Romania is a land of a thousand faces.
The crossing point between the Occident and the Orient,
and a melting pot of different cultures.
It is also a country unlike any other in Europe.
With over half of the Carpathian mountain range weaving through it,
Romania is the custodian of Europe's greatest surviving mixed forests,
and two thirds of its alpha predators.
As well as native Romanians, it's home to Hungarian,
Saxon,
Roma,
Serbian,
Greek,
and many more diverse peoples,
united by the borders of a nation
that stretches to the mouth of the Danube.
However, Romania's natural and built heritage
is under threat from reckless development
and a race to modernize which often destroys the very things that could ensure
prosperity for generations to come.
Welcome back to our two-wheeled tour
around Romania's nine great historic regions.
In this fourth episode, we've reached Muntenia.
We commence our journey starting in the capital city of Bucharest,
just 37 miles from the Bulgarian border.
It is the most densely populated city in South-Eastern Europe,
and until 1989, the seat of power for the Communist party,
lead by the late Nicolae Ceaușescu.
I'm on my way to visit his lavish headquarters,
ironically dubbed The People's Palace,
still the heaviest and second largest building in the world,
weighing in a whooping 4.10 million tons.
It's now the House of Parliament for the Romanian government,
and it's jointly occupied by the Senate and the Deputy Chamber.
We've been granted exclusive access
to see what usually goes on behind the closed doors,
with the help of my guide Francisc,
who's waiting for me in one of its cavernous lobbies.
Francisc.
- Hello, Charlie. - Hey!
- Good to see you. - Good to see you too.
- Thanks for coming. - My pleasure.
- This really defies the descriptions. - It is pretty impressive.
There's more than four million tons, the weight of the palace.
And also the lights, as you can see,
there are 2800 chandeliers in the building.
Ceaușescu must have been very desperate to make a big impression.
Yes.
The amount of labour and the costs and the materials involved in building this.
He wanted a big building and to be honest
then he build this palace they destroyed one fifth of Bucharest.
Nobody builds a building like this just to show humility.
Let me show you the chamber of the Senate.
This is where the action happens.
Legislators, they make the laws over here.
They have the atomic precision clock.
What was this originally intended for?
Still for the big meetings of the Communist party before.
What's very strange seeing this is that the Communist regime is all about
being down to earth, about not having the grandeur,
places like the imperial Băile Herculane,
they were painting over the marble because it was relevant to the bourgeois.
And here we have a building that is more opulent, more extravagant.
Because the purpose, the original purpose was to show off the power and the might.
- Yes. - They realized that they couldn't impress
with Communist apartment buildings.
I think it nicely demonstrates the fact
that no political regime ever truly succeeds,
you know, look at that.
- Power corrupts. - This is Communism.
Yes, but not of the textbook.
Everybody is equal, but some people are less equal than others.
This was the balcony where he was supposed to have his speech.
But he never did. He died before it was finished.
Yes, because the Revolution came beforehand.
And yet, even though Ceaușescu's dead and this was costing billions,
they had to carry on.
Yes, because they built more than 60 per cent just in the 80s.
They started in 1984 and eventually finished in '97.
All this was the whole view of a new Communist city,
according to Nicolae Ceaușescu's view.
Michael Jackson was here, on this balcony, in '96,
we have the picture and everything.
- But he didn't dangle a baby over. - No.
That was in Germany, I think it was somebody's else tour.
He was the first one, the first VIP, 75,000 people at his concert
on the big stadium.
This is where everybody was supposed to be received before
by Ceaușescu and his wife.
And they were supposed to walk on different stairs, the same time,
to make sure they'd impress everybody.
And after that, take the people in the big reception halls,
this way, over here.
This is the biggest one. It's 2.200 square meters.
I read somewhere that he also wanted to have a dome that can be removed
on the palace, so he could get a helicopter in.
They had some ideas, but they abandoned it.
They never did it.
And the car park is vast. I once saw a program
where cars were driven through the car park.
- Yes. - At high speed.
And I was thinking, I always wanted to do that.
According to some sources, the palace is like a gigantic iceberg,
far bigger underground than it is above,
with numerous unspecified levels delving deep beneath the city.
However, I was happy just to visit one of them
for the chance to travel in the thread marks of Top Gear
and take a quick ride through the cornucopia of concrete corridors.
Bucharest is a vast city, divided into districts
and packed with museums, malls,
art galleries, night clubs, parks and ritzy new restaurants.
I'm stopping for lunch at one of the most exclusive
to see how Romanian cuisine is evolving in this competitive environment.
Welcome to our modest little restaurant.
It's palatial!
It was a lot of work and it went a lot against the times when we did this,
but we said we want to put something on the map
which is really about the past brought in the present,
and made to last for many, many hundreds of years.
A lot of old buildings in Bucharest are in a terrible state, aren't they,
and it's a long going problem that many are facing collapse.
I don't think the main challenge is the people don't see value in them,
what can I do with such a house, you know,
how many restaurants can you do, what kind of restaurants.
So in a way, that's what we tried to show and it was a huge gamble,
that we could do such a restaurant, in such a place,
make it work, create a viable business model
and a product that people really love and would want to come back to.
So open plan kitchen, which is almost mandatory these days.
Well, yes, not easy to do, but this is the soul of our restaurant.
Cătălin is the one that's conducting this particular soul.
- Cătălin. - Hi, Charlie, nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you. So what's the style, I mean, in terms of the creative process,
how's that work for you?
For example, coming some ideas, I put them on the paper,
I speak with my sous-chef, Sorin.
And it's easy to put on the paper, a menu, but when you start to practice,
it's really hard to find a good flavour.
- Trial and error. - Yes.
For example, we have some dishes, and we tried for three months.
That must be kind of fun at the same time, right?
Sometimes it's fun.
The experiment is quite enjoyable when you get it right, it's satisfaction.
Sometimes it's a little bit too expensive, to practice...
- Every day. - Yes.
