The Provo Pause

Snakes and Tails and New Year's Eve

2012-01-16T08:24:00.000-08:00

So New Year's Eve my buddy Peet needed a ride back from the airport after his Christmas vacation in Costa Rica. As a reward he told me we could stop by his work, 'Snakes and Tails', to check out the snakes, lizards, and turtles. Lisa came along as well and it was a ton of fun. Even though Lisa viewed the whole thing with a bit of trepidation at first, by the end of the night she was hefting giant snakes alongside me!

Christmas in California!

2012-01-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

It was a great Christmas this year. Estelle and I drove down two days before Christmas and soon enough the Harward Clan began to arrive. We soon got into the Christmas spirit with Elsa singing for us all her Christmas songs that she had learned at school.

Elsa and Aries soon carried on a Harward family tradition. The old olives on the hands!

It was great to be home again! I had not been back to California for a year, since Estelle got home from her mission. I was so grateful to be back and surrounded by family.

It was really good to see Brenna and her family as I had not seen them since last Christmas as well, whereas I was able to visit most of the rest of my family a few times in the intervening year.

We had a bunch of monkeys soon occupying the trees in the backyard!

It was great to see both my brothers. It was fun to have Apache, and later Rosco, come as well. Having dogs around is still a novelty as we grew up without any real pets. Apache was always anxious when people were coming and leaving. It was really funny that once Rosco showed up that he asserted his dominance over Apache, the larger dog!

Matt was recovering from his knee replacement surgery. It was one heck of an operation as is plain from this picture!

It was great to see Matt and hear about his job and work on new paintings of temples.

I got put on potato patrol for Christmas dinner.

One of the best parts of the trip was gathering around the piano and singing all the Christmas songs from the hymn book. Brenna is still our piano officinato!

Another Harward family tradition was also carried out while I was there: pile up on Uncle Grant! Aries was intent on sitting on my head and was soon joined by most of the other nieces and nephews. I always get pretty banged up, but the kids love it!

Matt's kids are a great lot! It was great to see them playing with all the other nieces and nephews. It was fun to see how quickly all the nieces and nephews who don't see each other that often got do to playing and being friends so quickly.

My 'little' nephews are starting to grow up into young men. It is so crazy how time flies and people grow!

We had a couple real foggy nights out in the field at the end of the cul-de-sac which was great. The kids loved going out, playing in the fog, and taking cool pictures. I took them out 3 or 4 times over a couple days.

It was still so much warmer than in Utah, but for the kids they bundled up and tried to summon fog spirits!

Deanne's kids arrived and brought with them their amazingly engrossing ipad with all its games. I was introduced to the game 'Plants versus Zombies' a strange game, but one that little Calvin was already a pro at and one to amaze his cousins.

I love little Parker! That kid reminds me so much of me when I was little, except much more mischievous.

I got Estelle, Kassie, Robert, Alanna, and Kellen to go to the movies after Christmas to see 'Warhorse'. It was a great movie, but a real heartwrencher, Robert told me he wanted to punch me for having us go see such a sad movie the day after Christmas! :)

Outside Mom's window a hummingbird had built a nest and was raising two little baby hummingbirds. It was a beautiful thing to see, especially in the middle of winter.

We all went to the beach and had a great time in the great weather of Southern California.

Parker has the sharpest nails I have even felt! His little hands feel like claws and he quickly made a game out of scraping up my legs! It was hilarious, yet often painful.

It was fun to see crazy Matt. He was in good spirits for the holiday, even with the pain from his surgery.

It was great to have most of the siblings all together, along with our families, I had such a great time and a great Christmas!

The Divine Gift of Repentence

2011-12-06T18:27:00.001-08:00

Well, I am continuing to read through all the conference talks and I came across another passage in the talk by D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles that I thought was very interesting. I think that one of the main themes of this conference, and any conference, is that of repentance.

Prophets have been sent on earth to cry repentance to mankind from the dawn of time. The Atonement of the Savior makes this divine gift available to us and it is up to the prophets to stir our hearts to remembrance and exhort us to repent and for what things we have need to repent. Most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can tell you by heart the 'steps of repentance': first recognized the sin, second feel remorse, third confess the sin, and lastly to make restitution. It is something I have been taught since a young child and have used in practice, but Elder Christofferson reminds us that:

"...repentance requires a seriousness of purpose and a willingness to persevere, even through pain. Attempts to create a list of specific steps of repentance may be helpful to some, but it may also lead to a mechanical, check-off-the boxes approach with no real feeling or change. True repentance is not superficial. The Lord gives two overarching requirements: 'By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins-behold, he will confess them and forsake them' (D&C 58:43)."

I was impressed by this teaching from a modern day Apostle of Jesus Christ. We may know the 'steps', but until we actually walk that path of repentance we will not be cleansed by the blood of our Lord and Redeemer. True discipleship is not superficial as well. As 'Saints' in the Church of Jesus Christ we have covenanted at baptism to be disciples of Christ and act as he would act (Mosiah 18:8-13). We need to become like Christ in thought, word, and deed. It is not a superficial change, or and easy one, or a rapid one, but we need it to be real and work it out with the help of the Holy Ghost and the Grace of God. This all centers around repentance and our decision to change, truly, and leave the natural man and become a fellow citizen of Christ's Church.

Thanksgiving in Zion

2011-12-02T13:55:00.001-08:00

Happy Post-Thanksgiving! I am sure that my now most of us have recovered from stuffing ourselves in gratefulness for all the blessings in our life. I had a great Thanksgiving in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Zion Nation Park in Southern Utah. I drove down with my little sister and met up my mom and my big sister and her family. It was great!

Although Elsa might look all bundled up, it was actually perfect weather in Zion. It was cool, clear skies, lots of sun, if a little windy. Elsa has grown up a lot. She can even put her shoes on by herself!

It was great to see my niece Alanna again so soon after her band competition in St. George, but even better to be able to spend a lot more time with her than we did a couple weeks ago.

Robert found a great spot in the western park of the part that we had never been before that had some cool hikes. We kind of bushwacked in the morning to look at some 'hoodoos' and then stopped for lunch. After lunch we hiked again out to a pair of giant hills.

There was some snow on the ground that Elsa was VERY excited about. She even almost walked off on her own trail for a bit! Also, Mom, Kassie, Elsa, and I fell behind Robert, Estelle, Kellen, and Alanna and almost hiked the wrong way as all three of us adults misread the sign! Luckily we quickly realized that we had taken the wrong path and got back on the right on.

I decided that the end of the hike deserved to get a nice G.Q. picture of myself for my facebook profile! :)

There were TONS of deer all around the park and we saw quite a few bucks as well that would have been to run into while in season and able to hunt. We actually had some just a few yards back behind our motel one night in the farmers yard! I almost hit one going through the park too!

As you can see after the exertions of the day we were all EXHAUSTED! But the smell of food quickly revived us! I devoured a huge plate stacked high with Turkey, Stuffing, Potatoes, Green Bean Casserole and all topped off with a few slices of pie! YUM! It was nice to have the Thanksgiving dinner in the Zion lodge with no prep work or clean up. Thanks Robert and Kassie for paying!

After a good nights sleep we went back into Zion. We spent the morning helping the kids get their Junior Ranger stuff done and then turned to look at the imposing shape of 'Angel's Landing' rising up over the valley floor. I was a little intimidated, but quickly decided that this was a perfect time to do it! So off we went (minus Kassie, Mom, and Elsa) to 'conquer' the climb!

We actually really booked it up the first 2 miles of the 2.5 mile hike. There was a lot of elevation, but not too bad. I was actually surprised how good of shape I was in. I am REALLY grateful for the hikes we did the day before because I think they really loosened me up and got me ready for this more intense hike. We quickly warmed up and soon shed our jackets and hoods. Crazily, I ran into one of my good buddies, Chris Woodhouse, from my mission coming down the trail! We jabbered away in Romanian for a bit, I introduced everyone, and the 'Mormon world' seemed so small!

After an hour we got up to 'Scout's Lookout'. Only .5 miles from the top of 'Angel's Landing', but that last half mile is one narrow and treacherous track with many delays waiting for people coming the other way to pass by. We ate a great lunch before heading up, and my, was there some strange 'wildlife' in the area! :)

Seriously though, a couple of California Condors were flying around the canyon, which was really cool. At first they flew above us, but soon, we were looking down on them!

This is what the comprised the last .5 mile to the top of Angel's Landing! Slightly terrifying! A posted sign said that 6 people have died from falling off since 2005! I couldn't believe the age of some of the children that people were taking up to the top of this. It was nerve racking at points!

Kellen did an awesome job on the climb! He also rode with use a lot which was SUPER fun. He was a regular chatter-box and I learned a lot about a bunch of cool video games that he plays that I wish I did too! He told me all about school and is a really smart kid!

Well, after an hour and a half of slightly stressful climbing we made it to the top! It was a magnificent view, even if it sometimes made me slightly nauseated to be up there!

It was coming back down that I was the most freaked out on the climb. Going up to Angel's Landing you can just look down right in front of you and ignore the heights just a little bit further out. Coming down you couldn't ignore it and while the view was great, I had my stomach in my throat for much of the climb back!

We all go back down safe and sound!

We all had a great trip and I am really grateful for Kassie and Robert getting the rooms and making all the reservations. We got fancy, hipster pizza in town that night, partied one more night, and then Estelle and I took off in the morning. It was an AWESOME thanksgiving in Zion!

BYU Basketball!

2011-11-19T14:37:00.001-08:00

Well, it is that time of year again! BYU Basketball starts a new season and I went to the first home game. I met up with Estelle and some other friends. I had to buy a regular ticket, but I easily passed the game 'security' and got down into the student section. Estelle, on the other hand, an actual student with student ID card and all-sports pass in hand, was stopped! We agreed that Estelle just had one of those faces that makes people suspicious of her!

One plus of getting to the game early and into the student section was getting the free T-shirt and pom-poms.

I love basketball games and I get into the chanting. I usually try to wear down my voice as much as possible. It was awesome to see the new team dynamics. The team looks pretty good, but it will probably be a rough and tumble season. A lot of development needed, but my favorite player, Charles Abouo, number 1, looked really good. I have been cheering that guy since I worked the cameras after my mission. It was a lot of fun!

Peter, denial, and Repentance

2011-11-17T20:13:00.001-08:00

Well, I have been told almost every Monday at the MTC, in broken Romanian, that scripture study is important. I have been struggling lately with feeling motivated to do my scripture study and really apply it to my life so that I get more out of it. So, tonight, after getting back from work super late I decided to get in some study and picked up the General Conference issue of the Ensign and turned to the first talk by Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and, low and behold, it is about scripture study.

While reading it I decided that if I write out some of my thoughts once in a while in my blog here that I can use that to get more out of my scripture study and make it more effective. Plus, I do keep this as somewhat of a 'journal' (I know it might not 'count', but it is a close as I can get!) and once you put it on the internet it is there forever (well...kind of) and so this will allow me to let loose with my spiritual side once in a while.

Therefore, as I was reading Elder Scott's talk, I was struck by the story of Peter and his denying Christ during his judgement. It is such a tragic moment for Peter. I see parallels relating to our own relationship with Christ. When we were all together as an eternal family with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in the pre-existence before this life we chose to follow God's Plan and sustained Jesus' position as our future Savior and Messiah. I believe that we felt so much love for our Elder Brother Christ and we sure of the righteousness of God's plan and possibly we too had a similar exchange with Christ before we left for this mortal realm.

I can image us assuring Jesus, and the Father, that we truly would remain faithful and not deny Christ. But our Elder Brother knew already that we would fall and sin, it was why he was required to Atone for our sins. When we sin we deny Christ, we are no longer working towards perfecting ourselves, but instead submitting ourselves to Satan. When earlier in Christ's mortal ministry Peter tried to convince Christ to save himself Christ said, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" In the Book of Mormon, the prophets constantly remind us to have the "image of Christ in our countenances", when we sin we do not have His image in our hearts, but that of our own desires.

But even as after Peter denied Christ three times, but was forgiven by Christ when he repented, so can we. Peter became the chief Apostle and President of the Ancient Church, suffering persecution and many troubles because of his testimony of Christ, all this after showing how weak he could be. We must be like Peter and repent of our sins, our weakness, and become strong in Christ to do his will and be able to be made clean in His blood and return to our Heavenly Father. We cannot be content to accept Christ once, but we must accept him every day and truly have his image engraved in our hearts and minds.

I hope that I can become anything like Peter, that great Apostle, and I know that if I can even get a little close it will only be through repentance, faith, and holding to the covenants which bind me to Christ and Heavenly Father.

Halloween

2011-11-14T16:20:00.001-08:00

Well, I had a fun Halloween, kind of low key, but fun. I dressed up as 'Fastidious Fred' the cleanest, nicest smelling, low down, no good desperado this side of the Rio Grande! I used the opportunity to justify buying myself a nice leather holster for my civil war replica pistol. I need to go out shooting with it soon! Looks like all that washing and general tidiness lent 'Fred' the support of his guardian angels, cause you know, 'Cleanliness is next to godliness'! ;)

Alanna's BOA Comp in St. George

2011-11-05T16:49:00.000-07:00

So, a few weeks ago Kassie told Estelle and I that Alanna was going to be going to St. George for a Bands of America Marching Band Competition. I really needed to get out of Provo and was excited to see Kassie and my nieces for the first time in a long time, so on Saturday morning I got up at 5am after 6 hours of sleep, woke up Estelle, packed up the car and got on the road. Estelle quickly fell asleep, but the radio and underlying fear of crashing the car kept me awake. ;) We got down around 9, after a quick pit stop in Cedar City to get me an egg McMuffin and some Dr. Pepper (oh Romanians, you don't know what you are missing without a McDonald's Breakfast Menu!) and met up with Mom and Kassie.

After getting showered up we went to Dixie State stadium and watched a bunch of bands, met up with Alanna, and saw her band preform. Elsa has definitely finally left behind her old animus of me from her toddler years. We had a grand old time playing together. She is a very smart and funny young girl. Makes me so happy to be an uncle with such great family!

A little climbing at Grandma's old house. It was kind of weird to be in Grandma's place without her there anymore.

Alanna's band, Clovis West, was really good. A bit of a small band, but good music and marching.

Alanna played the clarinet and is there between the 25 and 30 yard line by the colorguard in the dress.

Aunt Karen decided to come down and drove down a little later than us, but just in time for Alanna's band's performance. It was great that she was able to come down. She took of WAY early the next day to get back up to SLC, so I am really grateful she made the trip to be with us! Love you Aunt Karen.

It was so fun to go 'behind the scenes' of the competition to see Alanna. It reminded me of my days in marching band during high school. It was so weird, I could almost 'recognize' people from high school in the bands that day. Band was such a fun experience. I did get a weird quarter-faced sunburn though while I was watching the bands in the stands, the only drawback of the day.

I can't believe how grown up Alanna is now. It is weird to have my nieces and nephews become grown ups and doing grown up things. It was a ton of fun to be with family last weekend and get out of Provo. I can't wait to see more family at Thanksgiving and Christmas!

Romanians in Layton

2011-10-30T17:01:00.000-07:00

So, back a few months ago I went up to Pioneer Days up in Layton to meet up with a mission buddy of mine, met his fiance, and watch some folk dancing. There was a group from Cluj-Napoca Romania and it was a lot of fun to watch and talk to a few of the group before their show.

I thought it was super cool that they provided their own real music. They were from 12-18 years old in the group. They tour all over the US and Europe. A real fun event.

Summer of Challenges

2011-10-30T15:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I was reminded that I have been less than up to date with my blog, so I will get back on top of things by relating my 'summer of challenges'. It all started a few months ago with the 'First Annual Macy's Run n' Chug'.

My buddy Travis was intent on 'challenging' me to some 'feat'. It developed from some conversation between him and my other buddy Erik which involved FHE, Taco Time Crisp Meat Burritos, and an eating challenge. So, one night, after having already eaten at Red Robin's, Travis again challenged me. This time to run to Macy's, about a half mile away, buy a jug of milk and see who could get back fastest AND with drinking the most.

