Tbilisi once again

I've been silent for a few days, mostly because I've been busy eating and drinking. My arrival in Kutaisi, on the morning of October the 25th, was the confirmation that Georgians and Italians are much alike. EVERYBODY applauded upon landing. Not sure if I feel better or worse.

Kutaisi airport is cute, very small with a very sci-fi looking control tower. I soon found the bus to Tbilisi and proceeded to get some necessary sleep. It's a four hours ride anyway, and I needed to rest a bit, considering that Tbilisi greeted me with COLD AND RAIN, around 3°. Damn. And as if this wasn't enough, the first scare of the vacation was waiting: four ATMs refused to let me withdraw, stating they couldn't connnect to my bank. Panic. But the fifth worked, so I managed to relax, also thanks to a freshly baked khachapuri.

These days have been mostly dedicated to relax, after some intense months at work. I did a bit of sightseeing (after two days temperature or much better), met some friends, ate A LOT and saw a wonderful Psychic TV concert at Bassiani, a local club built in the Dynamo Stadium basement. But for the most I've been enjoying the sci-fi landmarks of Tbilisi.

I also went back to the Sameba cathedral, since last time it rained all the time. It's  still a magnificent sight, especially with the sun.

The Dry Bridge marker, so called as it's close to a bridge overlooking a street, is your classic flea marker where you can buy plenty of soviet memorabilia. Medals, coins, daggers, samovars, you name it.

The last one, a 1983 oscilloscope was too beautiful to leave there, so I got it for 50 Lari (a bit less that 20 Euro). It's in perfect working conditions (must be an oscilloscopio "della nonna") and will look very good in my place.

After two days at Gaga's hostel, I moved to Mimi's house, the sister of a future CS guest. Mimi has funny hair, a friendly cat and her grandma's tkemali is wonderful.

Tomorrow I'll go for some Georgian site visits. Mtskheta (the old capital of Georgia), Uplitsitkhe (ancient cave city) and The Jvrari monastery. In the meantime, I keep eating and eating.

Budapest... again.

Seems like I can’t really do a trip without something embarrassing. Yesterday, after spending a nice afternoon with Anna and her friend Judit taking pictures in a park, I headed for the airport, next destination: Kutaisi, Georgia. Little I knew my actual next destination was Dumbasstan. Once in the airport terminal I checked the board and didn’t see my flight to Kutaisi. Weird. I checked again, then checked the boarding pass. And well, here we go. My well documented fear of missing flights, that usually makes me arrive quite earlier, did the trick.

I went to the airport day one day before.

That’s some earlier. So, after a quiet retreat from the airport, I took the bus to Budapest again, and the fun began. Anna had to wake up very early the day after, so she went full-scale Defcon 1 emergency mode. Attempt to calm here proved rather useless, until Adrienn kindly took me in. After another hour-long trip from the airport to the city, I met her and we went drinking, to say goodbye to a long day (for both) and to forget my utter dumbness.

The day after, Adrienn kindly showed me around, starting from an awesome food joint with delicious soups and sandwiches, Bors. Then we went to Buda, where the citadella, the castle and Saint Mathias church (Mátyás-templom) are. The church itself is absolutely beautiful, shame for the Hilton built next to it, although I have to say that the church reflection in the large glass windows offers a pleasant sight.

Other than the church, the hilltop site provides a wonderful view of the Danube river and the Palace of Parliament, one of the most beautiful buildings in Budapest, built in gothic and renaissance revival style. Its dark red dome dominates the white stone of the structures, as well as the innumerable spires.

The citadella and castle area is also a repository or beautiful sights. Smaller churches, beautiful palaces with detailed sculptures. One example is Mary Magdalene church (Mária Magdolna-templom). Of which just the tower remains. During the Ottoman Occupation of Hungary, it was the only functioning Christian church in the country, until its transformation to a mosque in the 16th century. Its original function was later restored and it served as the coronation venue for Franz I of Hungary. It suffered severe damage throughout the World Wars, and it was almost completely destroyed during the Communist Era - with the exception of its Gothic belfry and some minor sections. Today, its ruins serve as a memento of the unpardonable cultural destruction of Communist times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Truly Budapest is a sight to behold. After this long and tiring walk, we went back home, crossing the Danube, which offered the expect magnificent sight, and we passed close to Saint Stephen's Basilica (Szent István-bazilika). At 96 meters, it's one of the two tallest building of Budapest (it's equal to the Palace of the Parliament, symbolisying that worldly and spiritual thinking have the same importance).

After resting a bit I finally gathered my stuff and went out, this time the right day to take off to Georgia. Once in the terminal I made myself recognisable again queuing for a brief moment on the check-in for Tel Aviv, but I soon realised the mistake and very naturally pretended I was just loitering around, slowly and indifferently moving away. The Mossad probably kept an eye on me. Shalom! Once I found the right line, however, and heard Georgian being spoken, I relaxed.