- Because the food, you know... - Yeah, the ingredients are not cheap.
But we are lucky also because our farmer it's here in the kitchen,
and all the vegetables we buy from him.
Welcome to our small little room.
- It's cosy. - It is cosy.
And we also try to have a story here, as well, with the blue.
Yes, I like the blue.
At the moment, Romania doesn't have a reputation internationally
as a gastro-destination.
Do you think there's any hope of that changing in the near future,
having Michelin reviews of restaurants?
Thank you.
When Michelin decides to come to Romania,
then they'll be able to evaluate,
because, at the moment, they're not present in Romania.
So we, as far as the world is concerned,
we can have five thousands three star Michelin restaurants...
- But no one will know. - No one will know.
Are people surprised when confronted with a place like this
and they come here for the first time,
especially Romanians who aren't necessarily entirely used to
this degree of sophistication?
They are, you know, kind of taken aback because they do not imagine,
when they taste, they realize where we are, Bucharest, Romania,
Eastern Europe, the flavours, they are very from here,
but the look doesn't fit with their story,
because they're not used to people in this field to be so careful
when it comes to details, to work so much.
You know Romanian food better than most people.
We believe in such a place you eat with your eyes,
you eat with all your senses,
you don't eat just with your tongue.
If your eyes are saying I'm gonna eat leaf,
as it approaches your tongue,
but then you're like, this is beetroot, it's crispy.
- It's transcending into art. - Yes.
That's what makes it so interesting.
And also confusing for people, which we love.
I always make this comparison.
People ask me what is exactly, what is that you do.
And I say, listen, restaurants are like museums,
most restaurants are like, you know, traditional restaurants,
they are like The National Museum of Art.
There it's very clear what's cool.
The painting with a lot of security around it must be good art.
Lots of tourists, must be good art, we will not compete with that.
We are like contemporary art museums.
When you go to a contemporary art museum, you look at things,
you're like, what is this supposed to say to me.
A contemporary art museum in society is about challenging,
it's about redefining your expectations,
it's about saying you thought normal was this,
but if you look at normal from this particular lens,
you might find something very surprising.
So this is the purpose of such a restaurant, I think,
to challenge our beliefs
and to show there's something much more authentic
behind the bigger picture.
With so much going on every day of the week,
Bucharest is also becoming a destination in its own right,
for the many international travelers who come to explore Romania.
Probably its top attraction is the historical Old Town,
which largely survived the bombing during the start of The Second World War,
and subsequent decades of Communist neglect.
Today it's brimful of bars, clubs and eateries
which cater to the discerning and less salubrious visitors.
Walking around the Old Town you can see why back in 1900
Bucharest was known as Little Paris,
not just because of its architecture, but because of the fashion
and the relationship that people living here had with France.
Much of that architecture has now been lost,
but you can still see its vestiges over here,
in the streets, in the buildings, in the ambiance.
What ads to the charm of the Old Town is the unfinished buildings,
that haven't been yet renovated.
It's gives the same kind of vibes as the ruined bars in Budapest.
It's work in progress, it's evolving, this is how it is,
it's tatty around the edges,
it's a bit rough, it's a bit ready, but it's lots of fun.
And if you ever doubted for a moment
you're experiencing un petit peu to little France,
behind me, it's the Moulin Rouge.
Just North of Bucharest
is an area of forest and farmland dissected by the serpentine Snagov lake,
actually an enlarged segment of the Ialomița river
which is now a natural reservation
and a riverside retreat for the rich and famous
who have weekend houses away from the hustle and bustle of the capital.
Here, besides its gentle shores, there's a little island
on which stands a small and unassuming church
with an enormous claim.
Below its metal roof, painted walls and a flagstone floor,
it's the alleged final resting place
of the man who inspired Bram Stoker's immortal tale of Dracula.
In episode one we visited the alleged birth place of Vlad Țepeș,
Vlad the Impaler,
and now we came to visit the alleged final resting place.
But there's some evidence to support
his affiliation with this church in this monastery.
He built the dome above us
and he built a prison for thieves.
He also built a bridge across to the island,
and, interestingly, he built an escape tunnel.
Why would you need an escape tunnel when you're dead and buried?
On the outskirts of Bucharest,
in the corner of a small field,
it's the workshop of craftsman
who's revived an ancient Dacian culinary tradition
and turned it into a thriving business.
This is George and he makes portable clay ovens
of the type used by shepherds for thousands of years.
You can see here the oldest clay ovens in Romania.
Today, as you can see, we've got plenty of ovens.
They have a traditional Romanian name, țest.
First of all, they can be found in Romania since the Dacian era,
that is 2000 years ago.
As regards raw materials there are three of them.
Clay or kaolin,
horse manure as a binding element, and water.
They look as if they might be a bit fragile.
No, they are not fragile, they resist to over 300 degrees Celsius,
and the product baked inside is very well cooked
and it's much more tastier
than food baked in a classic, standard oven, on gas or electric.
I'd like to ask you Charlie to try to make together...
- Now? - Yes, now... A țest.
Here, under this tarp, we have the raw materials.
It's blended by feet. Let's see.
It's a bit like when you're doing the wine harvest,
but this is the horse poo harvest.
It's started to change consistency a bit,
a little bit creamier, squeezing up through my toes.
A little bit stinky, this is smelly work.
How long would you have to do this for?
About four hours.
We have a couple of țest made by me the other day.
And drying time in the sun approximately how long?
They have to be dried for about ten days.
After that you turn them upside down and leave them for another ten days.
First of all, Charlie, the upper clay should be pushed down to the base,
down to this mark.
Now, we'll take it with our hands and fill the upper side.
It should be bigger and have an upward point
to look like a hat or a clop.
We go like this, put some water and do like this.
Yeah.
- And you get up here. - That's it.
Please.
What's the reason for this?
Its role is to leave a hole inside,
so that we can lift it and put it down on the hearth.
So, there...
As straight as possible. Perfect!
Like this. It's OK.
