It's like rural American in the 50's (or 30's?)

One notable little item:  riding through rural areas we see lots of folks cutting hay by hand - with a big old wooden handled scythe.  I know that when I was a kid, in the 50's on our farm, we would but the edges of the hay fields like that, but most of the field was done with a tractor pulled power mower.  But, we've seen a number of fields being cut all by hand (and, a sheep being sheared with hand powered shears - take that, you wimpy Australians).  They are quite good, taking a swipe and having all the hay cut on that swipe line up so that at the end they have a lined up pile of cut hay that is then loaded on a horse-drawn wagon and then taken to be piled on a stack of loose hay - no power bailing.  

Lots of horses on the road pulling carts - including my favorite, a cart with a power mower in it.

Lots of pretty flower gardens around houses.

Lots of abandoned factories - a relic of the Ceausescue regime.

Small businesses along the roads - tomato sellers with perhaps 30 tomatoes available for purchase.

Talked to some Romanian cyclists today (software guys in their late 20's on a 9 day mountain bike tour).  they remembered little of the Ceausescue days, but the emblematic recall was of getting up at 4 am to go stand in line to get 5 little tins of yogurt.  Take that King Sooper.

Today was day off in Alba iulia (city of 50,000) - an old town dating back 2000 years to Roman times.  Massive fort with multiple reincarnations from the first century through the last major rebuild in the 1700's.  Now being redeveloped as an upscale tourist hotel, several large churches, lots of tourist stuff including several really nice museums, and a pretty park with running trails that is located in the old moat between 2 sets of walls. 

The orthodox basilica is a particularly spectacular and pretty church.  Quite impressive.