Highlight of the evening: the actual gate, a makeshift prefab room much closer to the actual landing strips.

Well, who cares. საქართველო, მოვდივარ!

 

(The highlight of the evening was actually one of the two Hungarian hostesses. Schicchi wasn't a fool, after all!)

Budapest

You might have noticed I'm not chronicling my Budapest trip to great lengths. True, and the reason is mostly because I planned this trip (the first part, at least) as a relaxing trip, so not too many touristic sights. I'll have time for such a trip later.

The arrival in Budapest on Friday morning was greeted by a bomb alert at the airport. Someone left a handbag on a bench, which later turned out to be just a handbag (well, I haven't read of blasts on news anyway), and the site was immediately cordoned, but we could go out no problem.

Once in town, I wandered about, but the constant drizzle proved to be annoying. The Nagyvásárcsarnok (Great Market Hall) was nearby, so I visited it, and marvelled at the products. Lots of sausages, paprika (of course), wine, fruit and sweets. It's a beautiful building, close to the Szabadság híd (Liberty Bridge).

 

After having a delicious lunch at Frici Papa (advised by my friend, previous guest and current host Anna), a traditional and no-frills Hungarian restaurant, I wandered a bit more, before meeting Nora, my previous host. She and her boyfriend Támas brought me to a fantastic dive bar, which didn't see much change from the past 30 years. After spending some time at their place, discussing Italo Disco among other things, we parted, as they were headed for a Swans concert (jealous!), while I went downtown to meet Anna. Then we started drinking (technically incorrect: they started drinking, I resumed drinking), with her friend Enikő (and Adrienn, who also was my guest with Anna) and we basically never stopped.

The day after we had lunch with a risotto I made, then we picked up where we stopped and went drinking again. They showed me the Szimpla Kert, one of the most wondrous pubs I have ever seen. Everything inside its large building is made from recovered scraps. There's a car inside the garden where you can sit and drink. Apparently this is a thing in Budapest and it has a name: ruin pubs. The same thing, in Italy, would be illegal, impossible or simply ugly, as our national obsession with safety would kick in and close it down. I'd like to ask how many people die or got injured in a year in Budapest ruin pubs, but I don't want to hear the anwer.

After that we met Judit, another of Anna's friends, and the drinking resumed. Egészségére!

Here we go again

- "Don't you feel lonely when you travel alone?"

All solo travellers heard this at least once, asked by friends, relatives, or simple people you talk to. That mix of doubt, suspect and pity in their eyes. But nothing can explain the feel of being out there in the world, alone but never really lonely, because hey, it's a busy planet.

Not tonight.

Not in the bus.

Well, it's 05:20am, so no wonder there's little company around. My trip starts now. First stop, Budapest. Than back to my beloved Georgia, where I'll finally be able to eat khachapuri again and to show the world I didn't learn much language-wise. Also, this time I'm not only going to export, but also import, as my friend Tiko entrusted me with some goods. Well, we have a long merchant tradition, after all.

I'm also quite excited to see Budapest again, though. I visited it years ago, but this time, when I say "years ago" I mean it. We're talking 25 years ago or something... guess this counts as the first time again, right?

And speaking of first times, this is the first time I use the electronic boarding pass. All wonderfully smooth. Also, first time they don't ask me to remove shoes. Unfortunately no first time without assholes in the airport. There's never shortage of those.

The trip has been remarkably smooth. There was, of course, an infant, but he cried during landing only, understandably, as pressure change is always annoying. The hostess spoke an unintelligible mix of English, Hungarian, parseltongue and Epson printer noises. All went according to plans. Well, almost everything. As another "first", I got my first outbound flight without applauses at the end. As I don't believe in human evolution, I can only thing that some extremely popular comedian made fun of the practice, enough to make people realise it's stupid.

Budapest welcomed me with rain, a bomb alert in the airport and an ATM that proposed me to withdraw 1000 €.

Not bad for a start. Not bad.

Brașov

The walk from the station to the hostel, located in the middle of Brașov's busiest old town street, has shown me more of that weird and wonderful sci-fi architecture.

The arrival at the hostel has been positively James Bondish. Or Sam Fishery, for the youngest amount us. Nobody was at the reception, but a sign, with a telephone number, told to call in case of absence. I did and I was instructed to follow some instruction by a woman.

«Go out, turn right and enter this code in the safe box.»

«Done, it opened.»

«OK, you can take key number 6. Close the box and use the key on the electronic pad of the door.»

Not bad for a start.

