Today was the most amazing day yet. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot to say about it, but I have never let that stop me before. So here it goes.

Our destination was 3 different painted monasteries which are exactly what they sound like. They are unlike any church we have ever visited before, and completely mesmerizing.

The first that we went to was Voronet Montestary, often referred to as the Sistine Chapel of the east. It was built in 1488. Let me repeat that, 1488. That’s before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That’s a really long time ago. I think they started the frescoes about 30 years after that, but still that was a long time ago.

This place charges an extra photo tax of 10 lei ($2.50) to take pictures of the outside of the building, but no photos are allowed inside. Let me tell you, that was an extra $5 well spent. You know that there’s no way thetwinsontour are not going to take pictures, lots of pictures.

The first sight as you step through the entrance gate is absolutely breathtaking–a church completely covered with fresco paintings– on the outside. Like completely covered. It’s so amazing. These are the original 500 year old paintings. They haven’t been repainted. They aren’t covered up by protective plastic. They don’t have any walls built around them. They are just there, hanging out in the elements saying take my picture. They are in amazing shape for having been outside in the rain, snow, wind, sun for 500 years. Until you walk around to the North side of the building. (I know its north because the guide told us so. thetwinsontour have not suddenly developed a sense of direction.) The north side has been nearly completely worn away with just a few fragments and traces of painto left behind. Most of what remained was up top just below the protection of the overhanging roof. This is more what you expect 500 year old outdoor frescoes to look like.

The paintings are made in wet plaster. So they would have smeared the plaster on the walls and then raced to get it painted. Can you imagine how difficult that would have been to paint it bit by bit without computers or projectures or whatever they would use nowadays to undertake such an endeavor?

Most of the paintings have a blue background. They haven’t been able to figure out which flowers/plants/minerals were used to make this distinctive blue color, so they just gave up and named the color Voronet blue after the church. Is that a color in the 64 box of Crayolas? It should be! And for that matter, doesn’t a 64 box of Crayons bring a smile to everyone’s face regardless of how old you are and make your heart skip a beat? I digress.

Obviously, the paintings tell religious stories. The language of the Orthodox church was Slovakian, a form of Russian that was written in the cyrillic alphabet. No one spoke that, much like Catholics don’t speak Latin. Also, they can’t read the cyrillic alphabet. So they had to have paintings to convey church stuff to the masses.

The church is rather small (most Orthodox churches are), but the inside is completely covered in paintings as well. The paintings are bright and vibrant. They were cleaned recently because after 500 years of burning candles, they tend to get a little dirty. But they didn’t touch up any of the paintings or repaint them. Just cleaned them up some.

Luckily we were able to buy a few postcards because you know my fingers were itching to take pictures. It’s so hard to follow the rules in the face of such overwhelming magnificience.

Our next monastery was Humor montestary. Again it had a photo tax of 10 lei to take pictures which thetwinsontour gladly paid without hesitation. We need pictures!

It is much newer than the first one. It was built in 1530. Which is still a heck of a long time ago! So long ago that I don’t even know what specific world events were happening. But according to wikipedia it looks like Henry VIII still only had 1 wife in 1530! So you know that was a long time ago!

The predominant color in these paintings is red, but I don’t think it has a special name like Voronet blue.

Just like the other one, the north side of the building is nearly void of any paintings due to 500 years of weather. I guess most of the weather systems in Maldova comes down the mountains and blows to the north.

This one has also been cleaned up on the inside so that you can see the beautiful paintings without a covering of black candle smoke.

Our third and final montestary of the day was Neamt montestary. It was built in the 15th century. Yet it stands in stark contrast to the other two. It doesn’t have any paintings on the outside, just on the inside. And the paintings haven’t been cleaned, so some of the walls are so black that you can’t tell that there are paintings on them at all. But it’s still amazing despite the centuries of smoke damages. And they let you take pictures inside– without a photo tax! What a bargain. We all know thetwinsontour love a bargain!!

