Romania: The Danube Delta

Sunset view from the train, south of Tulcea.
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We´d heard much about the Delta, beginning as far back as our stay in the Black Forest.  After winding through Germany, Austria, a sliver of Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, the Danube splits off into three huge branches about 200 kilometers before it finally empties into the Black Sea.  Having spent several weeks biking along the thing, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to witness the Danbue's grand entrance into the sea.

We took a train to Tulcea, and for the last leg of the trip we were nearly alone on what may be Europe's most dilapidated train.  We have a hilarious video of the train's toilet, which has a hole in the bottom through which you can watch the track go by.  Well, that's one way to deal with pesky sewage!

the Danbue's grand entrance into the sea

Beach bungalows in Sfantu Georghe.
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From Tulcea onward it's strictly boats, with the exception of a few nearby towns that may be reached via road.  Fishing villages abound along all three branches of the Danube, and others can be found in the narrow channels that connect these branches and the many lakes of the delta into one massive network of waterways.  We started by taking the ferry to Sfantu Georghe, a town right at the confluence of the river and the sea.  The town was a little boring, but it was pretty cool to see a place with not a single car!  Moreover, the "beach" more or less extended the 2 kilometers into town, so the ground was sand, or appeared to be a desert with a few dry bushes, wherever you looked.  Idiotically, we failed to check into accomodations before setting off, and they all were booked save a bungalow site out closer to the sea.  The bungalows turned out to be awesome, though.  Cheap, clean and very cool.  They had a restaurant, movie screen (showing soccer games in Romanian, though), and cool places to just hang out.  Best of all, we were a short walk from the sea.  We headed over and walked along the isolated beach, beautiful against an oddly pink-hued sky.  Masses of birds were flying around, no surprise since the delta area is home to about 280 species of birds.  It was a fitting closure to our Danube journey.

Black sea beach, Sfantu Georghe.
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The next day, we took the ferry back towards Tulcea, but stopped off and hitched a ride along some of the inner waterways.  We saw beautiful birds everywhere, including one very large pelican.  All in all, though, the delta was interesting but probably not worth going out of our way as we did.

During dinner in Sfantu Georghe, we met a very cool German couple who had spent about 3 weeks hiking in the Carpathians.  Apparently, Romania is something of a hiking destination, and still an ideal one for anyone who prefers some solitude in their treks.  We had a great time chatting over drinks, and funnily enough, we later ran into them at the Hanul Manuc back in Bucharest and shared a cab to the airport!  There really aren't that many tourists in Romania, which is one of the reasons it's such a cool place to visit.

Black sea beach, Sfantu Georghe.
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Back in Bucharest we had to deal with the problem of the bikes.  We decided that shipping them was the only reasonable thing to do since otherwise, we'd have to lug them onto too many taxis, trains, and planes to count.  This turned out to be a bad decision from which we later learned a tough lesson about customs laws, but at the moment we were relieved to have DHL take them off our backs (or butts, rather, ha ha).  We said goodbye to Romania and headed off to Sevilla, Spain for 10 days of Spanish lessons to help prepare us for South

Black sea beach, Sfantu Georghe.
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America.