So, I decided to 'accept' by trying to start running before he was ready, but I was so full and such a slow runner he caught up and passed me, luckily he kept slowing down cause he was worried I would quit, instead I threw up my dinner and eventually caught up, bought the milk, and ran/drank on the way back, periodically throwing up. Erik and Riley acted as judges and to keep us honest, driving by checking up on us. Travis tried to run to the finish line and then drink all of his, but that didn't beat my steady routine so I won. 1:0

A few weeks later, when I was living on Travis' couch for 3 weeks before moving into my new place in August, we decided to go race up the Y-Trail at 10:30 at night. That was miserable, I threw up, Travis almost did, and we only got about a quarter of the way up, but he was consistently outdistancing me, so he took the 'win'. 1:1

So, the last challenge was about a month ago. We bought pumpkin pies from Macy's and attempted to eat them in the hexagon that someone has marked onto the cul-de-sac on Travis' street. This was by FAR the WORST challenge. The nastiest pies ever, I couldn't get the stuff down and heaved it up a couple times. So, as it stands, Travis is in the lead. 1:2

We will see how things go from here!

Cowboy Themed Birthday: Guns and Cooking

2011-08-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

I know I am a couple months behind now on my blog, but I am striving to catch back up. I had a really good birthday. I decided to make it 'Cowboy' themed. Why, don't really know, I guess because I decided to go shooting and to Cracker Barrel that it required a 'Western' feel. We got some people together from my ward to shoot on the other side of the lake, including some nasty bottles of Tohisan Noni.

We brought out a toilet and blew it to smithereens. Shooting toilets is always super fun, and I initiated many of my ward friends to the fun experience.

Estelle got some sweet cowboy boots from DI and did some damage with her shooting skills.

Shooting was popular.

A few more of my friends met up with us at Cracker Barrel. There was some kind of conspiracy and they got the old waitress to bring out my birthday cake and gave me an embarrassing, sloppy kiss on the check too. The whole place was in an uproar!

It was a great 25th birthday, not one I will soon forget!

My first Rodeo

2011-08-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

A few weeks after getting back from Europe I decided I wanted a 'Cowboy themed' birthday. To get it started I went to my first Rodeo ever the weekend before my birthday. I bought myself a sweet cowboy hat and shirt to go see it. It was a ton of fun. I loved the announcer and this almost pentecostal preacher like voice/commentary.

'Old Glory! Her birth certificate is the Declaration of Independence and birth date 1776!'

Bucking Bronco!

The mares and their foals. 'Nothing more beautiful, I don't care who you are, than a mother and her child!'

The Rodeo Queens...all pretty dang hot! ;)

Wild Cow milking! Yee-yah!

Why I HATE Heritage Investment Group

2011-08-19T21:57:00.001-07:00

Well, I today I was excited to get my deposit back in the mail. I had sent it over to my buddy's house while I am in between places. When I opened the envelop, ironically self-addressed by myself, I was informed not only was I not getting back my deposit, but that I OWED the Heritage Investment Group 20.31! I am not proud of it, but I swore for the following hour and a half as I drove around to pay.

Here is the breakdown:
Total deposit: 250
Contract determined removal for 'cleaning':50
Further cleaning: 125
'Utilities': 95.31

Now, 4 of us lived in that apartment which means that 'somebody' got 'paid' 500 bucks to 'clean' the apartment, IN ADDITION TO 200 bucks already mandated in the contract for cleaning purposes. Thus 700 dollars for cleaning.

Well, luckily I know one of the girls that is moving into my old place, unfortunately, I wasn't able to warn her off from signing and moving in. You want to know what 700 bucks of 'cleaning' gets you? Well, a clean out refrigerator and moved about furniture. The floors hadn't been dry cleaned, as per the 50 dollar fee, and instead of cleaning the place, unsightly trashcans were moved out of sight and the couches moved about. So, 500 dollars, even if 'someone' was paid 25 bucks an hour, the max of a profession cleaning person, that is something like 20 hours of work...without the 200 bucks already taken from the deposits.

In addition to not being cleaned further after I and my roommates left, the problems we reported were not fixed. So my friend is moving into a place with a broken dryer, doors with holes in the doors, unchanged shower curtains, deteriorating bathtubs, among other things. Additionally, a broken vacuum, excess folding doors, and leftover roofing material has been 'stored' in one of the hallways.

The 'utilities' charge is heinous. We paid for gas and electricity ourselves, so what do we owe 95 each for? Well, city sewage and water charges. Now, most managers pay that 400ish bucks of the year FROM THE RENT, but we are forced to pay it from our deposit! And ended up each owing about 20 bucks. 400 might seem a lot, but in perspective we paid 280x3 300x1 for the rooms, 1140 a month, 12 times that (because it is FIXED rent, even during the summer months) is 13680 a year...meaning that 400 bucks is hardly a dent. In addition, they didn't fix anything this year or clean anything, except a new roof (forced by the advance state of disrepair) and the drying out of some wet carpet (which we paid for the electricity used by the fans).

Interestingly enough, one of my roommates failed to pay three months rent...he had the big room, 300 a month, so...about 1200 bucks. Hmmm, very interesting, almost the exact amount that the combined deposits withheld, plus 20 bucks each, would profit the managers!!!

Now, I could take this to small claims court you say, well, Heritage Investment Group offices houses a couple of lawyers as well. They had the knowledge and can do the work for free basically, while I would have to file a claim and find a lawyer to help me re-cope 200 bucks. They know I won't do that and they can hound me forever if I don't pay the 20.31. So, I did, I couldn't yell at the secretary cause that was mean, but I did pay with a nasty penny! I am going to go tell those dishonest piles of crap what they are on Monday or something.

If you read this, DO NOT DEAL WITH HERITAGE INVESTMENT GROUP IN PROVO! I hope that they all end up financially ruined, but worse than that, I hope that they can explain their actions at the Judgement Bar of God. Because this is FAR from 'dealing honestly with your fellow man'.

Washington Trip

2011-08-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

Well, after getting back from my trip to Europe I was not done with my travels. Less than a week after getting back I was on another plane, but in the opposite direction. My sister Deanne recruited me a few months earlier to fly out to the Tri-Cities in Washington to watch her kids while she and her husband partied it up in Hawaii. It was a super fun, and sometimes challenging, week.

Mom was already there and Deanne and James had flown out before I arrived that day. It was amazing to see Mom in action. She took such good care of all the kids and looked out for me too. It was a lot of fun to hang out with Mom and play with the kids.

We took the kids out to the park right nearby the house. Kylie showed us, and TOLD us, how grown up she was. ;)

Well, within 3 hours of getting to Kennewick to watch my niece and nephews I had already allowed Calvin to bang up both of his knees. His knees were covered in blood, but when I asked how he did it he told me 'I am not going to tell you!' And for the next week he wouldn't tell me what happened. Only once his parents showed up did he relate the story of falling down after running after some squirrel or something.

I quickly realized that Parker was a mischievous kid. Deanne got some sweet clothes for all her kids. Parker was an amazing eater of foods too. I think that he looks so much like me at that same age as well.

Parker loved to chow down on a whole stack of crackers when he ate them. Half of each bite seemed to become nothing but crumbs!

Kylie is a great 'big sister'. Reminds me of some of mine. Helpful, but also being like another mom. ;) she was hilarious!

These kids all LOVED to have their picture taken, so every moment could become a photo shoot, but each of them were always doing such great stuff I wanted to take all the pictures.

About halfway through the week Mom had the inspired idea to get a London broil steak. She thought that it would be enough for a couple meals, but Deanne's kids devoured it! They kept saying 'This is the BEST 'chicken' ever!" That made me laugh so much!

Grayson was an incredible baby. He was so relaxed. He LOVED climbing up the stairs and anytime that I turned my back for a second he was over to them and heading up! He warmed up to me after just a day, once Deanne got back he would hardly look at me though. He has the warmest baby smile with his jowls ever.

I am so impressed by how good the kids got along in general. They also were really nice to us, especially under the circumstances of their parents being away from such a long time.

These kids were so fun to goof off with! Chip of the old block!

I wish that I could be entertained by a bunch of random stuff in a box like that!

We went to some more parks. I needed to get out of the house. I was stuck inside watching one or two of the kids while Mom took them to school, swimming, friends, and what not. After 3ish days of hardly leaving the house I finally got out of the house a bit and stopped going house crazy.

Man, that Parker was a wild kid!

Well, Deanne and James finally got back. It was a relief to one and all, especially the kids. They were super happy to have their parents back. It was a lot of fun to see Deanne. I hadn't seen her for a long time. It was the first time I have visited her at home since she lived in Kansas.

This picture makes me remember being a kid (see below). I LOVE YOU MOM!

Twenty years later and mom is still taking such good care of her family.

Deanne showed us her skills at Hawaiian sports...right before she hit Parker in the eye with it! It was hilarious. It was a fun trip and I really appreciate the chance that I had to see my sister and her family and the dental checkup James did for me right before I left.

Budapest: Jewel of the Danube

2011-07-31T23:30:00.001-07:00

Well, I am back to trying to finish up the log of my last European trip. I left Ukraine, crossed back into Romania, and then jumped on a train back to Cluj in Transylvania. I slept overnight at a hostel I have used before. The workers there got me a ticket on a Maxi-Taxi to Budapest on an overnight route leaving from Cluj around 10 and getting into Budapest about 4 in the morning. I had to wait around the bus station/subway station until I could exchange some money and buy a ticket, but by 6am I came up from the subway for my first good look at Budapest. It was amazing.

I checked into the hostel in downtown Pest (Budapest was actually two cities: Buda on the west bank of the Danube and Pest on the east bank) and then the hostel check in guy helped to guide me to the right subway and route to get to the nearest LDS building. I quickly showered and got to church in time to enjoy sacrament meeting...in Hungarian. I wondered if I would be able to understand any of the meeting like I did in Ukraine, but I didn't understand a single word.

After going to Church I began to explore the city. This building was an awesome example of art neuveux architecture. Budapest had a number of great examples of this beautiful style.

This was one of the old squares of the city right near my hostel. The new modern roads have bypassed it, but you can still image what it would look like if it was dirt and carriages instead of modern asphalt and concrete.

I crossed from the Pest to the Buda side of the city on the Elisabeth Bridge. The old fortress of Buda dominates the bank of the Danube. The fortress has withstood sieges from multiple enemies. At one point the Ottoman Turks defeated the Hungarians after the Battle of Mohacs and seized all of Hungary up to the Danube. This point once marked the boundary between East and West. Ottoman occupied Hungary was ruled from Pest for over a hundred years. In 1848 it was one of last bastions of Hungarian revolutionary resistance against the Hapsburgs.

Crossing the bridge you see this magnificent waterfall. The hills on the Buda side of the river are unusual for most of modern Hungary, which is a wide plain. Their obvious defensive value explains why it is so fortified.

As I began climbing up the Buda Fortress hill I encountered many different layers of fortifications, modern and ancient. This wall is a later fortification designed for defending against early modern gunpowder weaponry.

The view from the castle towards the Pest side of the river is amazing. The famous 'Chain Bridge' spans the river, the incredible Hungarian Parliament building dominates the bend in the river, and a massive Catholic Cathedral, similar to that of St. Paul's in London, towers over the city on the right.

I visited the Museum of Budapest History up on the fortress. This statue at the entrance is a great romantic, nationalistic portrayal of the victory of the ancient Avars and Huns, the progenitors of the modern Hungarian nation.

This is a thousand year old representation of Christ from shortly after the Christianization of the Hungarians. This Christ is a young and dynamic man. He doesn't sport a beard as he does in later Christian representations. The newly Christianized barbarians found a dynamic Christ for their growing power.

This is a Hungarian Hebrew headstone from the Middle Ages. Hungary was a homeland for Jews for hundreds of years before the Second World War ended that legacy when in 1944 over 400,000 Jews were deported to death camps in Poland under the radical, fascist Arrow Cross government that seized power after the German occupation of the country.

There was an art gallery in the museum with some really cool paintings of Budapest through the ages. This shows the hazards of crossing the river in the 1700s before the construction of the multiple bridges which now criss-cross the Danube.

This shows a view from the Pest side with the Buda fortress in the background. It is a powerful scene that evokes the sense of trade and development from the industrial revolution taking place. Steamboats bringing goods up and down the Danube from the headwaters in Germany to the ports on the Black Sea in Romania. The Danube was the lifeblood and heart of the city and its economy.

This is the center of a now collapsed arch, the keystone. I thought it was special because it shows that these were not just carved, but often painted. The ancient stone cathedrals and churches of the Middle Ages would have been painted and much more colorful than we see them them today oftentimes. Just hundreds of years of wear have worn off the bright colors. This may be a depiction of Elijah being feed by the ravens...or some more recent saint who had a similar experience.

A very interesting depiction of the crucifixion.

I took a picture from the castle looking out over the vantage point of the city. Several of the other bridges, including the Elisabeth bridge are visible behind me. It was a HOT day and I had just climbed up to the fortress, had been wearing a backpack....so I was DRENCHED in sweat!

Here is the presidential palace that has been built on top of the hill near the old fortress. It was nice to see it in the daytime this time, unlike last summer when we where there at 3 in the morning, and I didn't anger any guards this time either! ;)

A remarkable Medieval cathedral. Again, nice to see it during the day time this time. This is near the famous 'Fisherman's Bastion' of the Buda fortress. Nearby is the Hungarian Military History Museum which was incredible.

This is the equipment of a Hungarian Cavalryman of the First World War.

Here is a Hungarian Cavalryman of the Middle Ages. There horsemen were skilled and feared warriors who fought countless battles with Turks, Wallachians, Moldovans, Poles and Germans.

Here is a 1800s uniform of a Hungarian Hussar. Complete with sabre. By this time the military value of these troops were becoming out of date and had been taken over by the elite, who still wielded great power, even if modern warfare was making them obsolete.

The First World War finally displayed the weakness of the old Hungarian military and forced a revolution in military affairs. This post card shows the members of the 'Alliance': the Aged Franz Joseph of Austro-Hungary, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, Sultan Mehmed V of the Ottoman Empire, and Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria. This powerful 'Alliance' almost was able to defeat the 'Entente' powers during the war, but failed in the end.

Examples of early hand grenades. As hard as it is to conceive, hand grenades barely existed at the start of the First World War. Most infantry were unfamiliar with such weapons early on in the war. Soon, all armies understood the need for specialized weapons and training for infantry to allow them to clear and carry trenches to defeat the enemy. Italian soldiers, entering the war late in 1915, and Romanian soldiers, entering the war in late 1916, were decimated by these weapons that they were unfamiliar with and caused great panic.

These are the Austro-Hungarian version of 'dogtags' from the First World War.

The amount of death and carnage on the front meant that bones were readily available. This horse bone has been carved and used to create a memento to the beloved Emperor Franz Joseph.

This Hungarian painted wooden carving shows King Ferdinand I of Romania packing up his crown. German-Austrian-Bulgarian troops dealt several severe defeats on the Romanian Army in 1916, forcing the collapse the army and the Romanians had to abandon Bucuresti and retreat to Iasi for the remaining years of the war. The Hungarians could only be full of glee concerning the position of their Romanian enemies.

This represents the King of Montenegro, holding a bag full of Entente bribes.

Tsar Nicholas is show here holding the symbols of peace in the motion of swearing he only desired peace, but the maker shows the 'true' warmongering nature of the Tsar. Look closely at his feet, they are made up of canon!

This wooden staff shows the Entente members, Italian, British, and French, unable to reach and help Serbia. The Austro-Hungarian Army was able to defeat the Serbian Army in 1915 and occupy Serbia as the Serbian Army and many civilians retreated across Albania in a horrendous march to be evacuated by British ships, rather than surrender to the Hapsburgs.

A field kitchen. It is forgotten that food has to be cooked for the soldiers. This wheeled cart was pulled by horses behind the front lines and served up the hot food Hungarian soldiers loved...or maybe tolerated. ;)

These are special unit pins for units of 'Stormtroopers'. Given more training, light machine guns, and loaded down with grenades, these troops were meant to infiltrate and destroy key enemy positions so that following infantry could punch through. The morbid feelings of the last years of the war and of even these elite troops are very evident from the death imagery used for these badges.

This unique map shows the route of one of the Hungarians from 1914-1922, from soldier to Prisoner of War and back to civilian.

A Hungarian drawing of some of the hardships of a Romanian POW camp.

With the surrender of Germany in 1918 the Austro-Hungarian Empire began to collapse. In 1918 a Bolshevik movement grew in power and eventually seized control of Hungary under the leadership of Bela Kun. This propaganda shows the strong and Bolshevik ridding the country of the Hapsburg monarchy.

This I found very interesting. Traditional Hungarian faith mixed with Bolshevik ideology. Christ holds the Workers' Red Star saying 'In this sign conquer!', the same words supposedly given to Constantine the Great before his final victory.

In 1919 the rebuilt Romanian Army occupied Budapest and helped end the Bolshevik government. This is an example of occupation currency printed by the Romanians while they occupied Hungarian territory.

