Christmas in Romania

We woke to a light dusting of snow here in the old town of Sibiu, it makes the view picture postcard perfect for Christmas morning. We intend to stay here tonight (nice hostel) before moving on tomorrow. Since my last post we have travelled some distance, my lazy blogging at fault there. We went to Haytusa in Turkey, an old Hittite city and impressively large, especially for being over 3000 years old. Becka saw some live music in a Turkish town on the Black Sea, but I was too tired and went to sleep!

We crossed the Bosporus in a bit of a dash arriving at Edirne a bit zonked out, the next morning we saw a wondrous mosque with a dome a few inches larger than the Agia Sophia in Istanbul. After a slightly tense crossing we were into Bulgaria and we headed for a ski town, Bansko. We skied and boarded for two days, the second being after a big dump of snow. Powder awesome.

Our plan was then to head to Belgrade in Serbia and then eventually out of the Balkans through Slovenia, where we both thought warranted a further visit. Unfortunately the Serbians wanted 116 Euros for car insurance, which we only needed for 3 days but was valid for a month. In Montenegro it had been 25, so we headed out of Serbia again and now a couple of days later we are in Sibiu in Romania. Romania is more western seeming than Bulgaria, shops in abundance and latin script but the countryside is buzzing with villages and rural life, and the neat villages have a distinct eastern European feel.

Turkey Two

After we got to Turkey from Iran i was in bed with lurg for two days and only pottering for a third. On the fourth we left Erzurum for the Black Sea. The route we hoped to take is shown above, we made it to the highest pass at 2600m but turned back to camp in one of the deserted villages above. The next day, with only a lot of digging to show for a morning's progress we doubled back and took a longer road. Today we reached the Black Sea, pleasantly warm weather after so long in the snow. We are staying in Samsun tonight.