Jennifer's visit to Romania

4/8/2007 - they there all!!! HAPPY EASTER!!!! wowowowow...bucharest is a great place to be on easter...no one is here driving around...i think they have all gone to their family's to hang out and celebrate....although last night trying to find a restaurant that was open was a bit of work...although a bunch of us tried a new spanish place....yummy!!!! today i am celebrating with friend's...we are having a mexican easter....hahahahaha....whatever that means....actually it means that corona actually made into town and we bought a bunch....should be fun as we have a beautiful day....and then tomorrow i head to italy....so i am trying to catch some things up...its my april break...and boy am i happy about it....on with the entry......below is a shot of a flower stall right around the corner from my place....the folks of bucharest LOVE flowers....i have seen everyone with flowers this weekend

in february of this year Jennifer, an ice friend stopped by on her trip around the world...she hung in romania for a week....and we went to poland and the czech republic...this entry is for romania....below are some pictures from our small road trip and exploration...

jennifer's first afternoon in town we walked around herestrau...the large park in the city with a lake (that they drain in the winter....who knows why!!!!) but around this lake they have this one set of statues to the founding members of the EU....but only their heads....the guy jennifer is standing with was from germany i think...i don't really remember....its weird...no shoulders...only their heads....good for a picture i guess :)

we also stopped in the "old school" style mall...where romanians used to shop before they had malls just like everywhere else in the world....this place is called the expo center...very strange manequins in the store windows....the building itself is a huge warehouse styled coverd place...its just an interesting step back in time, but don't buy CDs for burning there...they destroyed my burner in my computer....ugh....

the shot above is of an old orthodox style church located outside of Bran, where dracula's fake castle is located...it was cool to go check out this church, even if it was closed...had a nice conversation with a romanian woman who could speak english...and the pictures you see are painted directly on the walls...up in the north east corner of romania there are supposed to be many of these painted monasteries...hopefully i'll make it up there at some point

the two picture above were taken about the same time....they were on the road from bran to brasov...the guys working in the fields were funny...i yelled across the the road to see if it would okay to take their picture....they smiled and nodded and kept right on working....and then when we looked to our right we saw this shot of the transylvanian alps....just stunning....

from brasov we headed to sinaia....but the weather was horrible so we couldn't do much...we did have a tasty lunch at the serbian place in the hills...plus we stopped by the sinaia monastery...this is a shot of the monastery...we couldn't go in, but we could walk around the grounds...this monastery is still used by men becoming priests and is run by nuns...so we saw a few flowing black robes, but because it was raining so much no one wanted to stop and talk...

within the monastery complex there is a really old, smallish, orthodox church, which was also locked, but the picture above is of the picture painted on the walls of the church above the front door....very cool....okay....that is the extent of what jennifer visited with me....she also spent the week in bucharest exploring and getting readjusted to not being in africa....and then we were off to poland and the czech republic....on with that next :)