Sunday, September 19, 2010

Transfagarasan Road

We thought we would drive a bit up the Transfagarasan Road, one of Europe's high alpine roads (sort of) and a monument of Romania's 1960s-1980s "communist" dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. The Soviets withdrew in the late 1950s, and Ceausescu pursued an independent sort of course. When the Ruskies re-invaded rebellious Czechoslovakia in 1968, Ceausescu bult the Transfagaran Road to provide ready north-south access to head off the Red Army. As if.... Anyhow, the road is still there, mostly a tourist thing, and also a logging truck thing. We thought we'd give it a go...
The Transfagarasan Road from Vlad's Castle; the nice-looking
bridge was actually an off-shoot, closed










The scenery was very promising










But after a kilometer or so, we decided the construction and
maintenance were maybe not so promising









Particularly the tunnels










Falling down overhead





So we retreated toward Pitesti, visited the Carrefours there,
and then drove on to










Bucaresti, and the wifi-less Casa Alba campground
there, a bit of a rip-off

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