Average speed on most Romanian roads appears to be about 70kph. There are some stretches of two-lane blacktop, but you’ll also find lots of potholed one-lane with tons of trucks, Dacia’s galore, and a rural cop with a radar gun in every town.

We stopped for lunch in Bran and had a quick look at the castle there, which clearly made a super-swinging pad for Queen Marie back in the 30’s, and then headed south towards Bucharest. Going was good enough until the ring road, which is congested bumpy single lane with several entirely uncontrolled intersections. A note for the EU suggestion box: a few stoplights would do wonders down here. We did some highly amusing romanian-style left-lane chicken passing moves, which only sometimes require pulling off onto the left shoulder to avoid oncoming trucks. Now we’re on the A2 (the only real highway in the country) heading to Vama Veche on the coast.

The contrast today was amazing - in the morning it was all horse carts and hand work on the fields (lots of scythes and pitchforks), and now its autobahn and mechanized agriculture, real steel for the bridges, and apparently functional infrastructure. Lovely mountain scenery up around Bran too. We opted to skip downtown Bucharest entirely, partly due to fact that this Swiss guy we spoke with described it with a single word: “chaos”.

After driving for a long time in several circles of different sizes, we found a lovely agriturismo just in time for dinner. This was after we had checked out the Hotel Lesu, at the end of the road up the “Valley of Hell”. The hotel had a light on, but it was a decrepit holdover from another time, and not the sort of place you hope to find at the end of the road on Saturday evening. As we pulled away, an older couple with Bucharest plates pulled up and started waiting in the lobby for someone to check them in. I imagine the wife wasn’t pleased about how the long-promised weekend getaway was turning out.

The place we found had a group of hungarians on a weekend bender; they set is up with shots of their local grappa straight away, direct from the plastic water bottle they were transporting it in. We had a couple of beers after dinner at the local bar, sitting outside on wooden stumps, watching the stars come out.

So far, Romania seems like the Mexico of Europe - trash in the rivers, lots of unfinished and derelict buildings, crowded bus stops, and crouched, leathery old folks, but also new supermarkets, gas stations, apartments, and cars. The most common type of store is construction materials, closely followed by tire repair.

Lunch today was at a “cabana”, sort of an all purpose hotel restaurant resort center, unfinished of course, and hosting both a local wedding and some Hungarian motorcyclists staying in the little outlying cabins. The food looked good, but when ours came, it was huge and deep-fried, with a plate of fried cheese balls on the side. The bill was double what it was supposed to be, but hey, these guys have a reputation to uphold. We negotiated I down to something fair for all parties involved, and now we’re making our way south and east from Cluj.

Update: we followed the Romanian “wine road” for a couple of hours in the hopes of find another agriturismo, but no luck. Lots of vines, but not a pensione in sight. In the meantime, we managed to drive through the “most polluted town in Romania” - a crossroads dominated by a massive coal-fired factory of some sort - en route to Sibiu, where we found a relatively well-developed small city, a small “four-star” hotel, and a charming downtown full of people out for the Sunday evening. Given its specific histroy, Sibiu may be an anomaly, or it may signal better to come. Today we head for Bracov and maybe a look at Bran Castle, and then probably to the Black Sea coast tomorrow. PS - one difference between Romania and Mexico is that Mexico is _much_ louder - Norteño music, cocks crowing, unmuffled exhausts - while Romania is much more european in that sense.

I can report that, without question, Fiat produces the ugliest cars in Europe right now. Renault produces *strange* looking cars, but Fiats are just poorly done.

We made the mistake of heading the wrong way out of town this morning, and then trying to wind our way back around to the highway. No dice. We ended up spending an hour and a half, returning more or less to where we started, and then finally onto the M3 going east towards Romania. Lesson learned: consult the map before setting off. Ahem.

Right now we’re making 180kph towards Debrecen, making up a bit for lost time. We’ll see how long the good road holds out; this may be our last piece of “autopalya” for quite a while.
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I think I just figured out what happened to Pearl Jam. After their career fell flat in the US, they realized that since the Italians love cheesy pop rock, their best strategy was simply to learn Italian and attempt to become the next Zucchero. Unfortunately for us the void they had occupied was quickly filled by whatshisname, Dan Robinson? Right, Dave Matthews. And what a void it is. I can’t wait for him to learn Italian too. Please.

When I booked my flight to Europe a couple of months ago, the only award tickets available were in first class. Fair enough, I thougt, it’s a free ticket, and I’ve never flown in the front of the plane.

Now that I’ve seen what’s on offer, I have to say you’d be crazy to pay for first class, at least on united. the service was fair at best, and no different from transcontinental business class. Food was the same as well - not bad, but nothing special. I have to believe that First on a European or Asian carrier would have been notably different. One amenity that I did appreciate to the fullest was the lie-flat bed - I slept 7 hours or so and woke up in frankfurt feeling not half bad.

A couple of *very* close train connections and now I’m on the TGV, almost to strasbourg!