Daniel's bringing us our mark, our personal logo.
One in the middle and one up here.
- That's it. - Perfect!
- Thank you. - Well done! Bravo!
Now we're making some bread to eat together, Charlie.
I'll shape it and you'll sprinkle it with tomatoes.
We put it inside for baking.
Embers should be all around it
to prevent the heat from coming out.
- And there? - Here? We'll roast some chicken.
Twenty minutes later, our bread is ready.
We'll see it now.
A nice Romanian taste and some healthy food.
That is the way bread was cooked thousands of years ago, isn't it?
Yes.
- Tell me please if it's done. - Perfect.
The țest chicken is very juicy and so tasty.
What first gave you the idea to start making this ovens?
The idea came from my grandma.
Her țest had been broken and she was supposed to get a new one.
I helped her to make a new one, I learned how to do it
and I thought there might be some other people who want to eat healthy,
nice and tasty food, but they can't get it.
So I started making lots of them to help more people.
This is something that people can make at home,
providing they have some clay and a horse.
Of course. Anyone who has courtyard house
can make it in order to cook in a traditional way.
Thank you for having us here and thank you for showing me.
And hopefully, people who see this,
might be inspired to make one of these ovens themselves.
Or if you don't want to get your feet dirty,
you can always give George a call.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming, Charlie, and please come again.
- Thanks a lot, George. - Thank you.
- Bon appetite. - Likewise.
Leaving the south lands behind us,
we drive up into the Carpathian foothills,
north of Buzău.
We're here to visit Romania's most recent environmental triumph,
1.036 square km nature reserve in geopark
which has just achieved UNESCO world status,
thanks in part to my old friend Thorsten Kirschner,
who showed us around the mud volcanoes in season one.
I'm heading back to his historic conac, or manor house near Berca,
that he and his wife, Giranda, have now opened as a hotel...
- What a change! - Yes!
... with Mediterranean style accommodation
and freshly foraged organic cuisine.
- So, we've got the pool. - Yeah.
What's that? A bar?
- Yes. - A bar?
- Yes. - Great.
- How many rooms? - Five.
- Five rooms. - Yeah. It's a small location, you know.
Because the guests must feel like home,
and if you have a bigger place then it's something else.
And also it's all about the food, isn't it?
Of course.
- If I know you! - Yes.
All of the things that you served
when I spoke to you last, was coming from the garden.
- Is that still the case? - Yes.
It's seasonal, it's regional and it's with a little bit of twist.
So, what have you prepared?
In front of us, you can get the wild garlic,
so I have made a pesto out of this with pinion or pine nuts
and our cheese that we're making here, the goat cheese.
So you make the pesto and you put it in a pan, a frying pan,
and you add a little bit of cream, to be creamier, and this the cooking.
It has to stay on the fire one minute.
This is the final touch, to crumble a little bit the cheese.
- And it'll taste smoky flavour. - Beautiful.
Like this.
And then you put the pine nuts or the walnuts on top of it, like this.
This is the signature dish for spring.
It's very nice to be back. Thank you for having me.
- It's our pleasure. - Yes, always.
Thorsten, I also hear congratulations are in order,
you're part of the team that has created this.
Is it a UNESCO geopark reserve?
Yes, it's in fact, UNESCO global geopark,
called Buzău land or Ținutul Buzăului, in Romanian,
and it's part of the UNESCO worldwide network.
It was a large team and they worked more than 15 years on this topic,
so I helped in the end to promote a bit
and we are really grateful to have it
because it's a big opportunity for Buzău, for sustainable tourism
because a geopark means we have geological phenomena.
We try to promote rural tourism, sustainable tourism
and I think that'll be a game changer for this region.
Having reversed to four wheels, as advised,
I'm going in search of one of Romania's most unusual phenomena.
Situated on a hillside, near the village of Lopătari,
there's an alpine meadow where the ground is perpetually on fire.
This eternal flame is caused by gas pockets
that sit deep underground
and they ignite on their way to the surface.
It's easy to see how people with no knowledge of Geology or Chemistry
might attribute this to the forces of the supernatural.
In fact, when Bram Stoker was researching Romania,
as the location of his book,
he might have read about these
and there's a scene where Jonathan Harker
had been taken by carriage to Dracula's castle, at night,
and he looks out of the window
and he sees fairy lights, flames dancing in the darkness.
There's a local legend for the people of the villages here
playing the heroes, as they usually do,
captured and entombed a demon under the ground
and these flames are the result of his struggles to get free.
The area of the geopark also incorporates large deposits of salt,
which exude from the hillsides and cliffs in several places,
crusting the rocks and fishes in different shades of white.
Tasty.
Just needs a bag of French fries and battered cod.
See how the rain dissolved the salt and created these crystalline structures.
The local people here take the water from this gorge
and use it to preserve their pickles for the winter.
This is very, very primeval landscape, millions of years old,
back to the time when it was a salt sea.
And as waters receded, deposits of salt were laid down in the earth.
You can see the top there, we've got layers of salt
and as it comes down is whiter and whiter.
There is, in fact, the second largest salt cave in the world,
just below my feet.
We can't get into it, sadly,
because it collapsed, with the rain,
but it's over a kilometre long.
Hopefully, that's something they can unearth in the near future
and will be another feather in the cap of local tourism.
Perhaps the most mysterious and intriguing feature of the geopark
has less to do with geology and more to do with the people
who once inhabited this wild region.
Hidden in the mountains around Colți is Romanian's alternative to Stonehenge,
a series of spectacular cave churches hewn from remote cliffs.
While many believe they were made by religious hermits in Medieval times,
there're also scholars who attribute their origins to the pre-Christian era.
Whether or not they were created by the church,
they have now been assimilated by it
and have since been periodically occupied by solitary monks
and even the occasional nun.
Many of them can only be reached by either a long hike
or some technical driving,
preceded by a shorter one.
First stop is Schitul Fundătura, schit meaning church.
