Last weekend caught us in the village of Moroieni. We arrived there Friday evening, after having dinner in Vienna (Vienna Hotel in the resort of Pucioasa, that is).

We stayed at a pretty little guesthouse, with very friendly staff and traditional Romanian cuisine. By traditional, I mean ham for breakfast, ham for lunch (and I’m talking about a 2 course meal) and roast chicken for dinner.

Saturday morning, we went on a stroll in the area. Moroieni is a mountain village close to Sinaia, but on the un-glamorous side of the Bucegi Mountains. It’s surrounded by forests, so the noise of chainsaws and sawmills is common. Horse carts filled with logs were common. There were also a bunch of dogs, hanging around. One of them (an ugly black scabby mutt) started following us, probably hoping for some food.

2 km away from Moroieni is the village of Glod. When I first looked over the map of the area, that name seemed familiar. Where have I heard it before? I googled it and remembered. Glod is where the starting scenes from Borat were filmed. The film crew told the locals they were shooting a documentary, but ended up making fun of them in the movie. More on that subject here.

Real life Glod looks very similar to the one portrayed in the movie. Poor people, small houses, muddy yards and lots of dogs. Lots of suspicious eyes cast upon us. Packs of dogs circling the scabby mutt that was following us.

Each house had its pack of dogs. Each pack of dogs tried to chase out mutt away. “Is that your dog?” people were asking. “No, it’s just following us”. “Well, you’d better watch out with it”. But surprisingly, each pack got chased away whimpering – our poor mutt was some sort of Rambo dog.

We returned to Moroieni through the forest. “Forest” is an improper word – most of the trees have been cut. On top of that, there was a lot of trash around. I’m used to seeing bottles and cans in pretty much every natural setting, but… beer cases? Romania continues to surprise me.