My Bloody Romania: Bucegi Mountains (of garbage)

by Leif Pettersen on

Dateline: Bucegi Mountains, Romania

If you’re a regular reader over at my laugh-riot, almost-award-winning blog, Killing Batteries (and if not, why exactly?), you’ll know that I do my share of complaining. It’s my way. I must complain to vent pent up rage or I’d have gone ape$hit on some deserving cop/hostel clerk/bus driver/post office employee by now and I’d be blogging about the food and internet cutouts at Sing Sing rather than various locations around Europe.

Well, I’ve held my tongue long enough. I’m about to open up a can of ‘Leif-Flavored Foot Up Your Ass’ on the entire Romanian population for their alarming, baffling and idiotic penchant for wanton littering.

I’ve already commented in this travelogue about trash lining the sides of most roads and collecting in the immediate orbit of any tourist sight, but my ability to overlook this finally snapped when the Little Vampire and I took a day hike at the Bucegi Mountains.

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Certainly, in any urban area trash can be a bit of a problem due to the sheer number of people producing it. But if people even half-heartedly dispose of their trash in a civilized manner, the tide can be controlled. Unfortunately, Romanians have yet to realize this particular wrinkle of modern society. Garbage is discarded at whim, usually wherever one happens to be standing at the time when one has finished their beer/ice cream/potato chips, regardless of the proximity of a proper waste receptacle. And it’s not like these lazy asshats are being asked to move all that much to find a bin. Most cities are veritably ‘littered’ with garbage cans. In central Iaşi, there’s a tiny, green garbage can hanging from every second post. Yet garbage rolls down the streets, gathering in small drifts in corners. Fortunately, most cities have armies of street sweepers attending to the problem, so the trash never gets more than ankle deep.

On a side note, I give Romanian street sweepers the highest regard for their dedication to what is plainly an awful job. Not only do they somehow hold their own in the epic struggle to keep Romania’s streets relatively clear of garbage, but they cope admirably with what I assume is an inundation of turd piles left by thousands of stray dogs (and domestic dogs owned by indolent bastards). Meanwhile in places like Paris and all of Spain, only a fool would look away from the pavement for fear of sampling the all-you-can-eat Dog $hit Buffet they maintain on their sidewalks.

Romania’s countryside is another story. Trash seemingly only gets collected seasonally or, in some cases, never. Roadside picnic areas are the worst. Sometimes these places have been supplied with a single well-intentioned trash can or dumpster by some local entity, forgetting that they didn’t install the Magically-Emptying model and so someone has to stop by on occasion to deal with their contents. Since no one does, they fill in a few weeks, then overflow, then the growing trash pile around the base starts to even bury the receptacle itself. But that’s assuming that most people actually get off their asses, waddle over and add to the localized trash pile. Sadly, most just chose to throw their garbage just a few feet away or, with supreme effort, into the nearby woods which they also freely use as open air $hit houses, complete with used toilet paper flapping in the trees.

As hateful as these sights are, at least one usually only sees them as they zoom by at 120KPH. What’s going on around the quickly spoiling mountain trails is another story. Which brings us back to the Bucegi visit.

The day started in now familiar fashion with unseasonable cold and rain, with a gusting, hat-snatching wind that, we learned belatedly, closed down the cable cars from Buşteni for the day. With our cable car-assisted climb to Babele Peak ruled out, we were forced to chose from a number of hikes leading from the edge of town. In a moment of temporary insanity, we briefly considered hiking the entire distance to Babele, a four and a half hour march, which might have been realistic if not for the late hour (it was already noon by this point) and the flimsy clothing we had on. We resolved that the Babele hike was folly and thank goodness. The next day we saw news reports of 14 tourists needing to be rescued from Babele later that same day after being trapped at the top by dangerous weather.

So it was that we opted for the very low-impact, 30 minute hike to a small waterfall. Not even 10 meters after the ‘no littering sign’, 50 meters after the last trash can, the piles, and I mean piles, of garbage started. Plastic bottles, chip bags, tins of tuna, candy wrappers, beer cans, beer cans, beer cans… The reason for this was obvious. Little sheds selling snacks and drinks start at the parking area and continue right to the foot of the mountain. Weekend Warrior jackasses intending to ‘enjoy the outdoors’ load up on Cheetos, ice cream sandwiches and tall cans of Ursus as they set off and not a single one of them is carrying their waste when the emerge from the woods a few hours later. It’s been deposited in the precious outdoors they’ve driven so far to experience.