This small oval dwelling is camouflaged by the trees,
and unique in that it was carved from a single boulder.
You can see the etchings on the walls and the ceiling,
it looks as if it was literally hollowed down with a fork.
It's had many people associated with it, it's had mystics, it's had monks,
and it's also had 12 nuns living here, according to the stories,
how that worked, I'm not so sure.
They must have had slept like sausages in here at night,
unless, of course, they had a wooden church adjacent to the rock.
But any trace of that has long since vanished in the forest.
My guess this hole here would have served as the chimney.
You'd have put your fire here to stay warm in the winter time.
Bijou, it's not five star, but you could survive.
To reach the next two, require a drive around the mountain
and back up another treacherous dirt road,
to a grassy meadow high in the hills,
followed by another hike.
This is the church of St. Joseph and is the oldest of the cave churches,
probably dating back to the Bronze Age.
It might have been a dwelling or it could been a temple.
You can get an idea of how it looked like by the holes in the rock.
The square ones probably would have taken beams that stretch out here
with supports and correspondingly the roof would have extended out
to create a pavilion.
None of these root networks would have been here,
it would have been completely flat,
and maybe the forest wouldn't have existed either,
so you would have had a clear view right across the valley.
They're always much smaller in the inside,
but you have everything you need here.
If I'm not mistaken, there's a plaster, they plastered over the rock.
And this would probably been put here, so they can paint on it,
so the monks can create murals
and beautiful depictions from the Testament.
It would have been very colourful,
but also gets dirty very fast because as you can see here
all this it's still coating the walls from
when they light the fire, and you need to light the fire, a lot,
especially if you're living here all year round.
Back down the trail on a jutting peninsula of stone
is the cave of Dionisie Torcătorul,
named after a monk who lived there in the 19th century
and used to spin wool.
But again, its origins are probably much older.
You have to admit this is a pretty good defensive position.
If you're under attack,
you just pull up the ladder.
Obviously in those days it was wooden.
I need to say that you also would be safe from bears.
What I love about these cave churches is their timelessness.
I don't mean their past, their history, I mean their future.
Forget about this ladders,
forget about the great cathedrals of the world,
the opera houses, the bridges,
all the cities of man,
in fact, us, as a species, we'll all be gone,
but this'll still be here in a million year time.
The last cave on my list is Aluniș,
which some argue dates back to the Geto-Dacians.
According to inscriptions on the wall,
believed to refer to the veneration of the sun and water.
This is also one of the oldest Orthodox places of worship in Romania,
established in 1274.
The entrance to the cave is protected by a small wooden church.
Weekly services is still held to this day.
A few doors down from the church is the Aluniș village school,
recently reopened as a community centre by an industrious local NGO.
I've stopped by to meet Iulia, one of its founding members.
Tell me about the kids coming here.
We're a non-profit organization, Aluniș Art Centre,
We are artists moved here
and we're working with local people to revive the traditions.
We have the pottery classes that we offer free
for all the children in the area,
as well as for the children around the country,
but from difficult backgrounds.
Basically, Buzău has a history of 6000 years of pottery,
which has been interrupted 30 years ago
by the physical death of the last potter.
So we had to rebuild it from the ground.
So, first of all, we have two ladies working in the pottery atelier,
we've been teaching them from the basics,
we brought teachers from Bucharest to restart this tradition.
- Fantastic! - Yes.
This is the old technique which is quite like the oldest in the world, by hand,
and the new technique is by the wheel.
We have electrical wheels of course.
It is shaping up very well, look at this!
It's beautiful! Congratulations!
This is the old school of the village
which was basically abandoned for ten years
because there are no more children in this village.
So it was really... how to say...
- Derelict and unloved. - True.
It's a very good way to put it.
And we just renovated it,
it started as a small art centre,
where we hope to receive art residents to stimulate a bit its activity
and attract a certain type of tourism to the area,
people which have as interest nature and love for arts,
and these are the people
who are always giving back to the community.
How do the children react to seeing these cave churches and this landscape,
it must be quite exciting for them.
- They are fascinated. - I bet they are.
A lot of mysteries
and they always ask about ghosts
and if we see spirits and if we see balls of fire.
Going back to the ghosts, do you?
Well...
I've heard stories. There are...
- I had a chat with one. - So you have seen a ghost.
Yes. I follow more the reaction people have
and what's happens in their life after they visit us
and it's so interesting.
There are some friends of mine who came
and after they had just visited,
they got children and I make fun that we can advertise this.
A fertility clinic!
But it's quite interesting,
each person reacts differently, but it definitely changes them.
Due west in the hills above Ploiești,
there's a new and much talked about hotel.
What might very well be the most luxurious hobbit holes in the world.
This is Casa Timiș,
centred around a restored manor house,
in a small valley surrounded by vines.
I dropped in to see what all the fuss was about.
Interesting design,
Provencal mixed with English manor house,
some tartans on the walls with a wee flavour of Scotland,
beautiful view, due west, so good for sunsets later.
Yeah, I think it's maybe the most glamorous hobbit house
I've ever stayed in.
Quite a long way.
Even the bathroom is extravagant without being over the top.
Hand painted sink
and a walking wet room.
Very, very stylish.
Over the manor house I tracked down resident celebrity chef Nico Lontras,
who's internationally acclaimed for his reinterpretations
of classic Romanian dishes.
- Welcome to my kitchen! - Thank you, sir.
- I see I arrived in a nick of time. - Yes, right in time.
We're doing two different starters and two different main courses.
We already build up the starters.
This is wild boar tartar with pickles and with the...
Why, because we see wild boars running around here.
And then we have bulz, which is a traditional recipe,
but we do it in our own way.
We serve it with ...
- Beetroot. - Right, beetroot.
And pastrami of duck.
Now we're gonna build up a dish
which is, I think is the most fascinating dish
we have in the menu today.
Because this is the deer filet.
In the way to connect to this land,
we chose an ingredient like the Jerusalem artichokes,
which in Romania we used very much in the old time.
