Balea Lac and Sibiu

It has been unseasonably warm here in Transylvania for the last week or so. This has really been a blessing. Especially since we decided to go the “Ice Hotel” this weekend. Earlier this week I booked an ice room at the Ice Hotel at the suggestion of one of our friend’s uncle. Florin (uncle) called us up on Tuesday and suggested that maybe the Ice Hotel in Balea Lac [Lake Balea], which is really out of the way but not too out of the way, would be a nice place for us to stay. We looked the place up online and decided that this would be a good place to stay while there was still winter around.

It’s a good thing that we went when we went. On the way back from the Hotel we asked the gondola (cable car… the thing you take up a mountain that is like a chairlift) driver when they shut down the hotel. He said “when there’s a hole in the roof of the hotel and you can see all the way through”. We asked him when this usually takes place and he said that the end of March or the beginning of April is typically when they shut it down.

On March 20th, we set out from our apartment and went to the bus/train station. We asked around how to get to Cartisoara, which is a town near where the gondola leaves from Balea Cascada [Balea Waterfalls]. One helpful guy said that we would have to take the maxi-taxi [van] to another town and then we could find transportation to Balea Lac [Lake Balea]. The driver said that he had no idea what we were talking about.

We talked with enough people and they said that we needed to get off at some village and then hitch-hike to get to the waterfall, and then we would take a gondola to the lake. It seemed pretty simple. And in reality it really was. But Amanda is sometimes hard to convince.

We arrived at the village in the “center” of their “town”. We decided to ask someone how to get to the lake. The cashier at a small store decided to make things difficult for us and speak exceptionally fast and tell us essentially to go 3km down the road and there would be a Lukoil gas station where we could get a ride to the waterfalls. She made sure that we knew that we would have to get a ride on the gondola to the lake because the road would be closed from the waterfalls on up.

This road that she was talking about is arguably the most awesome road to drive on in the world. The road was set up by the Communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu during his early years. The road follows Ceausescu’s pattern of grandiose, ridiculous, megalomaniac infrastructure-building. It is constructed up and over the top of the Fagaras mountain range, near the end of the Carpathians. It is about as winding as you can get and it is also closed during the winter time. Luckily there is a gondola.

We took the cashier’s advice and walked from the little village that we got off at and headed for the Lukoil station. Amanda wasn’t happy and said that she “wanted to keep positive”. I did my job and said that it would be fine. When we were almost to the station a guy pulled over and asked us if we needed a ride.

We obliged and as we were asked if we spoke German (the Ice Hotel is run by Germans) we finally decided that Romanian was the best language when he dropped us off in the little village of Cartisoara. We hitched another ride up the beginning of the Transfagarasan highway to the waterfalls with a young couple that was going to do some skiing. I asked if there were ski rentals but they said no (they had their own). At the end of our trip they invited us up to their ski hut. More on this later.

After a white-knuckle ride (for Amanda, but she was very brave) up the gondola, we arrived in what was like something out of a movie. There were huge, beautiful tops of mountains that surrounded a frozen glacial lake (Lake Balea) at the top of some of the most picturesque mountains in the country. We stared at the mountains for some time before we looked around for the hotel.

The Ice Hotel is actually made out of ice that is carved from Lake Balea, piece-by-piece. There is also an “Ice Church” there as well. The Ice Church is complete with pews, a crucifix with a remarkably realistic Jesus and even a “Last Supper” ice carving on the wall at the back of the church.

But the church is nothing compared to the hotel. After we checked in at the “Cabana” (cabin that is set up for permanent places to stay at the lake) we went to check out the hotel. We were asked by the lady at the front to find a room that we liked and then to come back and tell her which one we wanted. We looked around for about a half an hour. There were tables that were cut out of ice. The bar was made of ice. There was an ice “Discoteca”. There was a statue of David replica, complete with penis, made from ice. This place is a once-in-a-lifetime place to see. And it’s in the middle of nowhere.













Amanda chose the “Eliade” room. Each room was specifically designed to represent the ideas of various famous philosophers. Eliade is a great Romanian philosopher, although there were plenty of international (mostly Greek) philosophers. I wanted to stay in the Confucius room which had an ice statue of a woman on a bench near the bed. Amanda thought that the statue would be creepy so we stayed in the Eliade room where we had an ice wall that separated us from the rest of the world.

All of the rooms just had a curtain to put up instead of a normal hotel room door, so our extra wall was an added bonus. Not only our wall, but the bed and night table were made completely out of ice. This sounds cold. It was. We heard someone say that they slept in the bed with just their underwear. I don’t know how they managed this because we were all wrapped up in our refrigerator room but our faces still couldn’t escape the elements.









We tried to enjoy the warmth of the cabin as much as we could before we went to our icy bed. Before bed we ate a meal, half of which was served on ice plates. I won’t say how much it was but it was very good. Before we left the U.S. we set aside Christmas cash from our family (thanks guys!) for a “luxury item”. The ice hotel, including the meal was our luxury item. There were some hidden costs but overall it was worth it. Even Amanda enjoyed it. I figured if she would follow me to an ice hotel then she would follow me just about anywhere.

We made some new friends and went to their cabin to have some drinks. There we happened to run into the first Romanian who managed to hike to the top of Everest. He was even wearing his “Everest Expedition 2003. ‘8828 meters’” shirt. He wanted us to know. But he was very friendly. At 2054 meters, the air was still easy to breath and the cool drinks in the hot cabin went down easy.

Our friends told us that if we needed a ride back to the Lukoil station then they would be leaving at 3 or 4 and we could come with them. We thanked them and went back to our ice hotel for the night. We made some more friends at the hotel though. Oh so many friends.

After a couple more drinks with our newer new friends, we agreed to go with a couple guys to see Sibiu the next day. Sibiu was declared the “Cultural Capital of Europe” by the European Union in 2007, along with Luxembourg. Before I went I thought that the EU was just trying to make their new member feel welcome. I was surprised by how nice Sibiu is. It almost rivals our new home, Brasov. If I didn’t know any better I would say that Sibiu is more beautiful than Brasov if I was forced, at gunpoint of course, to compare the two.

Needless to say, we had a really good weekend vacation. All of that fun and excitement, however, was followed by a nasty couple of days of stomach flu for the both of us. So this is our first day out of the apartment since Monday! Hurray!