One of the things I loved about backpacking in rural Romania was the way that many village homes were works of folk art. Now it looks like someone has written a book about them. I'll have to look it up.


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Histories of technology (*cough*) tend to treat the breast-strap horse harness as something that was rendered obsolete by the padded collar and disappeared by the year 1200 AD. However, it turns out it's alive and well in Romania and it has certain advantages over the padded collar. Transylvanian Horseman has an interesting photo-filled post on ( Read more... )

I can't believe it's taken me a year to notice that Julian Ross of Lunca Ilvei, Romania, now has a blogJulian is a British engineer who left his job designing London tube stations to start a bed and breakfast and horseback riding centre in a Transylvanian mountain village. I visited him in the summer of 2002 and again in the spring of 2005. Lunca ( Read more... )

These days, even a little restaurant on the marches of Transylvania has its own website, complete with a slideshow. To properly appreciate this place, you're going to have to imagine the savour of delicious tripe soup and the clientele of happy lumberjacks with fur hats and gold teeth. That's how I experienced itI still want to teach English in ( Read more... )

There's a news story going around about American frat boys suing 20th Century Fox because there's footage of them making obnoxious misogynist comments in the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. I'm not terribly sympathetic; you don't need to be an elected official to know that you're ( Read more... )

I got a note today from the awesome Julian of Lunca Ilvei, Romania. It reminded me of how badly I want to see that town again. (See here for my last trip there.) I still want to teach English in rural Romania for a year, although in all practicality I will probably have to wait until I finish my degree, because library resources in the region ( Read more... )

Note to me: must go back and copy out the reference to legal evidence and Transylvanian corpses that I found today ( Read more... )

So let me see. Last time I wrote, I was in Cluj. It was Thursday. That was just before my final and most infamous encounter with Romanian buses. In Romania, there are a lot of small private bus companies. Most of them don't have a web presence. But if you don't like the price or the schedule for the train, all you have to do is call around ( Read more... )

Day 13. Still not king ( Read more... )

Me and carters, oh yeah. I don't know what I'm doing, or if just having blonde hair is enough, but the carters in this country certainly like me ( Read more... )