Traveling to Romania: Advice?

[brossa]

I'll be accompanying my wife while she gives some presentations in Romania over a week in mid-June. We'll be traveling to Sibiu and Targu Mures. We'll have some local 'wranglers' to make sure we get around to where we need to go, but if anyone here has experience with Romania I'd appreciate your input.

[Bear_Nenno]

I enjoyed Romania. The people are all really friendly and everyone seems to speak English. The roads are pretty shitty, though. Will you be driving? I went here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bran_Castle) and here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunyad_Castle) last summer. Good times!

[liirogue]

My husband is Romanian, and we visited there two years ago. It's a beautiful country with great food. Meals tend to be very meat-heavy - the sausages and salami are amazing. And the cheese... I dream about the cheese. It's very easy to find fresh cheese, and it usually served with every meal.

I would strongly recommend not driving yourself. Romanian drivers are nuts and the roads are in bad shape. It is very common to see horse-drawn wagons and livestock is frequently on the road. Pedestrians are also common but hard to see - there's very little in the way of street lights, so night is very dangerous.

Watch out for stray dogs. They are everywhere. We never had any problems, but I wouldn't recommend going out at night alone when they seem to congregate in packs.

If you can, go to Peles Castle. I highly recommend the full tour. It's more expensive, but the castle is just amazing. You can get a tour in English easily.

There are two restaurants I highly recommend. Coliba Haiducilor in Poina-Brasov is a really neat restaurant that serves traditional Romanian food. The atmosphere there is great. Taverna Sarbului is actually Serbian food, but it was the best restaurant we ate at. They have several locations throughout Romania. I had some lamb sausage there that still makes my mouth water when I think about it.

Let me know if you have any specific questions and I'll do my best to answer! Romania is a beautiful country.

[Chefguy]

They make stunningly beautiful carpets, but I suspect the days of $500 masterpieces are gone.

[brossa]

I don't think that we'll be doing any driving of our own - we're part of a larger group of specialists giving lectures and we'll all be going from place to place together. Our Romanian hosts will be doing the transporting, and they'll be arranging for sightseeing too although I'm not in the loop to know about the details of that yet.

I guess I'm most curious about any particularly locoregional food or art that I should be on the lookout for. It sounds like I should focus on sausage and cheese - are there local delicacies, wines or spirits that I won't find elsewhere? Any other arts/crafts specific to the region? I usually try to pick up some piece of regional art when I travel. Thanks for the mention of rugs, Chefguy- any advice about that?

[Chefguy]

Originally Posted by brossa

I don't think that we'll be doing any driving of our own - we're part of a larger group of specialists giving lectures and we'll all be going from place to place together. Our Romanian hosts will be doing the transporting, and they'll be arranging for sightseeing too although I'm not in the loop to know about the details of that yet.

I guess I'm most curious about any particularly locoregional food or art that I should be on the lookout for. It sounds like I should focus on sausage and cheese - are there local delicacies, wines or spirits that I won't find elsewhere? Any other arts/crafts specific to the region? I usually try to pick up some piece of regional art when I travel. Thanks for the mention of rugs, Chefguy- any advice about that?

I'm completely out of touch with all of that, but I'm sure you can find some good info on the intertoobs about different regions and knots and all that. When I was there, it was only for about a week, but I saw some unbelievable rugs. Unfortunately, at that time they were just getting out from under the old regime and one never knew if the customs people at the airport would confiscate your rug or just want a bribe. So I didn't take the chance. A coworker took one through in a large bag and just pinned a $20 bill to it. When he got home, the carpet was still there and the twenty was gone. Damn.