postcard from romania

Three weeks of traveling through Romania with a tent and a thumbs out.

Sleeping right on the beach, waking up by sunrise and going for a swim first thing in the morning. Oatmeal for every breakfast. Reading on the beach. Swim. Beach walks. Swim. Nap on the beach. Swim. Cooking pasta with tomato sauce every night. Watching the sunset and the moon rise. Stargazing and falling asleep to the sounds of the waves. That´s what most of our days looked like. Some moments felt like we were the last people on earth, cut off from civilization, under a sky full of stars.

I´m romanticizing those weeks, of course I am. Of course there was the flipside too. Carrying way too heavy backpacks through 40 degree midday heat. Mosquitos bites. So many fucking mosquito bites. Not only once being very close to a heatstroke. Almost throwing up on a nighttrain because of motion sickness. Military helicopters flying up the coast towards Ukraine, bringing us back into reality about everything that´s going on in the world. Nights so windy we thought our tent will break down. The same food every day (oatmeal and pasta with tomato sauce). Health issues. The list goes on.

And yet I´d do it all over again.

For moments of pure freedom on long train rides across the country, for experiencing strangers kindness over and over again when hitchhiking, for the moment we saw the sea for the first time after talking about it for so long, for never heard songs turning into the soundtrack of our travels, for barefoot walks and beach dances and playing in waves the way I did when I was a kid. For not knowing where to sleep tonight, but having so much faith it´s all gonna work out (it always does!).

When I told people we´d travel to Romania this summer, almost everyone was surprised. Why out of all places would we choose Romania? We live in Europe, why don´t we go to Italy or Spain or Portugal? The answer is quite simple, because wildcamping is legal in Romania and we´ve heard of people camping right on the beach somewhere on the black sea coast. I feel like in the end it almost doesn´t matter which country one travels to, every country has beautiful things to offer and kind people and good food and interesting history and culture, and every country has its downsides too. So I guess it doesn´t really matter where to go. That´s how we didn´t even think twice about our decision of going to Romania.

And it´s a country I´d recommend in a heartbeat. We only spent three weeks in Romania, so we only experienced a fraction of the country, but I know I´d definitely come back. The people were incredibly kind, the mountains are gorgeous, the beaches as well, food is probably good (since we were on a very tight budget and camping we were cooking our own food). The few food items we tried like Covrigi or Zacusca were incredible and I still think about it now being back home. I started being obsessed with salted sunflower seeds, I bought them in every supermarket and spent every day eating way too many of them.

You´re probably thinking we´re experts when it comes to camping, I´m making it sound like we´re always out in the wild camping somewhere. Well, that´s not true at all.

I have no clue when it comes to camping, and being in the wild. But I knew I always wanted to sleep on the beach somewhere, so of course, I said yes to that trip. Were we naive? Absolutely. Would lots of little mistakes been avoided if we would´ve actually planned this trip out? Of course. But we just started traveling towards Romania, left Berlin august first, traveled through Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary before crossing the border into Romania. I remember how ecstatic I felt when we crossed the border, the sun just went down, blue hour painting the sky light pink. We always just had the sea in mind, this picture we´ve seen of people setting up their tents right on the beach. That´s what kept us going. There wasn´t really a lot of information online, so we just winged it.

We took busses and trains and hitchhiked, and we also walked a lot more than I would´ve wanted. This is the way I usually travel as well, the only thing that was completely new for me was camping. No access to running water, no electricity, no bathroom. But I guess one gets used to it, and even start to love it at some point. Because everything had to be simple, the littlest everyday tasks take so much longer. We did eventually treat us to a little Airbnb when we got to Bucharest, because there´s no way we´d camp somewhere in a big city (we´re naive, but not that naive!), so taking a shower and sleeping in a proper bed was definitely a great feeling.

I remember looking into a mirror for the first time in a while when we got to our Airbnb in Bucharest, being excited seeing how tan I got - turns out I was just covered in layers and layers of dirt, and after taking a shower, I wasn´t that tan anymore.

Anyways, Bucharest really surprised me, I didn´t think much of it before, but I would definitely go back for a little city weekend trip, and it would be the city I´d currently recommend when someone would ask me for a place to go for a weekend getaway.

Also, because people always ask about safety, which is something I don´t really like to answer but since everyone always asks: I did feel safe. Very safe. But I wasn´t traveling solo (for the first time in a long time). And my perception of safety might differ a lot from someone elses. It takes quite a bit for a situation to feel unsafe or uncomfortable to me (I backpacked through India on my own and I hitchhike solo, just for comparison). So yes, Romania felt safe to me. The only thing that made me feel unsafe in situations were street dogs, so I feel like that says a lot about my view of safety in Romania. I only made positive experiences in Romania, but still, I can´t tell you if Romania is a safe country to visit. Every country can be safe or unsafe, it just depends. Something bad can happen in the claimed safest country in the world, the same way you could make only positive experiences in a claimed unsafe country. So that´s that.

Would I recommend backpacking through Romania with a tent and no plan just because you heard its possible to camp and sleep on the beach? Probably not. Having a car would´ve been great actually, it would´ve caused us a lot less stress. And looking back, I´d say we were way too naive. Which was probably the magic of this trip. I would do it exactly like that all over again, but I probably woulnd´t recommend it.

We documented our travels with a little digi cam and my camcorder, shitty quality but I guess that´s the beauty in it.