"I want to see mountains again, mountains, Gandalf!"

Also titled, Dracula, Black Sea Tragedy, and Pandora's Recovery!

From last Wednesday to Sunday we made our way around Romania with Manu, visiting family (of course!) and some of the country's best features.



Traveling in Romania is a bit of an adventure.  Most of the highways have only two lanes which means all drivers must be skilled in the art of passing. More than once we gasped in fright as a semi's lights burned in our retinas before Manu skillfully re-entered his lane.

The Carpathian mountain range is a sight, at times resembling the highest ridges of the Appalachians and at other times displaying the rounded granite peaks of the west.

You may be familiar with this area for its connection to the well-known literary figure Nicolae Carpathia--the Antichrist in the Left Behind series-- or the lesser known Count Dracula.

Try googling Nicolae's name and counting how many pictures of Obama come up. 

We visited two castles, the one associated with Vlad the Impaler who is thought to have influenced Bram Stoker's Dracula, and later the last castle inhabited by Romania's royal family before being kicked out by the Communists. But most striking about this area was certainly its natural beauty. Apparently others think so too: Manu told us that Prince Charles is a frequent visitor to this area of Romania because of its preservation of traditional village life.

Beautiful Emma in front of Beautiful Brasov.

"Whatever is a week-end?"

From there we spent three days on the Black Sea in Romania's second largest city--Constanta--with the family of her great Aunt (who wonderfully resembled her Mamae in Phoenix). I would show you pictures, but I'm not skilled enough in PhotoShop to edit out all of the scores of topless grandmothers and their Speedo-donning husbands. I'm not kidding--if you are interested in the diversity of human form, look no further than the beaches of Constanta.

But then, tragedy strikes! While looking through the menu settings of our camera, trying to adjust the image size of our pictures, Emma accidentally re-formatted the memory card. The ensuring feeling of despair was all too familiar: a year ago we left our camera, containing all of our wedding and honeymoon pictures, at a public pool where it was promptly stolen. Emma's grandmother quickly got on the case and began praying that our camera would be returned. Sure enough, a month later the camera was at her doorstep! Being somewhat of a realist (see, real pessimist) I doubted that there was any hope this time and assured Emma that we would not be able to get our pictures back. Later that night, still feeling the loss of our pictures--most significantly those of Emma's grandfather and first-cousins--the wife of Emma's first-cousin once removed said sympathetically but as a matter of fact., "God did a miracle once, he will do it again. He can do it and I'll pray for you." When we got home, we googled online recovery programs found one called Pandora's Recovery, and....we were able to recover all of them!


The Lord is too good to us and we are grateful--not only for the pictures, but for this entire trip. Many Romanians do not have the privilege we have had to see the beauty of their own county. It was truly a gift.