And then we have beetroot puree.
This is the red wine sauce with fruit from the forest.
So there'll be a reduction of red wine.
- Yes. - Presumably and forest fruit.
And cooked very slowly. For example, in here there're two bottles of wine.
Reduced down to this.
Reduced down to this with like 200-300 grams of fruit
and then is taking the fruit and the wine, the alcohol is evaporated,
and you have just the right...
- Sweetness and sourness. - Correct.
We'll gonna start with the simple version of plating.
I'm gonna use two spoons of beetroot,
we gonna use two spoons of the Jerusalem artichokes puree,
because we like to create colours.
I'm gonna put the meat,
I have four small pieces.
Now I'm gonna put the sauce,
each piece of meat need to get sauce.
Of course, salt is keeping everything together.
And then, fruit as well.
And then, from the same Jerusalem artichokes,
I made chips.
I think every single ingredient has to be used in a different way
to give texture and colour.
It's so artistic you don't really want to tuck into it. It looks incredible!
I wanna take a photograph of it before I eat.
- So we'll be taking this outside. - Of course.
And hopefully you'll tell me a little bit more
about your influences as a chef.
I am trying to discover the old Romania to be able to do the new Romania.
So the dishes we're doing now in the conac
we're trying to be based
on the Romanian historical gastronomy culture.
Of course, we are in the middle of Dealu Mare,
I have to connect to what is here.
But before that, Romania means so much more about gastronomy culture,
because all the influences from all the regions it's making sense.
What I learned in all these years is that Romanians have to stop saying no,
this is not Romanian,
you have to connect to the place you are,
and create the dishes with what you have around you.
Old recipes were made in old times from old reasons.
We are not in that time when you come to fill up your belly.
- You are coming to this place... - To have an experience.
To have an experience and to enjoy and don't rush,
enjoy the view, enjoy the food, enjoy a glass of wine,
look around, breath,
and go home charged with all these and talk about it.
After a late lunch, I was joined on the patio of my own private back end
by owner Cristina Timiș for a signature sundowner
consisting of a lavender gin and tonic.
How did it all begin?
Everything began on August 1st, 2018 when he came here.
It was love at first sight.
At that time,
here it was just the manor house and four hectares of vineyards.
I had a powerful dream to make here something very special
and different from all has to offer the hospitality in Romania.
Everything I've done here,
I've done from my own perspective as a tourist,
and a very demanding one,
and as a mother perspective,
who wants to take her children and family just in secluded places,
everywhere and anytime in connection with nature.
The kind of people that come here, you have people coming from abroad,
a lot of fun, visitors as well.
Yes, a lot of.
It's quite a sort of multicultural feel.
- Yes. - And the design as well.
I like to be, because, you know, my vision for this place
is to write history in international hospitality, not just in Romania.
I think that's very cool.
The vision I proclaimed three years ago now it becomes reality.
For the next part of the journey,
we join on the National Road One,
which winds north towards the Prahova Valley,
to our next destination,
the Royal Palace of Peleș in Sinaia.
With a few hours to spare, I decided to go in search of a small reservoir,
deep in the Bucegi mountains,
with one of the most iconic views in Romania.
This is Lake Scropoasa in the Cheile Orzei gorge,
the source of the Ialomița river, which we last encountered in Snagov.
There's a well beaten track down to a wooden bridge
from where you can take pictures of the mouth of the canyon,
with its weird assortment of wooden sheds clinging to the rocks,
reminiscent of America back in the days of the gold rush.
Maybe it's because of the power of Instagram,
but this has become one of Muntenia's most photographed landmarks.
So much so that some bright spark obviously decided
more illumination was required.
It's a bit strange to find a lamp post
on a hiking trail in the mountains, 20 km down a dirt road.
Reminds me of a... wardrobe.
Narnia!
However, I'm sure the bears appreciate the illumination at night
when they are foraging for wild raspberries
and lost their sense of smell.
Very good.
Further down the mountain sits Peleș Castle
perched regally on a forested hill, above the town of Sinaia.
Restituted back to the royal family after the fall of Communism
and now open to the public,
it was constructed by king Carol the First of Romania,
also known as king Charles, according to my guide Costin.
- Costin. - Hello!
Hello.
Good morning.
- Charlie. Nice to meet you. - Costin. Nice to meet you.
The castle was built by the first king of Romania, king Charles the First.
- Who came to Romania in 1866. - Show me the highlights.
Now we are in the vestibule.
Yes, I see, we came through the side entrance.
This is the main entrance of the castle,
where king usually invited his guests.
It took 41 years to build the castle.
Most of the artists that were involved in here were from Germany and Austria,
chosen by the king.
He took a lot of art history classes at Bonn university, so he knows.
So he was a highly educated man and he knew exactly what he wanted.
He had impressive collections in Peleș Castle,
and one of the most impressive one is the weapons collection.
The full collection counted about 5.000 weapons.
Very important in here is the sword up there on the fireplace,
which is a German execution sword.
On the blade of the sword there is engraved a text,
in the old German language, in translation,
"when the sword will be above your head, God will offer you eternal life."
I know it's hard to believe,
but back then it was an honour to be beheaded with that one.
They probably didn't see that in the last few seconds of their life.
But that sword has actually been used to behead nobles.
- Nobles, German, Saxons. - Many people.
Over here, that's the music room.
- Look at the stained glass. - The queen's temple.
Because she was a musician herself.
Yes, she was a musician,
she was a translator, she was a writer, she was a painter.
That's by her.
Yes, the painting down there done by queen Elizabeth.
We have to pass to the reception halls
where we'll gonna find two large Venetian chandeliers,
which were made of Murano glass,
which is known as the best glass in the world.
You will see in here the theatre hall,
the place where Sarah Bernhardt played, over there.
Right in the back there's the royal baths.
And all around the room you'll see the frieze in here
which was painted by the world known Austrian painter Gustav Klimt.
This is a door to be used in case of emergency.
