My article on Eastern European castles is up at Fantasy Magazine.

http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/2010/06/eastern-europes-hidden-castles/

After Moldova, I took the bus to Suceava in the north of Romania.

The northeast of Romania is known as Moldavia and is still a rural area where you can see lots of horses and buggies on the road.  The area is also home to painted monasteries that have beautiful frescos.

Then I travelled to Transylvania, a region in central Romania.  I stayed in the town of Brasov and visited some of the towns and sights around the area.

Bram Stoker based the character of Dracula on a historical figure, Vlad Tepes, a Wallachian noble who fought against the Turks.  Vlad was born in Transylvania and was called Vlad the Impaler because of his habit of impaling his enemies on stakes.  He father belonged to the Order of the Dragon (Dracul) and Vlad became known as Dracula (son of the dragon).

Brasov has one of the narrowest streets in Europe.  Nowhere to hide if the vampires come after you.

I visited Peles Castle, the summer residence of the Romanian royal family.  I had never heard of it before, but it is one of the most impressive palaces I’ve ever been to.  A lot of the European palaces (Versailles, the Hermitage, Vienna’s Schonbrunn, Madrid’s Royal Palace) have rooms covered in gold leaf, which initially seems impressive but starts to look a bit gaudy after you’ve seen a few.  Peles Castle is decorated in wood and seems like somewhere you’d rather live than the other palaces.  There are elaborate carvings, displays of weapons and armour and a library with a secret passage.
Unfortunately it was very expensive to get a photo permit (about 5 times the cost of an entrance ticket), so I didn’t take any photos inside.

Bran Castle is called the Dracula castle, but in reality has little to do with him.  (He might have visited there, but he didn’t live there).  Someone decided to cash in on the popularity of the Dracula story.

Sighisoara is the city where Dracula was born.  It’s a really nice city with an old citadel.  I visited the house where Dracula was born.

The house has been turned into a tourist restaurant.  I had a meal with a hollowed out loaf of bread filled with soup.

The main course was a steak and schnitzel skewered on a little wooden stake and covered in tomato sauce.

After Transylvania, I visited Bucharest, the Romanian capital.  A lot of people don’t like Bucharest, but I had a fun stay there and visited some nice restaurants.

Vampires aren’t the most dangerous things in Romania these days.  Dogs are popular in Romania and can be found everywhere – even in mountainside castles.  Bucharest has a bad problem with stray dogs and a couple of years ago, a Japanese man died after being bitten by a stray dog.  Fortunately I avoided any conflicts with vampire dogs.

I ate pizza in a country that doesn’t exist.

After Ukraine I visited Moldova.  There’s not a lot to see inside the main part of Moldova, but there is Transnistria.

Transnistria is a self-proclaimed independent republic.   There was a civil war in Moldova in 1992 and more than 500 people were killed.

Transnistria has its own borders and immigration checks, its own government, army and currency, but it’s not recognised as an independent state by other countries.  Many of the people in Transnistria want to become part of Russia.

I stayed in the main part of Moldova, but went to Transnistria for a day trip.  I’d heard stories of foreign travellers having to pay bribes ($20 – $50 US) to get into Transnistria, but fortunately I didn’t have to pay anything.  There was a long wait at the checkpoint and I was the last in line from our bus.  The bus driver didn’t want to wait any longer and took me to the front of the line and demanded they process my immigration form quickly.

Transnistria is a Communist dictatorship and has lots of murals and slogans.

The Presidential Palace

Horse traffic lights.

There were lots of young men in black clothes with shaven heads wandering around.  Communist youth group members.

Some of the people in Moldova were a lot friendlier than the people in Transnistria.

Have fun,

Aidan.

I only stayed a couple of days in Belarus and then took a night train to Kiev in Ukraine.

(Where are all these countries? Here’s a map)

Lonely Planet books tend to exaggerate, and the chapter on Ukraine is particularly prone to extolling the country’s wonders in terms that aren’t warranted.  It’s unfair to compare countries, but after visiting Russia, I was disappointed with Ukraine.

Kiev has a lot of nice churches, but I found it a difficult city to navigate and not a particularly friendly city.

