From spa days in Europe’s biggest wellness centre to kebab-for-ticket trades and bedroom views of live football—my Romanian adventure was anything but ordinary. Here’s how I stumbled through Dracula’s backyard chasing the beautiful game
The home of Gheorghe Hagi, the iconic bleached blonde team of France 98 and most famously of all, Count Dracula. Like any country I’d never visited, Romania had always had an appeal to me. I’d planned a joint trip to Moldova and Romania but time, funds and an unreliable travel buddy put pay to this.
Around the same time another friend was working remotely in Bucharest and invited me over, no brainer, next stop Romania.
Flights are possible for £100 return from Manchester but given the short notice and Easter period, I ended up paying way over the odds. Not to worry, after 3 and a half hours in the air I was landing in country number 68, happy days.
The day before I left, my good pal Lee mentioned an amazing Spa that he’d heard about. Not something I usually indulge in, but I was assured it was an awesome place to visit and incredibly good value, why not hey? When in Romania.
And I must admit, Lee was right. What a splendid way to spend a day. The largest wellness centre in Europe just 10 minutes north of the capital. Pools, water slides, saunas, infrared therapies, the list goes on. This place seemed to have everything including a selection of quality restaurants and swim up bars. All this for 30 odd quid for the day. An absolute must visit for anyone coming to Bucharest. It’s so close to the airport that people genuinely fly from England just for a day trip it, a bit extreme but I can see why.
During the day there, I heard plenty of tourists and a lot of Italian accents. Or so I thought. As the weekend went on, it was clear that the Romanian language had strong similarities to Italian in its rhythm and melody. Despite its name, it is actually lesser known as a Latin language than Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese. It’s unique twist comes from its influences from, Turkish, Hungarian and Slavic languages.
A thoroughly refreshing and tiring day meant there wasn’t enough energy for much more than a couple of beers in one of the cosy Irish Bars in town.
Fully revitalised, it was time for some tranquil tourism. The only target on our minds was the National Football Museum. En route we ambled around, following our noses and taking in some of the awesome old buildings constructed in a blend of various historical styles. One of the charms of the city was the ‘street art’, just like in Napoli, no matter how grand and picturesque a building is, it seemed like it was accepted for the bottom two metres to be covered in graffiti.
The centre of Bucharest often had a scruffy feeling without being dirty, some areas aged and worn but still maintaining real character. The streets felt quiet and relaxed and a pleasure to stroll around. A couple of times you would walk under huge underground street crossings and there would be literally no one else around, a very strange yet refreshing experience.
We swung by a little flea market with a cool selection of items including plenty of stylish communist tracksuits that would no doubt go for a lot of money in some trendy shops in the Northern Quarter back in Manchester.
I’d decided to be a good tourist and forget about English football for the day, but when we passed through the main centre for bars and saw that Man City had pulled back a 2-0 deficit to Palace, we felt it’d be rude not to stop for a beer and ice cream and watch the remainder of the match. We were rewarded with a 5-2 demolition as City seemed to finally be clicking in to gear after a shocking season.
Finally, we made it to the Romanian National Football Museum. I was pleased to see we were literally the only people to enter during the time we were there. 4 floors of cool exhibitions. A whole room understandably dedicated to the legendary Gheorghe Hagi. Beyond doubt the single name that would come to mind for any football fan when asked about Romanian football. Especially if you lived through the 90’s.
What to say about the ‘Maradona of the Caparthians’? His story intertwines with the History of the nation itself and he plays the most prominent of roles in almost all the epic stories of the Romanian National team.
One element of their history that doesn’t involve Hagi is the origins of the World Cup. Alongside, Uruguay, Brazil, Belgium and France. Romania were one of only 5 countries to be represented at the first 3 World Cups showing they were a strong early presence in the global game.
World Cups were then interrupted by the Second World War and after that the whole globe was a vastly different place. In 1947 Romania became a communist state and from 1965 were led by Nicolae Ceaușescu. Initially a popular leader but in time became known as the most repressive and totalitarian in the Eastern Bloc.
The decline of Soviet influence and continued uprisings throughout the 80’s had led to greater instability. By 1989 it all came crashing down, with partial free elections in Poland and the Velvet Revolution in Prague, things were changing rapidly, but peacefully. However, in Romania things didn’t go as smoothly. Violent protests started in the city of Timișoara and spread throughout the country.
Ceaușescu addressed a carefully selected audience in Bucharest from the balcony of the Palace of the Parliament. Expecting to rouse his supporters and get the people back on his side, he was very much mistaken. The crowd turned violent, TV coverage was cut off and he beat a hasty retreat with his wife, evacuating by helicopter from the roof of the building.