What do you mean by emergency?
King said that's a lot of wood in the castle,
and if a fire starts during the night
you have to escape as quickly as you can from your bedroom.
So this is why each important bedroom in the castle
had a secret door like this one.
So it wasn't for the purposes of illicit access.
No.
- Are you sure about that? - I'm hundred per cent sure.
This is the royal bedroom for the king and queen.
It is important to notice that Charles I and Elizabeth
shared the same bedroom.
Usually back then, in Europe,
royal members used two different apartments in the castle.
Now we'll see the biggest
and also the most impressive apartment in the castle.
And it seems to be also the most expensive one,
this was for guests, this was how you show your wealth.
They spent for this apartment about 12 million dollars.
- The equivalent or actually that? - That time money.
You said the royalty, even visiting royalty,
slept in separate bedrooms.
So, the king was there.
- Look here, closely. - This is a cupboard.
- It looks like a wardrobe. - Another wardrobe.
- Another secret door. - A secret door.
Which leads to the queen's apartment.
So through the wardrobe. Like in Narnia.
Exactly. There's a lot of Narnia context coming out at the moment wherever I go.
This is really beautiful and this would be her sitting room.
The sitting room, yes.
We're gonna find a lot of Italian ceramic in here.
We'll see, right here, the queen's bedroom.
It's a little smaller.
- The bed. - That's not so small.
- This is a queen's size bed. - Of course.
But imagine that in this bed the second queen of Romania, Mary,
gave birth to her first child, Charles II.
So much history has taken place within these walls.
It's flabbergasting how much work has gone
into creating every single detail in the palace
and I imagine also the effort that's needed to maintain it.
Yes, we have to. King Michael I, last king of Romania,
when he came back in his home here, in 2007
he said that this castle will be forever open for the public,
so we have to maintain it for the future generations.
To reach the west side of Muntenia we have to negotiate the Bucegi massive,
which takes us around to the north, past Bran
and up towards Rucăr, in Târgoviște.
On our way, I'm making a quick detour
to explore the stunning Dâmbovicioara gorge
which cuts to the edge of Piatra Craiului National Park
and back into Transylvania.
It's easy to see why this dramatic setting
is used as a backdrop for the epic western Cold Mountain
with Nicole Kidman and Jude Law.
That's the end of the gorge
and I think I've been adversely ridden back into Transylvania.
If you come all way up here you leave most of the people behind
and you have this wild and unspoiled place almost entirely to yourself.
I had to do it on the bike because we wanted to show you the whole thing.
My advice is leave the car down in the town,
take the time and walk all the way up here.
It's one of the most beautiful hikes you can do in Romania.
One of Romania's more abundant culinary resources is the truffle,
which includes both black and white varieties.
Finding them, however, is a tricky business
and requires expertise, both human and animal.
I've come to the forests surround Târgoviște
to meet truffle hunter Marius Herghelegiu
who's taking me on a mining trip
to harvest Romania's illusive black gold.
Marius.
- Hi. - Hi.
- How are you? - Very well.
I think we might leave the bike as we're going...
Yes, we can leave the bike here.
...deep in the forest.
In my car we have dogs, you'll see.
Where we would be without dogs? I guessed we'd be using pigs.
Probably pigs use to eat them, don't they?
Yes, pigs want to eat them, dogs are doing it for fun.
Yeah. And they'll eat a biscuit, I believe.
- Yes. - Yeah.
- It's not entirely... is it? - Yeah.
- So this is mostly oak and beech. - Yes.
And some hawthorn.
This looks good. Around here.
Good job, Luna.
Look. This is a truffle. Bravo.
As you see it's eaten by snails.
It's a good one. Smells good.
Smells like my socks. Exactly as they should.
- After a day on the bike. - Yeah.
- This is a summer truffle. - Yes, this is a summer truffle.
Summer truffles are from when? From June till August?
Yes. And the autumn truffle starts from September to December.
It's interesting that trees somehow communicate with each other,
with connection made by a fungi.
This mycelium connects this tree from above with this one
because they change nutrients, they change information.
They exchange information via the mycelium.
If a fire starts there all the trees in this valley,
in a few minutes or half an hour develop carbon dioxide,
it is very interesting.
- To protect. - Yes.
- It's almost like the Avatar, the film. - Something like that.
There's one big forest consciousness and everything is linked.
One question I am fascinated in as well as is
how do white truffles fit in?
The white truffle which is the most expensive is very, very rare,
and you need special conditions,
special combination of trees and a lot of moist.
So the equation is far more complex?
Yes, far more complex and that is why it's so rare and so expensive.
- We do have it in Romania? - Yes, we have.
I think 85 per cent of the truffles sold in Europe, maybe in the world,
is coming from Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia.
But the Italians...
They like to hang on to the idea...
They handle the market, so they say all the truffles are from Alba,
this is an Alba truffle.
There is a sad part of this story.
The sad part is the truffles
are harvested by some poor people
who earns just few money for these truffles.
But on the end in luxury restaurants, this high price...
Someone's paying a hundred pounds a plate.
Yes, but this people who harvest truffles are poor people,
like in diamonds.
Only in truffles there's no blood.
She found something.
Well done, Gresy, well done.
It's a black truffle.
Bravo.
The fungi we know above the ground are spreading the spores with wind.
The fungi under the ground need something else to spread the spores.
They develop some smell to attract animals.
They eat the truffle, they poop over there and they spread the spores.
And that's why this truffle is so smelly.
- So flavour. - So it wants to be found.
- Yes. - I thought I knew about truffles,
but as it turns out, I barely scratch the surface.
So we just have to go and find someone in Târgoviște
that might be prepared
to cook them on extremely short notice for dinner.
There's gotta be a restaurant, I'll knock at the door.
- All right. Let's go. - Let's go.
Shall we?
Come on, Bella, come, babies.
I think we've got a table reserved for us over there.
I'll see her and go to have a word with the chef.
Okay.
- Mario. - Hey.
