), then started up his personal dorm-room disco again at 06:30.

He departed and was replaced by another guy whose story was affecting: he was far from his home elsewhere in Romania.  He'd been involved in a car accident in which his wife was seriously injured and had been forced to stay in Brasov until the case was resolved.  He hadn't been permitted to visit his wife and had lost his job as a motorcycle mechanic. He'd run out of money and had been arrested again for sleeping on the street and the hostel owner had let him stay for free once he was released from jail.  This was all very sad, and we did our best to be understanding, trying to talk a bit despite the huge language barrier and offering to share our dinner with him. But the whole situation seemed a bit dodgy to begin with, and the fact that he didn't want to eat at all, only to drink lots of vodka, smoke and cry out on the balcony made him kind of difficult to be around.  I hope his story has a happy ending.

So there we go.  Our introduction to Romania.  I hope I haven't made it sound too negative.  'Cause it really wasn't. And as we moved further into the heart of the Transylvania region it just got better and better.

Mo Palermo

The original plan for departing Sicily was to take a ferry over to the Italian mainland then dash across to the Adriatic and take a ferry across to Albania to begin a bit of a Balkan adventure.  However while sitting in a park in Catania I'd realized that all of the transportation involved in doing this was actually pretty pricy. While looking for alteratives I discovered 16€ flights from Palermo to Bucharest in a few days time.  This would let us throw in a quick visit to Romania where we kind of wanted to go anyway, would save lots of money getting there and as a bonus would give us a couple more days in Palermo, our favourite city in Sicily. Done.

The trip from Giardini Naxos to Palermo went up the eastern side of Sicily via Messina.  As you travelled up the coast, Calabria on the Italian mainland was easily visible across the strait.  This route meant that we'd done an almost complete circuit of the island save for the far west. On arriving in Palermo we were sorely tempted to pop into Taverna Azzura, but it was getting late and we'd already changed our arrival time twice with our host, so decided we'd leave it 'til the next day.

The next day we had a visit to the biggest and best of Sicily's street markets to obtain picnic supplies.  Some more of those fabulous cherry tomatoes, great big green olives, a super-salty, crumbly baked ricotta, some bread and a bottle of prosecco (not really a product of Sicily, but we hadn't had any yet in Italy, and this was our last chance.  We had plans to take our picnic to the outlying town (suburb really) of Monreale in the hills above Palermo. But when we just missed the bus and discovered the next one didn't leave for 90 minutes we decided to just plonk ourselves down in the park in front of the Sicilian parliament.  This was made somewhat more complicated when I read the park rules sign and it said "no picnics outside of designated areas". Apparently super popular tourist towns in Italy (Florence, Venice, Rome) have started to ban eating in their most popular public spaces to reduce litter and the sheer numbers of people occupying them for extended periods (and presumably to boost the revenues of nearby restaurants).  We actually went to the trouble of asking a policewoman and she said something to the effect of "go ahead but don't be a dick about it".

We had a long casual stroll home after this past the cathedral and the lovely pedestrianised XXx.  This gave us time for a wee nap before making our return pilgrimage to Taverna Azzura. We arrived around seven and spent about six hours watching the crowd first grow and then heave around us.  We had two made-to order pizzas ourselves (up 'til now we'd just had the slices and mini-pizzas from the cabinet) and they were well up to standard, perhaps even better. Overall champion was the Pizza xxxFolded with rocket, gorgonzola, tomato sauce and mushroom.  I think it's going to be a while until I can bring myself to eat any other pizza (in fact, since I'm writing this well after the fact I can say that it's been three weeks and I'm just starting to consider it).

We had a few Moretti lagers and Sarah a couple plastic cups of sweet Vino Zibbibo.  Taverna Azzura had glasses, but it seemed like only regulars (or people who looked more responsible than us?) got to take them out into the alley where the vast majority of eating and drinking was done.  Turned out to be no bad thing, as a homeless guy who we'd previously given a cup of beer to grabbed one out of Sarah's hand sending it splashing to the ground, stickyfying legs and hands in the process. Boo!

Even though our flight the next day wasn't until the late morning, we still had to show some semblance of sensibility, so with a heavy heart we said goodbye to Taverna Azzura and its deliciousness and headed home past the baroque and Arabo-Norman wonders of Palermo for one from final time.

Palermo's airport is a fair way out of town, but there are regular inexpensive express buses.  Despite many (often justified) complaints about Ryanair when things go wrong (and when they do annoying stuff like charging €55 to print boarding passes… In what universe is that even vaguely proportional to the costs?  Or even proportionate to any outcome it's meant to encourage? I suppose I shouldn't complain because it's the unfortunate buggers who end up paying these fees that allow people like Sarah and I to buy €16 tickets without driving the airline bankrupt).  Anyhow, when things go smoothly as they did in Palermo, it's just fine. There was practically no queue and we had plenty of time to admire the spectacular mountainous backdrop to PMO while drinking our final airport beer for a while, a gift of homebrew from Gianluca (somewhat oxidised and autolysis-y, but actually still surprisingly pleasant for that).

Coming up next: arrival in Romania and the start of the Balkan leg of our trip.

