Travelling to Romania in a couple of weeks with some friends, heard it's a wonderful place for hiking/camping.
Anyone been there? Got any recommendations?
Pic related, that's our destination.
Welp I've been to Romania for hiking, but a different area. Not sure how applicable my experiences will be but I'll share some top tips anyway.
I was hiking in the fagaras mountains, and the single biggest danger was the sheepdogs. Do not fuck with a sheepdog. If you see a herd of sheep, be afraid. Be very afraid. They will try to rip your face off if their shepard doesn't stop them, and even if he yells at them, they'll still want to rip your face off and will be barely containing the urge.
Carry lots of dry socks. Dunno how the weather gods will favor you, but I got shat on heavily and the single most sexual moment of my life was pulling on my last pair of dry socks. Followed shortly by the worst moment when they immediately got wet from my boots.
Enjoy the bean soup. Most meals we got their were prefaced with a delicious bean soup, bread, salt, and onion. Romanian food was simple but tasty enough.
Don't trust that people will speak english. If they do, it might be really bad english. Depends where you are and how rural it is. A touch of french might help too, some people I encountered spoke no english but decent french. No clue why.
Go to Sibiu if you can find the time. Beautiful little town, loved the orthodox churchs and architecture.
Don't go to "Draculas castle" in Bran. It's shit. Covered in tacky tourist wank, and really very disappointing.
>>652313
One further tip: Don't be nice to the stray dogs. There's tons of them, they will beg from you, and if you give them anything, even just affection, they'll follow you. We got a stray killed because we were nice to it - it followed us ~10 miles out of town to a lodge we were staying at. The lodge owners had 2 beastly dogs protecting their place from strays and those 2 presumably killed it. They kept the beasts back while we were around, but I think at night they were let loose and the stray was still hanging around hoping to see us.
'sup, I'm a romanian and I'm here to teach you.
1. carry cash. romanian LEI, not euros or whatever.
2. in cities or areas near to cities, most people will know english. in very rural areas, 99% will not speak anything other than romanian
3. do not trust gypsies
4. do NOT trust gypsies
5. like the other guy said, sheepdogs are vicious. keep a large can of pepper spray handy.
6. never turn your back on a sheepdog
7. eat "mici". they are small kebab-like things made from beef and sheep. delicious. use mustard
8. if you can find it, eat "fasole în pâine" (bean stew in bread). see pic related
9. this time of year there's a lot of boar hunting going on in that area. if you wanna go hiking or whatever, wear something bright so you don't get accidentally shot and get your head mounted on a wall
10. roads are shit. if you're gonna drive, be careful. there's been pretty much no snow so far this year, so you won't find any snow except on high mountain peaks -- yet.
11. don't try to cross the border with any illegal shit on you right now. with the immigrant thing, the holiday travel and all the other shit, border controls have gotten very strict. they will find your weed and you will be ass-raped.
12. there's lots of mineral water springs in Borsec and Bilbor. haven't been there myself, dunno if there's anything to see/do there. research it yourself. that's also an area with a lot of magyars (hungarian minority in Romania) - most of them don't even speak romanian properly. good luck communicating.
13. Cluj-Napoca is a nice city. Also the most expensive city in Romania, at this time.
14. Bistrita is also nice. ish.
15. orthodox churches basically everywhere. a few catholic and protestant ones as well, in certain areas.
can't really think of anything else at the moment
have fun
and remember: do not trust gypsies.
Camp in Hoia-Baciu forest near Cluj-Napoca.
>>652313
>>652315
I am romanian and i can confirm these are good advices
during winter time you shouldn't find sheepdogs in the mountains
stray dogs in the forest kinda ruin the wilderness feel and if they are close enough they can scare away the some of the animals you might otherwise be able to see
also, wolves and other animals rarely attack people so you shouldn't be afraid (dogs are far more dangerous)
from a hiking point of view Romania is rather tourist friendly as there are a lot marked trails, some of them well maintained, other not so well
also in national parks you should find helpful information
as there isn't a lot of snow even some right now even a lot of mountain trails should be accessible
know the number for Salvamont (mountain rescue) just in case
as >>652325 said you should be careful about people and expect to be disappointed by the infrastructure
>>652342
no