There are a lot more than 3 montestaries here in Maldova. I think there are about 12, but that is all that we had time to visit. Most of them are UNESCO World Heritage Sights, so we got to check a few more of those off the list. thetwinsontour adore UNESCO World Heritage Sights! We asked if there are painted montestaries other places in Europe, and our guide said that there is one in Bulgaria. But that one doesn’t look like a church at all from the outside because they had to keep it hidden from Turkish invaders.

And I think that’s about all the important stuff that I can remember. I keep learning too much stuff every day to possibly remember it all.

Love,

thetwinsontour

A picture says a thousand words, so here’s a couple million words for you that say more than I ever could…

Today we did a lot of driving (sleeping), but we did get to visit another fortified church. And once again, we weren’t able to go into the bacon tower. They keep talking about bacon towers and special attic ventilation for bacon. Ancient life was built around bacon, as it should be. Do you know what I have not eaten since we got here? Bacon! Not a single meal they have served us has any bacon in it. It’s crazy!

Anyways, this was the fortified church of Biertan. It’s claim to fame is the divorce tower. Before you could get a divorce, the acrimonious couple had to spend three weeks alone in the small tower with one small bed and no silverware. The idea is that living close together in tight quarters will rekindle your love, but I think watching your husband eat with no silverware would have the opposite effect. The divorce tower does boast a high success rate. There was only one divorce in the history of the church, so the husband must have been a really obnoxious soup slurper.

Their other claim to fame is a super complicated and secure door lock. They invented it to take to the Paris World Expo, you know, the one they built the Eiffel Tower for. And the lock won first place! I don’t know if that means it beat out the Eiffel Tower, or if there were different categories, or if the Eiffel Tower wasn’t part of the competition. It is a pretty magnificent lock though and looks much older than 120 years old.

After all that excitement, it was time for a nice long nap on the bus until lunch. After lunch, we had a walking tour of Sighisoara. Now that I went to the effort to get that spelled correctly, I should write about it a bit. First of all, this is the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler. Secondly, it’s the oldest continuously inhabited citadel in Europe (or maybe the world). Thirdly, it is a UNESCO world heritage sight. I need to find a checklist of UNESCO sights so that I can check them off as I accidentally go to visit them. We have been to quite a few in Romania already. thetwinsontour do adore a good UNESCO world heritage sight.

In Sighisoara, there are these covered wooden stairs that go up the mountainside. They were built for the children to be able to get up to school. From the bottom, it doesn’t look like too many stairs. In actuality, it is 174 stairs. 174 stairs ancient, wooden stairs. 174 stairs? No problem. We got this! Except we had 15 minutes to make it up 174 stairs, take a quick selfie in front of 174 stairs, and then race back down them and get to the bus with a stop at the WC on the way. And, in typical twinsontour style, we made it with 1 minute to spare. Whew.

I covered the rest of Day 5 in the day 6 blog while this one was lost. Aren’t you glad I found it?

Love,

thetwinsontour

Well I had written half of a perfectly good and incredibly boring post about Day 5 in Romania. And now its gone. I don’t know where it went! I didn’t accidentally publish it, and I don’t know how I could have deleted it. So maybe I will find it when I get back on the good wifi. Maybe day 5 will be forever shrouded in mystery and undocumented.

One mystery from day 5 that I will shed some light on is the KFC crispy hot dog. We had seen some billboards for this and were quite intrigued, as any normal person would be. So it is a crispy chicken strip in a stale hot dog bun with ketchup, mustard, pickless, and onions. Now that thetwinsontour have sampled this culinary delight (?), you need not fall to temptation to this regrettable menu specialty. On the plus side, thetwinsontour did not have to #saynotothestraw at KFC because they had paper straw!! Woohoo! Good thing we had already planned to go to the grocery store for chocolate pudding and snacks. Due to our disappointing hotdogs, we also picked up a yogurt.

So, onto day 6. This morning started out with a walking tour of Targu Mures to see the sights. Luckily, thetwinsontour explored this part of town the night before on our own and had already gotten millions of pictures of the beautiful Art Deco buildings without people in the way. Thetwinsontour hate it when tourists get in the way of their pictures! Local people are acceptable, sometimes. I’m not really sure why there were so many art deco buildings there (with a few ugly communist buildings mixed in) or why there was a building boom there in the 1890s (one of them said 1890 at the top). Anyways the buildings were quite beautiful and we loved them all.