The pilot was quickly ordered to return and they were tried in a military court. Accused of genocide, embezzlement and undermining national security. A couple of hours was enough to return the verdict. GUILTY.
On Christmas Day 1989, just 4 days after his ill-fated speech. Both Ceaușescu and his wife were executed by firing squad live on state television. The broadcast was both gruesome and controversial, but one thing was for sure. The reign of communism is Romania was well and truly over. Slightly more dramatic than Gavin and Stacey reruns. Merry bloody Christmas.
Rewind 3 years and Romanian football was undergoing its most significant moment in history. Steaua Bucharest had made it to the Final of the European Cup. Their opponents were to be Terry Venables’ Barcelona who had beaten off ‘The Last of the Proletarians’ in IFK Gothenburg in the other Semi Final.
70 odd thousand fans were present at the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán that evening, though only a rumoured 50 of them were handpicked fans and officials from Steaua. It is believed up to a third of these took the opportunity to escape communism and never returned home.
The game finished 0-0 in front of the partizan crowd with Helmut Duckadam the hero keeping a clean sheet for 120 minutes, but that was nothing on what was to come. ‘The Hero of Seville’ broke all sorts of records and went on to save all four penalties from El Tel’s men so just two weeks before I entered the world, Steaua were crowned champions of Europe, a first for any Eastern European club.
Not wanting to stop at that, shortly after, Steaua completed the transfer of Romania’s bright young starlet Gheorge Hagi. As the club of the state, it is believed that Ceaușescu had an influential hand in the transfer in order to keep Steaua at the pinnacle of European football thus promoting his regime.
Hagi’s transfer had the desired affect as Steaua went a world record 104 games unbeaten in domestic football from June 1986 to September 1989. Still a European record today with only ASEC Abidjan of Ivory Coast beating it with 108 games between 1989 and 1994. The Bucharest club again reached the final again in 89 but followed the fate of many others and were schooled 4-0 by Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan.
Communism had restricted any movement of players out of the country, but events of 1989 meant Hagi and others were free to roam. And when Real Madrid come knocking, as Jude Bellingham says, ‘the whole house shakes’.
Italia 90 bought only Romania’s second World Cup appearance since 1938. They performed admirably reaching the second round but the glory days came in USA 94. A World Cup of the underdogs, Hagi set the scene with a phenomenal strike, a curling lob from a seemingly impossible angle which led them to victory against Colombia.
Eventually falling to Sweden on penalties in the Quarter Final but Hagi again introduced himself to a whole new audience, including myself being the first World Cup I vividly recall.
Premier League followers will remember this golden generation of Romanian football, the likes of which we haven’t seen since. Dan Petrescu, Florin Răducioiu, Gigi Popescu are all familiar names to fans of that era.
Also part of the iconic France 98 squad. More than for their football, which wasn’t too bad at all, they became known for their post qualification antics. On beating England 2-1 in their second match, they’d sealed their route out of the group stage and held their manager, Anghel Iordănescu to the bet of having to shave his head. In turn, they held up their end of the bargain of every player to a man dying their hair bleach blonde.
In hindsight, many agree that it led to them taking their eye off the ball and they eventually fell to a solitary Davor Šuker goal versus Croatia. Their last appearance at a World Cup to date but there’s always hope that the likes of Radu Drăgușin can inspire a return to USA 26, 32 years after their heroics there.
Hagi’s curtain call was guiding Galatasaray to UEFA Cup victory in the year 2000, the first and still the only continental success for a Turkish side. They beat 3 British clubs on route. Rangers early on, the tragic encounter with Leeds in the Semi-Final before Hagi’s old pal Popescu broke Arsenal hearts with the winning spot kick to take the trophy. They’ll get another European win one day, I’m sure.
The King of Romanian football hung up his boots in 2001 finishing with 124 caps and without doubt, the greatest player the country has ever produced
A bargain £9 spent for a lovely walk down memory lane. Post museum, it was a pleasant evening so we wandered around checking out a couple of quaint churches before returning to the main drag. We stumbled upon a German style ‘Späti’, a shop selling a plethora of ales, needless to say I was like a kid in a sweetshop with all these untried beers. A really cool spot to hang out and drink for an hour or so before it started to turn a little nippy.
Some may have had their fill of football for the day but not us. Time for dinner and where better than another Irish pub showing a variety of games on screens all around us, the perfect venue to round off the evening’s activities
One last saunter around the streets of Bucharest taking in the traquility and observing the location of Ceaușescu’s final speech, the beginning of his end where the crowds finally turned against him.
