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Do we crowd too much in? Yes we do. Now most people who read about our trips would imagine that we have all the time in the world.  But we don't. We limited ourselves to ten days in Romania so that we could go on to Ukraine and Russia and get to England in time for a wedding. But we just could not leave Romania without stopping in Suceava and seeing the famous painted churches. 

We almost didn't get to see the churches because transportation is so poor, it would have taken us a day per church had we tried to do it by public transport.  However, no sooner had we checked into our hotel, than the word must have gone out that there were foreigners in town.  We were eating a late lunch when a young man sat himself down at our table and introduced himself as a local tour guide. 

He was in his late twenties and spoke good English.  Unfortunately once we got down to business, we found that he just wanted far too much money for our budget: $100 for an all-day visit to various sites around Suceava.  We told him that we just couldn't afford that and told him that we were more interested in something around $25.  We parted amicably and told him that if he changed his mind we would be back at the hotel in the early evening. 

We went off to see what we could by ourselves. The days were still very long and we walked out of town to the very impressive remains of a 15th fortress and got to see the lovely Monastery of St. John in town. In the small church that belongs to the monastery, we saw a family group that had come to ask for some special blessing of the priest.  Perhaps someone was sick or starting on some new venture, we couldn't tell, but there was lots of touching of bowed heads, passing of written prayers, and chanting. We were later getting back than planned, but he managed nonetheless to find us wandering around not far from our hotel and after a short round of bargaining, we agreed on a half-day for our $25. 

The tour guide was waiting for us when we finished breakfast the next morning and was accompanied by an ageing Mercedes driven by an ageing Romanian. We visited three monasteries, all of which were very pretty and the weather cooperated but by the end of the morning the young man was beginning to irritate Jan beyond belief. We were also a bit shocked when he interrupted our tour to escort a group of Swiss visitors, the friends of and led by  the Swiss Ambassador to Romania, around one of the churches.  The final straw for Jan was when he started to preach to us about his Eastern Orthodox Christian beliefs. And finally, of course, he was expecting a big tip and didn’t get one (we felt we'd bargained honestly and he had in any case earned extra money on our time from the Swiss group) and so he underwent the usual personality transformation from “I’m your best friend” to “I despise you”. Not literally, but body language was unmistakeable. 

But on the whole, Suceava was worth the trip. The painted churches are quite unusual and quite beautiful.