How are you?
Thank you so much for doing this at last minute.
Let me show you what I've got.
What?
What does he got in his pockets? Have a look.
Truffles!
Some are truffles from this afternoon.
Gold! This is gold.
- Black gold? - Yes.
What can we make with these?
I make you pasta? Risotto? Or something else?
Pasta sounds great.
Looks sensational. Thank you for doing this for us.
Thank you very much.
From the ground to the table.
This is the very definition of slow food in a very short space of time, obviously.
It's only travelled ten kilometres to get here
and we're eating it a few hours later.
Completely fresh.
- Enjoy. - Enjoy
Târgoviște was the capital of Walachia during the Middle Ages
and the seat of power for Vlad the Impaler.
I'm here at his former palace to find out more about this iconic figure
with the help of archaeologist and historian Mihai Năstase.
- Mihai. Greetings. Good morning. - Good morning.
- Nice to meet you. - I like your office.
Thank you very much. It's really a big office, as you can see.
It must have been very impressive in its heyday.
Definitely it was.
I'm trying to imagine what they looked like.
No drawing? We don't have any drawings?
No, unfortunately, not.
- That's a shame. - Yes.
It's sad, but there are only sketches with the palace in the state of a ruin.
The oldest part of the buildings dates back to 1400s, something like that,
early 15th century.
Correct me if I'm wrong,
this was the capital of Southern Romania at that time.
Yes, it was the capital of Walachia
from 1420's till 1660.
It's so sad that it's fallen so far from its original state.
The main cause for the state you see it today
it's the fact that it was abandoned.
So Vlad Țepeș governed from here.
Yes, this was his centre of power, of course.
He was a bit of a hero of his days
because he kept the ottomans out, didn't he?
With brutal taxes.
He had successes against the Czechs,
but he is not only popular for his... let's say foreign policy,
but he's also very popular for his inner policy
in order to create a centralized government.
- Basically, a one person government. - An autocracy.
Yes, but the context of that time it was of this nature,
that this kind of policy was welcomed by the masses.
And those who misbehave got a stake in their bottom.
Yes, if you look at this, it was like justice for all
and everybody was equal in front of justice.
But it was not in the terms of today,
but it was in the terms that it was a universal punishment for every offense.
Despite the legends about him,
some of them they are really bad
some of them they are quite idyllic to a certain way, a certain perspective.
Would you say there is any kind of comparison to be made between
the perceived brutality of the Ceaușescu reign
and the Țepeș era?
Ceaușescu definitely tried as all the modern tyrants
to take and embody the past into their rule and into their being,
and of course, Vlad was a figure of righteousness, of justice,
of the authoritarian ruler,
but who was making good for the people.
But you can't fall foul of that as well
because if you have such a flimsy legal process
then it can backfire rather spectacularly.
Yes, I would say that history teaches us a lot of examples
that who draws the sword dies by the sword.
Dies by the sword. As we will see just around the corner.
Across town, we reach a non-descript military building
on the side of a long avenue of trees.
Now open to the public, this is the place that quite literally witnessed
the final heartbeats of the Communist era.
On the 25th of December, 1989, an exceptional military tribunal
convened here, in this building, to judge, sentence and execute
Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena.
They were held overnight on camp beds in a small front room
before being marched across the corridor and sat down before the waiting jury.
This is the room where the trial took place.
Ceaușescu and his wife sat on those two chairs over there,
in the corner.
He dismissed any defence
because he refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the tribunal.
The judges sat here
and just over an hour later,
his sentence was passed
and he's taken out to be executed.
It's really strange being in this room
and seeing it exactly as it was apart from him over there.
It is as if they have just left
and the whole proceeding happened
hours ago rather than 30 years.
Between 2:40 and 2:45 p.m.,
Ceaușescu and his wife were taken out here.
It was very rushed and they were placed against this wall,
and three guys with AK-47 opened up.
There was no direct order, they knew what they had to do,
and it was a sense of urgency to get on with them.
And suddenly it was all over.
You can see the bullet holes behind me in the wall,
you can see the body line of Ceaușescu and his wife where they fell.
And at that moment in time,
Romania ceased to be a Communist country.
Or so one may think.
However, there are still vestiges of that old way of life.
It's been a slow evolution ever since,
and it's taken decades for Romania to grasp fully the concept of democracy.
We still have corruption in this country,
we still have the media in the pockets of certain politicians,
and the old guard who, for a long time, control things behind the scenes.
But it's a bit like being a teenager.
You have to go through this process of change, it's awkward, it's difficult,
it's never easy till you come out the other side.
And Romania now step by step is growing to a brighter future,
but not without a huge amount of pain along the way.
THE PLACE WHERE THE CEAUȘESCU SPOUSES WERE EXECUTED
DECEMBER 25TH, 19892:45 P.M.
Leaving recent history behind,
we're now journeying into the distant past.
I am on my way to an archaeological dig outside Târgoviște,
on the flood plains of the river Dâmbovița.
My Satnav has brought me to a field outside the village of Geangoești,
where archaeologist Ana Ilie has been working
to unearth a prehistoric site,
the remains of an adobe village inhabited over six thousand years ago.
- Good afternoon. - Good afternoon.
- Welcome. - Charlie. Glad to meet you.
- Come and see my beautiful site. - Your beautiful site.
Yes, my exciting site, actually.
I don't wanna walk in the wrong place cause I know how important that is.
How did you find it?
The site was found in 1969
by the history teacher from the village which is nearby.
The village is there, Geangoești,
and the river is two kilometres far away,
south, Dâmbovița river.
- We are in the bed of this river. - So this is the flood plain.
Yes, the flood plain,
but the terrace is nearby, where the forest is.
This community of Gumelnița-Karanovo culture
they loved to have water around them.
We have knowledge they exploited all kind of fish and molluscs,
but here I didn't any bones because the site doesn't preserve the bones,
it's very acid.
What sort of things have you found recently?
