Snagov and Steaua – Saturday 29th September

Today started with a say trip to Snagov to see the lake and Vlad Tepes’ tomb in the Monastery. With a pool car courtesy of those lovely people at Aviva I set off with my visitors – elder brother Neville and his son Anthony. Unfortunately the planning hadn’t extended to actually finding a map on the internet and so we set off with all eyes peeled for road signs. The first sign took us off to Snagov village and requests for directions in my Romglish were met with very blank looks indeed. Having driven down a few rough roads to dead ends with no sign of a lake we headed back to the main road to try to find another turning on the assumption that we were nowhere near the lake.
The next turning quickly took us into a large gloomy forest and soon we came across a sign to the “Historical Site – Vlad Tepes”. This sent us into the forest down a very narrow twisting and turning road that eventually emerged near the lake.
We were rowed across to the island by two young locals for the rather exorbitant fee of 100RON, although this was the cost of a “return ticket”!
The monastery in its current form is primarily early 16th century with the richly decorated interior dating from the mid 16th century. Unfortunately there is extensive damage from vandalism although there is a massive restoration project under way that will complete in two to three years time. What murals are still in place are magnificent but the 20EURO camera tax for such a small monastery seemed exorbitant even compared to the cost of the “ferry”.

Now I have learned that sometimes postcards are better and the results for the photo collection can be just as good.

Returning to Bucharest suitably stressed from my first driving experience here lunch is ollowed by some beers with colleagues before setting off for the Dubliner for Wales v Fiji. Suitably depressed after Wales' exit from the Rugby World Cup we headed off to the Stadionul Ghencea for the football - Steaua v Vaslui kicking off at 8:45 is easily the lastest kick-off time I've known.

The first-half is woeful full of long aimless balls, diving and feigning injury. Steaua just about edge it in the "shamming" stakes. The second half sees Steaua dominate for long periods with the only goal of the game coming with a good header from a corner. The game ends controversially as only one minute of the three minutes of time being added on gets played resulting in a "robust exchange of views" between the referee and the Vaslui manager.

So an interesting night out, despite a disappointingly small crowd and a poor game overall it took a while to find a taxi back home but we are back just after 11:30 to plan our day out in Bucharest for Sunday.