I spent a day in Bucharest, and couldn’t wait to get out of there. I went to the Black Sea, a place I’d always wanted to go. I had a Eurail pass for the Balkan Peninsula, so I figured it would be easy to get around. Wrong. All Romanian trains are on indefinite strike. I had to get around by convincing people to give me rides and paying plenty because gas is so expensive.

The coast has small Soviet-style resort towns for Romanian families to go on vacation. No one speaks a word of English. It’s actually a pretty cool place to visit if you’re a 10-year-old Romanian kid.

Romanian restaurants pride themselves on having page after page of animal products. They honestly have pages of pork products, pages of beef products (every part of the animal is listed with some sort of sauce or side dish) pages of various grilled meats (I saw “bear” on the menu at one restaurant). For me, the vegetarian, there was always pizza with peppers and ketchup. And that’s what I ate.

I’m sure there are a lot of nice people in Romania. I’m sure they are warm, welcoming, and honest. But Romania is in serious trouble. The government is so corrupt that people have no hope of a future. They make about $5 per day. Their expenses are higher than that. I spoke with people who said most Romanians wish for the communists to come back, because at least under Ceausescu they had some meat, eggs, milk, and sugar. Now they say they are starving. They have a huge amount of farmable land, and most of it is being done with horses and donkeys. There are gypsies on the roads everywhere.

The communist days weren’t so easy either.

My big problem with Romanians is that many of them are serious liars. I had a date with a Romanian girl in New York last year; she lied about everything and enjoyed it. While I was traveling, I was also trying to sell a camera on Craigslist back in New York, so whenever I checked my email I would also repost my ad. But not from Romania.

In this weekend’s travel pages: traveling in Japan, last-chance winter fun, and urban travel in a new crop of destinations.

Japan
– “A Mountain of Tranquility Near Tokyo’s Frenzy” (NYT)
– “Island-hopping mad in Japan” (Times of London)

Enjoying the Last of Winter
– “The Cold Show in Fairbanks, Alaska” (NYT)
– “How to Enjoy a Nordic Ritual at Any Age” (NYT)
– “Learning to snowboard at Mountain High & Bear Mountain” (LA Times)

Urban Travel
– “Bogotá: 100 Percent Colombian” (SF Chronicle)
– “Food? Art? History? It’s all in Lyon” (Chicago Tribune)
– “Instant weekend: Bucharest” (Times of London)

(image via ruudb0y’s photostream)

Romania officially joined the European Union this year, and the Boston Globe’s Tom Haines used the occasion to kick off a four-part series to see how the changes will affect the citizens of many of the nations that have recently been welcomed into the EU. Part one begins in the fog-shrouded foothills of the Carpathian range. “[W]ith a wash of midmorning sun, only faint wisps of white lingered above the village of Voronet and a stone church adorned with frescoes in rich red, gold, and blue,” Haines writes. “The Orthodox images of Adam plowing, of the Last Judgment, and more were not sheltered inside a sanctuary, but exposed, vulnerable, on outside walls.”