With the fall of the Bolsheviks a nationalist right wing government took power under Admiral Horthy. The Romanian occupation was represented as 'typical' Romanian theft. Here the threat of 'White' nationalist power is causing the Romanians to run back home, laden down with booty from Hungary. The Romanians did requisition a significant amount of material that was sent back to Romania, but it was seen as reparations for the massive amount of material taken by Germany and Austro-Hungary from Romania while most of it was occupied from 1916-1918.

Here is an example of the nationalist propaganda in support of Admiral Horthy the 'Regent' of Hungary. Technically Horthy was only the 'Regent', in charge until a King could be appointed. Two attempts to place a king on the Hungarian throne were thwarted in the 1920s and eventually Horthy made the 'Regency' hereditary and his son would have succeeded him as the head of state, but his death in a plane crash during operations on the Eastern Front during the Second World War ended that.

A great example of Hungarian irredentism. The lost territories of Upper Hungary, Transylvania, the Banat, and Croatia, the borders of the Old Kingdom of Hungary are shown on this flag commiserating the 'Mutilated Defeat' of the First World War when Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Romania gobbled up Hungarian territory.

They had some dummy weapons to play with in the museum, which was awesome! This was a Mannlicher rifle that was standard issue to Hungarian soldiers.

Here is a representation of Hungarian soldiers as they would have looked in 1940 when Romania was forced to retro-cede part of Transylvania back to Hungary. The Hungarians profited from German actions and help and regained parts of Upper Hungary, Transylvania, and Croatia during the Second World War. The Hungarian had high hopes that alliance with Germany would lead to full restoration of the borders of the Kingdom of Hungary and provided material support and troops for the Eastern Front.

After leaving the museum I saw this Hungarian pointer which reminded me of my sister and brother in law, Janette and John, and their dogs and puddle pointer extraordinaire, Gus.

The Hungarian Parliament is one of the most impressive buildings I have ever seen.

I climbed down from the Fisherman's bastion to head back to my hostel. I was dead tired after a fitful night's sleep on a maxi taxi, church, and exploring. Plus, my feet were killing me, I was wearing some shoes that, while I like how they look, are HORRIBLE to walk long distances in. So, I went back to the hostel, took a nap, and changed.

I went back out to explore at dusk. I found this old Jewish Synagogue, a relic of the Hungarian Jews that used to live in the city.

I then went to Saint Stephan's Basilica. Its neo-Classical style and design bares a striking resemblance to Saint Paul's Cathedral in London. 96 meters tall, it is almost as tall as Saint Paul's, 111 meters. A beautiful Christian monument.

I walked down to the Parliament and got a picture of the Danube at night.

The Chain Bridge and the Buda fortress are amazingly beautiful at night.

A cool old hotel on the Pest side.

A monument to the Soviet intervention which crushed the Hungarian Revolution in Budapest in 1956. Here the spirit of the revolution following behind the Russian tank treads.

An awesome church downtown from the 1700s that wouldn't be out of place in many cities in Romania.

A monument to the fallen Hungarian soldier of the First World War.

Art Neuveux building on one of the main boulevards in Budapest.

A narrow street of old Pest.

The old main train station of Budapest from the 1800s. A beautiful example of art from the industrial revolution.

I am not really sure what this sign restricts, but evidently, Old men shouldn't be walking with their kids in this area...

An awesome iron bridge, another example of industrial revolution architecture. Far from just being a bridge, it symbolized imperial might and was painted this cool green color.

A classic Hungarian Catholic Church, with Saint George once again slaying the dragon.

So, after another day of wondering the streets of Budapest I grabbed the same Maxi-Taxi back to Romania, but I got off in Arad instead of going all the way back to Cluj. I wanted to try to do some interviews with veterans the next day. I wasn't successful unfortunately and so I jumped on an overnight train to Bucuresti with a few days before flying home.

Chernivtsi: Cultural center of Bukovina

2011-06-23T17:15:00.000-07:00

After meeting Mark and Brent at the bus station in Suceava, we got some food and then got on a dilapidated bus heading over the border into the Ukraine to the city of Chernivtsi, known as Cernauti in Romanian. I thought that the bus would take a while, it looked like it could barely move and had problems getting up even small hills, but little did I know how long the bus would take. We stopped briefly right before the border at the Romanian town of Siret.

When we got to the border we got stuck...for 4 hours! The computers on the Romanian side of the border had gotten a virus and crashed so it was taking FOREVER to get across. An old Ukrainian lady was laying her feet on my backpack in the back of the bus, other Ukrainian ladies were getting drunk on some sort of alcohol they were passing around, and it was HOT! Pretty much one of the most miserable experiences of my life.

After a 7 hour trip total, we got to Chernivtsi, we got pointed in the right direction towards the city center and walked. The old Ukrainian lady who had her feet on my stuff tried to help us get there, but she knew almost no Romanian and couldn't understand that we didn't have money to pay for a bus ticket and got really mad at us when we didn't get on!

As we began to hump our packs down the street I began to see the true extent of the beauty of the city. The architecture was colorful and intact. It reminded me of little i have seen before, although it used to be called 'Little Vienna' (like Ruse).

We finally got downtown and I had some directions for our hostel, but they were so vague that we couldn't find the place and we were having a hard time finding signposts, although many were in Cyrillic and Latin alphabets which helped a bit. We tried asking for directions, luckily a Romanian Ukrainian lady helped us translate and we ended up following behind a father and his son down the street.

Unfortunately, the place the guy led us to was NOT our hostel, so we wondered around some more. We got back to the main central square and saw some young women and asked them for help in English. They gave us directions which were good and we arrived at the hostel and dumped off our stuff to go explore the city as much as we could.

We only had a bit of time in Chernivtsi. We had to leave the next morning to catch the one bus in the morning at 7 in the morning the next day so we could get back to Romania and the rest of our plans. The hostel owner tried to get us to stay longer, but I wanted to get to Budapest and Mark and Brent had to get back to Bucuresti to fly home.

The city was even more beautiful at night. The famous town hall here was illuminated by changing lights from purple to green to yellow and everything in between. We ate at a cheap cafeteria that the hostel owner took us too. I tired using pigeon Romanian there to order with some success and had one of the serving girls call me a 'frumos baiet' or 'handsome boy'! :D

We found the city theater downtown. Chernivtsi was a Hapsburg cultural center in the 1700s and 1800s. It had large Romanian and Ukrainian/Ruthene minorities, but was under Austrian administration. The city also had a massive Jewish population and was often called 'Little Jerusalem'. The city and surrounding area was seized by Romania after the First World War, but was lost to the Soviet Union temporarily from 1940-1941 and permanently after 1944. In 1990 it became part of Ukraine. Even today, after long years of Russofication, the city still has 6 per cent Romanian speakers (down from nearly 25 per cent 100 years ago).

I was going slightly nuts after the long day on the bus and thought that this circle thing which was illuminated underneath and changing colors was just like something from a Mario type video game.

During the Second World War, Cernauti became the location of a major ghetto under Romanian administration containing nearly 50,000 people. The local mayor, Traian Popovici did his best to delay and prevent deportations of Jews from Cernauti to Transnistrian camps and ghettos, and their high rates of mortality. Popovici managed to save 20,000 Jews through his efforts in arguing with the Antonescu regime that the original number of only 200 Jews to be allowed to be saved from deportation was too low. He is ranked by Israel as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. Most of the Jews who survived the war emigrated from Chernivtsi, now under Soviet control, to Israel and very few remain.

We walked around some more and continued to be impressed by the sights of the great city. I wished I could come back someday to better experience the city and its surrounding environs.

This is the entrance to the hostel that we stayed at that was right off the main square of the city. We all had a terrible night's sleep. Not just because we went to sleep at 2 to wake up at 6, but also the beds felt like rocks and one of the other guests was snoring in a way that should have awaken the dead! This guy's snoring was SO loud that I have difficulty that I could make the same sounds even when awake! We got up rather bleary eyed and headed back to the bus station.

The city was very quiet that early in the morning. We got to the bus on time and it was full of some of the same people on it the day before. We realized that many of them were intent on smuggling cigarettes across the border to sell, without customs taxes, for a profit. We also met a girl, Sarah, who was an American working as a Peacecorps aid-worker in Chernistvi.

One the way to the bus station I saw this truck pulling tanks of Kvass. It is a drink I tried in Odessa, Ukraine last year which is very slightly alcoholic, of which I was unaware, but to such a degree it is not considered alcoholic by locals, hence the reason I drank it. It is a wheat drink that is very popular in Ukraine and Russia.

We said goodbye to Chernivtsi and crossed back into Romania. At the border, a 'serious' customs officer, nicknamed 'the Boxer' by the Romanian Ukrainians let us Americans by without looking through our stuff, but many of the rest of the bus got in trouble for their cigarettes. We think that two cakes brought across by some people secretly contain cartons of cigarettes. Once we got to Suceava I convinced Sarah and her friend to go to Cluj with me so they could see that city and then head to Sibiu and Sighisoara (she had NO idea how to get there) and then back. So, while Mark and Brent took off back to Iasi, I and Sarah and her friend jumped on a train to Cluj.

Voronet: Painted Orthodox Monastery

2011-06-21T21:49:00.000-07:00

After sleeping in a bit I got up to go see one of the painted monasteries in Voronet, but first I was hungry and I stopped to get some really good, inexpensive Romanian food. The hostel owner recommended a place nearby. The owner was an awesome guy, very nice, outgoing, and talkative. He suggested this Romanian Peasant Ciorba which was just a soup filled with goodness!

I also got this grilled pork with a mushroom sauce and a simple salad of cabbage. It all came with bread and mineral water, with a free refill, for all about 7 bucks. It was SO good and after feeding myself I was ready to go explore this monastery.

I noticed a local unique architecture style. These fancy tin gutters were all over the place in Northern Moldova and were unlike anything I have seen in the rest of Romania. Maybe some similarities with Gypsy buildings, but much less excessively ornate.

After taking a bus for an hour from Suceava to the small city of Gura Humorului (the mouth of the Humor [River]) a lady yelled at the bus driver to let me off at the turn off for the road up to the monastery of Voronet. Romanians are very helpful oftentimes, especially when they meet a lone American traveler who, shockingly, speaks Romanian. Romanians like getting involved in things oft times, which is a lot of fun...sometimes! :D

The walk up to Voronet from the main highway was about 5 kilometers. As I was walking I spotted some real life nomadic Gypsies. Using modern tents, and even a truck, these roaming Gypsies still live a semi-nomadic life on the outskirts of Romanian cities and villages.

As I past through the small village of Voronet on the way further up to the monastery I saw more and more examples of the local devotion to ornate roofs and gutters. These well covers were amazing examples of peasant culture.

I saw several of these roadside icons. It was interesting to see how much Christ and religion was still so evident in their society, even after 5 decades of Communism.

These houses were all very similar and had similar designs and decoration. Each on had a barn connected to it, wells, a small courtyard, and land behind it extending to the small river behind.

I finally got to the monastery. I was made to wear this tie on skirt thing to cover up my legs and shorts. Nuns ran the place, collecting the fees for entering and such. There was a bus load of Poles visiting too. It was a very interesting place.

Here on walls is the famous paint of this, and similar monasteries in the area. The blue color is called 'Voronet Blue' and is world famous for its unique properties and the fact that it has yet to be discovered how the Medieval builders succeeded in making this color.

So, after seeing the monastery I trekked back down to the main valley and towards the main highway.

I re-crossed a major river and I loved seeing this stereotypical scene of Romanian guys fishing. Romanians LOVE to fish and will do it ANYWHERE! I have seen people fishing in nasty ponds or even the Dambovita in the middle of Bucuresti that I would NEVER fish in, but they will do it. I think half of it is just getting away from the hustle and bustle and fishing, even if it isn't likely to be any fish or in some gross body of water.

I was walking and nearly trod on this lizard. Having just traveled with Peet I was keen on looking at lizards and such (he was trying to catch some in Croatia and Slovenia) so I stopped to get this picture and all the while it didn't move, but when I was bold enough to try to grab it, the lizard took off.

After getting back to the highway, I walked the extra bit into Gura Humorului to look for a bus back to Suceava. I saw this adorable young horse in someone's front yard on the main road.

I saw another, more ornate of these outside icon stops.

I found this VERY interesting. This was an old cemetery for the Russian dead from World War 2 who died fighting in Transylvania alongside their new allies, the Romanians, against the Hungarians and Germans. Romania had fought the Soviets for 3 years, but on August 1944 the Romanian 'Turning of the Arms' against their former Axis allies sent Romanian and Russians into Transylvania together. Along the way, impromptu cemeteries popped up that later became politically offensive to the locals. This cemetery looks like it has largely been emptied of its graves and the monument defaced. I don't know when, but even during the era of Romanian Communism, anti-Russian sentiments resurfaced, and after Romania's condemnation of the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 this, and other cemeteries, suffered from the political re-orientation.

After a good 4 hours of walking and seeing the monastery I found a bus stop in Gura Humorului and caught a bus back into Suceava for one more night before meeting back up with Mark and Brent and jumping over the border to the north into the Ukriane and the former Hapsburg city of Czernowitz.

Suceava: Medieval Throne of Moldova

2011-06-21T13:22:00.000-07:00

When I left Constanta I took a Micro-bus to the city of Bacau. I had no where to stay, I got dropped off and luckily the taxi driver I got knew a place where I could stay for a decent price. I slept there and then did some interviews in the city the next morning. I saw Elder Suppes, one of my good buddies, known him since he was in the MTC where I volunteered. I didn't take any pictures, Bacau was a clean place, but nothing really that interesting, and I was gone by 1:00 on a train up to Suceava. On the way, near Piatra Neamt I saw a 'Tank Graveyard' with hundreds of tanks lined up, but overgrown by plants and stuff, a relic of the massive army of the Communist Era.

Moldova is a much more hilly place than the flat Wallachian plain. It was in this more difficult terrain that the Austro-German-Bulgarian forces of the Central Powers were halted by the remnants of the Romanian Army and massive reinforcements from the Russian Army, along with problems of overstretched supply lines and bad weather, in the winter of 1916 after Romania's disastrous entrance into the First World War.

I got to the North Suceava train station and caught a bus into town.

Suceava is situated up on a large hill. The city has been largely modernized and the historic part of the city is quite limited. While a rather run down, small, and unimportant city in modern Romania, Suceava boasts a rich Medieval history. It was the capitol of the Moldovan Principality for 200 years, between 1388 to 1565, and had connections with the Polish, Hungarian, and Russian Medieval states. It was the throne of Stefan the Great and Holy, one of Romania's greatest heroes.

After checking into my hostel, which was pretty nice, I took a walk to go explore the old Medieval ruins of the Throne of Moldova. I had to hike down the hill of the modern city into a small valley, and then climb up the stairs onto a nearby hill.

Atop the hill was a massive statue commemorating Stefan the Great and Holy, Prince of Moldova from 1457 to 1504. He fought against Polish, Hungarian, and Ottoman attempts to seize his lands and was a brilliant military commander, who emerged victorious in all but four of his 48 recorded major campaigns. Even though he was of the Eastern Orthodox faith, the Pope in Rome declared him a 'True Defender of the Faith' for his actions against the Ottomans. He built 44 Orthodox Churches, traditionally, one for each of his victories.

After passing the statue I had to wander through a wood for a while trying to orient myself with a hand drawn, not to scale, map given to me by the hostel.

I finally saw this chalk written sign pointing me in the right direction 'To the citadel'.

I finally came upon the old citadel, the Throne of Moldova. It was an ancient fortress which had many layers showing the development of European Medieval castle technology. An early Medieval square keep was the original fortification which concentric circles of walls and defenses were added to over the decades. Round bastions and a moat were the final additions.

I talked to the ticket seller for the fortress, he was reading a book on Romanian history and I discovered that he was working on his post-graduate work and planning to write about Moldovan history. It was fun talking a bit of shop with another historian to be.

Here is the original keep, with newer defenses around it. I had a lot of fun running around the fortress. There wasn't anything inside, but it was nice enough. A beautiful day, a few families were picnicking in the walls and I climbed up on some of the ruins.

After visiting the citadel I followed a different path down from the fortress and down into the small valley separating the Medieval ruins from the modern city. The very 'backwoods' nature of Suceava is extremely evident.

The modern city does contain a few other important Medieval sites, like the Church of Saint John. It also has some more modern buildings from the 1800s containing the history museum and also the first Romanian Secondary School, established in the late 1800s.

The old town hall is a beautiful building also.