After a quick shower and rest, I ventured out. Brașov immediately appeared as a nice mix of old and new. A fashionable old street was lined with new shops, while many young people walked by. The central Piața Sfatului (Council Square) is a perfect place to sit and enjoy the consistent sun. From the square, you can see the Biserica Neagră (the Black Church), so called because of the charred colour after a huge fire in 1689. It's huge, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) gothic churches in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, taking pictures was not allowed inside (you know what? Stop with this bullshit!), which is a pity, for the sheer number of interesting sculpted gravestones, though I admit it didn't give me the Tardis Effect like the Duomo of Milano. You know what I mean.

After the Black Church I headed to see the Biserica Sfântul Nicolae (Saint Nicholas' Church), not far. This had the classic pointy towers seen in many Romanian architecture. Unfortunately, surrounded by other small buildings, it was impossible to get a proper angle, especially considering that from the side I was having another against the sun moment.

After a quick tour of the bastions, which gave a nice overlook of the city, I decided to walk up the citadel, the Cetățuia Brașovului, from where you can enjoy a view of the town. Yeah, great view, if it wasn't for the two huge new building popping up into view, which fortunately are a bit blurred with light in this lucky sunset shot here.

Once down again, I went back to the hostel, where I met a Korean girl and a Romanian guy. The girl spoke English, but the guys didn't. He spoke good Spanish though, so I took it as an exercise for my learning. Let's say that, as usual, reading and understanding are a different matter than speaking, but we managed to understand each other enough. Especially when he tried to talk to me about alien abduction and the resulting pregnancies...

The second day has been a mostly resting one. I went to have lunch Ina good city centre restaurant, where again I was the only patron (I'm specializing in this) and joint the Romanian guy, An US guy and a Brazilian girl for some beers at the pub downstairs. I originally wanted wine, but the first two I chose weren't available, so I opted for a nice unfiltered beer and it wasn't also available so I prayed to the waitress to bring me ANY damn beer...

Good bye Brașov, you also treated me well! Tomorrow morning let's hop on a train to Bucharest!

Sighișoara

It didn't take more than 10 minutes to notice how beautiful Sighișoara is. Surely, in Italy we have plenty of hilltop medieval citadels, but because one thing is pretty, doesn't mean others aren't. And this has a different feel, maybe that slavic atmosphere, with pointy towers and scaled roofs. Or maybe the cold temperature, which can't but make you think of people shutting themselves in at night, which actually happened. I explored the citadel streets at night and there was not a soul in sight.

Sighișoara, as many of you surely know, is Vlad Dracul III birthplace, the one that would have been later called Vlad Tepeș, Vlad the Impaler. In fact, the town is unfortunately dotted with vampire-themed tourist traps (the Vlad as a vampire thing is 100% Bram Stoker, here he's just a popular hero who defended Wallachia from Ottomans), starting from Vlad's alleged house, where a restaurant advertises its goods with very 90s Geocities-style bloody fonts. Skipped.

The clocktower, sitting atop a medieval gate, is beautiful and contains a very interesting museum, with a very interesting pharmaceutical section and a collection of several of the town guilds' items. Stuff from the guild of smiths, shoemakers, tinners, butchers, locksmiths, etc. The top overlooks the town and you can see the entirety of Sighișoara from it. Small brass plaques indicate the direction of distance of main cities and capitals. I am still thanking my unbelievable luck with the weather. Not a single cloud in sight. They're probably all in Vanadzor, Armenia (Sorry C.) by now.

At noon, you can see the clock mechanism in motion, inside, moving all sort of small figures, taken from the Zodiac.

Going up the hill, where the historical Biserica sin deal ("Church on the hill") sits, is the famous covered staircase, with wooden roof and walls. I didn't see it the first day, and for the better, because going around there's an amazing view, with one of the best sunsets ever. And since it was sundown in Transylvania, what better than a visit to the local cemetery? Mostly German and Hungarian people are buried there, guarded by flocks of... ehm, by murders of crows (surely put them by the Transylvanian Ministry of Tourism). I visited the Church the day after. Not as stunning as other orthodox churches, but interesting nonetheless. And there was a crypt! What else can I wish for?

The last evening, I met a Croatian and a Spanish guy in the hostel, while an Israeli guy joined us afterwards. After dinner, I ended up drinking wine and playing pool with the latter in a local (rather quiet) club. No Wicker Man scenes here. No one watched us, whispered us "Foreigners, leave at once!", told us we're in danger or even crossed themselves. Disappointing. Hollywood, did you lie to me?? Even worse, the radio played Toto Cutugno after a while and many locals sang to it. That was worse than a mob attack. After the club we went to a still open restaurant (he didn't dine) where a Zoolanderesque gypsy waiter, with a permanent raised left brow, sat us. While my companion ordered a pizza, I ordered a lichiu, which was listed as "plum dessert with cream". Expecting a slice of pie, I was quite flabbergasted when I got served a huge pizza with cream and plums. Don't get me wrong, it was GOOD, but I had gulaș just a hour or two before. I surrendered halfway. Romania - Giorgio, 1-0.