Then we went to an ancient library that didn’t allow photos. I don’t know what it is with these places that don’t allow photos. It’s not so that they can make money on postcards because they didn’t have a gift shop or any postcards. What a missed opportunity on their part. But I can screenshot the few pictures they have on their website! (see below) The library was founded by a rich nobleman in the late 1700s who went around Europe on a book shopping spree and came home with thousands of books for his library. thetwinsontour wish they could go on a multi year shopping spree! We could excell at that for sure! Especially if our goal was gas station candy bars! We try to be strong, but every time we stop for a potty break we end up buying another candy bar, or seven. We just can’t help it. We are powerless against the wide variety of Milka chocolate bars available.

After that we were back on the the road again. Apparently it was a super windy road with lots of twists and turns through the mountains. I say apparently because after searching the woods for brown bears as we drove past and not spotting any, I quickly fell asleep for the rest of the journey.

After lunch we made a quick photo stop in Bicaz Canyon. We were also supposed to have time to shop in the souvenir stands on the side of the road, but obviously our tour guide underestimates the amount of time my sister needs to take selfies because we were the last ones back on the bus and we didn’t have time to buy a darn thing. The canyon looks more like you are standing in between some mountains than standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon. I wouldn’t have known it was a canyon if not for the name. I would have just thought it was a pretty photo spot.

Now comes the tricky part. Our final destination was Maldova! No, not the country that most of our faithful readers have probably never heard of, but rather the region of Romania called Maldova. I haven’t looked at a map to see how close we were to adding another country to the list, but at least we weren’t close enough to get a welcome to Maldova text on our cell phones because that would be tragic to be so close to another country, yet so far away. Maldova the country was a part of Romania before Communism, but then it was annexed and became part of the USSR and the other half stayed part of Romania. After the fall of communism the USSR part became it’s own country instead of going back to Romania because its mostly Russians that live in the country of Maldova now (even google lists the official language as Russian). See, it’s a little complicated.

On that note of confusion, I shall let you go for now.

Love,

thetwinsontour

PS- I haven’t mentioned this yet, but don’t forget to like thetwinsontour Facebook page. We are also on Instagram! but someone stole our name so we had to use underscores the_twins_on_tour so be sure to follow us there too. As soon as I think of a more creative way to use our name, I will be changing our Insta name. So go like the page now to avoid any confusion.

Armed with the warmest scarves ever created, even warmer than a wink from George Clooney across a crowded room (blatant plagiarism and I don’t care. A line that great needs to be repeated) we were ready to face the brisk October morning. Our first stop was the second largest outdoor ethnographic museum in Europe which is just about 10 minutes outside of town. Its usually closed on Mondays and was open just for our tour group, so we couldn’t go inside any of the houses, but we were able to walk around and see all of the buildings from the outside. I am usually not a fan of ethnographic villages because usually they feel contrived and really hokey, but I quite enjoyed this one. Maybe it was the beautiful fall weather, maybe it was just the magic of Romania, maybe it was the 5,000 steps I got. Just think how many steps I would have gotten if we had time to see the whole park. There are over 300 buildings from all over Romania that have been disassembled and reconstructed in a wooded park with a large pond. Still no bear sightings though, but there were a lot of uncooperative ducks.

Our next stop was Alba Iluila, a city here in Transylvania that dates back over 1,000 years. Our guide told us all about the history and importance of this town, but of course I can’t remember it now, and the wikipedia information is not super interesting. It is a fortified city– built in the shape of a star, because they thought that a star shaped citadel would be easier to defend. The star shape only dates back to the 1700s when they were worried about Turkish invasion. They also have some Roman Ruins inside the citadel! Everyone should know by now that thetwinsontour love Roman Ruins! Alas, it was just a small portion of a cobblestone road, but it was a Roman road. This citadel is a complete juxtaposition of time periods. So, we can stand inside a centuries old fortification and look out onto Soviet era communist apartment buildings. So, this is the fascinating part– in 1987, an architect decided that one of these buildings needed to be separated and a road put between the 2 halves. I am not sure how tall these apartments were, maybe 10 stories or so, but they were big. So, as part of the propaganda, they decided the residents didn’t need to empty their apartments first. They just separated 2 fully furnished buildings and moved them across the street using rails. I find this completely fascinating! I am still trying to wrap my brain around it too. From the front it looks like 2 large apartment blocks of varying heights, but from the back you can tell that they are distinct buildings that have just been built (or pushed) next to each other.

