Day 1We get ourselves at Schiphol, we have too much cash on us, damn the .ro currency!
Can’t wait for the brilliant Eurozone! Get scared on the plane when some drunkard of a pilot announces the route and all. Sailorboy gets panicked at his foreign language capabilities, me at his Romanian with a taste of vodka. I pray. We land precisely on time. Gee!! The only time the plane’s on time, my parents are late with their pick-up. No wonder they’re late. The traffic’s a mess!! Such a nightmare!! Well, when in Rome.. luckily we get home, I see my big-fur cat and we have good .ro food and drinks. We drag ourselves to sleep.
Day 2
Enthusiastically launched into an exploration of the 2nd biggest building in the world – the House of People. This thing is humongous! Only sailorboy gets to see it, I’m banned to solve issues bank- and uni diploma-related. Bank’s are in the system. Issue solved. Another Kafka scenes rolls under my eyes when I figure it out that at my former uni they only work between 11.00 and 2.30. Lazy bastards! I re-visit them at the appropriate hours and get to stand in a line for more than one hour. I silently congratulate myself for my choice of moving to a different country.

We’re lunching with the extended family, grandma and grandpa. Grandpa manages to talk about grapes and weather with Sailorboy just by using hand-language. Pretty cool! We hit it off to La Motoare – the place to be! It’s a real gather-up with Gigi, Geamy, Kiki, Simona, Ioana, Adriana, Raluca, Corina, Maria, Vico, Boris. Later we move on to the creepy Cafenea, where we’re not allowed to sit outside on the terrace, we only can be given a drink if we’re in. Inside it’s a public sauna. Delia, a mother to be, her man, Razvan, another mother Alice and Edi join us. We keep up the good short stories and I’m happy to see all. Till our next gather up, ta-tar!!

Day 3
My agenda definitely includes Vulcanii Noroiosi, a.k.a. the Muddy Volcano’s.
The desire to climb up on a mountain is crawling up in the back of my head.
Sailorboy discovered the plopping concept. He’s just playing the

bubblegum and then breaking sound as a plop for a good illustration of the volcanos. We’re just picturing it, stopping at a dam to admire the view then getting to the real thing. It’s indeed a plopping feeling. Next to that, it’s always good to see the Mars-like scene. I play a new-born coming out of Mother Earth.
We hit it off to Sinaia, the mountain touristy resort where lately bears have been coming up from the mountains.. I suppose the bears discovered the economic principles of scarcity in the woods, as well as “no lunch for free”. Now they need to attack city and village population to convince people to get food placed in the forests. Damn economic bears!!
Day 4
We’re having museum/castle visits on our travel agenda. We get some ridiculous shoes for the Pelisor visit. We get in and come to some long-forgotten places of kings and queens in .ro.
Later on we get to see the Peles, castle which value’s estimated of weight in gold.
That should be pretty cool. I’m wondering what’s my value?!Had dinner at the Serbian place where too much food invaded my plate. Needed to taste my father’s food, so he’d take something from my plate. So overwhelming!
Day 5
Woke up early in the morning to go see the Dracula’s castle. They made some sort of medieval castle out of it, so only the fame and glory stays. I took the most popular photo’s whom every one who visited must have took. I’m so ordinary!

We carry on our road trip to Brasov. We get a magazine to choose from, we’ll be staying at Samurai. The owner looks like he’s going to split us in two with a sword, but he’s too kind. He speaks the slow language of the west .ro, he couldn’t be more funny.We’re advised to check out the Coliba Haiducilor at the Poiana Brasov.
We get very traditional food and music. Together with that, a rip-off bill to pay. No mood for fights with waiters, we leave.We take a tour of the big square, have some cold drinks and enjoy the evening – chill-out time.

Day 6
In our quest to see more Dracula places (we are in Dracula’s land, so we need blood), we get to the man’s house in Sighisoara. I really enjoy the medieval city and revival style. We step in the house which is now a restaurant and we have some Transilvanian food. Soup in bread included.
Funky bite!
We stuck around enough for one day, we needed to move on. We
expected Medias to be something of a city, we could only pee there, so we’ve named it PeeCity.

In desparate need to sleep somewhere, we asked at a hotel in Alba Iulia.
Man, what do you think this is?! Paris?! Watch it out for ridiculous prices while you’re out there!! The bastards would try anything!! We got in a park where oddly enough you could use internet for free. We tried to connect the minicomputer, failed and asked some guy with a computer what the trick is. Poor park guy couldn’t figure it out, so gave us a number of a hotel.
We got in there, we finally got air conditioning. It’s a God-given gift at 39 degrees..At the valuable indications of the hotel personnel, we could walk for 20 minutes to the old centre. After no less than one freaking hour and a half, we got there.
After walking in spooky neighbourhoods where I was really watching my bag and asking people if it’s a long way till there. They diplomatically and politely offered to show the direction, without precise information of the hour it would take us to get there.

