Roads

In Bulgaria, the condition of the roads was always close to a driver's heart.  Driving there needed lightening quick reactions to see an imminent pothole and take evasive action.  It is a skill that all Bulgarian drivers acquire very early on. I thought I'd seen some bad roads around Kozloduy and in similar remote spot.  But now, in Romania, I have been taken to new heights.

Yesterday I returned from the coast and decided to NOT take the boring motorway but to take a more scenic route.  That was the good part of the idea. The road was clearly defined on the map (Route 86, joining E87 to 2A, near Mihail Kogălniceanu).  It started off a bit rough but then got worse - why didn't I turn back?  Because I figured it couldn't get any worse...

I thought I'd take a picture of a bad bit (see right).  However this turned out to be one of the least damaged parts of this 4 km stretch. If the rest had been like this, it would have been easy. 

It genuinely looked like it had recently been bombed by NATO in a training exercise.  The car seems to have survived though the low front end took some impacts.  It was like a test track for tanks. 

It is the season generally here for road repairs.  That, and the painting of white around tree trunks, signifies the onset of spring. The ring road around the NE and SE or Bucharest has some 'challenges', especially in the dark.  They were filling the bigger holes in recently when I did the trip.  This amounted to a moving operation where one guy identified the crater to be filled and the next shoveled in some loose tarmac.  They relied on the following cars to compress it.  I am sure those repairs will last some time.  

Road damage is everywhere in Romania.  The motorway to Cernavoda from Bucharest has such damage in the far right lane to be capable of ripping off a wheel.  They are currently patching the patches. 

And don't get me started on biking on the roads....! 

Dogs in Romania...now one less

I can now add to the earlier blog about dogs by announcing that Romania has one less - and that my car has suffered front end damage.  Co-incidence? I think not.

I never got the dog repellent spray designed for cyclists - it seems good stuff is available on eBay in the US but not available here... I have not yet figured out the real answer to what the dogs clearly see as sport here.  I have tried ignoring them, swearing at them (in English) or riding at them.  None work.

I hasten to add that the unfortunate dog who is now probably in dog heaven just decided to cross the motorway at the entrance to a tunnel at the wrong time...

Transfagarasan Highway

I took a short trip over the last few days to have another attempt at the Transfagarasan Highway which runs across the Carpathian Mountains.  I'd previously foolishly attempted this in November 2013 (see previous blog).  This time, in summer and, having checked there were no scheduled closures, we tried again.

It's a drive from here to Bucharest, then Ploiesti then Brasov as a stopping off point.  Taking the road west from there gets you to the northern point of the highway.

This is the road travelling by the Top Gear team - which they reckoned was the best road in the world for driving. I'm not sure how they came to that decision although the Romanian Tourist Board probably helped them along the way...the cars they used were probably very unsuitable for most of that road (90% probably) so it makes you wonder logistically how they did it. From N to S, it is about 120 km with some 30 (I estimate) on the pass itself.

The route up from the north is the most spectacular.  Last November it was icy with the lake at the top iced over.  Now the area around the lake was just full of stalls selling cheese, goat skins, sausage and tat.  The view was still impressive though! However, to our relief, the big iron gate in the tunnel at the top was open this time (it's a long way back down).  South of the summit was very scenic but with fewer acute bends and so less dramatic.  Eventually it leveled out along the edge of a man-made lake which, driving through trees not being able to see the lake got a bit tiring (and boring) after a while.  Despite the warning signs, no bears were seen stealing picnic baskets.

So - done. Spectacular over the top (even in a VW Passat) but a long trip, especially south heading into Curtea de Argeş which was just very industrial.  I'd seriously like to know how the TG lot got their three cars up there...they seem to gloss over such details in the programme!

A Study in Modern Dentistry

Today I went to the dentist in Constanta.  But that word 'dentist' doesn't do it justice.  I felt that I had actually stepped into a dentist equipment suppliers showroom at a worldwide dental exhibition.  I'd had toothache for a few weeks and put off a visit to the dentist in the UK for a while, pending return from holiday.  Finally, with pain and a swollen gum, I visited my collegues dentist wife in Cernavoda.  She identified root canal infection which I suspected so, after an x-ray at the plant medical centre (cost: £1.80) she decided it was too complicated and got me a referral to the place in Constanta.

This dentist had everything. Fancy lights, music, x-ray machine, computers, other machines which looked impressive but had unknown function..it still hurt a bit though!

A far cry from dear Mr. ******.

