Romania

After a 13 hour train journey we arrived in the mountain town of Sinaia in Romania early this morning. The last couple of days in Bulgaria we spent camping by the black sea and in a small town with a name too hard to pronounce. The crazy bulgarian who made us dance turned out to be quite a character and was actually great fun. He took us and a couple of Slovenians on a day trip to a national park where we saw turtles and water snakes.

Actually come to think of it, bulgaria is crawling with serpents. I have seen three snakes in three days in bulgaria! for those of you who know me, you will know that I am absolutely petrified of them.
The first two were water snakes, one at the beach and the other at the national park. The third was in our cabin!! I saw it just as we were about to go to bed. I couldnt sleep there so convinced Damon that it was better if we pitched the tent. you can imagine...

Anyway, the currency in Romania is very confusing. There are old Lei and new Lei. The old Lei use 0000's of zeros. So one million Lei is like 100 dollars. But there there are new Lei which have cut of four zeros. So we never know how much we are giving or receiving.

The language is also very unique. Romania is closest to Latin, and sounds like Italian but a third of its words are of Slavic origin. I can almost read some of it, but it still going to be a battle. I was getting rather good at reading Cryillic in Bulgaria towards the end. Damon however is still none the wiser with that alphabet.

We are planning to do some hiking in the mountains for a couple of days. Apparently Romania has Europe's largest populations of bears and wolfs. Nice. Any bear tips for us Gis??