Well, because of all of the happiness caused by the digicam, I've totally forgotten to write about the trip to the mountains. A whole week has passed, and intresting things there, yep, did happen.

We were in Lacu Rosu, a little tourist place in the Carpathians. On Friday in the afternoon we took a car of one of our colleagues - Alexey, and left for adventures, nature and ancient legends of vampires. Since then, btw, I want to obtain a driving license and to provide myself with any kind of a vehicle. The point that in comparison with train hiking car appeares to be a second-to-none means. Because the railways are usually made in kinda twisted way, it would take about 7 hours to make a way of 150kms long. And with a car we made it in about 3 hours, including stops to walk through the cities we were passing by, looking up the map, and changing audio cassets. All the way "Aria", "Blind guardian" and the sound-track from the New Year show by ORT (Russian TV) with Ukrainian folk motives :) were with us. That's it. Whatever. Gotta have a car.

Among the cities we specially liked Piatra Neamt - the first more or less major city on the way from Iasi to Bicaz. A huge mountain covered with forest "hanged" above the city. Well, it didn't really hang, but made such an impression, for the mountain stayed aside. We saw their central park exactly when local school-boys and school-girls were celebrating their leaving. There was something worth seeing. Because of a specific education system which means 12 years of sudies, first at school and then at liceu (high-school), the female leavers were about 18 years old.

In Lacu Rosu we settled in a hotel which cost 300.000 lei (9$) per night for one person. The TV-set in our room had two Romanian, one Italian and one (sic!) Polish channel. Well, - we thought, - what else can a TV-set show in a region of Romania where the majority of population consists of ethnic Hungarians, beside Polish movies?

While we were looking for a place for settlement, a local road police guy decided to talk with us. It is really useful to be able to speak Romanian here. Among three of us only yours sincerelly was able to. Well, Alexey turned the car round somewhere near a road bend, or on a some kind of a white line (I'm not good at these things). Then a policeman stopped us and gesticulating, started.. "WTF? You cannot turn round here, cannot you see the line?".. etc. I answered, "What for, dear domnul, do you tell me all about it? I don't even have a license". "Translate for him, then" - he asked. Anyway, it was clear that we broke the rule. So, having enough of the post-Soviet experience, I started.. "Dear mister policeman, we work in your country attracting foreign investitions into your economy, at an American company in Iasi. Came for a week-end to see your beautiful nature. Could we work it out somehow so that not to have problems?". Obviously, I was referring to money. The guy thought a little bit, and then said "Well, ok. But don't do it again". He just let us go. It was absolutely unexpected. Then, discussing the case, we imagined a Ukrainian road policeman. In such a situation in his eyes numbers would start showing, like black jack. As soon as he would hear the words about an American company, programming, zeros would be added to the numbers. And the Romanian one just let us go, saying not to do that again. If you're reading this, dear Romanian road policeman, - take our sincere thanks.

Beside of Hungarians, there were some other intresting things in Bicaz, near Lacu Rosu. Names of various places, for example. Cheile Bicazului (the keys of Bicaz) are two rocks among which a road and a river go. They lead to Piatra Altarului (the altar stone), which is a very high mountain with a cross on its top. There is such a Romanian habit to put crosses everywhere. They can be seen at every well, or just in a plain field. Once, crossing a bridge we saw a piece of rock growing straight from the water. "Cross" - said I without any doubt. It appeared to be exactly so when we came closer.

However, the name that I liked most of all was Gatul Iadului (the throat of Hell). Near it an idea to climb somewhere up to the mountain came to our minds. Recently our fellow colleague Victor introduced another word into our vocabulary - matrasnik (mattress-sitter), which means something like the following: "an addict of comfort who even in extreme natural conditions wants to have warm bed, shower and other advantages of civilization". Well, we didn't really live in a tent, because it wasn't that comfortable (lol), and also because it was pretty cold in the mountains. The day temperature was about +15C. Finally we realized why its wasn't a tourist season time, and why it started only in 20-ths of July. Anyway, we're matrasniks. But in order to persuade ourselves that it wasn't so, we started climbing, having choosen quite a steep mountainside. A small observation we made. When you're climbing up you don't notice how hight you get. But when you're looking downstairs, it's quite possible to shit yourself. Nevertheless, inspite of tiredness after climbing up and going down we still had a lot of impressions. We made a whole photo film in two hours. And during whole the trip we made three films.

Lacu Rosu is translated as "red lake" directly from Romanian. Actually there is a real lake there. But when we saw it the colour was green, though the ground around it was red. Not far away on the way to the tourist places there were some kind of mines, presumably of ore. Because of it, I think, everything was red there. Maybe the lake itself becomes red sometimes too. Also there was a boat station on the shore, so we couldn't help renting a boat to surf the lake :)

On the way back we went through whole the area. Saw the Romania's biggest dum, which was built by a Soviet project. A very huge one, it impressed us a lot. It prevents whole the lake (another one, called Bicaz afair) to sink. And if it breaks it will be wet in a lot of cities down there. Also, we visited a famous monastery Durau near a foot of a mountain.