I really don’t like the way I look or sound when I start spouting off about these things in public, it smacks a bit of the Ugly Tourist waltzing into town and telling the natives how to behave, but the Little Vampire was in total concurrence, so with this encouragement I moaned incessantly as we stepped around garbage all the way to the waterfall.

After a while, I actually started to admire how far the trail of trash persisted. It seemed as if some of these people had been carry six-packs of beer and catered lunches for them to have carried the wrappings so far before discarding them. Minutes later at the waterfall, I discovered the last piece of the puzzle. A pair of f*ckwits had set up two tiny food stands barely out of photography range of the falls. They had just about everything a hungry hiker might need after a grueling 30 minute walk, except one crucial item: a garbage can. Not only were people merrily invoking the ‘Once I Drop It, It’s Not My Problem’ approach to Romanian waste disposal, but some people were taking it to the next level and throwing their trash into the falls, like contest to see who could get their garbage caught in the highest branches. It made me sick.

I realize that there are dough heads in every city on earth who are capable of this level of gleeful vandalism and natural destruction, but the ubiquitous distain that Romanians seem to have for their surroundings is deplorable. I cannot in good faith promote nature tours in Romania until these people wake up, make tougher littering laws, enforce them, and send out the tens of thousands of people that it’s going to take to clean up the staggering mess they’ve made in what was once a beautiful country.

Leif Pettersen, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, co-authored the current edition of Lonely Planet’s Romania and Moldova. Visit his personal blog, Killing Batteries, for more condemning of entire populations and guidelines on when it’s OK to be an Ugly Tourist.

My Bloody Romania: Bra

by Leif Pettersen on

Dateline: Bra??ov, Romania

Why is it that the top two tourist destinations in Romania have virtually no signage to assist the, you know, tourists? Seriously, this mystery has kept me up at night and driving in maddening circles during the day, cursing the mothers of city officials who are apparently still diverting their sign budgets to keep apartments for their mistresses by the Black Sea.

Let’s start with Bucharest. First off, this hellhole is one of Europe’s worst capital cities, so anyone coming here for a pleasure stay is either vastly ill-informed or they’re giving it a pity visit, because their plane landed here and they had no other choice. Bucharest has minimal satisfying activities, it’s expensive (by Romanian standards) and there’s an army of thieves and pickpockets freely roaming the streets including the armada of illegal taxis that still bafflingly operate with impunity, despite repeated declarations by officials (via live-feed from their Black Sea villas) to crack down.

Bucharest has exactly zero signs directing people to such vital locations like important plazas, the train station or the airport (until you’re just 2km short of the bloody thing and planes are roaring overhead, where they’ve posted a no-brainer sign pointing straight on – nice effort jackasses). On the contrary, if you, say, want a Big Mac, there’s thousands of signs blanketing the city clearly pointing the way to the nearest McDonald’s, with distances and GPS coordinates just for good measure. Say what you want about McDonald’s, at least they understand the simple concept of ‘If You Point to It, They Will Come – Faster’, while Romanians still largely adhere to the perennial ‘Find It On Your Own, I Don’t Care If It Takes You All Day. Do You Have A Cigarette?’.

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Braşov, hands down Romania’s primary tourist city (without the advantage of an airport, I might add), is only slightly better. Once you’ve penetrated through the industrial and commercial zones, a few signs have been nailed to posts in randomly selected intersections pointing the way to the center, but getting this far takes a significant amount of luck and trial and error since there are no signs directing people from the E68 highway. I know this as indisputable fact, as the Little Vampire and I just drove the entire length of Braşov’s outskirts three times searching in vain for signs, speculating on what kind of BMW the mayor bought with his sign funds.

Well, future Braşov visitors, here’s a hard-earned tip for getting to the center of town: when approaching the outskirts, look up toward the south (better yet, have your co-pilot do this, as taking your eyes off traffic in Romania for even a second is guaranteed to lead to disaster) and locate the tacky Hollywood-style ‘Braşov’ sign propped above the city on Mount Tâmpa. All you have to do is home in on that thing until ‘Centru‘ signs start appearing.