Ukraine and Belarus bore the brunt of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.  Approximately 6% of Ukraine remains contaminated and the continuing cleanup action still consumes about 5% of Ukraine’s annual budget.

It’s possible to do day tours of Chernobyl from Kiev.  The tour companies assure people that even though they visit areas that have higher than normal levels of radiation, it’s completely safe.  I was tempted, but the tours are very expensive and they didn’t have tours running the day I enquired.

I did visit the Chernobyl Museum.  There was little information in English, but they did have some interesting looking mannequins.

Kiev also has some colourful tanks left over from the war.

Most people In the east of Ukraine speak Russian and in the west most people speak Ukrainian.  Although the languages are similar there are lots of differences.  For example, Kiev is the Russian name of the capital.  In Ukrainian it’s Kyiv.

Lviv in the west of Ukraine is regarded as the country’s cultural and artistic capital.  It’s further away from Russia than Kiev and Ukrainian writers and artists went there because they had more freedom.  In Lviv you can buy t-shirts that read in Ukrainian, “Thank God I’m not a Muscovite.”

The hostel I stayed in had an old portrait of Lenin that had been redecorated.

I went to an underground bar that had a bouncer in a uniform holding a pretend machine gun.  To gain entry you had to tell him the password (Glory to Ukraine in Ukrainian) .

I also visited Kamyanets-Podilsky, a small town that has an impressive castle.

There were some interesting warning signs around the castle.

I didn’t think they were half so funny when I was climbing up a set of wooden stairs leading up the tower and realised how badly maintained the steps were.

The signs got even more dramatic.

Odessa is in the south of Ukraine.  It’s one of those places that most people don’t know much about, but it has a cool sounding name.  It sometimes turns up in book and movie titles (The Odessa File, Little Odessa) and its a vibrant city with a culture different from the rest of Ukraine.  Odessa reminded me a bit of the different feel Osaka has from Tokyo.

Odessa doesn’t have many tourist sights, but the so-called Potemkin steps are a popular place to visit.  They feature in the much-imitated scene from the Battleship Potemkin movie.

Have fun,

Aidan.

After Lithuania, I went to Belarus, one of the last surviving communist countries.  It’s a dictatorship where the KGB is still active and spies on people.

Minsk was almost totally destroyed during the war and had to be completely rebuilt.  25% of Belarus’ population died in the war.

When I arrived at the bus station in Minsk.  I went to use an ATM but it was all in Russian (or Belarussian, I can’t tell the difference).  I hit what I hoped was the cancel button and the machine returned my card.  Another menu came up on the screen.  It was all in Russian except for a button labelled FAQ.
I pressed that and two of the strangest messages I’ve ever seen appeared.
Why did my monkey was delivered badly dead?
Why did my cat was delivered badly dead?
I have no idea why these were chosen as questions likely to be FREQUENTLY asked of a Belarussian ATM.  And why were the questions in English?  Do foreigners come to Belarus to order monkeys?  If I ordered a monkey and it was dead on arrival, I’d be pretty annoyed.  I’d be even more annoyed if it was badly dead.

Someone translated the Russian answer for me and it says something like “It wasn’t fed.”

Belarussian currency isn’t the easiest to deal with.  There are no coins and notes come in denominations of 20, 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, 10000, 50000 and 100000.  $1 US is about 2500 roubles.  You want to make sure you give people the right note.

There isn’t a lot to see in Minsk apart from some war memorials and museums.  They don’t get many tourists, but it’s an interesting country to visit because of its unusual political situation.

Have fun,
Aidan

Minsk Trivia:
In 1960 Lee Harvey Oswald defected from the US marines.  He went to live in Minsk and married a local woman.  A couple of years later he returned to the USA and shot President Kennedy.

Minsk also gets a couple of mentions in episodes of Seinfeld.

Well you made a long journey from Milan to Minsk.
Rochelle Rochelle.
You never stopped hoping.  Now you’re in the pink.
Rochelle Rochelle.
When the nay sayers nay you pick up your pace.
So nothing’s going to stop me so get out of my face.
I’m having adventures all over the place.
Rochelle ROCHELLE!