After that we went to Calnic fortified church. What is a fortified church you ask? Well that’s a good question. It’s a church with ramparts built around it. This one had a wine cellar with giant wine barrels (its important to save the wine from marauding invaders I guess), a bell tower, and a bacon tower where the parishioners kept their bacon (it’s even more important to protect the bacon!). Also in the walls are areas where each parishioner could store some provisions. We were able to climb up to the bell tower, but the bacon tower was closed much to my disappointment. Despite the lack of bacon, this little place was amazing. It’s in a small town in the Transylvanian countryside and absolutely gorgeous.

I have not described our meals enough, and you know my mother worries that we don’t eat enough when we travel. Rather than describe the delicious candy bars that I have scarfed down, I shall tell you about our dinner. We went to the small town of Sibiel for dinner. Sibiel happens to be located next to the stork capital of Europe. Its October, so they have already flown the coop back to Africa. However we did see their giant nests (out the bus window) on the top of every light pole. For some reason, we got off the bus and into horse drawn wagons, or as our guide calls them, boogies (buggy), to go the last kilometer or so to Sibiel. I guess it was for the rustic charm, but I felt sorry for the horse because I have eaten a lot of chocolate bars. Our dinner was in a private residence, but it is set up like a restaurant with a large dining area. Apparently after the fall of communism, this town quickly marketed itself as an agro-tourism destination which means a lot of people opened their homes as bed and breakfasts and let people live the farm life and milk cows! If we had known about this sooner, this trip probably would have turned out a lot different.

Anyways, dinner started with a shot of plumb brandy which may be the most vile local moonshine I have ever drank. We had a plate of appetizers with the prize for most interesting (disgusting) going to the bits of pork lard. Its literally just slimy, slightly gelatinous, bacon flavored fat. We also had homemade wine, soup, polenta, and cabbage rolls which were all quite tasty.

And that sums up day 4 in a very large nutshell.

Love,

thetwinsontour

Today our tour headed to Transylvania! Actually, I think most of our destinations are in Transylvania, but don’t worry, Romanians are not into vampires. We headed to the Carpathian mountains which is the longest mountain range of Europe. I wish I could describe the beautiful scenery, but it was a late night of fountain watching last night. I slept the whole way. One moment I am listening to our guide talk about life in communist Romania and how she lived on the 11th floor, but there was usually no electricity to power the elevator, and the next minute I am out. Dead to the world. Until we got to our first stop–a gas station potty break. Then I was out again until we made it to our destination–a monastery in a town famous for its therapeutic thermal waters. I have absolutely no idea how old it was, (but I may look it up when I get working wi-fi and insert that number here). Apparantly, rich people used to build churches so that they would have a nice place to be buried. Orthodox churches are much smaller than Catholic churches. You’d probably look at it and call it a chapel. Unfortunately, no pictures allowed inside. In Orthodox churches only the priests are allowed to see the altar (and men too. The only way a woman is allowed near the altar is if she has special permission from the priest to vacuum there.) So the altar is hidden behind a wall with doors that looks like an altar. I don’t remember the word at the moment, but you likely wouldn’t know the word if you read it either.

Then we were back on the road again (ie asleep fast). In between my sister’s snores I listened to the guide talk about Romanian wildlife. Romania has the largest undisturbed forest in Europe (after Russia) so they have all manner of wildlife. For example, 60% of all European brown bears live in Romania! Hunting brown bears has not been allowed since the fall of Communism, and I think a lot of that is because their communist dictator loved to hunt them so much, so part of them breaking free of oppressive communist rule was to save the bears. Bears are very territorial, so the big bears run the smaller ones out of the forest to the fringes of towns to eat garbage. She said that their are frequent news stories of bears in the towns, which means bears can’t hibernate because they are not getting enough to eat. Alas, we did not see a bear today, but we did see a bear crossing sign. So close, yet so far away. They also have Europe’s last population of lynx! Alas we did not see any of these big cats either. Nor did we see any deer, stag, or wild boar out the bus window. You know I would have jolted awake at the mere whisper of bear!