Once in central Braşov however, it’s all gravy. This is tourist ground zero for a reason. Easily the most scenic urban area in the country, Braşov also happens to be an excellent staging area for castle tours, day hikes, and increasingly ill-fated ‘bear-watching tours’. I’ve lost count, but I think at least three tourists have been killed by bear attacks in the Braşov area this summer, with several more injured. Meanwhile, these outings – usually consisting of a ride to the local trash heap to watch scavenging bears feed – are creating the illusion (for the bears) that humans = food. I don’t know about you guys, but when I go somewhere expecting food and find nothing (say, a flight from DC to San Francisco), I get a hankering to disembowel somebody. Obviously, I’m of the opinion that bear tours should be avoided. If you wanna see giant, hairy, dangerous animals rooting for scraps, tour the US Senate during appropriations season.

I’d been to Braşov before, wandering the pedestrian-friendly center, slowly circling the massive Black Church and, as I did on this visit, enjoying some of Romania’s best non-Romanian cuisine.

I’m not normally the kind of jackhole that travels 10,000 miles just to eat at the local Hard Rock Café. I love Romanian food, but seriously, after weeks/months of the same stuff every single day, sometimes you just want a hamburger. Or in this case Mexican. I haven’t found anywhere else in all of Europe that does Mexican as well as Bella Musica in central Braşov. Chips with salsa, prepared the way that Buddha intended, and a shot of ear-smoking ţuică arrive after you order and it just gets better from there. Fajitas, burritos and excellent cuts of beef are available at reasonable prices. And, yes, they do Romanian food and they do it well. There’s a ‘ciorba de pui a la Grec‘ (countryside chicken soup, Greek style) on the menu that aroused me more than the first time I saw Michelle Hunziker topless.

I’m gonna be frank, with limited in-town time and yet more foul weather, I didn’t spend much time roaming Braşov on this particular stopover, but even quickly driving through town served to remind me that Braşov is well worth its notoriety. Even better, there’s a somewhat competitive budget accommodations industry here, making this one of the few cities in Romania where a decent hostel stay is attainable. We stayed at Rolling Stone Hostel this time around after a grimy, malodorous stay at another hostel during my last visit, which, despite the already-dated review in the current LP, has free internet/WiFi and reasonably priced castle tours.

Like most popular cities, it’s probably best to avoid Braşov in July and August, otherwise, this remains a must-visit city on any Romanian tour

Leif Pettersen, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, co-authored the current edition of Lonely Planet’s Romania and Moldova. Visit his personal blog, Killing Batteries, for further amateur food reviews and more references to Michelle Hunziker’s killer bod.

My Bloody Romania: The real Dracula’s Castle

by Leif Pettersen on

Dateline: Dracula’s Castle, Romania

Wake up people, Leif’s Un-Authorized, Tell-All, Myth-Busting, Ass-Kicking, Hyphenation-Extravaganza is about to begin.

I’m about to provide you with priceless information that will make you a star at your pub’s next video trivia game and possibly get you laid – or at least second base out in the alley – depending on how much beer your victorious answer earns your team.

There are three sites in Romania that are billed as ‘Dracula’s Castle’ in the interest of selling more undead-themed t-shirts and coffee mugs, but only one of them is where Vlad ‘?epe??’ Dracula actually lived, passing his time scaring the living crap out of Turkish invaders during his reign as Prince of Wallachia.

Below are three pictures: ‘Dracula castles’ located at the Tihu?a (Borga) Pass, Bran and Poienari. Can you pick out the real Dracula’s castle?

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2.

3.

Let’s get the no-brainer one out of the way first.

Picture Number 1, The ‘castle’ at the Tihuţa Pass, is nothing more than a tourist trap hotel, built in the early 1980s, to siphon just a few more dollars out of die-hard fans of the fictional Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, retracing the journey taken by protagonist Jonathan Harker. Never mind that the building is only 20 years old, it’s unlikely that non-fictional Vlad Ţepeş ever set foot in this region, as it’s clear on the other side of Transylvania, practically in Moldavia, hundreds of kilometers away from Wallachia where he ruled.

