Galeria Caspar

What you see here are ´´clouds´´ of mosquitos flying above the grass en way. They love the water, no wind today, and a very warm winter this year here... I forgot my sunglasses, and it was complete horror this. They were everywere, I couldn´t breath without swallow some in my mouth. Never again this route near the lake.   

From a little further distance, the "clouds" with mosquitos are looking like smoke from a fire.

Het Kleinte Huisje in Schermerhorn - Cea mai mică casă din Schermerhorn, 10m2, Built in 1634 (for families with sometimes 10 people...)

The toiliet is outside, above the water as you can see.

Schermerhorn, I suppose it's a difficult name for Romanians to say...?
Like for people here the village name: "Cârţa" is almost unpossible to say correct   

Windmills! My favourites I was lucky enough to find one in Belgium, near the Noth Sea coast. I think they are less common than in Holland. That one was a true mill, these in your pictures seem to be used for pumping water out of the canals.
We have (had, actually) some windmills also in Romania but they are a different design and they are not as solid as yours. Apart from a small stone foundation, they were entirely bulit from wood and therefore few of them survived.

This in region of Dobrogea, the windiest part of Romania, preserved "in situ", so to speak:

http://amfostacolo.ro/FOTO/GENUINE/d006/6632/598_8260_5.jpg

And those ones in the museum in Sibiu:

http://www.albumdefamilie.ro/imagini/08-2009/mori-de-vant-20775x1024.jpg

In this regio here, there are about 200 of those mills, they are indeed designed for pumping water out of canals. The mills in my pictures are from the year 1633, so they are very old. That´s also the year that this piece of North Sea was turned into land (took the mills a few years), and several other places in Holland are also from the 17th century. Those mills pumped the water out of the sea, and afterward untill now they also pumped water out of the canals, to prevent the land from flooding, and turning into a sea again. The polder here is -3,8 meter under sea level. That's also the origin of the name Holland   

These mills are built from a wooden frame only, with In Romanian: "Stuf"
on it. So they are quite dangerous in cases of fire, and in the history, fires destroyed a lot of Dutch mills.
The roofs containing of "Stuf" are quitte common here in North- Holland, a lot of farms for example are still built with it. You can see it 10 pitures above on the picture with the red Scania-bus, that's is a tipically farmhouse for this regio. Those farmhouses are so big, because in the history the building contain all the farmwork: A living part for the family, in the same building were stables for the cows, and under the roof lays the grass for the cow in the winter season.

There is also an active cornmill in my hometown, I can make a picture of it soon.

@ TVlad, here is a picture of some other mills. What you see is a ''Zaagmolen" or in English a mill that cuts wood into the preffered sizes for furniture etc. Almost complete trees without the branches are going from the water inside the mill (also with the power of the wind/mill), with a cutting machine they are turned into planks.



Inside the mill:

Hm, another clever use of wind power. I didn't thought that wind was powerful enough to power up a sawmill.
In German they call them called Sägemühle, quite similar with Dutch.
The ones that you photographed, are still in comercial use or they run only as a tourist attraction? Either way, it's very nice to know that such very old machinery still exist.

The Sawmill is still in commercial use, but also opened for tourists. The mills which are pumping water out of the canals are private property, and mostly not accesible. A classmate from my school 15 years ago lived in one (the second one with the wite dressed man in front of it).
I've heard about contracts with the state; you can buy some mills for just 1(!!!) Euro from the state, but you have a duty to restore them and keep them in a good condition, which is sometimes very expensive...

Citat :

In German they call them called Sägemühle, quite similar with Dutch.

Correct, some words are quite similar with each other. But some people here are quite angry if a foreigner says: Holland, is that a regio in Germany? Americans do often say such things   

Today in Amsterdam Centraal:

There is a strike of the cleaning companies at the trainstations and in the trains, the aren't cleaned for 3 weeks since now:






Ieeeuww.

Those are the effects of Europe's "social state system". In USA they would be probably fired long ago. I don't say their system is perfect but we can "import" the better parts of it.

Haha, here people throw stuff on the ground even though the bins are empty.

Romania mai 2014, without trains:




Berceni.


New CAF metro.



We've got warned by DR2005, but we felt still a bit like criminals to make some pictures of the metro   Everytime there was a guard which asked us to stop us, even when I took a very good look and I supposed there wasn't a security guard, there was one. Within a few seconds they showed up. Even here at the viaduct there was a man from parking place who was shouting at us to go away. Way are they so afraid of some tourists?
And, arriving at the airport I put 20 Lei on my Activ Card for the public transport, especially for rides with metro, but all the Activ chip machines were out of order (a plastic bag on it). Why are they not valid anymore?
It was a bit frustrating to buy paper cards, while we had already put money on our chipcards...