In the UK, dentists are called Mr... or Mrs..., not Dr.  Mr. ****** was an 'old school' dentist. Failed to graduate from dentist charm school.  My early visits were terrifying.  He wasn't too far away from Sir Lawrence Olivier as the Nazi dentist in Marathon Man.  He used an old steel hypodermic syringe which looked absolutely frightening (however I think anesthetic was still rationed during those visits...)  I can hear him now bellowing at me: "Open your eyes, boy! I need to know how you're feeling".  Ha! The screwed up eyes should have told him everything.

Time passed, and on to different dentists.  One of the best was a chap in Cumbria who had had a patient die on him.  Always easy to get an appointment with him, strangely.

We moved to the US in 1993 - the motherland of dentistry.  This was 180 degrees off Mr. ****** - soft music, assistants mopping up the slobber from your chin, so much anesthetic you still felt it 2 days later. Still, we all had good (and gentle) dental work there - paying out thousands for orthodontic work for the kids (sadly some undone some years later when Emily dived into a pool which wasn't as deep as expected....but more of that soon).

Next was Bulgaria.  Kozloduy was a small village in the north west, close to the Danube.  But, I had very good, cheap dental work there.  Sometimes, the language was a barrier but other times, like when a nerve was hit, not.  Once prior to a wisdom tooth extraction, she thought I was a bit tense so fed me this homeopathic relaxant.  I am 99% sure it did me no good at all but it seemed to help her. Or maybe it was the hefty assistant who wiped my mouth with what appeared to be an old flannel which kept me quiet...

So now, Romania.  This surgery in Constanta is very, very impressive.  They even had a machine which went 'ping' (ref: Monty Python).  I'll see how it goes but today was pretty good, nice music, pretty girls.  Even the bill was OK but that's before the crown.  I'll let you know.

As for Emily - she is working in India and has just had her teeth completely fixed and whitened.  And very nice too. And cheap.

So, the message appears to be this: consider dental tourism for a holiday this year.  Don't stick with your UK dentist - you'd be surprised about where you can get better treatment, at a fraction of the price.  We recently left our private practice plan in the UK.  For its cost, you could get a load of things sorted out somewhere else!

A Short Winter

So, as the clocks go forward, and the snow fences are removed, it seems official - winter is over.

Cernavoda Station

Despite fears to the contrary, the winter was relatively mild and, I'm sure, not a patch on what it can be.  True, there were many cold, grey days and some snowy showers but only one major snowfall and that was mid January.  Temperatures got pretty low but the heavy snow coincided with my trip back to the UK at the end of January so a trip to the airport became a bit of an issue.

It seems that at some point, the highways maintenance crew decide not to try and keep the motorway open and give up clearing the snow.  This happened a couple of days before my trip (and it's never good to get between an Expat and his trip back home!) so an alternative was needed.

Some checking showed the trains were still running, so at great expense a ticket was purchased for the 1445h train from Cernavoda.

Station buffet

Having been warned off the railways in several
countries, I felt that it was worth a challenge and expected the worst.  I got a first class ticket (ok, so I chickened out of 2nd) and can say that it was equal in standard to the trains I take in the UK, up the East Coast line.  Warm, and comfortable (once the lodger in my seat had been persuaded to move) but a bit slow.  Several stops for quite some time with no info on what was happening.
 It arrived on time but then took 6 hours to reach Bucharest...but at least it did!



They do miss a trick, though.  With a train full of people, someone somewhere needs to be selling over-priced food and drink.  It was strange that no one's set this up.  Maybe they don't know how desparate people get on a train for a Kitkat and warm beer...the UK can teach them a thing or two.

BUT, as I said, it got there.

After that, the snow hung about a while but no more falls.  Unlike the UK, where it just rained for 3 months solidly.  Miserable place.

The pics here were taken in early February as the snow was well melting by then.  I took them on a visit to the station on a boring Sunday.  The pic on the left shows probably one requiring the most resilient employees.  Petrol tankers passing to Constanta have guards every 3-4 tankers, all kitted out ready for trouble.  I guess it's a real threat but not an easy job riding shotgun for 200 miles in freezing temperatures!


Anyway, time to change the snow tyres.  Soon time to fill up the pool.

50 sheds of grey

Sunday - a grey day in a grey place.

Sad, frozen pool

Sorry if it sounds a bit depressing, it isn't meant to be but is more a description of Cernavoda on a Sunday afternoon in December.  There's something about these types of day where the cloud hangs low, it's just 2-3 degrees C above freezing.  We seemed to have many such days in Kozloduy where the only thing to be seen moving was gangs of rampant Brits looking for a bar which was open, showing football and warm.