However, the majority of the city is Communist apartment blocs which are dull and ugly, even if once in a while they have some originality, like this one for instance. After a long day of interviews, trains, and exploring, I was worn out and sweaty. So, I returned to the hostel to relax. I actually ended up having a long conversation with a older Dutch lady who was very interested in the local history before I finally got to bed. The next day I would go out and explore one of the famous painted monasteries near Suceava.

Constanta: Romania's Black Sea Port

2011-06-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

So, we got up early in the morning to catch the micro-bus to Durankulak, about 4 kilometers from the Romanian-Bulgarian border. I was very careful at the ticket office to shake my head 'yes' rather than nod 'no'. In Bulgaria it is reversed from the way we nod yes and shake our heads no. It often caused some momentary confusion. We lucked out and a guy who owned a restaurant in the town of Vama Veche right over the Romanian border stopped and gave us a lift. He was bringing back Bulgarian beer for his restaurant and told us about the Romanian 'woodstock' that Vama Veche was during the summer season. Basically, a bunch of European hippies come to swim, listen to rock concerts on the beach, and drink...didn't really sound like my scene.

After a short ride to the city of Mangalia and another hour bus ride from Vama Veche, we arrived in Constanta. This Romanian port city was a sister port city to Varna developed by the Ottomans, although its history goes back to Greek and Roman Antiquity. The original Greek trading city was named Tomis, which has the unflattering distinction to have been considered so remote and such a backwater that it was a place of exile for Roman political undesirables. Most famously Ovid, the poet/writer.

Ancient Tomis has left little remains, although the Romanians have gone at lengths to display it for all to see and stress the Roman-ness, thus Romanian-ness, of the city and their rights to it. The Ottoman past still has a few remnants, like this mosque, but most of that period has been covered up, much like in Varna.

Here is the local theater.

Constanta became an extremely important port at the turn of the last century. Originally meant to facilitate the exportation of Romanian grain to a hungry Ottoman Empire, the city was soon the nexus for Romanian 'Black Gold': Oil! A vital rail line connected Prahova oil fields northeast of Bucuresti to Constanta and from there oil could be transported by ship out to the highly industrialized states in Western Europe whose appetite and need for oil was growing by leaps and bounds during the Second Industrial Revolution. Constanta became an extremely prosperous and strategically important port city.

This was the first time I had visited Constanta since my mission, even though this was my 4th visit back to Romania. While we couldn't reach Constanta in time for Church (we had hoped to arrive just as Church ended at one, but for some reason Constanta is the only Branch that starts at 9 rather than 10!) Alin Constantinescu, the young Branch President, and his wife Mariana were still there and invited me over to their place to visit. I had known both very well. They had gotten married, in the Temple in Madrid, and just recently Mariana had given birth to a beautiful daughter, born in the covenant...one of the few Romanian children that I know of with such a blessing. I had to go out kind of far to see them and I found out something very interesting about the small apartment they stayed in.

I had lost touch with the man I baptized in Constanta, my first baptism, named Octavian Bizgan. An large, powerful man, he was one of the most Christ-like people I have ever known who was a true Christian through and through, Alin told me that he was living in London now, the first news I have heard of him in 4 years, but sadly, not active. However, Alin and Mariana, with their newborn child, were living in his apartment while he is gone, rent-free. The Lord works in mysterious ways, while Octavian may be less active and I hope he comes back to activity in the Church, through him the Lord provided for the needs of this young, faithful family: Alin, a return missionary, and Mariana, a spiritual giant, were provided for as only the Lord can provide.

Mariana is a member of the Vitel family, one of the earliest families baptized in Constanta, and one of the largest Romanian families I know (3 boys, 2 girls). Catalin here, her little brother, was a tiny little kid when I served in Constanta, he is twice as tall now and in high school...CRAZY!

I went when Alin, Mariana, and Catalin to the Grandparents Vitel's place outside the city in the countryside a bit. Next to their apartment bloc they had a little bit of land with chickens, a dog, a little shed, and sheep somewhere. Grandpa Vitel comes from northern Moldova and his accent is SO hard for me to understand, even now. It was a lot of fun talking to him and seeing how he tinkers and stays active even after a very long and hard life.

The next day I went to the Veterans' Association and interviewed a sailor, airman, and soldier who all fought during the Second World War, while Mark and Brent did their own thing. During World War II Constanta was a vital target for Soviet, and later, American bombers. From the port fuel and supplies critical to the support of the Axis armies in Southern Russia were transported by Romanian ships up the coast to Odessa, Sevastopol, and further as the Wehrmacht and its allies advanced further into the Soviet Union. Constanta was protected by not just strong ground anti-air defenses, but also the destroyers and frigates of the Royal Romanian Navy sortied out of the harbor during air raids to lend their firepower, making Constanta one of the most dangerous targets for enemy bombers (Soviet bombers in 1941, American in 1943-44). The Soviet Navy also attempted to land troops at Constanta only 4 days after the war began on June 22, 1941 against the Soviet Union, but Romanian coastal and naval guns, along with well laid mine fields, frustrated the Soviet landing force and sank one of the two Russian destroyers, forcing the withdrawal of the other and the transport ships.

Constanta's old historical center isn't has well preserved as that in Varna and is more spread out, but its beaches are much sandier and nicer than those further south.

There are still some very beautiful examples of architecture in Constanta. This is a building done in the Venetian style.

In the main downtown park a few of the less well preserved remains of old Tomis are out on display for all to see. The local museum has a stunning amount of Greek and Roman objects and trade goods. The coastal area here was very much under Hellenic and Roman cultural influence and the kinds of fabulous things left over from daily life, war, and business are just amazing.

We stopped by to pay homage to the place where I was beaten up as a missionary in Constanta. The tram stop in the middle of the road, and the tram line itself, has been torn up and no longer exists, but I had Mark reenact one of the blows.

I always loved this ugly clock. You can see the time/temperature from three directions! I remember passing this all the time: going down to Church, to go contacting the big park, to go to the store, to go to an appointment, and I even bloc-knocked just down the road from there.

I was really happy with my visit to Constanta. I wish I could have found more veterans and been there for Church, but I had a great time and success. However, we needed to be on our way and so we grabbed some transport...not this boat, but it was in front of the train station, and nearby the train station was a bus station where Mark and Brent departed my company for the next few days as I headed straight north to Bacau and Suceava in Moldova (the region in Romania) and they traveled northeast to Chisinau, the capitol of the Republic of Moldova, and then back west into Romania to Iasi.

Varna: Bulgaria's Black Sea Port

2011-06-17T20:45:00.000-07:00

We had a good sleep on the train to Varna. We had a couple Bulgarians show up in our cabin, but in general we just slept fine. Bulgarian trains were very similar to Romanian ones, but a lot scarier, especially when the train slowed down. The breaks made an unholy noise and the whole car shuttered more violently than I was used to with any other train. We got into Varna early in the morning, about 7am. I thought the train station was a beautiful one (I have become a sort of train station enthusiast after my travels in Europe).

Varna was expanded under Ottoman rule as a truly important port city in the 16th/17th Century. Along with Constanta, in Romania further north, the port became the object of Ottoman attempts to better exploit its empire economically in the 1800s with the extension of rail lines from the port into the Bulgaria hinterland. This infrastructure project was taken up by Bulgarian nationalists after the country became independent.

The city is once again a rather young city architecturally. The old Ottoman city was devestated by a major fire during the Crimean War (1854-1856). Most of the expansion of the city was in the late-1800s as Bulgaria developed its new national infrastructure (first line all the way to Ruse was finished in 1866, connecting Constantinople with Central Europe). Black Sea port cities were believed to be vital to the future economic vitality of the local states and so were correspondingly favored with lavish attention and state funds to expand them and develop their port facilities. The architecture is that ubiquitous French inspired style which is so popular in this part of the world.

Varna has a nice beach, but, more importantly, an INCREDIBLE harbor. It curves around to give great protection at the mouth of a major river. The harbor was so desirable that during the Crimean War, Varna was used as an important logistical base for the Anglo-French forces as a place to evacuate the wounded from the forces besieging Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula and as a staging point for reinforcements and supplies. The city suffered from a Cholera outbreak because of the overcrowding of the small, Ottoman city.

No city escapes some massive Communist memorial in these former Eastern bloc states. I think this is supposed to commemorate the Bulgarian 'resistance fighters' during the Second World War. A largely imaginary resistance. Bulgaria, while traditionally friendly towards Russia, was much less supportive of the Bolshevik state and joined the Axis. While Bulgaria did not send troops to the Eastern Front to fight against Russia, it did allow German military transit rights to invade both Greece and Yugoslavia, occupy parts of Greece and Yugoslavia to assist the Germans, and defended its Black Sea coast, territorial waters, and airspace against Soviet naval and air incursions.

This sign is hilariously self-explanatory.

There was a cool looking little military history museum in Varna near the beach. While it was closed for the weekend a few of the objects were out front. Here is a big naval gun, but converted as a seashore defensive battery.

Here is a Bulgarian torpedo boat from the 1900s. During the First Balkan War this boat was able to succeed in sinking a Turkish Cruiser off the Bulgarian coast.

You can see from this shot the beautiful coast of Varna with the seaside hills dropping down to the shoreside. The water was nice, if a bit seaweedy. The beach was sandy, but not as fine as in California. And it is HOT!

I continued to be impressed with the Communist architecture of Bulgaria. I actually like this building.

The local Bulgarian National Theater in Varna. A beautiful building. Varna has a very complete and beautiful historic downtown. Lots of walking area, pedestrians, and great buildings...just ignore the creepy guy in dark glasses who offers to exchange foreign currency at a more favorable rate or to sell you 'marijuana, cocaine, or heroin'.

A cool Bulgarian Orthodox Church downtown.

The evening in Varna is very comfortable. A nice sea breeze comes in off the Black Sea, lots of families walking about, and some street performers. I was impressed by the amount of children Bulgarian families had. It seemed that most families had a couple kids and there were a ton of pregnant women. So, families seemed a bit larger than in the other Balkan states I have visited.

We turned in rather early so we could get up early in the morning to catch a Micro-bus to a town nearest the Romanian border from whence we could hump it to and over the Romanian border. I enjoyed my stay in Varna and wished some of the museums were open and that we had gone swimming, but...c'est la vie!

Sofia: Back to the Beautiful Balkan Capitol

2011-06-17T16:26:00.000-07:00

After getting back into Sofia that afternoon after visiting Rila we walked down to the train station to get our tickets so we could be sure we had them. The train station in Sofia is definitely one of the uglier train stations I have been too. I got this picture of this Communist era statue out front, but behind and around us were a bunch of bums and their little homes...it was kind of creepy.

The inside of the train station was a bit more interesting. We tried a couple windows, but the ticket ladies kept motioning us to go down further and downstairs. We went down and found another ticket place where there was a lady who actually spoke some English, luckily a younger man was there who spoke even better broken English and helped get us our tickets on the overnight train to Varna.

Our train did not leave until after 11pm so we went back into the city to explore it some more.

We stopped by the St. George Church which was situated in the center square of a massive 19th Century building. It is one of the oldest churches in Bulgaria, dating back to the Early Middle Ages. The ancient Byzantine design was very evident and had been restored to function, even though a lot of it was still in ruins.

There was this weird statue...we couldn't figure out what or who this was.

There was some kind of government office in part the building surrounding the St. George church. It had these ceremonial guards dressed up in 19th Century uniforms that looked really sweet! The one on the left was totally looking at me take the picture.

We went back to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. We went inside, but no pictures were allowed. It is a HUGE space inside with thrones for the former king and queen. It was a beautiful building.

Touchdown!

This was a HUGE monument dedicated to the 'Liberating Red Army' of the Second World War. It is a massive complex, but it has fell into disrepair and all sorts of young people played and sat on it. Especially because of a local Red Bull skate boarding and roller skate event.

This food art on the side of the building was really random...probably Communist?

Bulgaria does have some remnants still of its Ottoman past. Here is a mosque in the downtown area.

Across from the mosque we found a proper 19th Century train station that I thought was quite beautiful, but had been abandoned in favor of the newer Communist monstrosity as the state modernized and the old station was used as a trade local of some sort. It was late enough that we headed back to the new train station, waited for the train, and hopped on to go to Varna.

Rila Monastery: The Mont Saint-Michel of the Balkans

2011-06-16T17:55:00.001-07:00

After a pleasant, shared with an older Australian lady and a young British couple accompanied by much historical, political, and cultural conversation, two and a half hour drive up into the mountains south-west of Sofia we arrived at the Rila Monastery. Before going into the monastery the drivers (we took two cars, the other car had Mark, Brent, and two Americans) took us up to the church of St. John, a local saint who had lived as one of the first hermit monks in a small cave in the rock behind the church.

The place is still a place of pilgrimage for the faithful Orthodox Bulgarians. Here are scrapes of papers with prayers and wishes, much like the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, that I found really interesting. Modern Christian pilgrimage is a very interesting phenomenon to me.

No Orthodox religious site is complete without its icons and candles.

This is looking up the upper entrance of the cave. It is said that one who can get through and climb up it will have his sins forgiven. I am sure that originally that this was just the culmination of a lengthy and trying pilgrimage from afar that required constant spiritual devotion, fasting, and cleansing. We can laugh today as we easily squeeze through the whole today and speak flippantly of the pilgrims and 'how can they believe that!?' However, we only did the least important part of the pilgrimage, without concentrating on Christ for days, possibly weeks, as we hiked, on foot (possibly barefoot the closer we approached) up into the mountains to commune with God in the same place another great spiritual man had before.

As you can see even I could get through. It was a good experience and while I was rather dismissive about it then, I am glad I could reflect on it now and see the great faith that this place represented and continues to represent.

The world 'Balkan' is of Turkish origin and means 'wooded mountain' and as Bulgaria contains the Balkan mountain range it is easy to see why they called them 'Balkan'.

After going to the monastic cave, we drove back down the valley to the monastery itself. It is an impressive structure that, at one time, housed 500 monks and nuns. It reminded me of the massive Catholic monastic complex at Le Mont Saint-Michel that we visited last year. Not so much because of its location (both are isolated though, far up in the Balkan mountains vs. on an isolated island on the Normandy Seashore), but because of the massive scale of the monastery and the tribute it was to religious and cultural transformations which affected monasticism across Europe and ecumenical lines.

The wealth of the monastery is evident even from the outside in the size and scale of its walls. Walls were extremely expensive in the Medieval Ages, not just to build, but also to maintain. These walls represented a defining separateness, not merely being a military defense, but also isolating off the monastic world from that of the world beyond.

The grand cathedral in the square that the monastery is built around is an impressive example of classic Byzantine style architecture. Its painted walls and ceiling are beautiful and stunning.

I really liked this portrayal of the Resurrection with the dead rising from their graves at the call of the trumpeting angel. It brought to mind the Angel Mormon atop out Latter-day Saint Temples and how he is calling the world forth and "Behold, he changed their hearts; yea, he awakened them out of a deep sleep, and they awoke unto God. Behold, they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word; yea, they were encircled about by the bands of death, and the chains of hell, and an everlasting destruction did await them." Alma 5:7

I found these two depictions as an interesting contrast between the different ways the Lord works: Daniel in the lions' den protected and an early Christian martyr being devoured by lions. Sometimes prophets are saved, but other times their are required to seal their testimony with their blood.

I beautiful depiction of the Revelation of St. John.

Once again we have the Leviathan at the bottom of the Abyss of Hell. Powerful Christian imagery.

You can see that even in the beginning of May the sun has yet to melt the snow on these mountains around the monastery. The air was quite cool. This place must have been absolutely isolated in the deep snows of the winter and for a lot of the year.

I really liked this portrayal of the local monastery watch guard. You can see that, once again, the Scots were not the only culture to wear the kilt. This Bulgarian guard is such a fascinating combination of Christian and Ottoman clothes and culture. With his curved sword and ornate musket he is armed much more like an Ottoman warrior, yet he wears the traditional clothes of the local highlanders instead of the fine clothes and turbans of the Ottoman upper class.

We enjoyed our time up in the mountains at Rila, although the drivers had us stay probably an hour more than we would have wanted, but it was a really impressive place.

We finally hopped back in the cars and drove down from the mountains, past small villages, on our way back to Sofia to see more of the city before taking a night train to the coast at midnight.

Sofia: Mountain Capitol

2011-06-16T16:14:00.000-07:00

Continuing on in our bus we climbed higher and higher into the mountains, going through multiple tunnels and across well built bridges over valleys. The main highway going to Sofia really impressed me. One of the main reasons for our frustration in driving in Romania was the fact that it took so long to get anywhere because the roads, in Transylvania especially, had to follow the contours of the mountains and valleys and go through the villages along one lane country highways. In Bulgaria the main highway had two lanes and had been built to overcome those problems so the distance we crossed to get to Sofia was much more substantial, and in less time, than much of our travels in Romania.

