Vampires, Gypsies, Saints and the Unsaintly

WE’D FINISHED DINNER AND were talking travel over a glass of red. My wife expressed a desire to see some of Eastern Europe. I said I’d be up for that … so long as we could do it on two wheels – EACH (we both ride BMW 700GS bikes)! And she said “OK, let’s do it”. So, in September 2018, we did.

We gave ourselves three weeks for a self-guided tour. Romania got the gig, because: 1) Transylvania 2) Dracula – Romania’s most famous citizen! 3) The Transfagarasan and Transalpina Passes. We mapped out our tour, including a short side trip to Hungary and Slovakia. We took our own TomTom GPS with our routes loaded - the road signs don’t have English subtitles! Great for getting into and out of the capital Bucharest and other cities.

Romania today has a population of 20 million and is a member of the EU. The country is defined by its recent history. Romania became a Communist Warsaw Pact country (Romanian Peoples’ Republic), after