Arrival in Romania

Another day`s motor sailing brought us to Mangalia, our port of entry for Romania, and a rather non-descript sea port. In the inner harbour we found a brand new marina with about 100 floating berths, electricity [if we wish, we are now independent of shore electricity as the solar panels are performing exceptionally well] and water and virtually no boats. All built with EU money. So good is the berth that we decided to leave the boat for a few days and travel inland to Transylvania. Our journey took us by train via Constanta, a large sea port just north of Mangalia, and Bucharest inland to the west, then north to Brasov in Transylvania. Enroute to Bucharest [a grey, uninteresting city] we crossed a large flat plain of land densely cultivated by both large agro businesses and peasant farmers. There were crops of all descriptions; vast fields of grapes, grains, citrus and stone fruit. The mountains of Transylvania were very high and the alpine scenery magnificent. At Bran we saw “Dracula`s” castle and others at Rastov and Sinaia. Romanian wines and beers were sampled and found to be excellent. And everywhere evidence of more EU money being poured in to rehabilitate infrastructure,such as the railways. On returning by bus we passed the nuclear power plant at Chernavoda and crossed the Danube-Black Sea canal which was supposedly dug by forced labour at the cost of 10,000 lives.