On Day 4, we took a three hour trip to Hunedoara. We stopped along the way in Deva to see a Roman fortress, and in Hunedoara to see Corvin's castle.
Along the road to Deva
A breathtaking view
An old church with mud walls
It had a graveyard and they put pictures of the deceased on all of the gravestones.
This is part of the construction of the very very old church
Haystacks, just like in the Grimm Brother's stories. :D
Caine - Dog
Pidgeons
I thought these were to a nuclear plant when I saw them from the air.
But they are not. I suppose they hold turbines for some energy source.
A skinny gypsy horse.
He doesn't know he is a gypsy, does he?
I felt sorry for him. But I don't think he knows how fat the horses in America are.
He seemed pretty happy
A marble image of the Roman fortress in Deva
We had to take an elevator lift to get up to the fortress.
Otherwise, we would have had to walk for three hours around the mountain to reach the top.
The rocks the fortress was built on were really neat
It was quite big
These workers were restoring the old Roman road. I think they were using the same cobblestones, just replacing them.
They were working to restore the entire fortress, given money by the European Union, but it will be many many years before they are finished. I can only imagine how long it took men to build the thing in the first place.
I'm sure it was magnificent at first
Caution: Snakes!! 0.0
Can you tell how high up we are? It was quite a dizzying altitude actually.
The air was a little thin
When we went down, we stopped at a fast foot walk-in with a stand up eatery patio. We had metetea. Also called Mich (meech). It is the best sausage in the world... no exaggeration, my friend. It's made with Lamb and pork.
Some gypsy children approached us, begging. The locals shoo them away because all they do is beg and it encourages more beggars. Their parents spend the money on drugs and alcohol. It is a sad life for the poor gypsies, who teach their children the same poor life.
The boy on the left was actually antagonistic toward the sweet little boy on the right. I don't know if they were related, perhaps competition. I wanted to take all three home with me and raise them differently.
A whitewashed tree. All of the trees are whitewashed.
We drove a little further to Hunedoara but we were running out of time.
Corvin's Castle is a Gothic style castle. The architecture of the roofs and walls and windows and doorways is Gothic. The Goths lived in the Hungary-Romanian area when the Romans controlled Europe.
Did you know that the Romans settled in Britain also?
The moat was very lush and beautiful
Of course, that's me, weary, but excited to be there.
It really is a beautiful castle
On the inside, there were performers:
Can you see the paint on the walls? All of the walls had faded paint. I'm sure it was beautiful when it was fresh.
I really liked the doors. Even the ceilings were beautiful carved wood
This window is very recessed. I believe it might be to the strong room of the castle, which held the treasury and would have been the castle's last defense as it fell. The strong room's walls are very very thick.
On the inside....lemme tell ya.
I'm sure the courtyard had grass once and was very beautiful.
Now it was weathered to where you could see the foundation stones.
These stairs were very steep and uncomfortable.
What a view!
I risked my phone to shoot this one.
At first I thought these were gryphons on this candlestick. But they might be cockatrice. They didn't seem to be just roosters.
This is an archer's window. It was very deep...I'm not sure how easy that was to shoot from.
My sisters played around in a fireplace
Silly girls
We ran out of time to see the entire castle, but I exited early and inspected something I had seen on the way in. A man was selling blowing horns. Some looked like fish. I bought this very nice "elk horn" for a nice price.
First blow, beautiful
My dad spoke at the message church in Hunedoara, because the people wanted to hear about the translation work. He shared a few things with them for a short time. Their church service was a little different than what we are used to.
Brother Robert checking out a tract my Grandfather had worked to translate. You recognize the cover art, don't you?
There were many other gypsy homes but it was too dark to photograph them.
This complex however was lit up because they were having a party.
Their families are very large so they build large houses. And I guess as they outgrow a house, the children build their houses around them.
We thought he was going to greet us, but maybe he was too busy.
Instead, he had his waitress serve us whatever we wanted, on the house.
I had cow stomach soup. I had tried it before in Atlanta when we visited second cousins, so I had good memories of it. This was even better. Yum!
The cow stomach is white and rubbery. But the garlic cream carrot broth is very very good. Those peppers were so hot, we called them "Devil's fingers." That's no exaggeration.
This one had many levels. Perhaps five or six.
Some going up. Some going down.
We made it home about three o'clock in the morning.
Poor Brother Alin, became giddy on the way home. Hilarious footage worth listening to.
You might not be able to understand what my dad and Brother Alin are saying, but I can help you out.
My dad had not paid for the hotel because in Romania, it is custom to pay before you leave.
So the hotel people had refused to accept my dad's money for days. And now we would be leaving the next day and we would be getting back to the hotel "just in time for breakfast." So they are laughing that the hotel people will think we had left without paying but would return in time for breakfast. It might not seem funny, but there were many inside jokes between the hotel people and us.
This concludes Day 4 and 1/2. We did not get to bed until Day 5! And we slept through most of that too. :D
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