Picture Number 2, Bran Castle, is a more realistic option, what with the fairytale turrets, dramatic setting and the fact that it was actually standing when Vlad Ţepeş was beating a hasty retreat through the Transylvanian countryside, but this was not Dracula’s home. It was built by Braşov Saxons in 1382. Ţepeş may have spent the night here after being chased out of his real pad by really pissed off Turks in 1462. More recently, it was home to Queen Marie from 1920 on and a summer chillout out zone for King Michael before the Communists removed him in 1947. In 2006, as part of a program to return property grabbed by the Communists, ownership of the castle was returned to its rightful heir: Dominic Habsburg, the grandson of Queen Marie, now a New York-based architect who immediately decided to cash out and sell the place. After Romania failed to get the funds together for a first-option offer, Habsburg placed the castle for sale to all comers. The castle was still on the market at the time of writing.

Picture Number 3, Poienari Citadel, is obviously the real home of Vlad Ţepeş, built by miserable, soon to be skewed, Turkish prisoners in 1459. Ţepeş had barely gotten comfortable before he was driven off by Turkish reinforcements in 1462. A large part of the structure fell down the mountain in 1888. What remains is a rather small cluster of head-high ruins, somewhat disappointing on their own, but enriched by the mountaintop setting and the 1,480 spirit-sapping stairs one needs to endure to access the site, which must have been a real bitch for those Turks to climb back when it was just a dirt path while loaded down with stones, bricks and buckets of mortar.

I’d been to Poienari Citadel once before during my LP research trip, but it was March. The mountain was somewhat fogged in and covered in snow, so my pictures didn’t nearly capture the essence of the place.

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After tutting at yet another unsightly pile of rubbish left by previous visitors at the base of the hill (via purchases made at nearby refreshments stands whose proprietors seemed perfectly content to let the garbage their dealings generated pile up to the heavens), the Little Vampire and I got started slowly plodding up the hill. Both of us being wretchedly out of shape, we rested often, while keeping our eyes on an idiotic family ahead of us that had opted to bring their dog on the trip, who was scampering around in the brush, causing dozens of mini-avalanches that bounced debris down the hill all around us.

Once at the citadel, we lingered, taking in the expansive view, snapping numerous gratuitous pictures of my butt and contemplating which hole was probably Vlad’s toilet. Though it’s awfully pretty on a clear day, there’s really not much else to do.

The walk down was no easier, quadriceps burning and nearing the failure point much of the way. Gingerly easing our spasming legs back into the car, we headed a few minutes up the road to the Lake Vidraru Dam, a worthwhile stop if you’re passing by if only to get a vertigo-inducing look over the side and, if you’re none too comfortable with heights like I am, maybe gauge how far vomit can fall before vaporizing.

Leif Pettersen, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, co-authored the current edition of Lonely Planet’s Romania and Moldova. Visit his personal blog, Killing Batteries, for more Romania trivia, hastily researched history and pictures ostensibly of tourist sites that happen to feature his tushie.

My Bloody Romania: Not your ordinary Arge

by Leif Pettersen on

Dateline: Curtea de Arge??, Romania

Do you ever have that dream where you’re just traveling along from town to town for weeks on end, meeting people, visiting arresting sights and all of a sudden you realize that you forgot to put on pants before you left America? And when you try to run back to America, gonads only barely cupped in one hand, suddenly you’re running in slow motion and Euro-political activists are jumping in front of you and going “No really, how the f*ck did Bush get re-elected? Are you guys retarded or what?”

Totally.

Another freaky thing that occasionally happens to me on the road is that I’ll arrive in an ostensibly ho-hum city, and it really is ho-hum, but there’s something about it that tweaks my aesthetic radar and I come away with an inexplicable affection for the place. I had that reaction to Curtea de Arge??.

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When I first visited Curtea de Argeş 18 months ago on my LP research trip, I was struck by how well organized it was (un-Romanian-like helpful signs abound), the kind, laid back people, the few, yet above average sights and, by my estimation, the best value accommodations in all of Romania. (That’s right, six commas in one sentence. You wanna make somethin’ of it?)

The Little Vampire and I rocketed into town well ahead of schedule what with us having no reason to linger on the fog-covered Făgăraş Mountains. Deftly negotiating the easy to navigate, well-signed streets (that’s the first and last time you’ll hear me use those words in connection with a Romanian destination), we pulled into one of my favorite pensions in all of Romania, Pensiunea Ruxi, unpacked and relaxed a bit before heading out for a tour.