Our hostel was really cool. It was hidden in a courtyard behind some imposing 19th Century buildings. The hostel was originally an inn on the main highway out of the city in the 1600s meant to provide lodging for foreign travelers and traders run by a Greek family. It fell into the disrepair, particularly after the Communist regime outlawed the admittance of foreigners into the country. It was saved from collapse by a restoration in the 1970s to preserve its as a historical landmark. After the fall of Communism it was used as an office, gallery, and eventually again fell vacant. The hostel obtained it and renovated it to its current condition in the last couple years.

After 5 hours on a bus we were ready to explore and stretch our legs. We had no idea of where to go and we hadn't been given a map. So, we ended up going in the completely wrong direction and seeing very little impressive for the first while and were very underwhelmed by he city.

It seemed a rather normal, Bucuresti-like, rundown Communist city.

The first really impressive sight were the mountains which stand around the city. It was a LOT cooler in Sofia than Bucuresti. The higher altitude was quite noticeable.

We decided to head down a different direction and we soon realized we were entering the true downtown of the city and that Sofia actually was a lot more beautiful and remarkable than were had first believed.

We came to a square that had these bears set up...somehow they were part of some sort of charity. Every bear was furnished and decorated by a different country.

I was actually really impressed by the quality of the monumental and massive buildings, even the ones from the Communist era of Bulgarian history. The buildings were breathtaking and especially beautiful illuminated at night.

The churches were very definitely Orthodox, but had a marked stylistic difference from the traditional Romanian version of the Byzantine style. These churches have much more of a Russian Orthodox feel rather than the Medieval Byzantine feel that permeates the churches in Romania. Sofia is a rather new European capitol, even younger than Bucuresti in many ways, so these churches have much more in common with Russian Orthodox architecture of the 1800s than with earlier Byzantine influences.

There were many statues to the Bulgarian War of Independence. Ironically, it was also the Romanian War of Independence. In the west the war is most widely known as the Second Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. While Romania was already de facto independent with a developed country and nationalist movement and supplied an important military support to the Russian Army and made a key contribution to the decisive battle of the war during the Siege of Plevna (Pleven), Bulgaria had only a small contingent of intellectual elite to full its nationalism and a only maximum of about 5,000 Bulgarian volunteers, supplied and equipped by the Russians, fought in the war for a country whose future borders and shape was largely unknown.

There was some sort of swanky party going on in this beautiful 19th Century building. We thought about trying to crash it...but being three guys in grungy clothes and smelling of hours of travel we quickly realized we would have no chance! :D

This is an eternal flame to the Bulgarian Unknown Soldier...I think.

This massive church was the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, financed and built by the Russians for the Bulgarians as a victory monument to the Russian victory over the Turks in 1878 which resulted in the creation of the Bulgarian state. The first treaty forced on the Turks by the Russians, the Treaty of San Stefano, created a massive Bulgarian 'superstate' that would have wielded great power in the Balkans stretching from the Black Sea almost to the Adriatic, East to West, and from the Danube down to the Aegean, North to South. Both the Western Powers (Great Britain, France) and the local Balkan states (Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania) combined to challenge these borders. Backed by the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary) who saw the opportunity to limit the expansion of their Russian rival and neighbor while also ingratiating themselves to the Western Power and their Balkan allies, Bulgaria was stripped of much of this original territory and the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 which was ceded to the local Balkan states.

The newborn Bulgarian state seemed to have been robbed at birth of its proper birthright in the minds of the new Bulgarian elite in the government and cultural institutions. Under Prince Ferdinand (of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family) Bulgaria developed its infrastructure until 1908 when he declared it fully independent of the Ottoman Empire and created the Kingdom of Bulgaria with himself as Tsar Ferdinand I. This statue commemorates him and he became a firm advocate of Bulgarian expansion in the hopes of fulfilling the dream of obtaining the borders of San Stefano, or 'Greater Bulgaria'. He lead the country in three wars of rapid succession in an attempt to fulfill the dreams of Bulgarian nationalists: The First Balkan War (1912) against the Ottoman Empire in attempt to kick it out of Europe and seize much of the territory of San Stefano; The Second Balkan War 1913) against Bulgaria's former allies, Greece and Serbia, and enemy, the Ottomans, resulting in a national disaster, occupation of Sofia by a Romanian Army, and lost of newly occupied lands; and the Third Balkan War (1915-1918), better known at the First World War, in which the Bulgarians joined in the Central Powers in defeating Serbia (1915) and Romania (1916) and defending against the Salonika Front in Greece (1915-1918). Bulgaria seized territory from Serbia, Greece, and Romania, but lost it all with its army's collapse in 1918 as the entire Central Powers defensive system collapsed across Europe and Tsar Ferdinand I was forced to abdicate in favor of his son Tsar Boris III.

After seeing all this we were pretty tired and headed back to sleep in our stifling hostel room and be ready to get up early in the morning to go see the famous monastery near Rila.

Ruse: Little Vienna on the Bulgarian side of the Danube

2011-06-15T22:31:00.000-07:00

With Estelle and Peet remaining in Bucuresti to fly back to the States, Mark, Brent and I grabbed a bus down to the border city of Giurgiu on the Romanian side of the Danube. There weren't any buses running across the border so we had a taxi driver take us to the customs stop and then proceeded on foot from there about 4 or 5 kilometers.

It was an amazing sight to see the impressive width of the Danube. I had lived in Galati which is further up the Danube, but it didn't have the same impact. At Galati both sides were Romanian, but here the river was not just a geographical divide, but also is a cultural and language divide. One side Romanian and the other side Bulgarian.

We crossed over to Bulgaria on the 'Romanian-Bulgarian Friendship Bridge' built during the 1950s. It was to show a new cooperation between the two states, which had previously had a checkered past in more recent history. Romania had invaded Bulgaria in 1913 in the Second Balkan War in a way that most of Europe considered underhanded and so very characteristically 'Balkan'. During the First World War Bulgaria had joined the Central Powers in defeating the Romanian Army and pushing it back into Moldova in 1916 to regain territory lost to Romania 3 years earlier. In 1919 Romania seized back the territory, called the Quadrilateral, but Bulgaria forced Romania to cede it, under German pressure in 1940.

With both countries fallen under the Iron Curtain and Romania's traditional economic relations with the West cut off, there was a radical reorientation of the two countries' trade to the benefit of the Soviet Union and the bridge allowed stronger economic ties between the two states.

I took one last look back, at the setting sun over the Romanian countryside.

After getting across the bridge there were a bunch of taxi drivers waiting for people coming across. We ignored the ones closest, but found one further up the road who spoke some English and also some Romanian. So, using pigeon Romanian to communicate (it was better than his English) he got us to our hostel. He was a really nice guy and it only cost about 5 Euros. After checking into the hostel we went out to explore a bit and saw the main square.

It was a beautiful nice and I am really proud of this picture of the moon.

Ruse was a pretty city during the evening. We walked around for about an hour, bought some food at a local shop, got acquainted with the money, and began to try to learn the Cyrillic Alphabet used in Bulgaria. A MAJOR difference from Romania.

We thought that the showers in Bulgaria were hilarious. They just attacked a shower to the sink and the whole bathroom is tiled with a drain in the middle to drain the water! I guess it makes it a lot cheaper than having to put in an expensive bathtub with all the fixtures...I tried to convince my boss Greg to apply the idea to our apartments we maintain in Orem, but he wouldn't get behind it! ;D

After a SUPER good sleep in a really nice hostel for just 9 Euro each that nice we were ready to see the city during the day.

I really liked this statue. The guy has a very Islamic influenced musket. Some kind of national hero.

Walking in the park we found the grave of the man with the coolest mustache I have EVER seen!

This was some kind of strange Bulgarian Orthodox memorial/church.

The old city is quite extensive and is very well preserved. We didn't visit any museums, but it was still pretty fun, but not a whole lot to do.

This is a really cool monument. I think it was to one of the Balkan Wars or World War One, but I don't know Bulgaria...either way, it had a wreath from the local Romanian representative too, which I found interesting because of how many times the two countries have been enemies.

The main square was under renovation, but still very impressive.

So after a few hours running around Ruse we wanted to get on to Sofia so we headed to the Bus station to grab some tickets, but had to wait an hour for the bus going to the capitol.

One the way to Sofia the bus made a short pit stop and we saw this awesome guy selling homemade axes! I was SO tempted to get one, especially one of the little tomahawk looking ones...but I had no idea what I would do with it so I just took a picture instead. He saw me take a picture and started yelling and waving an axe...I hoped he was just trying to advertise his wears rather than threatening my life, but either way it was AWESOME. We hoped back on the bus and were ready to see Sofia.

Bucuresti: Village Museum in the morning and Art Nouveux for Lunch

2011-06-12T10:48:00.000-07:00

Estelle and Peet's last day in Bucuresti, and the day Mark, Brent, and I took off for Bulgaria we decided to go see the Village Museum in the morning. We had to walk through the famous and beautiful Herastrau Park to get there.

We found the ProFM Romanian radio memorial to Michael Jackson in the park. We offered up our own rememberance to him. ;)

Coming out of the park we passed by the Romanian Arch of Triumph. Patterned after that in Paris. It was finally finished in 1930 after over a decade of political maneuvering between the government and the grassroots Cult of the Heroes organization to memorialize the sacrifices of the First World War.

Estelle went 'cuckoo' after the fancy chickens hanging out in the Village Museum. The Museum was set up in the 1930s. It gathers examples of Romanian peasant village structures from all over Romania. Many of the buildings were bought and transported from villages and are actual real buildings, not just reconstruction.

It is a pretty big museum. A couple acres of land with dozens of houses, churches, barns, water and wind powered machines, and other typical village things.

Some of the places were completely furnished inside so you could see how the houses were decorated at well. Most of the buildings date from the late 1800s.

There was even an example of a village inn with a still and this MASSIVE wine cask.

I really liked this windmill from Dobrogea.

A colorful painted door of a farm from the Dobrogea region.

Very interesting housed from Oltenia (Western Wallachia). Peet said he thought it was funny that the Oltenians lived like Hobbits! The place is half underground, to use the ground as insulation.

Here are some tall, narrow houses from Maramures in northern Romania, probably need the steep roof to keep snow from collecting on top during the long winters.

Here are some VERY Romanian wooden carved gates.

Cool details from the wooden gate.

Here is a nicely restored example of early 20th Century Bucuresti architecture incorporating the Brancoveanesc Style into this downtown mansion. It is right off of Cismigiu Park and hidden by large Communist blocks from easy view, but is a great look into the old historical past of the city.

Before leaving for Bulgaria we all met up and had lunch at the Caru' cu Bere Art Nouveux style restaurant.

Inside it was very beautiful with ornate arches, columns, and painted scenes, usually involving Carriages dropping off beer to local consumers.

It was a perfect place to end our time in Bucuresti. The food was good, not as good as Crama Sibiul Vechi, and the service was good. The Atmosphere was awesome, they often have shows and live music, especially in the evening when food costs more. So, after this Mark, Brent, and I said goodbye to Estelle and Peet as we parted ways: us on to the border with Bulgaria and they back to the United States. The first phase of my trip had ended and the second begun!

Bucuresti: Mogosoaia Palace

2011-06-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

On our second day in Bucuresti we decided to go 20 minutes out of town and see Mogosoaia Palace, Renaissance palace of the Romanian Princes of Wallachia. We had to catch a Maxi-Taxi from in front of the North Train Station of Bucuresti. I wanted to make sure Estelle saw that place, a key point from my mission, the departure and arrival during Transfers. Anyway, we got on the Maxi-Taxi, or Micro-Bus, but the driver was a total jerk and drove pass the palace and we had to walk back about 20-30 minutes along one of the main roads out of Bucuresti.

We were joined as we finally approached the grounds of the Mogosoaia Palace by a loveable stray. It reminded Mark, Brent, and I of the stray cats that followed us around in Scotland and Normandy.

The grounds of the palace were very beautiful and well kept. During the 1800s the land was bought by a wealthy landowning family and a member of the family restored the palace in the 1920s. It became a place of escape for some of Bucuresti's elite during the turbulent years of the Depression and the Second World War.

We felt VERY safe because of the half dozen security guards watching the palace. We all thought it was pretty funny that they were part of 'Life Guard Security', spelled out in English!

The palace complex is made up of a 4 or 5 major buildings with a grand entrance, some walls, and a Renaissance Era Byzantine church. It is surrounded by extensive grounds.

We climbed up atop the entrance gate and got a cool picture of the courtyard and one of the main buildings of the palace.

The palace is situated on the Dambolvita with the water coming right up to the back gardens.

The palace was built by Constantin Brancoveanu between 1698 and 1702. He combined both Venetian and Ottoman styles to create the, asserted distinctive by Romanian nationalists, Brancoveanesc Style. Constantin Brancoveanu did not meet a happy end. During his reign Peter the Great of Russia attempted to invade the Balkans and seize territory from the Ottoman Empire to control all of the Black Sea and possibly even Constantinople itself. Peter's plans of a local Christian uprising failed, partly because Bracoveanu, who had been hedging his bets by promising support, refused to assist Peter once it was clear that no massive Christian revolt was underway. The Prince of Moldova, Dimitrie Cantemir escaped with Peter to the Russian court, but the Ottomans summoned Brancoveanu and his sons to Constantinople where, for his duplicity, his sons were murdered before him and then his eyes gouged out so it was that last thing he saw before he was formally executed.

So, we got a picture of all 5 of us with a timed shot on the beautiful banks of this palace, associated with Princes, intrigue, death, and decadence.

Going around the grounds I found a lone pillar, probably all that remained of a lost building that couldn't be fully restored. It had the Bull Head seal of the other Romanian Principality of Moldova.

I looked in vain for the single headed eagle with a cross in its beak, but I only found the seal of Brancoveanu himself, this two headed eagle.

We head that there were some old statues of Lenin and Stalin that were thrown in the palace grounds somewhere. So we hiked ALL over the dang grounds for another 30ish minutes looking for them. Trudging through mud and underbrush Mark finally asked someone who worked there about it and the statues WERE there...but had been moved just recently.

You can see the Maxi-Taxi behind Estelle that we took back from Mogosoaia, and you can tell Estelle was less than impressed with the Maxi-Taxi experience.

We took a metro around town and we lucked out and got one of the old, crappy, graffiti covered metro cars.

We went back downtown to see the massive House of the People, or as it is official called now 'the Parliamentary Palace'. So we stopped and saw the headquarters of the National Bank of Romania.

The Parliamentary Palace, aka House of the People, is HUGE. It is bigger than this picture can really show. The mad dream of a delusional dictator. The entire economy and effort of the entire country was dedicated to the building of this monstrosity for nearly a decade. Hundreds of floodlights were brought in to keep the work going 24 hours a day, people worked in shifts, 'malefactors' were sent to do work on it and its surrounding projects as punishment. It wasn't finished by the Revolution of 1989, even today it has large parts that are empty, but the final touches were installed after the Revolution because everything was paid for and finished. It now serves to house the Romanian Parliament that rattles around inside its vast halls.

I was really glad that the 'patio' doors were open. When I went through as a missionary they were closed. We got a great shot of us two looking out over the Square of Nations and down the Boulevard of Union, built to mirror the Champs L'elysees in Paris. Local Urban Myth states that it is actually one meter wider or longer than the original.

Photos were not allowed inside, unless we paid a bunch of bucks, so, no pictures inside (in fact it cost us 25 Lei to get in this time, 5 years ago when I went as a missionary it was only 5 Lei!). Outside we walked through Parcul Izvor, Fountain Park. I was surprised to see this statue of Mihai Viteazul. He usually is in outside the University in front of some of the old bank buildings downtown, but he and a few of his fellow statues have been moved temporarily to make way for the building of a drastically needed parking structure.

Crossing the park we approached the old historical part of Bucuresti from a different direction and saw some 'new' buildings. Then we caught a taxi to the Church nearby and hung out with the YSA and some other members before Institute, got some free food, Peet caught up with some people, I said hi too, and then Estelle, Mark, Brent, and I visited another member that lives nearby. After that we headed back to the hostel. I guess I was tired and didn't think to take any pictures....plus I have a BUNCH already of the Church on Pandori Street.

Bucuresti: Little Paris

2011-06-11T13:14:00.000-07:00

After sleeping it off in Bucuresti after our travels, we got up in the morning and dropped off the rental car near the local airport at Baneasa. On the way back we were passing the mission office, so we decided to step inside, go up the nicest elevator I even used in Romania, up to the mission office on the 7th floor (8th in America, in Romania, and Europe the 'first floor' is the Ground floor, or Partir in Romania). There they had the board of Returned Missionaries, and I am still on it!!!

