Italians were masons, Romanians were building terraces, the Gypsies were coolies. Albanians and Greeks worked in stone, Germans and Hungarians were carpenters. Turks were burning brick. Engineers were Polish and the stone carvers were Czech. The Frenchmen were drawing, the Englishmen were measuring, and so was then when you could see hundreds of national costumes and fourteen languages in which they spoke, sang, cursed and quarreled in all dialects and tones, a joyful mix of men, horses, cart oxen and domestic buffaloes. So wrote Elisabeta, Queen of the Romanians, on the construction in the late 19th century of the impressively lavish Peles Castle in a stunning location in the Carpathian Mountains to the north of Bucharest. I spent just an hour or so at the palace in the company of my Romanian Cisco colleague, Radu Bitu, a couple of weeks ago, at the end of three highly productive and enjoyable days in his country. Having spent the two previous nights in Sibiu (the image below is of the old square at the centre of Sibiu), in the heart of Transylvania (and that after one night in Bucharest itself), I felt I had just about as delightful an introduction to Romania as I could have managed in such a short time. Technorati Tags: romania , transylvania , sibiu , bucharest , travel
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Transylvania & Peles Castle
Italians were masons, Romanians were building terraces, the Gypsies were coolies. Albanians and Greeks worked in stone, Germans and Hungarians were carpenters. Turks were burning brick. Engineers were Polish and the stone carvers were Czech. The Frenchmen were drawing, the Englishmen were measuring, and so was then when you could see hundreds of national costumes and fourteen languages in which they spoke, sang, cursed and quarreled in all dialects and tones, a joyful mix of men, horses, cart oxen and domestic buffaloes. So wrote Elisabeta, Queen of the Romanians, on the construction in the late 19th century of the impressively lavish Peles Castle in a stunning location in the Carpathian Mountains to the north of Bucharest. I spent just an hour or so at the palace in the company of my Romanian Cisco colleague, Radu Bitu, a couple of weeks ago, at the end of three highly productive and enjoyable days in his country. Having spent the two previous nights in Sibiu (the image below is of the old square at the centre of Sibiu), in the heart of Transylvania (and that after one night in Bucharest itself), I felt I had just about as delightful an introduction to Romania as I could have managed in such a short time. Technorati Tags: romania , transylvania , sibiu , bucharest , travel
Read the article on John Connell
