Journey Through the Iron Gate

On Wednesday, we began the long trek home. We awoke at 1 a.m. Bucharest time, caught the [Viking] bus to the airport at 3:30, and took a flight from Bucharest to Frankfurt. We had a 2 hour layover in Frankfurt, and then took an 8 hour flight to Toronto. After a 3 hour layover, we flew home to Pittsburgh. It was a long day, but all went smoothly with the flights - no big issues. We love to travel to different places around the world, but it is always good to get home! Thank you for reading this blog. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you learned something new!

On Tuesday, we disembarked the cruise ship after breakfast and rode by bus to Bucharest, which took about 3 1/2 hours. Our ship had docked a little further away than planned due to low water levels of the Danube, which partly accounts for the long drive. The other reason for the long drive was very heavy traffic, which apparently is common in Bucharest. Our tour guide, Huana, told us that Bucharest is the 6th largest crowded city in the world. Romania is one of the largest countries in Europe by size. The population is 21 million. The language spoken here is Romanian and they use the same alphabet as us, rather than the cyrillic alphabet like Bulgaria. Romania is the only Latin country in southeast Europe, and is surrounded by Slavic countries (except for Hungary). Since Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal are also Latin, the Romanian language is very similar to those languages, especially Italian. The main religion is Orthodox. Romania is a former Communist country, ruled by  N...

On Monday, we took a 2 hour bus ride from the ship to the town of Veliko Turnovo. Our tour guide's name was Kremena. Kremena told us that she learned English from watching Dr. Phil and Judge Judy. She said her favorite Judge Judy phrase is "Beauty fades; dumb is forever." Along the way we drove through rural areas and little villages, with flat brown fields in the foreground and rolling foothills in the background. It was very nice scenery. Along the way, Kremena shared some history of Bulgaria with us. Bulgaria suffered a lot under Ottoman (Turkish) domination for many centuries. Then, in 1878, Russia fought with them against the Turks and liberated them. At that time, Bulgaria became a monarchy until 1944, when the Communists took over. Before the Ottoman domination, Bulgaria had been a monarchy. But during the centuries of domination, the monarch family line was lost. So when they became a monarchy again in 1878, they didn't have a king. So they invited a for...