Day 6

Ahhh wat a headache. We drank a little to much beer and wine. Happily we just want to go for a small bike ride today. On the day we arrive we so the letters of Brasov in the mountains and really wanted to go there. So today it is ‘only’ cycling to the letters and back. There is a lot on the agenda today. Since we missed Bran yesterday and a visit to Transylvania is incomplete without visiting this tourist trap :-), we decided to go to Bran by car in the afternoon.

The trip to the letters of Brasov was not easy since the climb was quite steep and also had a lot of gravel and stones (and of course not forgetting the kilometers and liters of the previous day).

The climb towards the letters	Yes behind the letters ! we made it !
The three of us behind the letters	The view on Brasov from behind the letters

Then we drove to Bran by car in the afternoon. And, indeed, it was a tourist trap and a bit worse then we expected.

The castle of Dracula	Inside the castle
The secret stairs in Dracula's castle

We have seen the castle and all the touristic crap they are selling there. In the evening we had an appointment with the sister of Reli to come to their house outside Brasov for a real romanian BBQ and some home made cherry liquor. We had a really good evening thanks!!

The nice house of the sister of Reli	Fire up the BBQ
Making the salad

GPS Track

The GPS track is here.

Day 5

After the breakfast

Breakfast

(by the way Erik you need to eat better in the morning 🙂 Another day of biking. This day we planned to go to Rasnov and if possible to Bran to see the dracula castle. The first climb of the day is a hard one really steep and difficult because of the many rocks and cracks in the road.

hmm nice road

Erik on the way down again

After this climb we are back again in the ski resort Poiana Brasov. From here we go by road to Rasnov, another climb but now on asfalt much better climbing but less fun ofcourse. In the decent of this asfalt road we see a small path going down between the trees and we decide to take it, wow it was steep and difficult and in the end it led us to a small river. So we just had to climb up again (pfff) to reach the road and go down via the road to Rasnov.

We visited the old citadel in Rasnov after yet another climb towards this citadel.

The citadel in Rasnov

After the visit we decided not to go to Bran too dangerous going over the road where also a lot of cars are driving. We returned the same way we came and went to the hotel to take a nice long shower. In the evening back to Brasov center. We had a real romanian dish for dinner (RELI PLEASE HELP WITH THE NAME Sarmala _ ?)

After the dinner we went to a terrace to drink a beer and there we met two dutch guys playing cards, Reli asked them if we could join and so we ended up playing the real dutch game “Toepen” together with the two other guys, and of course drinking beer and wine. This was really tough as we finished biking already quite early and had our first beers already at 4 in the afternoon.

toupen !

And drinking wine 🙂

GPS track

The GPS track is here.

Day 4

Today we go into the mountains, we prepared our bikes got enough water (it is again 30 degrees with a clear blue sky). We started at the foot of mountain Postavarul. and took a not so steep path to reach the ski village Poiana Brasov half way the path it seems the path stops, but because the tip of Mihai we knew that we could go further in the woods and find a path that will bring us towards the ski village. This was quite an adventurous path. Anyway, not the place to try out new techniques (because a potential big fall if it goes wrong).

A picture of the three of us

do you see a path here ?

The first climb is now finished but we are not yet done for today, we went to reach the cabin at the top of the mountain following some hiking tracks that are also possible to bike. wow what a nice view from up here.

We didn’t reach the highest point of the mountain but stopped at 1750m altitude. The next part is the fun part going down again on a really beautifull track for going downhill again because Mihai told us how to go.

The view half way Postavarul

Tree roots on the way down

Small single tracks, with steep sides, a lot of rocks and roots of trees and some fast paths winding down.

The first part of the track was quite difficult at times. Then we reached the last part, which can also be seen on the video Mihai made with his friends . Finally we reached Brasov again and went to have a drink and a small snack. In the evening we went back to the terrace and met Mihai again to share our stories with him.

One of the steep sides next to singletrack

One of the nice terraces in Brasov

GPS track

The GPS track is here.

Day 3

It is again a nice day the sun is shining and after we woke up we had a beautiful view over the mountains from the cabin of Reli’s parents.

The morning view at the cabin of Reli's parents

Today is the day we are going to have our first encounter with the Carpathian mountains and Brasov. We have to travel to Brasov by car. First we stop at Turda to meet Reli’s parents and see his kids (they are staying with grandfather and mother for the weeks they hava holiday in the Netherlands) In Turda also Reli’s nephew Adi got in the car because he had to go back to Brasov where his father and mother (Reli’s sister Lily) live.

Turda – Brasov is about 350 km but because of the condition of the road and the many villages we will pass we cannot drive on a constant speed of 120 km/ph. The speed will be more like 60-70 km/ph. It was also a bit more problematic as there are quite some holes in the roads and we were traveling with 3 bikes on the back of the car.

