Balkans August 24, 2018 Sibiu, Romania

4:30 am wide awake.  A couple of notes about riding in Bucharest: drivers mostly stay in their lanes, not a lot of horn honking, drive pretty fast, not a lot of speed limit signs so no clue if they are speeding, mostly cars, not many motorcycles or scooters, temperatures have been in the mid 80s and sunny so we have been sweating a lot riding in our gear.

Another example of stern to humorous transitions.  The checkout lady in a local grocery store - Susie asked her about the difference between 2 types of ice coffees we were buying, one container was dark and the other container light colored.  The lady gave us a stern "you've got to be kidding" look.  We then carried on a conversation in broken English during which she read the ingredient labels on the containers and basically said one is dark and the other one is light, and then we all started laughing.  She paid absolutely no regard to the people in line behind us and they showed no impatience.  That's my kind of humor and I think my Gainesville Geezer friends will agree.

The local currency is Lei, which are about 4 to a US dollar.  Below is a picture of the sausage counter in the grocery store with prices and you can see it's pretty inexpensive.

Sausage, ground meat and chicken seem to be pretty popular local proteins.  And polenta a favorite starch.

9:00 pm and we are having dinner at our hotel in Sibiu, Romania after riding about 200 miles from Bucharest. We rode the Transfagarian twisty, mountainous road.  It was beautiful and we got to 6,600 feet elevation.  We shared the route with loads of cars, a few tractors and 1 or 2 horses pulling wooden carts.

Saw alternatively fields of corn then sunflowers.   Big traffic jam at 530pm on the two lane road to Subiu, couldn't figure out what was holding us up, turned out to be a roundabout. 

We are staying at the Apollo Hermannstadt Hotel.  Nice clean room for $64.00 US including breakfast and very slow wifi so I am going to sign off for today.