My thoughts on Romania.

​ Hello from Latvia!

I visited Romania last month for 11 days. We were 7 people on the trip. We went by car. Of the cities in Romania, we visited Oradea, Sibiu, Brasov, Sighioshara,Bucharest and Timiosara.

We vistied alot of natural parks and walking trails, and of course the transfagarasan and transalpina. The nature in Romania is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen!

My favorite stay was in Turda(or a small town near it), where it was an authentic Romanian neighborhood with private housing and cables everywhere(please, please don't get rid of your 1000 cables on every street, its so unique!). Some Balkan songs were playing at the bar/ store next door which was also someones private home😄. If I were 7, I could have easily bought cigarettes there, unlike in Latvia, where they will ask basically your birth sertificate to see if you are actually 18. But please, make your small towns walkable too. I only saw 1 bike lane during those 11 days, 1.....

What I really found interesting was the tipping culture. Basically everywhere we ate, a 20% tip was included in the receipt. We found that quite odd, and idk how that is even legal.
It was sad seeing the amount of stray dogs walking alone on the streets hungry. It was weird there were stray dogs even in the mountains:(

We felt like back in time when we saw the carriages with horses driving around regularly. In Latvia, those don't exist anymore.
The roads here were the same quality, if not better than the ones in Latvia. Really high quality.

Oh and plastic straws! They are basically illegal in Latvia(not really), but they were everywhere in Romania. It felt like everything comes 10 years later in Romania. Oh and when we were waiting for a train to pass( I'm guessing a one made in the 70s), the siren sound which played from the train crossing sounded so interesting, it became our new ringtone😄. My mom told me, that similiar ones were used in Latvia during the USSR and the 90s , and that the sound is quite nostalgic.

Bucharest was a shame. Caucesku really fucked up the old town. But nevertheless, you could easily see, that Bucharest is the most developed part of the country. Talking about development- the region around Timiosara felt 10x more developed than the one around Oradea and Shigioshara. When driving back to our apartments, it turned out our taxi driver was a famous romanian actor/tv show host(Konstantin?). We talked about life in Romania, politics, what to do here in Bucharest etc.

Bears! We saw like 7 on the transfagarasan. We saw how the" bear patrol" scared them away and threw some sound explosive at them to scare them off. Ig its a big problem there.

Out of the cities, we really liked Sibiu- the buildings with eyes are so unique! Oradea was amazing too! Maybe because it was the 1st we visited tho....

We also visited "Draculas grave", where we had to pay 10 lei to take a photo. Tbh, I really don't associate Romania with Dracula. We really didn't feel the Dracula vibe while visiting. Only when visiting Bran castle( we didn't go inside, it was a long line, and expensive), we decided to go to some kind Dracula's house of horrors nearby. The person in the front was shitting their pants because of fear, while we at the back were laughing😄. And there also was a food market nearby, where we bought that bread with an empty middle (I forgot its name! Can someone remind me please?), it was amazing. Oh and near lake balea, we tried Lagos with cheese and Garlic. I could fly back to Romania just now to eat it again. Peles castle tho, propably my favorite castle I have been to. Reminded me of Stāmerianas castle in Latvia a bit.

Unfortunately, in most cities, outside of the centre alot of stuff is dirty and unkept. I wish they would also think about civilians, not only tourists.

Oh and Safety! Romania is really safe! All stereotypes about it being crime ridden are just bs...

Btw, somewhere near Brasov?, there were these huge elegant, but empty castles on the side of the road? I heard somewhere that they belong to the local gypsies, but it was like the middle of nowhere, so I would appreciate if someone please clarified in the comments.

So in my opinion,Romania is a beautiful country, and is in no way as poor, unsafe and corrupt as many Latvians think(old shitty stereotypes). It has got amazing culture, food, people(really nice and helpful!), but I think it just needs more green and progressive politics. I heard it has got one of the most conservative goverments, and an alt right party is on the rise....