Beer Festivals and Volcanoes: Just Like Home

Though it's Sicily's second largest city, it felt more city-like and bustling than did laid back, slowly crumbling Palermo.  Our stay began with a family of an elderly mom, her son and their dog in an apartment building on the outskirts of the central city.  We arrived around 10:00 and we're sat down on the balcony to begin our day with coffee and homemade carrot cake. Thus fortified we set out about our one real day of just exploring the city.

Though I never fell in love with Catania the way I did with Palermo, we still had a fun first day.  Buying a kilo of cherries for lunch and sitting in a giant gazebo in the central park was one part of this.  Then wandering almost at random through the city's west and stumbling across an area of three square blocks where everyone was either trying to find parking spots, buying red roses or selling red roses.  Coupled with the fact that many of the women seemed to be dressed in nun costumes (nun costumes mind you, not actual nuns' habits) this was all very confusing.  We eventually figured it out when we came across the church of Santa Rita, who, on her death bed requested a rose from her home town.  Despite it being January, her followers tried to oblige and miraculously (she's a saint after all) found a bush in full blossom and were thus able to fulfil her dying wish.  This was her feast day and everyone was coming to replicate the final offering made to Rita.

We also had a fun visit to the former monastery and the huge, never completed, church of San Nicolò l'Arena that now houses the University of Catania's faculty of literature.  The partial church was no less imposing for being unfinished, but the gardens and galleries inside were bright and welcoming. Just across from the church, around the corner from the Piazza Dante (named after my Nephew) we popped into a Salumeria (a deli basically) for a grilled sausage sandwich.  While waiting for that to cook the staff offered us some ground horse meat (a Catania specialty) to munch on. It wasn't bad. Very lean, only slightly gamey and well seasoned.

We came across castles and hamams and piazzas and cathedrals, alleys wandering alongside and ducking under the railway tracks through town, and several of the little rubber-tired mini trains that seem to be taking over tourist destinations throughout the old world.  And near the very end the curious but charming elephant on a column in the moan Piazza that is Catania's symbol. In short, on our first day in Catania we got all of the (outdoor at least) tourist highlights of the city under our belts.

Next morning we went down to the rocky but pretty beach/fishing port near our Airbnb.  While we were there several guys were training a golden retriever and two Labradors to act as water rescue dogs (actually I think one may have been already qualified and just brought along to show the almost comically incompetent other two how it was done).  Going for a swim with these two was an fun but odd way to begin a day that would continue fun and odd late into the night.

A couple of months previously, in Cadiz, Spain, we'd met Gianluca, a Sicilian who'd convinced us to visit the island instead of central and northern Italy ("You can visit the north any time you're in Western Europe.  But since you'll be in Tunisia it's the perfect chance to see Sicily too!"). He'd mentioned at the time that when we were proposing to visit was right around the time of his brother's wedding, which he'd be coming home for.  And lo, there he was in Catania at the same time as us.

This was only partly due to good planning.  It always seemed like making plans to meet with Gianluca took a long time and was unpredictable (fair enough, he had his brother's wedding to help with).  But on the afternoon of out second day, Gianluca and one of his cousins, Fabio, met us under the gazebo in the central park. The plan (and this is where our Catania experiences start to get unusual) was for us to join them for his brother's stag so/bachelor party.

We set out to the costume district (Carnival in Catania is a fairly big deal and there actually was such a place) to peruse giant penis and condom costumes for bro, then went for a beer (slightly oxidised but pretty decent ESB out of a 750ml bottle from a Sicilian brewery) while we waited for the rest of the crew to be ready.  We went to an uncle's house in the suburbs to meet the other dozen young men (a smattering of whom spoke some English) and then headed out still further to the flanks of Mt. Etna for the evening's first activity: paintball.

We got the safety briefing (in Italian, but I made sense of it, and it was all pretty commonsense anyway) and played several games with all of the non-drivers digging into beers from the car boots between games.

To put it bluntly, I suck at paintball.  And my communication with teammates was never going to be the best.   Indeed it's kind of a surprise that I only scored one "own goal". But everyone did have fun and by the time we were done it was almost dark.

Gianluca had some prep stuff to do, so he left us (and this sounds way worse than it is, in fact it was kind of fun) beside a row of dumpsters near to the dinner venue with two half litre beers while he sorted stuff out.  When we finished our beers and he still wasn't back we simply headed to the restaurant and ordered another plus a litre of house wine. I suspect we didn't adequately explain to the staff what was up, but the lights came on when the rest of the group arrived (though it must still have been surprising that we were joining fifteen young Sicilian men plus one Spanish woman [another friend of Gianluca's]).

We'd clearly got the spirit of things right when we'd ordered the drinks.  The rest of the dinner was basically plate after plate of meat being passed round the table (there was a salad and some fish for Sarah), including some really good sausages and lots more horse.  And, of course, heaps more beer and jugs of wine and at the end a couple bottles of potent herbal spirit that the restaurant had gifted the groom.