There are always times when we are lucky or unlucky with fixtures but this time was impressive. Of the three teams in Bucharest – FCSB, Rapid and Dinamo – that were battling it out in the Championship round of the title race, none of them, yes, none of them were at home that weekend. A one in eight chance by my maths, the schedulers have had a nightmare, and so had I.
This left me checking trains and flights to the see if I could get away to see another game. Where there’s a will there’s a way and Rapid were playing away to CFR Cluj on the Monday night so I jumped on the HiSky flight and an hour later I was landing in Cluj-Napoca in the heart of Transylvania, the country’s biggest region.
I popped my head into O’Peter’s pub for a swift pint and tune in to yet another comical Manchester United loss, this time to Newcastle. This was a quick reccy ahead of the nights big match. Cluj-Napoca centre was a delightful spot, relaxed, quiet and with a nice river running right through the middle.
I headed to my apartment to drop the bags, a long ol’ graft up the steep hill giving you a wonderful view across the city where youngsters gathered with friends or on first dates. A lovely peaceful setting.
I was staying in an old school grey apartment right out of the communist era, quite a walk from the town, but with very, very good reason. One item on my bucket list had been to watch a match from an apartment overlooking a pitch. When scrolling through the options on Booking.com, I couldn’t believe my luck. This room was in the corner of the stadium looking right out over the playing surface. I double checked it was the right ground, wouldn’t be beyond me to mess that up, and it was, free for matchday as well. My trip to Cluj just got a whole lot more exciting.
FCSB significantly dropped points in the night’s encounter which I thoroughly enjoyed back in O’Peter’s with a Steak Pie and a couple of pints of Holsten Weizen. They were top of the table but this outcome meant a win for CFR the following day would bring them level on points at the top, a great result for me as it increased the games significance.
No chance I was walking back up that bloody hill but thankfully the Bolt scooters were on hand for a little treat. Barely a car on the road, another soothing feeling of tranquillity I’d felt during my time in this country.
What a feeling to wake up to a beautiful floodlight peering down at you through the window. Bloody brilliant. I stared out onto the pitch and watched the drama of the corner flags been placed before heading out into town for the obligatory walking tour. The tour was short but sweet, a cute little place that doesn’t take long to explore. Plenty of nice churches, Romanian Orthodox being the leading religion with about 80% of the following. However up in Transylvania there is a larger influence of Hungarian Catholics due to its connecting border.
After the tour I met up with a young lad who got in touch via Instagram. Ondrash was a dedicated CFR fan travelling into the city. A really intelligent lad that it was a pleasure to learn from, he had a huge passion for history and a strong love of his region, stating that he felt more Transylvanian than Romanian as he had less in common with those in the capital. The kind of feeling that only enhances football rivalries.
As well as those feelings, he also had a spare ticket for the match which he kindly offered to me. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I already had a perfectly good seat to watch the spectacle from. But it was only right that I entered the arena for the full experience, and the trade was done. One large kebab for one ticket. Deal.
The Dr. Constantin Rădulescu Stadium was named after a former player, coach and club Doctor. Originally constructed in 1973, the capacity was extended to 22,000 during the clubs meteoric rise. They were formed way back in 1907 as Kolozsvári Vasutas Sport Club, a year you will see dotted around the city in various forms. At the time Transylvania was considered part of Austria-Hungary and not until after the second world war when the territory moved back to Romania did the current name come about.
Căile Ferate Române, CFR represented the Romanian Railways and struggled for any early notoriety, spending the majority of the 20th century bouncing between the top few divisions. Only in 2004 did they end a 28-year hiatus outside of the top division. Their rise back to Liga 1 was strongly influenced by the investment of Árpád Pászkány. Within 6 years CFR reached the pinnacle of Romanian football for the very first time, taking the Championship away from Bucharest for the first time in 17 years.
The intervening period were the glory days for CFR, they had numerous forays into Europe with notable Champions League wins against Celtic, at the Stadio Olimpico against Roma and even a victory at the Theatre of Dreams in the final days of Sir Alex Ferguson. After 5 titles in a row up to 2022, CFR have settled on 8, leaving them as the most successful club outside of the capital but still a long way off Dinamo with 18 and 27 for Steau/FCSB. That’s a discussion for another day with the rights to the clubs early titles claimed by two different sides.
This confusion at the top of the tree is endemic of the chaos of Romanian Football. After decades of dominance by the clubs from the capital, Since CFR won in 2008 there have been 6 first time winners, their meteoric rises were often funded by crime and corruption with 3 of those clubs now dissolved, and 4 owners ending up in jail.