For lunch, we were on our own in the old town of Sibiu. Our guide suggested several restaurants, but she also mentioned pastry shops. So it goes without saying what thetwinsontour ate for lunch. There were several pastry shops on the pedestrian street with take out windows, and we weren’t the only ones waiting in line. Its pretty much the thing to do here. We got a gogosi which come in both sweet and savory flavors: salty cheese, sweet cheese, ham & cheese, something that wasn’t translated, apricot, berry, apple, and plain. So this is simliar to a cross between a fried pie and an empanada. Clearly we got the ham and cheese because it screams lunch. It was slightly more expensive than the other flavors at 4.50 lei, so that’s about $1.12 instead of the 4 lei or $1 that the others cost. And it was delicious! And we had plenty of time to wander around exploring the town and buy a couple of magnets. Fast, delicious, and cheap! That’s what I am talking about!

The interesting thing about Sibiu is that it is known as the city of eyes due to their unique architectural style. The attics have ventilation holes in them that make it look like there are eyes in the roof of the houses. This region was inhabited by Saxons (Germans) who had a mad love of bacon so they had to ventilate the attics properly to cure the bacon. I’m sure there is something more to this, but I prefer to focus on the bacon part. Because, well, bacon…

Today was a bit colder, ok really cold. Somehow I did not prepare for this properly. It was so cold and windy on our walking tour. I was frozen. I did bring my down coat that we took to Ecuador and Antarctica. I brought a fleece hoodie and a raincoat, but I didn’t bring a scarf or hat. I have a hundred scarves at home, but did I bring one? No! Why not? Because low temperatures of 40 degrees didn’t seem that cold. Did my neck get cold? Yes! Did I have to go to Zara (a discount Spanish fashion store) and buy a scarf? Yes! Was it like the most expensive thing in the store? Just about! Did I care? No! Is it the biggest monstrosity of a scarf that you have ever seen? Yes! Could it be used as a shawl or very warm blanket instead of a scarf? Of course! Does it make my neck sweat when I wear it? You bet! Do I love it? Absolutely!

And that pretty much sums up our day!

Love,

thetwinsontour

Greetings from Bucharest. We arrived here yesterday afternoon after a rather uneventful journey (except for the fact that this tale almost ended before it started. We got stuck on the airplane in Chicago because the airplane door wouldn’t open! For like 20 minutes! Luckily, we had snacks and didn’t have to slide down the emergency slide.) Since people always ask, we travelled from Kansas City to Chicago, had a 9 hour flight from Chicago to Vienna, and then an hour and a half flight to Bucharest. So, there you have it.

Your fair heroines are currently sitting al fresco, waiting on their orders of Moldovan Stew with polenta. Not sure what we ordered, but it sounds authentic. And, our mother loves polenta– at least she claims to every time she drags us to The Dinner Theater. Of course, despite the promising polenta, my mother would turn up her nose at this place– can you believe that they serve Pepsi instead of Coca Cola? Arggggg, such a tragedy!! It is quite cool– lower 60’s, cloudy, and breezy– which explains the patio heaters and blankets on the chairs. (Yes, we are currently shivering under a blanket that someone else has used. The GERMS! Ha ha! Don’t tell my aunts.) To top it off, since we are sitting outside in the fresh air, they brought us a clean ash tray. (We actually saw quite a few ceramic ash trays in the souvenir shops.)