Halfway we stopped ad sighisoara, a city with an old citadel, where Vlad Dracul (the one and only mister Dracula 🙂 was born, so we also did some real tourist activities.

Casa Vlad Dracul. Did he really live here? I'm scared!!	The entrance to the citadel of Sighisoara.
The tower of the citadel	A view from the citadel.

Around 16:00 we reached the city of Brasov where we were taken to our hotel. We will stay in Brasov until saturday. After check-in we called a cab and went to the center of Brasov. We were surprised by the town of Brasov, renovated houses nice terasses everywhere and of course the BRASOV sign up in the mountains, just like Hollywood.

The letters of Brasov! We have to go there. Otherwise our holiday will be incomplete.

The Brasov sign

Nice to see a city with such big ambitions. Also funny was to see all the terrace parasols saying “Probably the best city in the world !”.

Probably the best city in the world

No comment

This evening we will meet our guide for the trails in Brasov Mihai Siman a local mountainbiker who was bloging about the trails in Brasov and surroundings (see blog link on the sidebar). Reli found that blog and contacted Mihai to ask for information about nice trails. We had a nice dinner together with Mihai his girlfriend and the sister of Reli with her family. Mihai cannot come with us to do the trail himself (some people also need to work) but he gave us a lot of tips about nice roads and where to go. We cannot wait for our first trip in the mountains !!

Dinner on the first night in Brasov

Day 2

The first biking day is here !! After a quick visit to Carrefour to buy some food (and to win 150 Lei 🙂 we went to pick up andy and on the way eat some breakfast. After we picked up Andy we went back to Relis place prepared our bikes and we left. we started with a nice climb towards an old citadel in the woods, we could even enter the citadel and look inside.

Eating breafast in Cluj

Reli entering the citadel

After this we went downhill met our first dogs and biked towards the next hill this one was almost too much for Erik (too little sleep) but he managed to get through after eating some more. We continued, we went through fields and some small hills and in the end we reached the gorges. A special place with a small river winding between two cliff walls really really beautifull. At this point our guide Andy and Reli noticed that we had little time left to return the bike trip to Cluj (we went about 45 km and needed to go back 45 km again) We decided that Erik and myself where going to walk through the gorges and Andy and Reli will return to Cluj and pick us up by car on the other side of the gorges.

The first stop.

Reli and Andy trying to block the view to the entry of the gorge.

The walking trip was a whole adventure, the small paths in the gorges are really not ment to take your bike with you, so we stumbled our way through the gorges.

A nice view of the gorges

On the other side we relaxed and drank some beer. In the mean time Reli has send a friend, Christie, to keep us company while he was biking back and buying BBQ meat (mici) for our planned BBQ in the cabin of his parents.

Relaxing after biking (Cristie and Bart).

Christie bought us some food known in romania as Kurtos Kalacs a from origin hungarian sweet snack. After 4 – 5 beers (i’m not sure anymore) Reli called, if we would ride up the hill because he is waiting for us at the road, we went up by bike from the gorges to the road, put our bikes on the back of the car and went to the cabin of Reli’s parents A nice wooden cabin in the mountains. The BBQ was fired up with wood and we had a nice evening. We are now wondering if they also sell Mici in the Netherlands.

The cabin and the bikes on the car.

Christie working the BBQ

Reli had been talking to us about going mountainbiking in Romania for some time now. I guess it must have been a few years back since he first brought up the subject. Then this year we finally went to Romania, “we” that’s Bart, Erik, and Reli. The travel arrangements were a bit of a puzzle in the beginning. But we had a good plan. As Reli intended to stay a bit longer in Romania, Bart and Erik had to travel separately. Comparing all the options, going by plane was the easiest (and cheapest) for us. As for the bikes, Reli borrowed Erik’s bike stand for the car so then all was settled. Romania here we come!

Day 1

In the morning we drove to Dortmund Airport to fly to Romania with our bikes packed in big bags.

Van with our bags at Dortmund Airport

We flew with the cheapest airline of all times (WiZZ) and it was actually a good flight and, most remarkably, also a brand new Airbus A320 aircraft.

wizzair

After a trip of about 6 hours we finally reached Romania and landed at Cluj Napoca airport where we met our Mountain Hopper Reli and Andy, a local friend of Reli, who was going to guide us for the MTB trips around Cluj Napoca.

The first thing we had to do was to put our bikes back together after the flight, with 4 people this was quickly done.

Erik assembling his bike

We went to the apartment of Reli in a suburb of Cluj and left our stuff there.

Left to right, Andy, Bart, and Reli.

In the evening we went for a diner in Cluj at the “irish pub” not real Romania food, but we will have enough of romania food in the rest of the holiday 🙂

This is the very first post on mountainhoppers.nl. The site is currently being setup. The first set of blogs will be about our Romanian holiday. Then we will regularly blog about all our other mountainbiking adventures.