After checking out the office and meeting the Office Elders and Assistants (accidentally almost getting some missionaries in trouble when we mentioned something to the Assistants because we thought they were Office Elders...opps!) We dropped down into the Bucuresti Metro (aka Subway). Estelle got to see the nice new metro cars which are now the norm, but she would experience the old ones too!

Our first day in Bucuresti we decided to go take Estelle to see all the touristy and beautiful parts of Bucuresti. Sometimes they seem few and far between, but while Bucuresti isn't as starkly stunning at Budapest or intact as Zagreb, but it is much more surprising. You think you have figured out the city in a few minutes and then you turn the corner and instead of ugly, monolithic Communist architecture you see a copy of a Parisian building or unique Romanian Brancovenesc style buildings or Hapsburg inspired banks or ancient Orthodox churches harking back to Medieval Wallachia or a Art Nouveux establishment from the 19th Century. So we start off from 'Kilometer Zero: Free of Neo-Communism Zone' with a painted Romanian flag from the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

This is the newly renovated 'Coltea Hospital'. One of the older buildings in Bucuresti, reminiscence of French style, but with a Medieval Romanian Orthodox Church in the front courtyard. One can imagine the prayers offered there for the sick inside the hospital.

Next we went down the old historical and financial district of Bucuresti. About half of it is under construction and rennovation, but the other half has been largely finished and should be very nice once it is completely finished.

I have taken this photo a few other times when I have been in Bucuresti. I REALLY like it. The old narrow street of 1800s Bucuresti with a Byzantine style Romanian Orthodox Church hidden in a back square. Medieval meets modern.

Here is the famous CEC (Casa de Economii şi Consemnaţiuni) Palace. The first Romanian major lending institution. Patterned on a larger building in Paris it is a beautiful building that encapsulated the new importance which foreign investment was to play in the development of the newly independent Romania. This is being repeated today when one sees that biggest and most monumental buildings being built in Bucuresti today they are steel and glass banking and trading skyscrapers financed by foreign investors looking for substantial returns.

We went by Piata Unirii (Union Square) in the heart of the former Communist dictator Niculae Ceaucescu's construction project to shape Bucuresti according to his grandiose, stalinistic dreams. A huge part of historic Bucuresti was leveled to make way for a large square, massive boulevard, imposing apartment complexes, and all dominated by the 'House of the People', the second largest office building in the world. This is the Bucuresti most easily seen and which dominates its image, but once it was the 'Little Paris' of Eastern Europe and that can still be seen if one looks past the outer facade of 'Communist Progress'.

Down one of the streets near Lipscani (Leipzig: center of German trade associated with the merchants working in this district in the 1800s) Street is this little Byzantine style Orthodox church, one of the oldest in Bucuresti.

Inside are some incredible examples of Orthodox art. The Iconostasis, the barrier separating the room from the Alter and Holy of Holies behind, was an example of intense detail work.

The painted ceilings are covered in the distinctive Byzantine icon and art styles.

The doors are intricately carved from wood. Probably much newer than the original building, but still an immense amount of work went into them.

The guardrail around the entrance was very intricate and I really liked this scene of Samson killing the lion with his bare hands.

Right down the street from that little church is the famous restaurant Caru' cu bere, The carriage with beer, done in the Art Nouveau style. We took a look inside and decided to visit it later for lunch before we left Bucuresti.

We explored some other streets of the historical downtown. Mark and Brent joined us having just flown in from Ireland. A local member, Stefan, came and helped to show us around and catch up. He had just gotten back from his mission and it was really fun to talk to him about it and hear him and how he has changed since I knew him in Bucuresti 4 years ago.

We took Estelle by the ruins of the palace complex originally build by Vlad Dracula the Impaler when he established Bucuresti as his capitol in Wallachia after taking the Princely throne. We didn't go in. I have paid to go in before, but as a tourist attraction it is rather lackluster, no museum or artifacts, just some old basement rooms which have been restored.

Out front there are a bunch of headstones and memorial plaques from earlier memorials, churches, and events. Some of them have Romanian in the old Medieval Cyrillic alphabet which is pretty cool! I need some more practice at translating them.

We took Estelle to a great donut shop in Piata Unirii called 'the Infuriated Donut'. Just one of the funny quirks of Bucuresti.

We also proceeded up the hill right off of Piata Unirii up to the Patriarchal Palace, residence of the Romanian Patriarch and High Priest of the Romanian Orthodox Church. It is hidden by the hideous Communist architecture erected at such cost by the Romanian people at Ceauceascu's whim. However, once you climb up the hill behind the apartment buildings you come across a complex of Medieval and 1800s buildings which make up the Patriarchal complex.

The church opposite of the Patriarchal palace is a stunning example of traditional Byzantine art and religious icons and motifs. This part of the outer porch shows God and Creation: the stars, moon, and earth in the corner and Adam made of clay to the right.

Here is Jacob's ladder, with angels going up and down. Flanked by images of saints.

There is also this oh so imaginative depiction of the bowels of Hell. There is an interesting referral here to the Old Testament verses about the Levitation which was associated with the very richly depicted Hell of the Byzantine world.

Here is the rest of the Patriarchal Palace.

On the Palace there are some modern mosaics. This one represents 'The Holy Apostle Andrew preaching the gospel in Drobrogea'. The Romanian Orthodox Church, like the other churches of the Eastern Orthodox Rite, claims it Patriarchal authority from the Apostle Andrew, rather than Peter as the Catholic Church does. Many Romanians claim that Andrew is buried in the Dobrogea near Constanta (or something like that).

Here is the famous depiction of Saint Andrew being martyred in Greece. The tilted cross of Saint Andrew is used by many, it is the actually the Cross of Saint Andrew which is on the blue field of the Scottish Flag.

The Ministry of Justice is just off of Piata Unirii in the other direction from the Patriarchal palace. It again is a mirror of a French building in Paris and was built in the 1890s. It stands aside the Dambovita River which cuts through Bucuresti, heavily channeled with concrete berms nowadays and even dsiappears underground under Piata Unirii for a bit.

Going up and away from the Dambovita on Calea Victoriei, The Way of Victory, you come upon some of the iconic structures of historical Bucuresti which survived Communism. This is the Cercul Militar, or Military Circle, a grand hall for military functions. Estelle thought that our pictures were getting boring and unoriginal, so we decided to do a jumping high five!

I really like this picture. It shows the reconstruction entrance of the Opera house (damaged by American B-24s bombing Bucuresti during World War 2 and later demolished by the Communists) which is no the entrance to a modern hotel with the Radio Tower rising up behind it. Build during the Inter-war years it was once the tallest building in Bucuresti. I really like it an example of the beginning of the simplistic modern architecture forms, but still has electric bolts adoring its very heights.

This is a MAJOR change from my last visit to Bucuresti. Personally, I thought that this statue was destroyed by the Communists. It is a statue of King Carol I of Romania originally set up in the 1920s. It was a symbolism of nationalism and royalty that served as the centerpiece of the increasingly right-wing and dictatorial demonstrations in the capitol during the royal-dictatorship of King Carol II and the military-dictatorship of Marshal Ion Antonescu. This national symbol was removed during Communism and was just re-erected last year, 20 years after the Romanian Revolution of 1989.

You can see the National University Library behind the statue with Revolution Square to the right where the 1989 Revolution began and the Nicolae Ceaucescu was deposed and executed. The old royal palace is just of camera to the right. One of the reasons why the demonstrations in the 1930s were situation right in front of the statue of Carol I.

We next went to the Romanian Athenaum, the ornate concert hall built in the 1880s to exhibit the growing corpus of Romanian music. Particularly that of George Enescu, the most famed Romanian composer and favorite of Queen Elisabeth, wife of King Carol I. It has the images of the national heroes of Romania above the entrance. It was a building to demonstrate the national character and ability of the Romanian nation.

We also HAD to visit Chisinau Park in the center of Bucuresti. It is the place where the Romania was dedicated by Elder Nelson in 1990. Walking through we saw this huge line of people waiting to fill up the bottles from a spring in the Park. Romanians are crazy about springs and spring water. They are SURE that spring water is healthier and more beneficial than regular water...no matter what its source, and sometimes that source is rather questionable, at least to my American eyes. ;)

Another rather common site in Bucuresti are the massive amounts of wire everywhere.

After criss-crossing the city all day we dropped by Sister Gorzo's house for a good homemade Romanian meal. Including Sarmale, stuffed cabbage rolls, that we refused to let Estelle try at a restaurant. We also got to play the traditional Easter game with cracking eggs even though we were a week late. Each person grabs an egg and the one hitting says 'Christ resurrected!' and the one holding says 'Truly He did resurrect!' and you knock the eggs together. The one whose egg doesn't break wins and you do this a bunch of times until one egg survives all the battles...which was MINE!!! I am king of the Easter egg knocking games! HAHA!

Sora (Sister) Gorzo is quite a character and a lovely person for Estelle to meet. So after a good meal we took off back to our hostel.

On the way back to the hostel we ran into a 'Shark' made out of a car. It was SUPER cool, if random, and we had no idea what it was for!

Court upon the Arges: Medieval Capitol of Wallachia

2011-06-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

After going to Church on Sunday we headed to Bucuresti to drop off the car, but we were going to make an important stop on the way down from Transylvania into Wallachia: Curtea de Arges. Translated literally it means 'Court upon the Arges' which is referencing it long history as one of the oldest cities in Romania and former seat of the princely royal court of Wallachia.

It was a beautiful drive from Brasov to Curtea de Arges. We went up, Up, UP along the ridge line of the mountains instead of down into the valleys like in other places for much of the route. 'Christmas had returned' as one member in Brasov said, it had snowed and so many of the mountains had a beautiful snow cap and frost on them.

Here is a good example of turn of the 19th Century semi-monumental Romanian architecture. It uses Brancovenesc Style in a modern form and on a grandiose style, characteristic of the period of dramatic expansion and internal development from 1880-1914 of the Old Kingdom of Romania during preceding the First World War under the reign of King Carol (Karl Hollenzollern-Sigmaringen) I of Romania. Imposing town halls like this one asserted the new independence and centralization of the unified Kingdom of Romania.

I guess here I can take a moment to explain something really important. The Old Kingdom of Romania (Vechiul Regat) was comprised of Moldova and Wallachia and part of the Dobruja. It is really important to realize that Wallachia is an Anglo-German name for the region, in Romanian it is Tara Romaneasca, or 'the Romanian Land'. These regions were independent principalities during the Medieval Ages and only unified officially after the Romanian War of Independence in 1877 with de facto unification since 1859. So, Curtea de Arges was the capitol of Wallachia (aka the Romanian Land) in the Middle Ages before the idea of 'Romania' even existed.

The main attraction of Curtea de Arges today is the monastery that originally dates back to the 16th Century (although in the 1880s it was 'renovated' which meant back than that the frescoes were preserved and the old building was torn down and rebuilt with modern materials).

The building in a unique amalgamation of Byzantine and Eastern styles. The arabesques are Moorish in design.

There are also very Islamic looking discs with geometric designs on the exterior.

The monastery is designed as reminiscent of a mausoleum and it does hold the graves of important Romanian rulers ancient and modern. The graves of Negru Voda, the builder of the monastery, and some of his family are there and it became the mausoleum of the royal dynasty of Romania in 1914 after the death of Carol I (King from 1881-1914, Prince of Romania from 1866-1881). He and his wife and his successor, his nephew Ferdinand (King from 1914-1927), and his wife are buried there. Only Carol II (king from 1930-1940), exiled from Romania in life and still despised in Romanian historical memory, is absent and is instead buried in Portugal. It remains to be seen if the last living king of Romania, King Mihai I (king from 1927-1930, 1940-1947) will be buried there or not.

Here is a modern statue of Negru Voda, the original founder and builder of the monastery. The monastery has a lot of rather macabre myths associated with it. None of them end well.

We then stopped in Pitesti after visiting Curtea de Arges. We met some member that both Peet and I knew. I didn't really get any pictures of them, I was tired and forgot, but I made sure to get a picture of Estelle with a fashion shop with her name on it and she had fun seeing all the random signs. After spending a couple hours in Pitesti we rushed on to Bucuresti, anxious to get to our hostel be done with our time driving on the road.

Sinaia: Home of Peles Castle

2011-06-10T10:56:00.001-07:00

Peles Castle in Sinaia is one of the MUST sees of Romanian tourism. It was the summer residence of the Romanian kings, built between 1870 and 1914. It was a place to escape the heat of Bucuresti, and I promise you, Bucuresti is a place you want to avoid in the summer time, it gets plenty hot! And the cool mountains of Sinaia are the place to go!

The first King of Romania was Karl Hollenzollern-Sigmaringen of Prussia, cousin to Kaiser Willhem II of Germany. He was made king of Romania in the 1870s and began building this 'small' and 'conservative' royal getaway. The castle is in the style of German castles of the Hollenzollern family and designed by a Czech from Bohemia.

The place is SO amazing and has SO much crazy wood work that you can't take pictures inside unless you want to pay about 30 bucks. Therefore, we only have pictures of the outside, but the inside is INCREDIBLE. Now, I haven't been to that many European palaces, but Peet has and he says they are usually boring and long, but he LOVES Peles. The place had central heating and central VACUUM system in 1880! It is a technological marvel and showpiece to impress visiting dignitaries. And if I am impressed a century later they must have been blown away!

We had some nice Italians take a picture of us in front of Peles. This amazing place is not to be missed if one ever visits the beautiful land of Romania.

Right before we left I tried a local treat. It is a bread like roll with sweet and nuts on the outside, pretty good.

Rasnov: Rusna, the German Peasant Fortress

2011-06-10T09:47:00.001-07:00

Only a short 20 minute drive from Brasov, nestled in the foothills of the nearby mountains, is the hilltop fortress town of Rasnov, a formerly Saxon village called Rosenau in German.

They say 'third time is the charm' and I guess that is true with Rasnov. I have visited the fortress twice before, but the old place is falling apart...literally! A part of wall and tower had collapsed and the whole place was closed down when I was there in the winter of 2009 although I was able to walk up to the walls. Last summer when I came by with Mark and Brent we couldn't even get close to the walls because of a guard with a dog and...plastic tape! So, I was REALLY excited to finally see the inside of the fortress!

You can see distinct similarities between the defensive architecture and military technology between Rasnov and the Saxon Fortified Churches we had visited earlier in the day.

Here is an inscription saying 'Die Rosenauerburg'. I found out that the local Saxon German dialect calls the city 'Rusna' and that Rosenau is a modern name given to the town.

Here I am with 'The man of the citadel'. This guy was SUPER cool. He has a little room rented on top of the fortress with all kinds of random antiques and such and hangs out there all day. He takes donations, but doesn't really solicit them. He dad was in the Romanian Army, but was Hungarian, played the according very well and competed in...running or skiing. I can't remember which.

This is an AWESOME relic from the turbulent days of the Second World War. This map is of a forgotten Europe. Printed in 1939 it shows a 'might of been' and a reality of Nazi dominated Europe. Germany is HUGE in the middle, having annexed Austria and the Czech lands, Hungary has expanded at Czechoslovakia's expense, a tiny Slovak Republic is squished between, and Romania is still 'Greater Romania' having not yet lost territory to the Soviet Union or Bulgaria after the Fall of France in the Autumn of 1939.

Ignoring the light reflected in the glass you can see a piece of Romanian Second World War history. This certificate was given in 'Thankfulness to the Delivering Soldier'. It refers to the Romanian soldiers who participated in the war against the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa, specifically to the operations which returned Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, occupied by the USSR in 1940, to Romanian control. All this was seen as part of a greater 'Holy War against Bolshevism'.

Before leaving he had Estelle and I get all 'dressed up' and take a picture. Said that he had 'been waiting for me all day!' and was super impressed of my knowledge of Romanian and the objects he had on display. I have to say...Romanians have a tendency to take HORRIBLE pictures, but he took a great one! Even getting us centered and focused. Often Romanians cut off heads, don't center the picture, and a myrid of other bad photo faux pas. Also, digital cameras usually weird them out, but he defied the statistics and got a great picture.

You get a GREAT view of the surrounding valley from atop Rasnov, so you can see why Rasnov was built up in such a dominate and safe place!

This is the main square of Rasnov. Estelle got a good picture of me. That well in the background centers in Rasnov's most famous myth, that during a siege two captured Turks were promised that they would be freed if they found water for the city. Some versions of the myth say it took them as long as 17 years to dig the 143 meter deep well, but ALL versions agree that the two Turks were killed after they finished, disregarding the promise made. Cheerful myth, huh?

