Sibiu and the Transfăgărășan Road

 

September 12-13, 2025  Sibiu and the Transfăgărășan Road

 We began the day with a walking tour of Sibiu, a former capital of Transylvania.  The town hall is impressive: 

And the walls of the town have strong buttresses: 

Typical of the architecture of the town is “eyes” on the building roofs: 

They are seen everywhere, and according to Perplexity, 

These are uniquely shaped attic windows or skylights that resemble eyes looking out from the rooftops. They were primarily built from the 15th to 19th centuries and serve a practical purpose as ventilation windows for the attics, which were used to store goods requiring a dry environment. Beyond their functionality, they have become a distinctive symbol and tourist attraction of Sibiu, earning the city nicknames like "The City with Eyes" and "The City Where Houses Don't Sleep."

 We went to the Brukenthal Museum which houses an extensive collection of Romanian art on the first floor.  On one wall was this guitar-like instrument called a cittern: 

There were lovely wall panels; here’s one of Hercules and the hydra: 

There was much mediocre art on the first floor.  Here’s a portrait of a Hussar captain: 

The second floor, however, had some outstanding pieces by European artists such as Van Eyck and Bruegel the Younger.  We visited the quite lovely Orthodox church—note that there are no seats.  The worshipers stand for the entire 3-hour service: 

Saturday the 13^th we returned to Bucharest but instead of taking the main highway, we traveled from Transylvania to Wallachia over the Transfăgărășan Road, built by Ceausescu as a military passage over the Carpathian Mountains.  It is remarkable (it has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transf%C4%83g%C4%83r%C4%83%C8%99an

 It begins its rise with a series of waterfalls: 

Near the top, the view back is amazing, but hard to show in all its complexity: 

As we crossed over the top of the mountains and began our descent down the other side, the clouds were problematic: 

As we broke out of the fog, we came across two herds of sheep and goats with their shepherds and dogs: 

They moved at their own pace, taking up most of the road, and creating a clot where the sheep and goats had one lane and the cars going up as well as those going down had the other: 

Ultimately the herd turned off to a side road and we were able to proceed.  It was both amusing and aggravating!   Our final stop was at the Curtea de Arges monastery, built in the early 1500s.  The most impressive feature was the columns: 

We checked into our hotel in Bucharest, washed up and walked to a restaurant where we met Garrett Keast, the conductor of the orchestra for tomorrow’s performance.  Along with him were the orchestra’s manager, Amy, and Tuck May Loke, the head of orchestral touring at a London agency along with her assistant.  We were six for a long, leisurely and delicious dinner.  Garrett has invited Kathy and me to come backstage for a visit after the concert tomorrow night.  I’ll report on all of that in the next, probably last, post.