Day 9: Last Day in Breb

Friday was our last day in Breb, so we decided to walk between two of the villages and take things in slowly in a way that you can't in a car (the way you especially can't when Taylor is driving). First, though, Vio sent us placinte--fluffy pancakes filled with sheep's cheese.

Fortified with carbs, we set out for the nearby Hoteni, for a roughly six-mile round trip hike. As on the other days, we had the road mostly to ourselves--it wound past the Rooster's Crest mountain in the distance, and we could see the locals out working their fields (they all live centrally in the village and own the land surrounding it).

The foliage seemed to be turning by the day, with some trees having suddenly burst into bright red. And though I did not see the hedgehog I hoped to find, we did have some unexpected experiences--an old woman gathering apples into her yard called to us and gestured us over, and then filled our pockets with apples. They were tart, sweet, and small, definitely different than the blander apples you tend to get at the supermarkets back home.

We also saw several houses that had trees in the front yards hung with pots and pans--which means a young woman of marrying age is in the home.

On the way back, a second old woman called to us over a wall and handed us several bunches of grapes to take on way, telling us they were "bun" (good).

Despite the language barrier, the people in Breb are among the friendliest I've ever met (a definite change from how I felt in the rest of Romania). The only thing that made me nervous walking around was the huge number of stray dogs running around--some of them are decidedly not friendly.

After our walk, we drove to a nearby restaurant in Mara, built over a stream so that they can farm the trout fresh to the restaurant. (That waterfall is manmade, but still beautiful!)

I had fried cheese (seems to be the standard "vegetarian" meal in Eastern Europe) and Taylor had fried trout, and for dessert I had a sweet cheese crepe and a forest fruit crepe--both delicious. And we had some delightful kitten company inside. Also. this is the part of vacation where I decide maybe jeans are no longer an option and it's leggings every day.

After our walk, Taylor rested in the house and I, tireless adventurer that I am, decided to walk to the other side of Breb to see the wooden church there. It was closed, but I still got to wander around the grounds and see the parish house and the belltower, as well as the cemetery behind. There was a herd of sheep grazing amongst the headstones, but since Romanian sheepdogs are huge and scary, I didn't get too close to them.

(Constructed with no nails!)

Since this was a day of eating, for dinner we went back to Vio and Vasile's house, and the night's menu was a sweet, tender pork with cardamom, garlic mushrooms, rice with parsley and paprika, and then some AMAZING cake--white cake with apple filling and sweet whipped cream, and chocolate cake with a vanilla pudding and a lemon jelly. Vio could open a bakery in America and be one rich lady.

We also tried to talk to each other more at this dinner, and between my roughly 17 words of Romanian and some hand gestures, we learned they have a married daughter living in Paris, a son in Breb, and 30 sheep--they both grew up in nearby Budesti and then moved to Breb. They even gifted us a bottle of their homemade horinca.

The last stop of the night was the fire at the Village Hotel--a group of 10 Romanian men had just arrived to do a weekend bike ride, so we sat with them for a while and engaged in our hobby of talking with people of other nationalities about what they think about Trump. (To quote one of them: "Well, he's not the WORST president in the world. It's Kim Jong-Un, then Trump.")