We Did It

We did it or we made it. However you want to put it we went around the world and we are back home in five whole pieces. We left Bucharest on Sunday afternoon, in the end of January. A short flight to Vienna, a change of planes to Berlin. A little adventure, I booked a hotel at the wrong airport, I realized at the last moment thanks to Ina. Overnight in Berlin, a short encounter with our friend in the hallway of the airport and we got on our last flight. At JFK we got a car and drove a couple of hours toward our house. We left the children to spend the night with a friend in New Jersey and we spend the last night in a hotel. Tuesday morning we drove a few more hours, stopped at Sam's club and Aldi for groceries. We spent $500 on supplies, for the first time in ages we didn't have to calculate how much we needed to buy, we just got everything that we could think of to resupply our pantry and fill our fridge. In the afternoon, we did the last few miles toward our house. It was epic. Unplanned, Louis Armstrong started to sing on the car stereo "What a Wonderful World". We did the last few miles singing and naming all the landmarks that we've learned so well on our way home. When we entered the house there was a lot of screaming and jumping. It took a few minutes of going through the house to recognize our home. In the evening friends joined us for pizza and champagne. It was epic. We did it, or we made it, however you want to put it, we went around the world!

At the airport in Berlin, AirBerlin carousel 

Hotel Bärlin in Berlin, just a big cheap room and one short night

Winter in Berlin from the hotel

This is our hotel 50 years ago behind JFK's limousine

Berlin Airport, last flight, last signage for New York

On arrival at JFK the welcome sign has Romanian as the top language!
Nice touch - thank you!

Done, we're in. No more passports necessary.

Above our rented car, the rest area has a sign to welcome us to New York State

Home. The planning board stayed just as it was 465 days ago.

Our friends left their map, flowers and another welcome back sign! Thank you!

It all started a long time ago with the thought that if others could do this, we can do it as well. Later it evolved into a strange feeling that we have to do it, we owe it to ourselves and to our children. By the time we left we felt that it is not such a big deal and any family who wants it can go around the world with their children.  More than a year later, as we approached the end of our trip we realized that what we were doing was extraordinary. Extraordinary as in out of the ordinary but also exceptional.

Is not just about numbers. We visited so many places and we walked so many miles. It's the incredible fact that we planned for the best case scenario and we made it happen. We were prepared for the possibility that we might not last this long, but we hit all our targets and we did everything we dreamed of in a special way. With the exception of Cape Town, we reached all our destinations at the best possible time of the year and in all cases at the best time of the day!!!  The only place that was on our list and we did not go to is Petra, in Jordan. We were close, in November in Sinai and we peacefully decided against it. The financials and the political situation were against it and we had to leave something for another time. As we were approaching the end of the trip we were exhausted. Maybe not that much physical exhaustion, maybe a mental one. Simply listing the places that we've seen would make somebody space out. Most of our families and friends lost track of us at one point or another and some of them got exhausted by just following us on the map. Once I caught a very close relative who had no idea on what continent we were and I'm sure he's just the unlucky one.

I would not advice anybody to try what we did. Do your own thing and follow your own interests. Definitely fly less and visit fewer destinations for a shorter or a much longer period. Our pace and our rhythm was exceptional and looking back I can argue that is not possible to do what we did. The only counter argument is that we did it.  There is a small club of families who travelled the world and probably a few that are doing it right now. What they did seemed simple when I read about it and now I know how special they are. Maybe we did travel longer, spent more, seen more, or maybe not, it does not matter. They are all extraordinary. As you plan and execute your own trip, what you'll do will also become extraordinary.

Did we see too much? I don't think so. We had this one chance and we made the most of it. We could have gone slower and shorten our list of destinations, we could have stayed for a shorter time. We have good reasons for why we did what we did. Like I said, we didn't start by planning to do something great, it just happened. We are the main beneficiaries, so there is no point in bragging about it. We were lucky, we were smart and we were well prepared. We never fought or argued, never questioned ourselves and never worried. We stayed healthy. Ioan had a cold every other day, but he took it in stride and never complained. The rest of us fared much better. On my part, the last day that I was under the weather was in Lhasa in November 2011. Ileana Ruxandra had a serious cold in Xi'an, we had to go to the hospital, the girls had some occasional colds but we never had something serious. Our stuff held on. In the last few weeks we had more and more problems with the cameras. In Madagascar, Maria's shoes were stollen. Besides this, and a lot of holes in the T-shirts, everything else worked out really well.

On the list of our extraordinary accomplishments I could also put this blog. With more than 260 posts, half a million words and more than 6000 pictures it is much more than one can handle. Despite the clean interface and the easy navigation options, most readers cannot find their way around, they read a post or two and go by their business. It is in part by design. Blogs are for the moment, only the last post matters and it stays on top. To start at the beginning it's generally inconvenient and hard to navigate. There is a science behind building a successful blog. Not only that I didn't look for that, but I avoided the general recipes and kept a low profile, this is for us and for you. Even if most of our friends and family members didn't read most of what's here there are a few who did and we thank them profusely. But now it's over and after posting the last few summary articles of this trip, I am thinking of taking this down. It is too much information, too much private stuff, too many of our personal pictures. What should we do?