Minutes later we were meandering in and around the atmospheric grounds of the tiny Episcopal cathedral (1526, refurbished from near-ruins in 1875) and adjoining monastery, ogling the cathedral’s interior ornamentation and the tombs of Wallachian/Romanian rulers Neagoe Basarab, Carol I and wife Elizabeth, and King Ferdinand and Queen Marie.

A short drive down the road is Curtea de Argeş’ other primary, man-made attraction: the Princely Court. The ruins of the 14th century palace are well-maintained (i.e. someone goes around from time to time and picks up the beer cans), if slightly moribund, but the church of the same era is still perfectly intact, including the extraordinary, never touched-up frescos covering every square inch of the interior.

Apart from the fairly dull County Museum and strolling the length of the town’s busy, but pleasant main street, that’s about all there is to do. You can see it all in about three hours at the laziest of paces. Like I said, ho-hum. Yet, strangely charming.

The next morning after a lovely, gut-busting breakfast in the living room at Pensiunea Ruxi, the cinematically beautiful weather inspired us to take another crack at the Transfăgărăşan Road. We theorized that maybe if we hit the mountain later in the day, the sun would have time to burn off all that moist fog and we’d have a better chance at seeing the lake and waterfall.

Leaving Curtea de Argeş at the dawdling hour of 11am, we wound through the uneventful and dreadfully paved Argeş Valley for 40km, frequently passing yet more brand new lodges and pensions as well as picnic areas peppered with years worth of trash. We hit the mountain just after noon and yet again wiggled up the twisty ascent, this time with a lot more company in the form of tourists and dump trucks that I hoped were loaded with material to patch the valley road.

As we neared the summit, still under a glorious cloudless sky, God must have realized what we were up to and, I imagine, nearly broke his neck grappling for his Blackberry to message Mother Nature. He probably fired off his instructions just as we entered the tunnel, she received them, hit a few buttons on the remote with seconds to spare and we emerged into, yes, even worse fog than the previous day.

Creeping through freakishly bad visibility, we managed to locate the edge of the lake about two feet before the wheels got wet and dutifully took a photo of the eerie nothingness before getting back in the car and inching down the mountain, demoralized. (For the record this is what the lake looks like on a clear day)

After his howling Screw Leif Orgasm, God must’ve stepped out for a smoke just as we once again passed Bâlea Cascada, because the fog suddenly cleared and there was the waterfall off in the distance, plain as day. We scrambled up alongside the cascading water for a mile or so, but time prevented us from covering the entire distance up to the bottom of the main falls. We had dinner reservations in Braşov at 7pm at a popular restaurant. Having eaten there before, we knew damn well that our table took priority over any waterfall. Waterfalls are a dime a dozen in Romania, honest-to-Buddha chips and salsa are not.

Leif Pettersen, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, co-authored the current edition of Lonely Planet’s Romania and Moldova. Visit his personal blog, Killing Batteries, for more insider info on disastrous Romanian interpretations on foreign cuisine – e.g. ‘salsa’ = ketchup, ‘orange juice’ = orange Fanta and ‘spicy’ = salty.

My Bloody Romania: The Transf

by Leif Pettersen on

Dateline: Tooling around the Transf??g??r????an Road, Romania

Nicolae Ceau??escu, Romanian dictator for 25 years, was a clown at best and a cruel, brutal sonofabitch at worst. His homely wife Elena was just the same, with the additional failing of being dumber than goose ca-ca. When the two were executed by firing squad on Christmas day 1989, it was a mercy killing. Had I been in charge – Wow, I utter that phrase a lot! – the two, perpetually in shackles, muzzles and dunce caps, would have been forced to travel the country, yoked to giant carts from which they would personally distribute their belongings and wealth to the people of Romania, particularly to the tens of thousands victims and their families who were imprisoned, tortured and murdered over the years.

Having completed that, they’d be dispatched to clean the bathrooms in Bucharest’s Gara Nord train station (still yoked for form’s sake) for the rest of eternity and live in a glass barn, complete with gastro-intestinally prolific livestock, placed smack in Bucharest’s Pia?a Victorei so the public could view their wretchedness 24 hours a day and freely bombard the walls with rotten fruit and vegetables. Ah, sweet vengeance.

