Transylvania (Erdely) Romania

We did a quick trip to Romania, to Transylvania, my mother's birthplace specifically.  I was at first a little confused, thinking she was born in Cluj (Kolozsvar)  but in fact she was born in Satu Mare (Szatmarnemet). We visited both towns and also a national park in between.  My mother was Hungarian and Transylvania, like many other regions around Hungary was lost to Hungary between the first and second world wars, trapping many ethnic Hungarians in foreign lands.  I was astounded to find that every second person in both towns spoke Hungarian.  Cluj University is in fact bi-lingual like Quebec.

We found Romanian architecture quite unique-  very Islam influenced as are some of the churches.  Here is a domestic house.  The style was repeated elsewhere in the region with or without the red tiles on the little cupolas.

A church.

and another church.

St Michaels Church in Cluj with the statue of Matthew Corvinus in front of it.

The city opera house in Cluj.

This rather nice statue of the university founders in Cluj that took our fancy.

The Metropolitan Orthodox Cathedral in Cluj.

The Greek Catholic Church in Satu Mare.

But enough of edifices, here are some photos of nature.  We only had time to go to one of the many national parks in Romania, Apuseni NP  in the mountains.

Tudra Gorge.  This gorge attracts many tourists, mainly from Hungary it seemed.  Hungary's mountains are rather small so they like to go to the Karpathians in Romania and to the Tatras in Slovakia.  We in Australia are rather spoilt for natural beauty, gorges and mountains are all around so we are a little harder to impress.

The ice cave however was an impressive sight to visit.  Here and the photo below are the queues of people descending into the cave.

The cave is at an elevation of 1165 m on the edge of a karst plateau.  The total length of the cave is 700m and its depth reaches 105m below surface.  The air enters in the rather small opening and it has no room to escape, hence the formation of the ice. The ice block has a volume of about 100,000m3, and  a maximum thickness of 22.5m . Its estimated radiocarbon age is 3800 years, being the world's second largest ice block and the oldest one.

The exit from the cave and the ice - this in July.

Belis Lake in the NP was a lovely place to stay.  We were fortunate to find a pension right where I am taking this photo, overlooking the lake.

The view of the lake in the setting sun while we were having dinner looking at this very view.

and to complete the picture here is a view of our first course.  Romanians make fabulous soups.  We did not realise till the end that one of the soups was tripe soup.  It is a national speciality and it was quite delicious.  If you don't like tripe do not order chorba burta.  But then again, be surprised.  Notice the quantity?