There are a lot websites dedicated to travel. There are a lot of bloggers who make a living from telling us how great travel is. Some of them are families and they keep repeating over and over how extraordinary traveling with your family is. How the children learn from the world, how they grow more confident, more social, more intelligent. How this thing is going to mark them for life and they will always be grateful for such an opportunity. The truth is that we will never know if this is going to make them better or it will give them better chances. We are smarter, better educated and we have proof that we had an amazing time. This is the message of this blog.


We will never do this again. We would do it again in a heartbeat, but we only had one chance, we didn't miss it and now we are moving to another phase of our life. It is hard for me to understand why I never thought of this until 2009. It is easy to have second thoughts about spending tons of money on houses, home improvements, decent cars, or else. I am not allowing myself to go there. Again, like I said, we had one chance and we took it. Maria turned 18 in December 2012, she is now an adult, has her own life and I will never be able to pay her enough to sacrifice another year of her life to hang out with us. Ileana, getting ready for her 16th birthday, is talking about going with her girlfriends to South America, after she turns 18. Or maybe Europe. Or maybe somewhere else, but she is not even thinking of inviting us. Ioan is only 13. Maybe we'll have another chance to spend time like this on the road, we had a little preview in our week in Scotland. Maybe.

We realized early in our travel that we live in the best place in the world. While we were gone, our little village got engaged in a campaign to be named the "America's Coolest Small Town"


In a recent web article on Yahoo!Travel they listed our region along nine other lakeside vacations that have it all. Even with us back, I am sure that it will remain a very nice place. Surprisingly or not, we didn't find any other place where we would like to move. So we'll stay here.

Home with Emma. No better place in this world.

Our friends asked when and where are we going next time. My answer is that we are never ever going to leave our house again. I never ever want to travel again. We will stay home. I repeat this all the time, maybe I will believe it. But the other day at lunch we talked about a possible trip to Mars in 2018. For those who don't know me, I never joke about these things. Ask my wife and my children.

Our Country

Welcome to my country! Bun venit! (boon veh-NEAT)

What happened? Did I blink and miss it? When did six weeks pass? Though we lived every day, time flew, moving from house to house, from tables laden with homemade traditional food to another one, from conversation to discussion and so forth.

Every day was a celebration!

Being back meant so many things. Suddenly, part of the people we were missing were right there with us, we could share some of our adventures, things that didn’t make it to the blog, we could find out how their life was, the one that we usually found out in long phone calls. We were sedentary, mostly because we loved more being with the people than to go look at a monument. I’m not saying that we didn’t visit anything, we did this too, but on a smaller scale compared with other countries. The combination of sitting, talking, eating (all this food that we didn’t eat in at least 14 months) lead to a logical weight gain. We could have different schedules, travel independently, relax from being in charge and responsible. It meant transitioning to a new life, where we were not a monolith, but five individuals.

What can I tell you about my country? If I tell you it is beautiful, will you believe me? It has mountains with peaks over 7 500 feet, you can trek them, climb them, ski on them, explore their caves and rivers. Maybe you would like to go to a sandy beach, at the shore of the Black Sea, that has a tide of only a couple of inches (better in the summer or beginning of fall). Or visit the Danube Delta, a birdwatching paradise and a nesting ground for the white pelican. Maybe you would like to taste wine aged in oak barrels, a Cotnari or a Murfatlar, and eat good food, close to the mediterranean style but with a local twist and flavor. Or visit museums and churches, and castles. Or have a night-life. Or just meet people, who are hospitable and speak English.

OK, I’ll just show you some pictures.

This is the view from Sinaia’s apartment, where we crashed for five days, after a fleeting  moment with our families in the airport. It was like in the movies, we emerged from the terminal as we traveled, clothes on our backs and one bag each, and after a few minutes we had winter clothes and boots, hats and gloves, lots of bags with homemade food and a car to transport us.

Though Sinaia (See-NIGH-ah) is wonderfully located for winter sports or for trekking, we spent the whole time inside, sleeping, eating, reading and working on the computers. The treatment worked, we perked up, usually at dinner time, talking about a possible book and movie, titles, whose role is what, deadlines and so forth. The children were active, had their opinions, suggestions, an attitude so much different from the “before the trip”.

Maria’s birthday translated into twenty five people crammed in a room singing “Happy Birthday!” and that was just immediate family! In Romania turning eighteen is  becoming an adult, at least in front of the law. She glowed at the attention!

Four generations ranging from 98 to 13 years old.