We made the whole route of tram 1 in Bucharest.


The new BucurLF, is it a new tram, or is it built with components of the tram above this picure?


Pictures of Craiova:





Tramway in modernisation in Craiova.


Substitute bus tram 100.

We buyed a 24h card for 6 Lei and drove by bus to Parcul Nicolae Romanescu:



We rented a Hydrobicilceta.   






Mini Zoo in Craiova.





After that, we took the Ring-line E1 bus from the parc to Electroputere Parc.
There we took the tram-bus 100 to PECO Severinului:



The tramyard.






There was a music event in Craiova   
Craiova really surprised me in a positive way. Nice old buildings in the center, a very large and beautiful parc, friendly people, good restaurants.

Drobeta Turnu Severin:





View from above Castelul de Apa. The chef of the IR between Craiova and Turnu Severin told us that there was an elevetor in it, and during the journey he gave us some touristic information; he showed us where there was a bride over Danube to Yugoslavia, etc etc. He was undoubdly proud of his homeplace.






Drobeta Turnu Severin was also nice to visit, one thing I almost immediately noticed was that there were no dogs on the street. The only place in Romania without dogs for me for so far. And no other strange persons like gypsies which are tryin to sell fake telephones/parfumes etc like in Bucharest.   


Porţile de Fier.






Nice busses here. But what's the difference between a Citaro and a Conecto?






Like Craiova, also Timisoara is in a complete upgrade work. Again, people begin to shout at us to stop photografing here, because of the building works. They told us to come back after 16.00h.   

It was a very nice week in Romania, a report with the train pictures will follow. Especially Craiova was really nice. Now I've seen most of Romania's large cities, Craiova, Timisoara, Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi, Constanta, Braila, Brasov, Oradea... But Cluj, Sibiu and Craiova are my favorites.  

Citat :

arriving at the airport I put 20 Lei on my Activ Card for the public transport, especially for rides with metro, but all the Activ chip machines were out of order (a plastic bag on it). Why are they not valid anymore?

The system was installed by the city-owned RATB (the company that has the trams, buses and trolleybuses). RATB also got the many you paid. Since RATB "forgot" to pay the money to Metrorex (owned by the Ministry of Transport), Metrorex decided to remove the Activ Card validators (they asked RATB to come and take them).
The paper subway card are a bit cheaper... a 10 fares card costs 15 lei, while one fare paid by Activ card costs 2 lei.

Citat :

The new BucurLF, is it a new tram, or is it built with components of the tram above this picure?

It's a new tram, but some components are simillar (motor bogies, parts of chasis) to those of the old trams. All these components were newly-built, but they use the same 35 or so years old technical specifications.

Citat :

The tramyard.

You were inside?

Citat :

But what's the difference between a Citaro and a Conecto?

Citaro is manufactured in Mannheim, Germany, while Conecto is manufactured somewhere in Turkey. Of course, there is also a price difference between the 2 buses. The "old" 12m Conecto buses you find in Timişoara are Mercedes O 345 built in Turkey. The "Citaro" clones are called Conecto LF

Try some smaller cities and villages. You won't find trams and metro, but you'll see the other face of the country. Take a ride on M400, between Brasov and Satu Mare. Or on 501 and stop along the way. If you like nature, you'll love these places aswell.

Yes, one of my future plans is to explore the region between Piatra Neamț, Bicaz and Gheorgheni. Also Sovata with the narrow gauche railway... But one of my goals in the future, is cycling from Avrig to Balea lac. Enough plans and things to do and see in the future in Romania  

@Dr2005, the guard of the tramyard in Craiova wasn't there in the days we were in Craiova. There were two ladies, they say come back another day...    The direct neighbourhood there was not a nice one, with lots of dogs, hard wind with dust on the street and some strange people. Probebly they acted a bit strange because they are surprised to see two foreigners, one blond haired guy 1.86m tall 

Sovata is awesome! It's 60 kms away from where I live. I go there quite frequently, despite the weather. Totally recommend it!

Piatra Neamt is another nice city, but Bicaz isn't much of an atraction. The landscape is awesome, but the city is small and has bad roads. One thing to see there is the Bicaz dam and the surroundings, even though the road up there is quite bad.