In the morning, after a quick breakfast, I headed to the bus station, where I met an old nice Romanian lady, speaking a perfect English, whom I shared the trip to Brașov with. As with old grannies all over the world, she was quite worried by me traveling alone, but I managed to reassure her. Brașov, here I come!

Romanian Odyssey

Back to Deva, I went straight to the station, where I got the first bad suprise: as doomingly predicted by Internet, there were no direct trains from Deva to Sighișoara. What I can do is take a train to Teiuș, then take one to Sighișoara. Problem: the first (and only train to Teiuș is at 20:30, takes two hours to get there, then the "coincidence" is or hour later. All in all, that'd mean getting to Sighișoara at 02:30am. Well, not much to do I guess, so I decided to go with it.Since it was rather early, I decided to get something to eat, something local. Which proved near to impossible. Deva closes early, thought I suspect being Sunday might have helped. I roamed the streets for one hours, with no luck. But hey, why nobody told me how wicked is Deva modern architecture? Everywhere seemed like 60's science fiction at its best, all white, curves and weird shapes. I tried to look it up on the Internet, but "Romania batshit crazy" architecture didn't give many results. Shame it was too dark to take pictures. In the end I ate some quick fast-food stuff in front of the station, and the wait began.

The train arrived in time (and it was rather nice), my seat was there but the electricity sockets didn't work, so I asked the ticket dude and he led me to some other seats, where I could recharge my devices. Darkness outside prevented me to enjoy the scenery.

We arrived at Teiuș with 30 minutes of delay. Since I had to wait a hour anyway, this didn't bother me. What bothered me, was having to wait another hour for the train, as the second was late as well. I am sure that somewhere, in Romania, someone says that when Nicolae was in power, train ran in time.

One hour in that station was surreal. It was a mix between Silent Hill, the Langoliers and some bad Balkan movie. People slept everywhere, dogs came and went. The toilet was Stephen King's material.

Finally, after all lost were about to be lost, the train arrived. It was greeted by a collective whisper. We could finally leave that god-forsaken station.

The trip has been rather awful. It was one the classic treni della speranza (train of hope), crammed with people, huge luggages and bad mood. A huge nerd, both literally and figuratively, watched bad anime on his monstrous laptop, while in front of me, the three ages of woman tried to get some sleep, mostly in vain. I read a bit, tried to sleep also but without any success. Finally, after an endless journey, we arrived in Sighișoara. The fact it's Vlad Dracul III (Vlad Tepeș) birthplace is clear from the start.

There was no way for me to reach the hostel, which closed after 0:00 anyway. Between being extremely tired (I left Timișoara in the morning) and not wanting to brave the -5°, I decided to sleep in the station. My extra jacket made a good pillow, the room was warm and I ultimately managed to sleep a bit, despite frequent wakes. In the morning I went to eat something warm (my first ciorbă!) and finally reached Burg Hostel, right in the middle of the fortified citadel, where I could finally sleep! Good night, friends!

Hunedoara

Halloween party has been excellent nonetheless. It wasn't an Halloween party actually, just a nice night in a nice place with good music, where I got to meet some of Silvana's friends. By the way, difficult not to mention the humongous dinner we had in a Serbian restaurant. Whoa.

My mind was mostly set on the upcoming departure. According to several websites, going to Hunedoara from Timișoara and then to Sighișoara is just a big fuck you. Especially the first. Apparently you have to go to Deva, then hope to take one of the two buses that mercifully go there. Miss that, and you're fucked. Impaled, even. Easy thing, considering that buses from Timișoara don't seem overly frequent. So I just decided to change strategy, ran a quick BlaBlaCar check and found a ride. Some Gabriel dude, going to Bucharest and passing through Deva. We got in touch, set a time and bam! Problem solved. Both him and the other guy we picked up spoke excellent English, so the trip has been quick, cheap and pleasant.

Getting to Hunedoara from Deva was even easier. "Two buses per day" turned out to be Romanian for "every ten fucking minutes". Well, THANK YOU INTERNET. Anyway, I managed to get there in 20 minutes and... well, Castelul Corvinolor is just majestic.

Built in 1446 in Gothic-Renaissance style, as the hands of John Hunyadi of Hungary (over the site of an older fortification and on a rock above the small Zlaști River), the castle is a large and imposing building with tall and diversely coloured roofs, towers and myriad windows and balconies adorned with stone carvings. It's a Witcher III fan's wet dream.

Exploring it all takes around one hours and a half. Unfortunately, it seems that the leitmotiv of the trip is "against the sun", that while nicely fits the Transylvanian theme, also mean that most of the photo will suck. As with the Orthodox Cathedral in Timișoara, I always arrive at stupid hours, with the sun hanging behind my subjects. Damn sun! Never trusted the bastard anyway...