This Christmas I had all and more that I wished for last year. Carols, gifts, three days of eating sarmale (cabbage meat rolls) with mămăligă (polenta), pork sausages and roasts, loaves of cakes, similar to panettone, and every kind of sweets.

Sarmale earthpot

These are the best cookies ever! And they're homemade!

We left for Craiova, where both of us have relatives, then we moved toward Cluj (Cluezh) to see one of my best friends and spend New Year. But to get there we drove through Târgu-Jiu, the birth place of Constantin Brâncuși (Brun-koosh). Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan and the National Gallery of Art have some of his famous works. He lived most of his life in Paris, where we visited with the children some years ago. It was natural that we wanted to show them the complex from our country. Dedicated as a War Memorial for the fallen soldiers in the First World War, The Table of Silence represents the moment before the battle, with the time passing in the twelve hourglass chairs; the Alley of Chairs, or of the Apostles, leads toward the Gate of the Kiss, and passing through, into a different world, toward the Endless Column, symbolizing the supreme sacrifice.

We were so close to losing our minds and drive toward Sarmizegetusa, the Dacian capital from 2000 years ago. Time and the missing four wheel drive made us reconsider. Still we enjoyed the views of rolling hills and flocks of sheep.

Lainici Monastery

Inside Lainici Monastery

A small orchard, crop fields, hay stacks to feed the stock.

The modern day shepards are still leaning on the stick the same way as their ancestors

Onions anyone?

New Year found us around the table with friends, mulled wine and sparkles.

Noroc! (noh-rock) Cheers!

Moving again, we made a stop in Sighișoara (See-ghee-SHWA-rah), a medieval inhabited fortress, with a fortified church (to keep the people and the faith alive during Ottoman invasions) and a covered stair (similar to the covered bridges) that enabled children to go to school.

Up there is a medieval figurine clock

I just love these cobbled streets.

The walls have ears and the roofs have eyes!

The fortified church and the covered stairs leading to it.

Major stop in Câmpina (Cum-PEE-nah), where we stayed with my sister and friends, seventeen people in one house. The children, happy to be with their cousins, transformed every night into an all-nighter, playing games, singing, talking. They tried for the first time in their life to ski, and while it was enjoyable, only Ioan wanted to repeat the experience.

Get in line!

Grilled pork sausage, chicken wings and tzuica, a strong plum brandy.

You need a professional grill!

Always rolling, we arrived in Iași (Yash) for one full day, to present our children to my father’s side of the family (they’ve seen them just in pictures). Before meeting with everybody at the restaurant, my uncle took us on a tour of downtown.

"Independent Romania" the monument for the ones who gave their life in 1877 so we could be free of the Ottoman rule

At the statue of Alexandru Ioan Cuza, the first ruler of Romania.

The Three Hyierarchs church, built in 1639, a mix of Eastern and Western styles

Detail: each row is different, a true stone lace.

Cultural Palace

București (Boo-coo-REH-sht) end of the line. We had time to squeeze a second visit with some of our friends, and even a reunion with Mihai’s high-school friends (some of them were my middle school class mates).

I grew up next to Atheneul Roman, a concert hall, doing my homework with the background sound of rehearsals. In front there is a statue of Mihai Eminescu, our national poet.

There were so many things to do before departure. Maria’s decision to study in Romania sent us in a whirlwind finding the requirements for taking the Baccalaureate (a serious exam on several disciplines, taken right after high school, required for continuing education to the University level, medicine in her case). It would have been easier if we had started when we arrived, but, from times immemorial, winter vacation feeling starts in Romania somewhere around Dec. 15 and ends, reluctantly, on Jan. 8. People still go to work, but nothing gets done, no major decisions are taken, everything is left for “after”. We found some information on the internet, but we had questions, we went to the office to have them answered, we bought books, and had more talks than we wanted if this is the best thing for her to do.

The talks were the reason that I didn’t suspect. The signs were there, secret projects between grandpa and Ileana, a formal invitation to a restaurant so we could “talk with no interference”, serious face but with eyes laughing in anticipation...it never crossed my mind, but my last thought before entering that room was that I should arrange my scarf to look good and... SURPRISE! Our families, joined for celebrating us, our trip, our achievement. We even got “Awesomeness Awards.”

 Looking back it didn’t seem so out of the ordinary. We lived every day, doing normal things, just in different surroundings. As all the things balance, they were the ones worrying, having received news of floods, earthquakes or social unrest, depending on where we were. Thinking that they were the ones who told us that people don’t even dream of this kind of things, not to talk about transforming them into reality, they are the ones who should receive an award, for putting up with us. Mulțumim (mool-tzoo-mim)! Thank you!

This is the end. We really went home from here, to our house, in the most beautiful place on Earth. No kidding. It took us only three days...I’ll tell you more next time. Until then...

La revedere! (lah reh-veh-deh-reh) See you!