Damn stupid hotel personnel!!We made it to the old city center. Apparently the pride of the city is a music fountain where half the city walks around, even at 10 in the evening. The massive ancient city walls are impressive. They amazingly made it so long. They even had some parade guard watching, I suppose it’s for the fun of it. Otherwise the huge cathedral had no guards whatsoever. I’ve never been alone in a church at 10 in the evening. Most of the time you cannot get in there that late.
I felt scared, good thing Sailorboy was there. Felt quite unique.

Day 7
Driving to Deva we decide there’s too much to walk to the castle, we were going to see the one in Hunedoara anyhow. The Corvins castle looked like an old fortress, but had some Dutch caravans around. Sailorboy discovered the hyper Dutch complaining to his
pregnant wife and regretfully and unrecognizably shut up. At the entrance I bump into this guy I’ve known for ages. We used to do a lot of partying.. Wtf?! What are the odds?! Castle looks nice for what it’s meant for. No glamour, except for the ladies working at its restoration. Only women at work! What’s that of a crazy club?!
Sailorboy drives on to some amazing racing routes backed up by fabulous scenery. We’re up to
Paltinis, next to Sibiu. We get no gps signal at the moment and get on some muddy side road, I get down in the paddles to ask how the road is going, and we proceed to Paltinis. We’ll have
some quiet relaxing time in here.
Day 8
My wish comes true – we climb up the mountain. We do an easy tour, as it’s a rainy weather. We have dinner at the hotel’s restaurant, there’s not much happening there. Even the waiter’s so old his feet hurt.. he seems he’s been on them for ages. He’s
tempting sailorboy with palinca and I have the usual beer of the
mountains, Ursus. We’re getting more .ro food and chill.
Day 9
We travel the same wonderful route on the steep curves to
Sinaia, we have a pick-up for my mom and dad, who were just enjoying their own private time in there since we left Sinaia. My dad drives to Buchi and we have dinner by the park. We’re on some covered-up terrace, but by the time we’re in the middle of our delicious dinner, a storm stops by. It’s so ravaging that in 5 minutes it manages to wet half of the terrace territory and all guests need to retreat inside. We continue eating, till Gigi calls. It seems half the Bucharest’s underwater. My father gets to the car and faces water till his knees, he brings the car to the door of the restaurant and for 20meters distance, Sailorboy gets shower wet. Ridiculous!
We need to get from our car to Gigi’s by letting them park next to each other. We had a set-up meeting, so we could get to see Gigi’s new house. Great place, I also need that kind of a kitchen! I suppose I need to earn it first.. I’ll do my homework on Cooking princess. We part with promises to see each other in the Netherlands again – soon, hopefully!

Day 10
Spent the morning at Sorina’s new hairstyling place. Got a good hairdo. Then hit off to the Green Hours, such a pleasant place to be at. Especially with Aida.
She’s telling me stories I somehow know and we catch up with our lives. I think this is the most one-to-one I’ve had so far in this trip.. but I don’t get many chances, what can I say.. I love you all!! Sailorboy joins us after unsuccessful attempts to see some museums in Bucharest and walking for half the day. Aida drives us to granma and grandpa where we say hello-good-by and talk about all we’ve done. We have a night out in Club A. My usual Club A friends are there – Alina, Andra and the gang! Geamy, Kiki, Alex and Maria on top. Sailorboy scores some extra points on social skills, niceness and rhythm. (can't believe I have no pics of that!!)

Day 11
We’re definitely not leaving the country till we see Cerna, the countryside. So we’re again the happy family on board. Damn we must have spent half of our days in the car starting day 2!! Oh well, all for a good cause!! My grandma’s so happy to see us, my uncle as well.He’s so happy he needs to prove he’s magnetism with all cutlery and remote control. I can also do this with one spoon – are we freaky or?! Sailorboy gets his first taste of goose heart – what do you mean you haven’t had that before?! I had a lot of brains in my good times! – It’s always such a pleasure to say that – I mean brains as food..
Day 12
We have the final generous breakfast in Buchi. Man we got so much food all the way.. drinks and food.. we’ll need to get ourselves on some diet when we get back. We’re happy to have a modest dinner at our place in Amsterdam. This was definitely a good one! Sailorboy’s
convinced we need to get back for some KTM motor off-road. I hope I was convincing enough with his friend, the RacecarSultan who agreed we’re going to see it all from an off-road jeep through the woods. That should be fun!!