The second week was spent driving and sightseeing around Transylvania (more of the first). We visited beautiful cities (Brasov, Sighisoara, Oradea), smaller towns (Bran), villages.
Brasov
"Dracula's Castle" in Bran
There are two types of roads: main, international corridors and the rest. The first type is smooth, with a wide shoulder, highways are being built or planned. If you want to drive off the main roads, you should have a tractor, or even better a tank. Potholes larger than a car's wheel, on the whole width of the road, for tens of kilometers, a short stretch (1-2km) of slightly better pavement and more of the same. On one occasion, it took us 3 hours to drive 20km. I hardly used third gear, going 20-30 km/h, then pulling off to rest. Horrible. And then, there are switchbacks. Oh yes, switchbacks. Lots of switchbacks. They can be fun if you're alone and the pavement isn't bad, but imagine climbing up steep switchbacks with huge potholes in car at its max weight, coming around a corner and seeing a truck coming at you for a head-on b/c he's passing a car!! Run for the ditch, man, because he's not going to make room for you! I almost had a few head-ons in the cities for similar reasons. Romanian drivers are just are bad as Polish drivers (Hungarians seem better), but the crazy, homocidal truck driver is an international standard. One thing I really liked in Romania, and which Poland can't seem to adopt, is the countdown timer above traffic signals at larger intersections. It shows how many seconds until the light changes from red to green or green to red. Normally I wouldn't turn the engine off at an unfamiliar intersection, but with a timer I can easily see that I have 80 seconds of waiting until I can start turning the starter. Unfortunately, the digits were too small to be seen from far away, so I sometimes hard to suddenly use the brakes instead of gently engine braking to a stop.
Svietlana did very well: even though she was packed to her weight limit she did good a job of pulling us up the hills. The A/C was on almost all the time
There was no other option with 5 people inside and with sun and temperatures of 28-34*C outside. With the weight, the steep hills and the A/C, it's amazing that I used only 49 liters of fuel for the 1130km of the tour of Transylvania. That's 4.3 l/100km, or 54 mpg
The return home from Oradea got worse FE, partially because of the 130-140km/h speeds on the Hungarian and Slovakian highways, and partially because of a downpour that we drove in from mid-Slovakia to the Polish border. The heat wave in the south hit the cooler, damp air up north and we drove under the front for 2-3 hours. It was pouring so hard that we had stop a few times on the shoulder and wait it out.
We noticed that Svietlana was attracting attention, but not more than back at home. Yes, a few drivers stopped in the middle of the intersection, blocking traffic while staring, but only at a rest stop in Hungary did someone actually come up and ask. When returning home we got pulled over by the Hungarian border patrol. They waved to us before they could see the aeromods, this was just a routine stop. They checked everyone's documents, asked whether we are transporting cigarettes or alcohol, and when I closed the trunk, one of the officers poked at the Kammback and asked what it's for. When I replied that it helps use less fuel, he shrugged with a "Yeah, right, whatever" expression.
Since I'm in efficiency, here is a picture of an old Ukrainian (Soviet) Zaporozhetz. It has a handcrank instead of a starter
Romania can be called "The Land of Dacia", both with regard to the historical name of that region, and with regard to the myriads of Dacias on the roads. Many of these cars are tens of years old and come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and have been "homemodded" into even more. Here is one with a homemade bumper which to an ecomodder's eye looks like an airdam. Also notice the three-tone paintjob
I'll add that big, ugly roof racks seem to have been standard on Dacias, and are probably rust-welded to the roof by now. On the left of the above picture is a Dacia Logan, produced after the company was bought by Renault.
One of the problems we had was with communication: a lot of people speak Italian, but not many know English. But all in all, we had a really great time, and coming back to civilization, and then home, was not easy. I highly recommand visiting Romania to anyone who is that region. It's not the backward, third world country many regard it to be.