Today we found this figurine, a lot of pottery,
because pottery is very common here.
These artifacts are linked to specific their beliefs,
religious beliefs.
- It looks like a fertility symbol. - Could be.
Some specialists say they are toys, but they are not.
This is a voluptuous figure, if you look at the curves of the back.
Look at that.
No, because usually it can be much larger.
It has quite a large posterior, so I'm thinking fertility might be a...
Yes. Can be one utility of this.
You don't find masculine representations in earth.
So rare. There are seven in Gumelnița,
north to the Danube, Gumelnița culture,
and I discovered here another four.
But that's all.
Usually, there are feminine representations.
Masculinity in that period was actually represented with horns.
With horns. So it's been a very productive site.
Yes and what is interesting for me, as archaeologist,
is to find what is distinct from another sites.
And this one was a big surprise
because the way they built houses is not like I have seen.
But I have read about them.
- And here you see it. - And here I can see them.
- Tremendously exciting. - Yes, indeed.
To have in pre-history a house with upper level, where they lived,
because I found on top of this an oven like this one, collapsed,
and to find that makes you keep going.
Before heading on to our final stop,
the historic town of Curtea de Argeș, in western Muntenia,
I grabbed a quick roadside snack.
One of my favourite things while traveling Romania is
whether on spring, the summer or autumn,
there's a huge range of fruits, vegetables, nuts,
wild mushrooms, things grown and things foraged,
just waiting for you to stop and fill your bags.
Hi. One kilo of peaches and one kilo of plums. Please.
A kilo of plums and a kilo of peaches.
Sensational.
Who needs to stop at the gas station, buy a curly sandwich
when you have this kind of things right on the side of the road.
Onwards.
Riding north-west, the landscape changes again.
This is an area rich in mineral wealth,
where timber and farming are not the only available resources.
I've only travelled 12 kilometres from Târgoviște,
and already it feels like we're on a different continent.
What landscape does this remind you of?
No?
Here's a clue.
Yep, you guessed it.
We're in Dallas, folks.
Welcome to Curtea de Argeș,
or the court on the river Argeș,
which served as a second capital of Walachia during the Middle Ages,
alongside Târgoviște.
I'm here to visit its famous monastery,
which has one of the most beautiful churches in Romania.
Built 500 years ago by prince Neagoe Basarab,
the story of its construction is riddled with legend,
as I found out from curator and priest Adrian Enache.
This church, the Cathedral of the Voivode Saint Neagoe Basarab
was built at the beginning of the 16th century.
It is unique owing to its architecture.
Everything you see outside is exclusively carved stone.
I've never seen anything like it in the whole of Romania,
I mean, the architectural style is unique.
It's definitely unique as it includes
Armenian, Arab, Persian, Georgian elements,
therefore we have all cultures.
And what is specific to the cathedral
are the two spires, spiral-like spun, twisted.
They were a first in our country.
They are spun backwards,
so at a certain imaginary point they connect,
suggesting there's only one God.
We may say that here science and religion come closer and blend
in a harmonious way.
There are numerous symbols associated to this spiraling spires.
We'll see that the North spire
offers an image of God descending towards humanity,
and the South spire suggests that humanity is ascending to God,
and we have this encounter man-God.
It's a very special legend, actually, it's a myth,
the myth of creation sacrifice that is present in all Balkan countries,
at a bridge in Bulgaria, in Serbia, Albania and it originated in Greece.
On these walls is painted the legend of Master Manole.
It starts here, in the southern part of the hall,
with the voivode's decision
to built a church there like no other before.
Then, we can see them making the sketches.
But as the legend says,
what the workers built during the day, collapsed during the night.
The next painting shows Master Manole,
with his team of "nine masons, greatest of them all"
tries to explain the voivode that it was collapsing.
The same painting shows us that the prince is adamant,
he won't give up the idea of having a church built exactly there.
So, Master Manole is forced to find new solutions.
The next painting shows us
that Manole is told by a voice, while dreaming,
that they won't be able to built the church
unless the first of the wives who comes in the morning, with food,
is walled in alive within the walls.
Manole share this dream to his colleagues,
"the nine masons, greatest of them all".
All of them decide to wall in the first wife who comes next morning.
But Manole was the only one who kept his word,
while the others warned their wives not to come.
So the first woman that comes next morning is Ana, Manole's wife.
When Manole sees Ana coming to be walled in,
he climbs the scaffolding
and prays to God to stop her.
God fulfills his wish,
sending rain, storm and hail on earth.
As we can see in these paintings,
Ana overcomes all obstacles and arrives at the site.
Manole tells her it's a game
and while his colleagues are eating,
he walls her in.
Then, the walls no longer collapsed.
But the church remained unfinished, because the prince ran out of money.
So the prince's wife, Despina Milița, decides to offer her last jewels
so that the church could be finished.
So there are two sacrifices, two offerings.
From a literary point of view,
Ana is the spiritual sacrifice, Manole's soul itself,
and Despina's jewels represent the material sacrifice,
and the church is finished.
Having the blessing of His Eminence Calinic,
Archbishop of Argeș and Muscel,
you are the first one allowed to visit this palace.
- What a privilege! - Feel like home.
Here, in Curtea de Argeș,
you are home indeed, as we are all God's children,
and especially you, by doing what you are doing,
you bring joy to so many people who can't come here,
but you help them see this place.
That's all we have time for in Muntenia.
Join us again as we continue west into Oltenia,
one of Romania's more mysterious and less well known historic regions,
but one that hides a multitude of natural and cultural treasures.
We'll be hanging out in the mountains,
and venturing beneath them as we leave no stone or building unturned
in search of more delights and local delicacies.
I will be riding one of Romania's most famous serpentine mountain roads,
and traveling to the city of Craiova for a night of fun and festivities,
but with strings attached.
Plus, we will also be joining friends for a trek along the Via Transilvanica,
Romania's answer to the Camino de Santiago.
All this and much more in the next episode of Flavours of Romania.