Wild Woman of Nevada: Romania Series: Sfantu Gheorghe (Danube Delta)

Erin and I slept well at our penisune in Sfantu Gheorghe and we were pleased with our decision to stay an extra night in the quaint fishing village. The first thing we decided to do was to walk around the village to get a feel for the layout and size. The town is pretty small, it was nice to see very few cars with most people out on the streets walking. In the middle of the village is a square with a park, a couple of small stores, a couple of bars and a pharmacy. Surrounding the square is housing, there are a lot of thatched roofed houses here and many of the homes have solar water heaters which I think is pretty cool. As we headed to the north end of the city we noticed that the homes petered out and the dump began. It's unfortunate, but there doesn't appear to be an official dump here, so all of the trash seems to get placed in the open field outside of town. Erin said dumps are one reason Romania may have trouble complying with the EU. They are supposed to get all their trash into official dumps, but it's expensive and it doesn't seem that anyone is willing to make it happen.

After our morning walk we headed back to our room, to simply relax for awhile--take a nap and read a book--it was very nice. We then headed back out to check out the Sfantu Gheorghe nature trail, part of which we walked on the day before when we rushed to see the Black Sea. The area is beautiful, parts of the area remind me of the U.S.'s arid west. On our journey we walked past the windmill which was built by Ceausescu, the Secretary General of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989 and the President of Romania from 1974 to 1989. The windmill is big and considered to be a major eye soar, built to be the largest of of it's kind for it's time.

Sfantu Gheorghe windmill

After we viewed the windmill we headed toward the Black Sea. It was a gorgeous day and the the sea was very refreshing. We collected sea shells as we slowly strolled along the sea shore. We were there during the tourist off season, so there was very few people on the beach, in fact the only people we saw was a group of about 4 people who we saw just as we were leaving the beach. On our way back to the village we saw a snake, it turns out that it was a venomous snake a Vipera berus or the steppe viper and although they are venomous, their bite tends not to kill, but can be very painful. I was very excited that we got to see a snake--how cool.

Erin on the Black Sea

Cows on the Black Sea--so cute!

Steppe Viper--Vipera berus

We decided to try to find a place to eat out for dinner. It was pretty difficult, we went to the town square to see if there was anything around there. There was a place, we could see tables set up through the windows, but it appeared that nobody was around and that it was shut down. There was a bar near the square, so we went there to see if they also served food, but they didn't. Erin asked the bartender if there was a place to get food and the bartender simply replied "camping" in English. Erin was a little frustrated and wondered why the woman had thought we were looking for camping. We went back to our pensiune and asked the woman there and she said there is a place called green village, just a few pensiunes down and over a bridge. We walked in that direction, but didn't see anything that resembled her description. Navigating here is somewhat tricky, most of the pensiunes, hotels and restaurants do not have signs to let you know you are there.

As we were searching for green village, we found two gentlemen who were talking in the road, so we asked them if they heard of green village or knew of a place to get some food. They replied "camping" Erin and I looked at each other confused. They then explained that there is a hotel, bar, restaurant on the next street over and that it was actually called Camping. We felt silly and headed to the restaurant. Sure enough there was a sign on the fence that read "Camping." It was an outdoor restaurant with wood tables and benches, a very nice setting. They had a large selection of food and what we had was yummy. While we were eating, there was only one other customer in the seating area with us and she was on her computer, come to find out they have Wi-Fi. Another thing we saw was that they had a huge movie screen with large speakers, it appears that this is where they hold the Sfantu Gheorghe film festival. Yes, this tiny town has a film festival, the ANONIMUL International Independent Film Festival, also know as the world's most remote film festival. Unfortunately, we missed it by a few weeks--actually I have to say, it was nice to visit the area when there were not a lot of tourists around. Once we finished our dinner we headed back to our pensiune and were blessed with another gorgeous sunset.