Everyone stroggled (my own invented word that is a combination of sauntered and staggered) out into the night and a wineskin full of (was it grappa maybe?) produced.  When the party began heading towards where Gianluca's car was parked to make an assault on the contents of the trunk we decided that discretion was the better part of valour (and of being a good guest too) and made our way home.

Not entirely surprisingly, the next day was kind of a write-off.   Pretty much the only thing we did that's worth mentioning was to head out in the evening to collect a couple of pizzas (ala Norma, with the same ingredients as the pasta) and a calzone.  These were good by NZ or Canada standards, but still not up there with Taverna Azurra in Palermo.

The following day was the wedding, so while Gianluca was busy with that, Sarah and I took a trip out of town to one of the main entrances to Mount Etna National Park.  We took the single public bus of the day out there in the morning and went for a walk in the acceptable but grimmening (another word of mine, but one whose meaning is pretty obvious) weather.

By the time we'd walked up the pumice and lava rock to the top of the gondola it was raining and windy with pretty mediocre visibility, but we carried on a bit further to get us up 2800 of the mountain's 3300m.  As we headed down the weather improved (which leads me to suspect that going up is why it got bad to begin with…) and the views out over the surrounding volcanic wasteland and further out over probably 25% of the whole island got better with it.

Exploring the cones and lava fields down closer to the road was fun too, and really reminiscent of the central North Island of New Zealand.

We got back to Catania in late afternoon and (despite our hostel moving us a few blocks away to a dumpier place for the same price) were tired enough to just call it a day and ready ourselves for the fun we had planned for Sunday.

This began with a walk through the northern suburbs of Catania which, though they didn't actually have much interesting to look at, did give us a chance to have an espresso at a little kiosk cafe in a park and another Sicilian food speciality, arencini (deep fried rice balls… we had one with mushroom and pancetta and another with cheesy pistachio filling).

Great way to line the stomach for a beer festival.  We are constantly seeing posters for beer festivals that we'd just missed or were just missing, but in Catania we'd got it just right.  For the first couple of hours it was pouring rain on the outdoor venue and Sarah and I were amongst the only people there. But we were befriended by two brewers from the little and little-known Italian region of Molise who collected us a table and tucked us in with a few other friends behind their stand.  (And I'm not just saying this 'cause they were so nice to us, everything we tried from both of them, starting with session IPA and ending with Tripel, was great.)

Most of the smaller breweries' stands were staffed by members of the brewing teams and, especially after the weather cleared, I had an awesome time trying lots of beer and geeking out a bit.  Everyone was exceptionally friendly and we ended up being gifted heaps of food and drink that led to us consuming more than we otherwise would have (and had the side effect of giving me a bit of an excuse for why I was skunked at foosball by two ten-year olds).  Nonetheless we were home in bed by about 23:30.

Up and at 'em the next morning we said farewell to Catania and headed up the coast to Giardini Naxos, a charming little beach resort town where Gianluca's family live.  On the way up we were in such a rush to catch our train (we arrived at the station with less than five minutes to buy tickets and get aboard) that I forgot to validate our tickets, which led to us being scolded and sold new (almost twice as expensive) ones by the conductor.  I suppose it was nice of her not to charge us the €50 fine that she could/should have, but still was even that necessary? Like do they seriously have a need to crack down on obviously foreign tourists who are running some racket involving using unvalidated tickets and reselling them on the black market?

Anyway, my grumpiness at this was assuaged by the delightful folks from our delightful B&B picking us up at the station and taking us to their delightful place in the equally delightful town.  

We actually didn't see Gianluca til late that night (when we sat on the balcony drinking some of his homebrew and a beer from the brewery he'd worked for in Spain).  He was super (and unnecessarily) apologetic about not spending that much time with us, and ended up driving us around on a tour of the coast north of Catania the next day.

This included a trip to the incredibly cute holiday village of Mazzaro which sits perched between a beautiful little rocky beach and island below and towering cliffs that plunged down into the sea from above.  After a walk round the beach and island in the bay below town we climbed up stairs and stairs and stairs and stairs to the top of the cliffs and the town of Taormina at their top.

Taormina is one of Sicily's tourism gems.  Its streets of worn-smooth cobbles are lined with Renaissance residences, churches and even synagogues.  It's got a fabulous Roman theatre as well. And it's jam packed with the tourists you'd expect in such a place.  Perhaps in part because of this, my two favourite things about Taormina were slightly offbeat ones:

First: A replica of a midget submarine that a local hero of the Italian Tenth Flotilla Frogman Commandos (that's sort of a composite literal/figurative translation of the name) piloted in WWII when he planted limpet mines on several British warships in the Alexandria harbour.

Second: an English couple who had just got married and whose guests were mingling and sipping drinks from a bar that they'd set up in the town's central square.  Meanwhile the bride and groom were having their photos taken, with their wedding photo shoot turning into a photo opportunity for hundreds of entirely unrelated tourists all around them, who in turn became the subject/background for several of the photos.

It was awesome to spend a good full day with Gianluca but come 16:00 we needed to be getting our train back to Palermo.  We had a very tasty meal and some more of his personally supplied beer (and homemade Patxaran liqueur!) at a friend's restaurant before he dropped us off at the station and we said our second (but hopefully not final) farewell.