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Ceauşescu had an affinity for megalomaniac projects that were usually expensive and always catastrophic. Stunning ramifications ranged from environmental disasters (trying to drain the Danube Delta and turn it into an agricultural region) to creating an astonishing two hundred thousand-strong stray dog epidemic in Bucharest (Palace of Parliament). What he was over-compensating for we dare not presume, but if there was any woman in modern history that would have fallen for the “No really, you have to see it in the right light – I swear it’s nine inches” shtick, it was Elena Ceauşescu.

That said, of all Nicolae Ceauşescu’s brainless, monumental, money pit projects, only one remains useful and, dare I say, admired. I speak of the Transfăgărăşan Road, Romania’s highest asphalt road, winding over the Făgăraş Mountains, connecting Transylvania to Wallachia.

Billed by my own LP guide as “an unforgettable experience behind the wheel”, the road was born not surprisingly out of one of Ceauşescu’s many paranoid episodes, wanting to secure a Carpathian crossing in case of Russian invasion (as had happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968). Ceauşescu sent in the army to tackle job, which they did in just four and a half years (38 fall-down exhausted soldiers reportedly died in mishaps during construction), opening in September 1974.

Weather restricts access to the road to roughly May to October, which is why I didn’t make this drive during my LP research trip (March), which, in retrospect, was a blessing as my Dacia’s brakes weren’t fit for door-stops.

The north (Transylvania) side, where the Little Vampire and I started early one morning, is indisputably the highlight. Scarfing a running breakfast on our way out of Sibiu before the Caucus of Organized, Devout Non-Atheists could re-take the streets for another day of closed-door cultish dealings, we turned off Highway 1 (E68) after about 40km. We meandered past a few villages and strings of brand new, EU-friendly, ambitiously priced lodges and pensions scattered throughout the countryside, before starting the crawl up a wicked series of zig-zag roads, requiring constant heel-toe action with the clutch and accelerator.

I expected that the dizzying drive would be somewhat sullied by some Romanian asshat driver riding two inches from my fender the whole way (there always is), shrieking curse words, frothing at the mouth and punching the ceiling because my interminable presence was delaying him by vital seconds to get to nowhere in particular. But the mountain was deserted. We only saw one other car during the entire ascent, possibly because everyone else had gotten a load of the morning weather report and prudently gone back to bed.

As the tree-line started to thin and we approached our first objective, Bâlea Cascada (Bâlea Waterfall), our now familiar weather misfortune burned us for the third day in a row. The mountain became enshrouded in a fog so thick and creamy you could’ve mixed it in parmesan and poured it over pasta. Apart from a few fleeting breaks in the fog, visibility was ridiculously low. So low that I didn’t see a flock of 400-500 galloping, wild-eyed sheep until an instant before they’d surrounded the car.

The Little Vampire screamed. I groped for the camera and courageously jumped out of the car for pictures when it seemed safe. The hoard continued for a minute or so, finally trailed by a few dogs and some shepherds that looked like they’d been up the mountain all summer equipped with more ţuică than soap. As they trotted by, one beseeched me for a cigarette, showing patent skepticism when I indicated that I don’t smoke, before they continued the chase down the mountain, tormenting the flock’s stragglers. I watched them disappear into the fog. Suddenly alone, I looked down and saw that I was standing on a carpet of raisin-sized sheep turds. The car floor was never the same again.

Minutes later we were at Bâlea Cascada. Barely able to discern the lodge/restaurant through the fog from the parking lot 10 meters away, it was evident we would not be viewing the falls on this visit. We retired to the bar for a surprisingly good coffee, vainly lingering in the hopes of this epic fog lifting, but it was useless. This was the kind of interminable fog foretold in the Apocalypse and believe me when I say it was Apocalypse Now.

Back in the car, we chugged up to, and right past, Lake Bâlea at the road’s peak (2,034 meters/6,671 feet). That’s how bad the fog was. We not only missed a whole lake, but the signs too. After plunging though a nearly one kilometer long tunnel we emerged onto the less striking south side of the mountain and… beauteous sunshine. One tiny tunnel separated a cotton-ball hell from Eden. Unfortunately, Eden was patently lackluster.

Leif Pettersen, originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, co-authored the current edition of Lonely Planet’s Romania and Moldova. Visit his personal blog, Killing Batteries, for additional tips on creative vengeance and how a non-existent God somehow manages to biblically screw him so often.