Estelle enjoyed the fortress too. Peet didn't come up, he had been there before and was super tired...and I am sure needed some alone time after being in close proximity with two chattering and hyper Harwards for nearly two weeks! :)

Rasnov also has a sweet Hollywood-sign like sign. So, you know its a legit place to visit!

Just 15 minutes more down the road is Bran Castle...the lamest of all of Romania's big tourist attractions. This is 'Dracula's Castle'...but only in Bram Stoker's book. In reality, Vlad Dracula the Impaler probably never even stayed here and if he did it was only for a short time, but the fame of this castle draws tourists...even though it is largely empty and really boring. I have never been in because of the collective recommendations by pretty much ALL missionaries who have been there. So, we just took Estelle to 'see' it from the outside.

Brasov: Center of Romanian Tourism

2011-06-08T22:10:00.000-07:00

Brasov is near the center, geographically, of Romania as well as being at the center of Romanian tourism. Nearby are the Fortified German churches, the Rasnov (Rosenburg) city fortress, Sinaia, Fagaras mountains, the Royal Castle at Peles, Sibiu, Sighisoara, and other important Romanian sights. So, we went to the fortified churches of Harman and Prejmer.

Prejmer is the largest of the German fortified churches. Walking around on the 'Wehrgang' or defense platform is my favorite part. Looking out the arrow slits and down the murder holes.

After visiting the churches we saw some Gypsies walking by in their distinctive big and loose suits with broad rimed, cowboy hats. Classic gypsy.

We also went by someone having a fancy wedding, even having rented a nice carriage.

This is Piata Unirii (Union Square) in Brasov. Our hostel was only minutes away from here. A First World War monument in front of the Saint George Orthodox church and one of the earliest Romanian language schools in Transylvania, outside of the Old Kingdom of Romania.

One of the coolest things we saw traveling around Romania were all the stork nests, they come back year after year to the same nests, and we came at the perfect time. It took us some time, but we finally got a lot of pictures of the nests with nesting storks in it. Sometimes alone, others with both parents, and even with baby storks.

This is Piata Sfatului (Council Square) the main downtown of old Kronstadt. You can tell how awesome Brasov is because of the Hollywood-like Brasov sign up on the Tampa mountain.

We went and visited some cool members in Brasov. The Nuti family are some of the oldest members in Brasov and super cool.

The Miron family are another 'old' member family.

The Hergheligiu Family are awesome. They have been to the temple many times and served as ordinance workers, she cooks awesome food, and he tells great funny stories. They let me stay over a couple winters ago. It was great that we got to go to church in Brasov and see all those great people.

Sibiu: Hermannstadt, the most beautiful city in Romania

2011-06-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

Now don't take MY word for it! Ba-da-dam! Sibiu, aka Hermannstadt, was made the Cultural Capitol of the European Union for 2007. (which was a bit of a problem for me in 2006 as a missionary because half of the downtown was under construction to ready it for 2007) So, there is an international consensous backing me up. Sibiu is the Romanian/Slavic name of the old German city of Hermannstadt.

The city is incredibly beautiful, it is a rich merchant city going back hundreds of years. So, obviously, it is one of the most touristy places in Romania and definitely one of the places to visit if you ever have the chance to go to Romania. The city is situated below the Fagaras mountain which are just a few hours away.

The German inhabitants of the city we mainly Reformist Christians, hence the lack of crosses on the churches, those with crosses are clearly Catholic. However, today, the city is 96 per cent Romania. Very few of Germans still live in the city, less than 2 per cent, and another 2 per cent Hungarian. We met some at the local antique shop that we stopped at where I bought some old, historical coins. The shopkeeper was VERY impressed with my knowledge of Romanian history as I perused the coin collection he had. I came away with some really cool ones.

Below the Old City is the 'new city' from the 1800s. It is so picturesque.

We decided to visit the old 'Vila' where I used to go to Church as a missionary back in 2006. The missionaries were just finishing up with some classes and waiting for other lessons. It was fun to hang out with those awesome missionaries and see the old place. I barely recognized it, as it just had gotten a new paint job.

This is Nicloae Balcescu Street. The super nice walking part of downtown...which was completely torn up when I was there as a missionary. I had to walk in mud and dodge earth-movers on a daily basis. Hazardous work!

We always laughed at this sign...we never quite figured out what it was actually for, but tons of Romanians were SURE that the missionaries were actually working for the CIA. Americans in dark sinister suits, you know, clearly the kind of people working for the government.

I took Peet and Estelle to my FAVORITE and BEST restaurant serving traditional Romanian food in the country: Crama Sibiul Vechi, or The Old Sibiu Hideout! It is in the basement of an old building downtown, has traditionally dressed waiters, and GREAT FOOD! We all got ciorbe first (Romanian soup) that were SO good and big I was feeling full just after the ciorba!

I ordered the Trista Ciobanului, or 'Shepard's Bag'. Basically the BEST thing I have EVER eaten. It was a pork cutlet stuffed with smoked pork, sausages, cheese, and other meat drenched in branza cheese with fried mamaliga! Yum, YUM!

Peet got a Moldovan stew served with Mamaliga and an egg.

An upclose shot of the Shepard's Bag and all its goodness!

Estelle got lamb...and out ate us all! I was struggling after that big ciorba, Peet was too, and I thought Estelle was too, until she ate all her lamb, started picking at mine, and ate half of Peet's plate while he was in the loo! And after we left the restaurant she was STILL excited to go get some pastries! Peet and I could hardly move we were so full!!!

Here we are outside Crama Sibiul Vechi, stuffed full to bursting! At least me!

I then took Estelle and Peet to see the old Medieval and Renaissance fortifications of the city.

After eating dinner we had to quickly get back on the road to get to our hostel in Brasov that night, on the way we got stuck for a bit by some passing...cows!

Romanian roads are pretty hazardous that way. You never know when you are going to hit a town and half to slow down, come upon a loaded horse drawn cart, slow old cars, or random animals wandering on the road.

On the way from Sibiu to Brasov we stopped in the city of Fagaras, the old Transylvanian seat of Romanian princes. During the Medieval Ages, the Romanian princely family had lands in the area, not just south of the mountain on the Wallachian plain. Vlad Dracula the Impaler began his career here in this region. This castle was a complete renovation by a Hungarian Transylvania price in the mid-1600s. While Fagaras has a Medieval Romanian tradition, it was a multi-cultural zone with Hungarians and Germans too.

I got this great picture of the fortress right at sunset before we continued onto the next old German city of Kronstadt. Another remnant of Transylvania's multi-cultural past.

Pause in the Narrative: Back in America and...did a Hobo move into my apartment?

2011-06-01T21:38:00.001-07:00

Well, I am BACK! I love the USA!!! I was so happy to be back that I was annoyingly whistling patriotic songs in the airport at customs in Dulles after we landed: God Bless America, Proud to be an America, Stars and Stripes Forever. Many nations wish to be exceptional, but America has been and we can continue to make it so. We stand, as Ronald Reagan said, as a 'City on a Hill' and we need to do our part to maintain and improve America. I was so happy to be back in America I nearly forgot how tired I was from the 15 hours of travel and all the stupidly invasive security checks.

Some of the things, mostly little, I first noticed and missed a lot that were absent in Europe:

1. A/C! It was SO hot over there and A/C is the exception to the rule and even when it was used it was used just enough to keep you from being really hot, not cool.
2. Free Refills! This is one of the most annoying things about visiting Europe. Even at a sit down meal you don't get free soft drink refills or even McDonald's!
3. Driving! Europeans just don't drive automatic, so I didn't drive at all in Croatia or Romania, because I suck at it and Peet was awesome enough to drive, but I LOVE having a car again.
4. Dr. Pepper! They have it over there, but it is more expensive and harder to find.
5. A real bed! European beds are...different, just not the same!

So, Estelle picked me up from the airport and I had the ever present smell of tobacco smoke on me that I didn't even notice anymore. You just get saturated with it while you are there and get used to it, but Estelle could smell it and I noticed it after my shower that EVERYTHING in my bag, even clothes washed by a member, smelled like smoke.

But I wasn't that concerned about that smoke smell because when I got back I entered my bathroom and I was confronted with...the HORROR!!!!

I seriously thought for a moment that a hobo had moved into my house and had been bathing in our bathroom. It was HORRIBLE! I stayed up to clean up the bathroom as much as I could (I finished it of on Monday after I got Ajax, scrubbers, and toilet bowel cleaner), clean my guns I had forgotten to clean, throw away stuff, organize, all the while washing my clothes and getting the smoke smell off of them and to have clean clothes for Sunday.

Sighisoara: German Merchant Fortress

2011-05-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

We drove a few more hours off the main freeways. It was frustrating because our GPS was in miles, but we were driving on bad roads and in kilometers, so that when it said 20 miles we think 'oh, like a half hour', but it really is more like an hour an a half.

Our hostel was one that I had stopped in to warm myself up when I first past through Sighisoara in the winter of 2009. It was right in the middle of the fortress town and the view of the main tower from our window was incredible. We also got a whole room for 8 all to ourselves because the earliness of the season. So that was great!

Sighisoara was the birthplace of Vlad II Dracula, known as the Impaler. It was a powerful German merchant town, heavily fortified and restricted to having only German inhabitants. Vlad II Dracula's father, Vlad I, was able to obtain special permission to live their because of his probable Catholic faith and membership in the Order of the Dragon begun by the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Hungary and other important noblemen from Poland and the surrounding areas. So, I was doing my best to look like the imposing Dracula of modern lore.

The main tower, or clock tower, of Sighisoara is only one of many. The whole fortress city is still complete, but dating mostly from the late 1600s after extensive destruction from a fire.

Our hostel must have had me in mind when they made the beds. I know that Mustangs, the car and horse, are my favorite things to have on my blankets! I slept SO good there.

Each tower and section of the walls of the city was under the responsibility of the different guilds in the city. These guilds were powerful merchant groups who had real military power as well as economic power.

We got up and had a really Romanian breakfast up in the fortress in the house in which Vlad II Dracula the Impaler was born. It was mamaliga, cheese, samtana, and egg that you mix together and is SO good. Romanian 'branza' is a salty, powerful cheese. Samtana is a super good sour cream. It was the perfect thing to start the day.

We really enjoyed Sighisoara it is one of the most beautiful places in Romania and a place you need to visit if you ever have the chance. It is only one of many Transylvanian 'Saxon' towns and villages with such fortifications that are strung between the trade routs from Wallachia to Hungary through Transylvania, but it is the best.

This area of Romania is pretty underdeveloped and seeing a horse pulled plow doing the work was really interesting, takes you back a hundred years. This was not the last 'Saxon' place we visited. The next two cities we were stopping at were the greatest of those 'Saxon' trade cities: Hermannstadt and Kronstadt.

Cluj-Napoca: Kolosvar/Klausenburg Capitol of Transylvania

2011-05-27T08:48:00.000-07:00

As we drove further into Romanian we began to see the evidence of truly entering the old Medieval province of Transylvania.

Transylvania has a very special history. It was never officially part of the old kingdom of Hungary until the 1860s, it remained an independent province, often under the rule of strong local leaders. It was a place of relative religious tolerance: Hungarian and German Reformists alongside Catholics, and the Uniate Orthodox who practiced the Eastern Rite but recognized the Pope were all officially recognized. In addition the Orthodox faith was a tolerated religion and a major Jewish population was also allowed. It also fell under Ottoman occupation for a period. All of this combined to create a unique multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional province that has so much history focused on it.

Modern day Cluj-Napoca is the fourth largest city in Romania. It was the old Austro-Hungarian capital of Transylvania. The Slavic/Romanian name of the city is Cluj. Napoca was an added with a hyphen in the 1970s by the nationalist Communist leaders to stress the 'Romanian' nature of Cluj. Napoca is an old Roman name of a city which stood on the same spot. Romanians, claiming descent from the Romans, added Napoca to further underline that. This 'National' Opera house has had the seal of Romania added to it and the statue of Mihai Eminescu, the foremost poet and national writer of Romania, placed in front.

This massive Orthodox Cathedral was built in Cluj after the annexation of Transylvania to assert the new Romanian Orthodox regime. Uniate Orthodox Romanians were not part of the official state plans to 'Romanianize' the region. A statue of Avraam Iancu stands in front of the Cathedral. He lead a peasant revolt against the Austro-Hungarian nobles in the 1700s and his failed attempt has entered national myth. In the early 1990s the mayor of Cluj denied the city was every Hungarian or Hapsburg and placed Romanian flags all over the city.

This is the old center of Hungarian Kolosvar. The Church of St. Michael is a Medieval Catholic church that some Romanians will tell you was built during the Hungarian occupation of 1940-1944. The statue is of Mathew Corvinus, one of the last great kings of Hungary, who was a Transylvanian nobleman. The statue has written 'Mathias Rex', or King Matthew on it, but in 1903 when it was first erected it read 'Hungarie Mathias Rex', or King Matthew of Hungary. You can see the marks of where this word was removed by later Romanian administrations and this Hungarian hero was even adopted by Romanian nationalists because his mother was ethnically Romanian. So, even though King Matthew was a Hungarian noble he now is also a Romanian national hero. Cluj is a living breathing battlefield of modern nationalism.

Additionally, in front of the statue, you can't see it in this picture, but further up in the square, the ruins of ancient Roman Napoca have been put on display under a glass protection, so that even in front of this Hungarian national monument the 'real' Roman nature of the city.

We met up with the missionaries in Cluj, including Sister Hickman who had just arrived in the country from the MTC on the same day. It was fun to see her, she is hilarious and was SUPER surprised that I showed up, even though I told her I would before she left! We stayed just a couple hours in Cluj before heading onto our final destination for the day: the German fortress town of Sighisoara.

Oradea: Little Budapest on the Quick Cris River

2011-05-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

Oradea was a city I was excited to see. I never served out in the western part of Romania during my mission and Oradea is about as far west and you can get. The border with Hungary is only 15 minutes from downtown Oradea.

Me in front of the State Opera.

Oradea was very beautiful at night. We met up with a member from Oradea named Bela that Peet knew while he served there. Bela was a Hungarian Romanian and had just finished serving a mission across the border in Hungary. It was interesting talking to him because he and many other Hungarians in Romania still see this area as rightfully belonging to Hungary. He even had a belt buckle with 'Greater Hungary' on it.

Bela's brother was able to point us in the right direction to a really good Bed and Breakfast where we were able able to get a third blow up bed for Estelle and keep the cost down pretty low. It was one of the nicest places we stayed, just us three again, but with good interior decorating this time! ;) Estelle was super nice to take the smaller third bed in places we stayed.

We went back into town in the morning after eating a good breakfast at the Bed and Breakfast. This is the famous Raven Palace in downtown Oradea.

The river that runs through Oradea is called the 'Quick Cris'. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a 'slow' Cris river. This is a view of the Townhall of Oradea.

Oradea was a beautiful city which reminds me (after the fact) of Budapest. On a much smaller scale, but similar feel. The city still has many signs in Hungarian and German, but for the most part it is now a Romanian city and the local Hungarians have at least had to learn Romanian after over 80 years of Romanian control of the area.

Cool stained glass inside the Raven Palace.

This is the main square of the old downtown. You can see a statue to the right of my of Mihai the Brave. He is the national figure who first 'united' all the Romanian lands of Moldova, Wallachia, and Transylvania in 1600. His 'union' only lasted a few months before his betrayal and death, but his statue was erected here after this area was annexed by Romania to justify their claims on the land. The main street here is named after King Ferdinand 'the Unifier' who ruled Romania during the First World War and the subsequent union of Transylvania to the Old Kingdom of Romania.

This is a statue of the General who lead the 'Glorious and Victorious Romanian Army' into Oradea in 1919. Oradea didn't stay under Romanian rule continuously after that, from 1940 to 1944 Oradea was awarded back to Hungary, under German and Italian pressure, by Romania along with all the territory of 'Northern Transylvania'. When Romania switched sides in WW2 the Romanian Army and the Red Army re-occupied the territory and it has been part of Romania ever since.

We walked down the old commercial district of Oradea. We some some classic gypsies wearing some of their traditional clothes.

Oradea used to be a major Jewish center. This massive synagogue now stands silent over the Quick Cris. As part of Hungarian occupied Northern Transylvania the Jews of Oradea suffered the same fate as the rest of the majority of Hungarian Jews, over 400,000, who were deported to the death camps in Poland in 1944 after Germany occupied Hungary and the radical right wing Arrow Cross fascist movement seized power in Budapest.