This morning we had a city tour. By bus. That means taking pictures out of moving bus windows with very few stops for selfies. What can I tell you about Bucharest architecture? Some buildings are 500 years old. Some areas were destroyed by bombs in WWII, so they were replaced with Soviet style communist buildings. Bucharest is also prone to earthquakes. There was a 7.2 earthquake in 1977 that decimated the city. The dictator took advantage of the devastation to clear a massive area and build an administrative area, with a huge palace to house the government, intellectual buildings, and a boulevard to rival the Champs Eleysées. He only had to relocate 60,000 people to realize his architectural dreams. The palace– Piața Constituției– is the second largest administrative building in the world, after the Pentagon. However, it is the heaviest in the world, but only the third largest by volume. It weighs 4 million tons, largely due to the 5 ton crystal chandelier. Construction on this grandiosity began in 1984– to put that in perspective, that is the same year I was rocking out to Madonna and singing Material Girl at the top of my lungs. It took 13 years to build, which is lightning fast for this type of monstrosity. They had crews working 24 hours a day– think of the overtime! The building could probably have been finished more quickly, but they took a break after toppling the communist dictatorship on Christmas Day 1989.

Woo doggies. That is a lot of factoids on the Palace of the Parliament. It is built in a hodgepodge of architectural styles, but mostly French neo classical because that is what the dictator liked. So, it looks like an old building, but really, my Madonna Like A Virgin cassette tape is much older than this palace! The dictator had visions of standing on the balcony and waving to his adoring public just like Queen Elizabeth. Alas, he faced the firing squad before ever realizing his dreams. Only one person has ever stood on the balcony and waved, and that was the King of Pop– Michael Jackson! Of course, MJ thought he was in Budapest rather than Bucharest.

It is hard to top palaces on a city bus tour. Our afternoon is at leisure, which is why we are now chowing down on massive amounts of polenta– it is truly yummy!

What to do with an unscheduled afternoon in Bucharest? Thetwinsontour did not hesitate– their is a special Banksy exhibit at the Triumph Arch! Woohoo! Thetwinsontour love to see special art exhibits that will never, ever come to Kansas. Especially when they are by the most famous, influential, elusive street artist in the world!! It was a great exhibit– and it was housed within the Arcul de Triumf itself. That makes doubly cool. Plus, we took the subway to get there. thetwinsontour really love subways. And this one only cost 5 lei for 2 tickets, so about $1.12 toubd trip– super affordable.

We also managed to sneak in a visit to the Bucharest municipal museum. This was completely unintentional. But, we were walking to the subway station when we spied posters talking about Diego Velazquez and Las Meninas! Now, our Spanish teachers taught us right– we love all things Velazquez. But Las Meninas is the pinnacle of Velazquez’s painting superiority– not even Bob Ross or Banksy can rival this masterpiece. Then in the courtyard, there was a Menina, in Romanian garb. It was like a moth to a flame, it just drew me in like a blue light special. I tried to read the informational posters, but my Romanian is just not up to snuff, especially since I have only been exposed to it for the last 2 days. So, into the municipal museum we went. It cost 10 lei per person (about $2.50) But, if you want to take pictures, that is an extra 15 lei! Not really sure what I was supposed to get from this museum– their was a room of jade clocks– the signs were in English– but they were talking about dreams and the fluidity of time going backwards. Then there were displays about communism in Bucharest and famous Bucharesti people. Really, I just walked through there as quickly as I could. Do you know what was not inside that museum? Not one single mention of Velazquez! That Menina was just there to taunt me.

Of course, thetwinsontour don’t move too fast, so that filled up our day until it was time to go see the fountains at 8pm. Remember earlier how I mentioned the boulevard that is bigger than the Champs d’ Elyesée? Well, there are 41 fountains running down the middle of representing the 40 regions of Romania plus Bucharest. And, of course, if you have 41 fountains, that is just begging for a laser light spectacular set to music! It was a brisk 12 degrees Celsius and the spray from the fountains was drenching us, but it was all so fantastic that we didn’t really care! There were people all around us, just singing and dancing to the rhythm of the fountains while thetwinsontour just clicked away, examining every angle of the fountains. It was highly enjoyable, so we don’t regret being loose on the town eating pizza and drinking a cider (even the waiter thought that was weird. We ordered it, and he’s like, that’s beer, it has alcohol. And we were like, yes we know. But it was pear lychee cider and strawberry lime cider. How do you not try that? Even if it is nearly $4.) way past our bedtime. So much for getting to bed early!

Love,

thetwinsontour