Unpaid players, mafiosa involvement, match fixing, you name it, it’s rife in this country. Highlighted this season by Liga 2 side CS Mioveni being deducted 74 points for a plethora of financial misdemeanours. The story of one of the most corrupt pyramids in European Football is delightfully captured by HITC Sevens on Youtube, a video well worth watching.
As for the days game, this was crucial for CFR led by Dan Petrescu, a man who oversaw two of their earlier titles. A win would draw them level at the top with FCSB before the visiting the capital for a showdown the following week. Their opponents were Rapid Bucharest who were all but out of a shout for European places and a home win was expected. Already in a cup semi final with no big hitters remaining, CFR were still on for a double.
The pre match song was sung but it’s never quite the same if the ground isn’t full. CFR started the better side, and it was no great surprise when centre back Leo Bolgado headed them in front from a corner on 7 minutes. The home side continued to dominate but they needed a fine save from Hindrich on the half time whistle which proved how vulnerable their lead was.
The visitors came out inspired in the second half and got a deserved equaliser which seemed to wake up the home team. Eyeing up my bedroom window from my seat I made my apologies on the 75th minute and set off on my little jog home. By the 80th minute I was sat on the end of my bed, chocolate cake in hand looking right down on the Rapid ultras.
Speaking of ultras, there is still a traditional scene here in Romania, as always united against authority and any sorts of restrictions. There are still occasional incidents of violence including a recent attack on a CFR youngster after their local derby with Universitatea Cluj. A rivalry that goes back over 100 years and still runs deep today but with a slightly more modern twist. The attack was targeted after the lad had been continually slagging off his rivals in social media posts.
Back to the bedroom coverage and apparently there was a big chance for Rapid but the goal was one of the few parts of the ground obscured by other fans. On 87 minutes, Louis Munteanu was withdrawn. The league’s top scorer by a long way and at 22 years old, a big hope for Romanian Football, but today wasn’t his day.
Was there time for one last twist in proceedings? An injury time free kick was awarded from the same spot Declan Rice had smashed one in against Real Madrid just days earlier. That strike falsely made it feel achievable. But alas, it wasn’t meant to be and the wall did its job. Rapid held on for the point putting a severe dent in CFR’s hopes of taking the crown.
I observed as the away fans disappeared into the night and fell back to drift off to sleep in my floodlit bed. Can’t beat it.
And that was that, another trip done. I shared the flight back to Bucharest with the Rapid squad before heading back to sunny Manchester.
Since that draw, CFR lost to FCSB the following week and it seems they will claim their 29th Championship. CFR will battle it out for the two remaining European spots. That and a cup win could still leave them with a very successful season.
As with all my videos I will rate CFR Cluj as a footy trip out of 100 across 10 categories
Team Ability – The football didn’t set the world alight but a perennial contender for the title in Europe’s 25th best league – 5.5/10
Atmosphere – The atmosphere was ok, both sets of ultras sang throughout and passion from the main stand, the stadium wasn’t quite full which always takes an edge off the sound – 6/10
Stadium Quality – An old school feel and pleasant views out across the countryside. One that will always hold a special place in my heart anyway – 6.5/10
Beer/Food at stadium – Only alcohol-free beer but pizza, hot dogs and plenty of snacks – 7/10
Tourism – A charming little town centre, very nice and relaxing and you can visit the enchanting castles of Transylvania on day trips – 7/10
Accessibility – Indirect flights from Manchester so not the easiest to get to but good value prices once you get here – 5/10
People – All those I interreacted with throughout the country were lovely, pleasant and smiling. My overriding feeling was that everyone just did their own thing and respected other people’s spaces, wonderfully relaxing, quiet and always felt safe – 8/10
Stadium Surroundings – A fair old hike from town but not too far from the train station, very little in the way of bars or atmosphere but in fairness it was a Monday evening – 2/10
History – Relative nobody’s until 2008 but a strong recent history since then. A few notable European scalps enhancing their exposure outside of Romania – 3/10
Ease/Cost of ticket purchase – The first time I’ve ever traded a kebab for a ticket but it’d be easy enough regardless as it rarely sells out. Failing that, book early, and for £20 you can watch from your bedroom – 9/10
Total – 59/100
Overall not the best score, a pleasant all round experience but no great highs other than the view from the room. Hopefully for their own sake the chaos and corruption within Romanian football will settle down and allow them to progress and we’ll see the ‘Tricolorii’ at next years World Cup in America. Oh and by the way, turns out Dracula isn’t even real
Accomplishments
For me in terms of personal accomplishments on this trip
Romania was the 68th country I have visited (68/196)
And the 30th in which I have watched football An absolute pleasure as always to travel around the world enjoying the delights on offer, thanks again for joining me and until the next footy trip, take it easy
great review!!!!