Hungary had been one of the more tolerant states towards Jews under Hapsburg rule, but after the dissolution of the Dual-Monarchy the Jews became competitors for a suddenly shrunken and crowded Hungary with too many bureaucrats and middlemen. The right wing anti-Semites grew in power, Hungarian Jews were discriminated against under the Regime of Admiral Horthy, but up to 1944 most were spared the horrors of the Holocaust. Sadly, today, barely any Jews are left in not just this once multicultural city, but in any of the former centers of Judaism in Eastern Europe, like Chernivisti in the Ukraine or Budapest in Hungary or Suceava in Romania.

Before we left I had to get a picture of this cool statue set up by the Communists to commemorate the victory of the Romanian Army in liberating Oradea from the Fascist-Horthyist Occupation. We had a long way yet to go that day and we hadn't seen the last of hotly contested former Hungarian cities. Our next stop was the most famous of the 'lost' Hungarian cities: Cluj-Napoca.

Lipova: Guarding Southern Transylvania

2011-05-27T06:55:00.000-07:00

From Timisoara we headed to...Lipova! If you are a real tourist and not a missionary in Romania probably almost nobody will tell you to go to Lipova. It is a tiny town wit a crumbly fortress, but LIpova is one of the few places near enough to areas missionaries serve in (Timisoara and Arad) that it is pretty famous as a P-Day visit spot. So, we decided to go see what it was like.

One the way I saw this herd of sheep and I just kind of wanted to get out and see them up close and get a good picture. Estelle and Peet waited in the car, until...

They saw this SUPER cute lambs run up to me! They had been orphaned and then feed by the shepherd by hand so they ran to people and thought they were people and stayed apart from the rest of the flock. Estelle and Peet ran out to see them. The shepherd was an awesome guy, but he wouldn't let me take his picture because he had been living out in the country for weeks and was very dirty. He definitely seemed happy to have some human company. He talked and talked and talked. About the lambs, about his dog, about the local village, and whatever else. We actually ended up staying out there for almost a half hour.

As we were talking this girl came by and told the shepherd in broken Romanian that a sheep had fallen in a hole. While he went to help it out we figured out she was French, spoke pretty good English. She had spent 6 months traveling on foot from Southern France to Brasov Romania and was on the way back. She had a tent, dog, mule, and stayed with locals when possible. Of all the tourists I met, she was the most legit and put all those lame Euro-Trash backpackers to shame!

So, we finally got to Lipova and climbed a hill up to the castle ruins.

Estelle was cold and had lost her heavier jacket somewhere in Serbia or Croatia so I let her wear mine, even if she was almost swimming in it. Behind Estelle you can see why Lipova was such a strategic fortress. It controlled the river valley and mountains leading into southern Transylvania. The mountains offered much better defensive positions than the flat fields of the Banat. Any Turkish army would have to besiege Lipova before being able to head further north.

We had bought some meat, bread, cheese, and drink and had a nice picnic outside the fortress. I felt very Romanian as I ate that lunch.

Another shepherd watching the flock graze on the hillside.

We, as dozens of missionaries before us, took lame pictures inside of the fortress. It was REALLY easy to get in those windows because the back is higher than the front, but it looks cool.

The whole time Estelle was up there I was begging her to be careful. Mom would KILL me if anything happened to her while we were in Romania!

Lipova was a fun place to visit for an hour and get out of the car and see some beautiful countryside, but we were ready to head up to Oradea, or Nagyvarad. An old Hungarian town, not part of Medieval Transylvania, but rather the Crisana region awarded to Romania after WWI.

As we drove Peet tried to drink some of his yogurt (partly because we had no spoons), but hit a bump on those pretty poor Transylvanian roads and got 'rose' flavored yogurt all over himself. Estelle tried to explain how he could use the lid to scrape it off his shirt, but the whole attempt became a farce and we just laughed like crazy. Which we needed because of all the frustrating road work on the country highways which slowed us down. All the worst because we had NO idea where we were going to stay that night in Oradea!

Timisoara: Crossing into the Romanian Banat

2011-05-27T06:16:00.001-07:00

So at 4 o'clock we grabbed the train out of Belgrade and to Timisoara Romania, so Peet and I ere really excited to get to Romania and be able to speak and interact with Romanians. This area on both sides of the border is called the 'Banat'. It is flat and rather uninteresting.

A lot of good farmland. This area was on of the border zones of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under Hapsburg, not Hungarian, administration. This was a multicultural zone dominated by Romanian and Serbian peasants in the countryside, 'Swabian' Germans and Jews in the cities.

We stayed in a Bed and Breakfast there for really cheap. It was SUPER nice, even if the interior decorations made us laugh. The bathroom had fake snakeskin tile walls! Basically every kitschy kind of decoration possible, but we had it all to ourselves and it was great.

In the morning we went into town. We saw the famous Orthodox Cathedral which had been build in the old center directly opposite the old German opera house. Medieval Temesvar had been a strategic fortress and German settlers, nicknamed 'Swabians' although they were not from Swabia, were invited to settle the area to strengthen Austrian control over the area.

In 1924 the eastern part of the Banat was ceded to Romania, while Serbia annexed the western part. The Romanians had hoped to seize all of the Banat, but we largely content with the final decision on the border boundary and quickly began to 'Romanianize' the city, its government, and educational system which had been overwhelmingly German.

Timisoara is a great city. It is one of the richest in Romania and has a tradition of modernity. It was the first city in Europe to be completely lite by the electric light, under Hapsburg rule.

All throughout the old city the Hapsburg past is clearly evident. Catholic and Reformist churches with Austro-Hungarian architecture are everywhere. I was VERY surprised at how extensive the old city was. Most people told me that other than the downtown area there was nothing to see, but old Timisoara stretched out and I still only saw a small part of it.

We met up with the Elders in the city center to talk a bit before going to pick up our rental car, get our stuff, and leave. All of a sudden a mass of pigeons got spooked and flew towards us. One landed and sat, quite contentedly, on the shoulder of one of the Elders. It was hilarious! Back in my day as a missionary, with the whole bird flu scare, I think someone might have had a heart attack. ;)

So, we picked up the car and started to head out on our second road trip, fully fed up with trains after crossing Serbia. We stopped at my favorite supermarket chain in Romania called Billa. There I got two of my favorite things that combined make the best thing! Chocolate Viva Snakes (little chocolate filled 'pillows') and Napolact brand milk from Transylvania my favorite Romanian milk. Vivas are SO good when eaten with milk and it was the BEST way to head out on the road from Timisoara.

Belgrade: Wet Fortress City

2011-05-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

We grabbed a sleeper car to Belgrade. The cabin had 6 spots and there were 3 of us, but I don't remember anyone else joining us, which was nice. I always like night trains, but this one was SUPER hot, we were all baking and we couldn't figure out how to turn down the heat. The train left at midnight and got into Belgrade about 6 in the morning. In addition to the hot cabin, we were woken up twice, in the border towns on each side of the borders when the customs police stepped in to grab our passports and stamp them.

So, when we got to Belgrade we were pretty miserable. And it didn't help that it was raining when we got there. I think this was the first part of the trip that Estelle REALLY started to wonder where I was taking her! The Belgrade train station is less than impressive. The Gara de Nord in Bucuresti is much larger and way nicer. I had my antennae up to watch out for Estelle, there were some shady people and creepy bums hanging around. I also had my first battle with a squatter toilet there at the train station while we were waiting for the baggage place to open so we could drop off our bags for the day. I won't get into details, but lets just say it was a tie, at best.

Here is the Serbian royal seal.

We went to the fortress first thing after dropping off our luggage because it is one of the coolest parts of Belgrade. There is a bunch of WWI and WWII stuff there. This is a cool machine that you hook to a retreating train and it rips up the train tracks behind it so the enemy cannot use them to pursue you or supply their advance.

View looking down onto the old town ruins of Belgrade. The fortress here was a key point in Austrian or Turkish defenses as it controlled the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers, the main lines of resistance for either side. Whoever controlled this fortress wielded greater power over their enemy and could strike further into their territory.

The fortress has some Medieval walls and turrets like these, but was also upgraded with the Trace Italian style fortifications as gunpowder revolutionized the battlefield. Unlike Kalnik, Belgrade remained a strategic military point up until today. It was the fist place bombarded during WWI by the Austro-Hungarian forces to launch the Great War and was bombed by the Germans in WWII and afterward occupied to control the vital railway through it to Greece.

We came across a traditional Serbian piper as we walked the streets of Belgrade. It was super cool to see a different type of bagpipes than the well-known Scottish version. Pretty much any culture with a herding culture has bagpipes all over the word. He is dressed in Serbian 'highlander' clothing. I must admit that I enjoy the sound that Balkan bagpipes make more than that of the Scottish. They are less harsh and have more of melodic tone of Constantinople and the Ottomans. We gave him a few dinar. I always like to support those living the old ways.

We then visited the massive Serbian Orthodox Cathedral in Belgrade.

The inside isn't finished, although it seemed to have had enough done to make it a working place of worship, and they are working on the mosaics and such. This is actually one of my favorite Orthodox images, Christ resurrected, resurrecting Adam and Eve with the gates of hell broken and their locks and keys busted.

We went down to see the buildings bombed by the US in the 90s. It was really interesting because I had only driven by them last time. Up close you could see the damage and that it was limited to those buildings. The area around them were completely spared, even buildings that butted up against the ones hit by our bombs. They were guarded by some Serbian troops. Once again, interesting to see something that I remember happening on TV when I was in elementary school.

We went to the park near the fortress. Now that the rain had finally let up and it was later it was filled with people. We stopped to watch some chess. This young kid tried to take on this old man, but while good, he soon found him outmatched and surrendered the game. Some of the watchers tried to get him to keep playing, but he show how no matter how he moved he would be in checkmate within a few moves. It was really interesting to see how people can play the game that way....I totally can't and only look at the more or maybe one ahead.

The main square and government building. Belgrade was an interesting place to visit, it was not as cool this time and part of that I chalk up to our tiredness and the weather, but after a week in beautiful Croatia, Serbia was a bit of a shock. Peet and I were ready to get to Romania, the true target of our trip and I was anxious for Estelle to experience the awesomeness and craziness of that great country!

Kalnik: Mountain Retreat

2011-05-26T12:19:00.000-07:00

About a hour drive from Zagreb is the mountain retreat of Kalnik. On top of one of the peaks are the ruins of a Medieval castle. Once an important refuge from nomadic raiders the castle long ago as abandoned, but the location has remained a popular weekend retreat for locals.

From the mountain you can look down upon the hilly countryside surrounding Zagreb and se the many farming communities. It is quite stunning. There is a bed and breakfast up by the castle that obviously gets lots of business. We found some information explaining that even during Communism this was a favorite spot for Croatians to get away from the city and relax.

There is some climbing on the crag that the castle is built into. We all just tried one route. I got about halfway up, Peet had some trouble, Estelle got up with his guidance. We only did one route because the others looked more difficult and Peet didn't want to have to lose any of his equipment and we were all just plain tired. We had been going non stop and at a fast pace for a week straight. So, I suggested we relax on the beautiful hill and take a nap. Estelle and Peet agreed with great gusto!

So, we climbed up to the top of the fortress and then headed down to relax.

This sign warned us of the 'many dangers' of the castle...which we ignored completely. It looked like we hadn't been the first and we just went ahead.

It was a great idea to take a nap. We could even see Zagreb way off in the distance. Peet discovered some flies who were disguised as bees and trying to drink our juices.

I really enojyed driving through the farming communities on the way back. They all had tractors and looked very prosperous. It was really fun to experience a bit of life outside the big city and see the countryside. We headed back into Zagreb where we dropped off the car and then hopped on a night train to Belgrade, finally setting out for the last stop before we were on to the next major part of our trip: Romania.

Zagreb: Still my Favorite

2011-05-26T11:15:00.000-07:00

We got to Zagreb pretty late and the GPS we had was not the best and it took us a while to fine our hostel. We had to backtrack and park in a place I knew we could, at least until 7 in the morning. There is something about Zagreb that I really like and I was glad to be back.

I had to get up at 6.30 to run down to where the car was parked to pay the parking meter so we wouldn't get ticketed. It was a beautiful morning. We could only pay for an hour at a time so I knew we would have to feed the meter a few times. Eventually the people at the hostel told us were we could park that wasn't metered and we could leave it there.

We had a great view from our hostel of the giant Catholic cathedral in the old city.

We thought that the 'peephole' of our hostel was really funny!

On the streets of Zagreb early in the morning. I wore my favorite T-shirt to complete my awesome day in Zagreb!

We went by the big open market. Estelle and Peet later bought some fruit and stuff from there.

We went to a local bakery to get some breakfast. I got this cheese-filled pastry thing that came with free yogurt, probably to help kill the taste. It wasn't sweet cheese or salty cheese...just not very good tasting cheese. The meat filled things they got there are MUCH better.

So, we went to get the car to move it and we saw this AWESOME East German made car. Its color was nasty and I wanted to show how small it was, barely longer than my arm span.

I am really glad that we and the tram block a lot of the square. Basically all the buildings in this are were under renovation.

So, after we moved the car we were walking back to go see the inside of the cathedral and we saw some guys in gym shorts. We said, hey, those must be American tourists because NO ONE in Europe would wear those...then I noticed that one of them was wearing a MTC backpack and I realized it was the Elders. I yelled at them and we talked to them for a while before they went on to play squash.

The inside of the cathedral was amazing. It reminded me of the inside of the cathedral in Cluj Romania.

The cathedral is surrounded by the old turrets and walls of the Medieval fortress of Zagreb.

My name is Indigo...you killed my father! Prepare to die!

I decided to risk eating another nasty food, but this sausage shoved in a hollowed out baguette was SUPER tasty! I ate it while Estelle was in a store looking at dresses or clothes or both. We gave her some girl time, but unfortunately in the big city, even in Eastern Europe, nice clothes are still expensive.

This is the main square with the statue of the Croatian hero Ban Jelic.

Estelle was ALL ready to continue on our trip. She managed to hook her little backback to her big one it was awesome. So, we were almost done with our time in Croatia, but we made one more day trip before taking a train to Serbia.

Ljubljana: Quiet Provincial Capitol

2011-05-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

Within 40 minutes (it would've been 20 but I accidentally got us off on a wrong exited and the next place to turn around was almost back in Trieste) we were in Slovenia! It is THAT close to Trieste. It is a beautiful country of hills and valleys with beautiful towns. Up north is supposed to be an awesome lake, but we needed to go east, through the capitol of Ljubljana, and on to Zagreb, the capitol of Croatia.

We got to Ljubljana very quickly. It is a quiet little Hapsburg backwater that now masquerades as a national capital. One of the first things we saw was this bike stung up over a street. I think it was advertising for renting bikes to tour the city, but it was still weird to see.

After walking around for a bit we began to climb up the hill which dominates the city and the river that runs through it. One top was a fortress that I wanted to see that I didn't go up to when I came through last summer. About half-way up we stopped to take this picture and catch our breath. You can see all the spires of the Catholic churches in the city.

The Medieval fortress on top of the hill was well renovated.

The fortress was pretty cool, but I was pretty disappointed at first. It seemed that it was only full of cafes and creepy, crappy modern art displays.

I did find a cool breach-loading canon dating from the late 1800s.

We went up in the tower and could get a good look at the city. The modern city stretches out to made more true the capitol nature of the city. The old city center though is much more quaint and betrays its original nature.

We finally found the museum in the fortress! I was really afraid there wasn't one at all. It was a very modern, interactive, and interesting museum. It had cool objects, things and reproductions to touch, and videos with historical re-inactors acting as narrators of all periods of Slovenian history. It was very informative, yet without being boring. Something hard to accomplish with a history museum.

Here is a wonderful view of the 'Dragon Bridge' over the river that runs through the city, the major catholic cathedral, and the hill with the fortress overlooking the countryside.

Me and Peet decided to do a Backstreet Boys cover in the middle of downtown Ljubljana.

We saw a restaurant that had game meats and so we paid an arm and a leg (like 30 bucks I think) to get a plate with wild boar, stag, and elk. Or something. They each had their own sauces to compliment their tastes and side. Polenta, some sort of cheese, and a dumpling. The sauces were a gravy like one, a pepper one, and a raspberry (?) one. It was really interesting to eat. Pretty good. The fruit sauce must have been close to fermented cause it had a pretty nasty taste.

We had a great afternoon in Ljubljana, but we left to drive the last few hours to get into Croatia and onto the capital to arrive at the hostel at a reasonable hour.