{"id":78,"date":"2019-09-14T05:50:19","date_gmt":"2019-09-14T05:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/?p=78"},"modified":"2019-09-14T06:54:43","modified_gmt":"2019-09-14T06:54:43","slug":"transylvania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/2019\/09\/14\/transylvania\/","title":{"rendered":"Transylvania: Day 5"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Day five<\/strong>, Wed. July 10<\/strong> : Budapest to Brasov, Romania<\/strong>  696km\/432 miles and 14.5 hours (including a 1 hour construction stop, a 1-hour dinner stop and a 30 minute speeding ticket stop)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not so long out of Budapest, the multi-lane autobahn ends and the one-lane road through Hungarian villages begins. Then we crossed into Romania. In the first few minutes, I passed a large, shirtless man wearing a newsboy cap and slowly riding a rickety bicycle. Next was a large woman wearing a dress straight off an 1800\u2019s settler’s wagon with a scarf tied around her head and a frown on her face, and then a horse-drawn carriage filled with a whole bunch of shirtless children. Stray dogs and prostitutes posed in the grass next to the winding road, filled up with semi trucks driving 20 miles an hour. I passed a still-burning shell of one on the side of the road. During a one-hour construction stop, Helen and I played count-the-shirtless men game. We lost track. A construction worker in overalls wanted to inspect my engine because it was leaking something, but he determined it was just air conditioner water and then asked me for a cigarette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Transylvania is beautiful and mountainous.  The forest comes right up to the edge of the road and the village houses are single story and muted colors. It\u2019s not hard to imagine 400-hundred years ago, villagers huddled around a fire, afraid of night-roaming vampires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got my first speeding ticket. There are three speeds in Romania: 100km\/62 mph outside of the villages, 70km\/43 mph on the hills and 50km\/31mph in the many small towns. But it\u2019s nearly impossible to go that fast because of all the trucks. On one of the few truck-less stretches, I got pulled over by two friendly and curious policemen who despite smiling a lot and being very interested in us, still gave me a ticket which I need to pay in town today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone is Romania is very friendly and I really like this country so far. It is fairy-tale beautiful, and dinner, in a candle-lit cellar, was delicious with fresh Romanian cheeses, peasant vegetable soup and thick bread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Headed to Dracula\u2019s castle in Bran now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day five, Wed. July 10 : Budapest to Brasov, Romania  696km\/432 miles and 14.5 hours (including a 1 hour construction stop, a 1-hour dinner stop and a 30 minute speeding ticket stop) Not so long out of Budapest, the multi-lane autobahn ends and the one-lane road through Hungarian villages begins. Then we crossed into Romania. In the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/IMG_0461.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlondontomongolia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}