Sunday was such a day.  I wrenched myself away from a rerun of 'Sounds of the 60s' on BBC radio and headed off for some air. With the trusty Nikon.




It's not that the place really is grey - well, I lie.  Most is as the blocks are rendered in grey or made from grey concrete.  The paths are grey except where they are black - and they are the holes revealing mysterious chambers below...

Couldn't see the depth of that hole

It was one of those days which is 180 degrees off the summer experience.  Even poor Snow White looked forlorn.

Current Affairs

As for the history of Europe in the 20th century, some local artists are a little out of touch with 1945's developments.  I liked the subtlety of this particular sentiment.

Expecting crowds

And steps which wouldn't look out of place at a Premier League football ground...












Most Cernavodians sensibly spend their Sunday afternoons (a) asleep, (b) shopping or (c) watching 'Romania's Got Talent' on tv.  Only mad dogs (plenty of them around) and Englishmen (far fewer) go out in the grey of Cernavoda.

At least when it snows, it covers all the shite up...

Tritium and the Transylvanian Alps

Last week there was an IAEA-sponsored workshop on the safety and licensing issues associated with facilities used for the separation of tritium from normal heavy water - fascinating stuff, eh?  Yeah.

I went as it was relating to the project I manage.  It was held at one of our contractor's locations in Ramnicu Valcea, north west of Bucharest.  It is about 5 hours from here so not a short trip.

After the usual delays at work, Dan and I left about 3 pm, struggled through Bucharest rush hour and the mountain road in the dark (and heavily populated with big trucks) arriving about 8 pm.  The high point of the evening was a dinner with the Canadian speakers (Canada is the leader in tritium removal technologies), not very exciting but we hoped it would get better tomorrow (it didn't for one of them, the chap who had the salmon was violently sick all night...).

It didn't for the rest either...

The workshop consisted of a series of 'death-by-Powerpoint' presentations which generally were very tedious.  This coupled with hard chairs and no tables to lean/write on meant for a long day.  What is it about people and Powerpoint?  One irritation is the presenter who writes his/her whole presentation on the slide and then, facing the screen, not the audience, proceeds to read it out word for word.  Another is the technical specialist who uses sliding/rotating words and awful colour combinations...we had all variants.  It's not that the subject was uninteresting (honest) - they just made it difficult to focus on the message.

We lasted a day and a half before we headed to our contractor's laboratory to view the pilot plant.  This has been under development since 1995 and is yet to go 'active'.  Make what you like from that.  It is substantial for a pilot plant, the main vessel costing some 8 million Euros...so it had better work soon and demonstrate the technology we need to use for the real plant.

Hotel

At about 4.30 Dan and I (with Dan's friend Ileana who'd turned up) set off for a small hotel in Voineasa, a small village tucked up in the Transylvanian Alps.  it was a very small informal hotel, but new and we were made to feel very welcoming.  Clearly, this was a great place for skiing - given a flake or two landing.  As you can see, it didn't look like any was on its way.  We ate at the hotel and had a few beers - we were late as Dan needed a new tyre on the way due to some damage caused earlier.

Dam & Fish Farm

Hotel at the summit - and open!

The plan next day was to drive north and then take one of the smaller mountain roads south (the Transfagarasan Highway) which would be very picturesque. We set off about 10.30h and drove some way up the windy road, climbing higher at quite a rate.  We stopped at a tourist spot (amidst the tat sellers) but it seemed like the road ahead was closed for the winter.  Dan's opinion was that 'they just tell you that to cover themselves...'.  Er, OK, so off we went further past a concrete barrier with the words (in Romanian) 'Road Closed Ahead'.   "They are just saying that" was the response.  Off we went further until we got to the lake at the summit - where there is a tunnel through the mountain (@ 2100 m). Guess what?  Yep. A big steel gate sits in the tunnel and....yes, locked shut.  

So, a coffee in a hotel perched on the lake side and we returned.  It wasn't so many kms, but a slow road as you can see from the photo (which doesn't do it justice).  It was a very good drive, pity we couldn't complete it, the gate being shut at the start of November until about May next.  I hope I'm still in RO to see it open!  The road is the one featured in Top Gear.

Northern approach

So, we drove back via a somewhat less appealing route but still interesting - through lot of small villages where seeing a couple of cars pass through was evidently still relatively unusual it seemed!  Avoiding loose cows and goats was a real challenge. 

I didn't record the number of kms driven, but it was a very interesting trip.  I had some scepticism over the use of 'Alps' however these mountains are very impressive and look like good skiing country in a short while.