Gypsy Trip

Arrival

Included highlights:

• Arrival in Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
• If time allows a short city tour can be organized. Bucharest will be the first point where we will start to discover the Gypsy World. You may even stumble upon a Gypsy band in one of Bucharest’s beautiful city squares. If such is the case, you’d be hard pressed not to take part in the joyful dancing that always accompanies such impromptu concerts. You can get a taste for the vibrancy of Roma culture - and surely you’ll get a strong sense of how gypsy culture is rooted deep within Romania’s history.
• In the evening a meeting with a local personality of gypsies’ will take place and you will have the chance to discuss over dinner about their history and culture.
• Check-in.

Discovering Gypsy communities in Transylvania

Included highlights:

• Departure to Sighisoara, the only inhabited medieval citadel, the Rothenburg of Eastern Europe.
• Stop in Viscri, where we will discuss about Prince Charles projects regarding the gypsy communities in Transylvania
• Have lunch.
• Arrival in Sighisoara.
• Dinner and check-in.

Included meals:

• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Dinner

Discovering Sighisoara and the Gypsies

Included highlights:

• Enjoy the city tour of Sighisoara - the place of Dracula’s birth and the best preserved medieval citadel of Romania - part of the UNESCO patrimony.
• Visit the gypsies from Valeni.
• Traditional gypsy lunch and Barbeque with the gypsies and enjoy the traditional gypsy life.
• Continue to Reghin.
• Check-in.
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Discovering the Gypsy life

Included highlights:

In the district of Apalina, situated in the suburbs of the Municipality of Reghin, live 466 gypsy families, but not at all a easy life. People from there succeed to survive from the social help delivered by the City Hall and also by colecting recyclable materials. Here we will visit a family that is involved in Horse breeding.

• Visit the Gypsies from Apalina,
• Lunch with the Gypsies
• Continue to Bacau.
• Check-in at the hotel in Bacau.

Included meals:

• Breakfast
• Lunch

Listening the Gypsy Music

Included highlights:

• Lunch in the neighborhood of Bacau,
• Listen the gypsy fanfare - a brass band of Gypsy heritage. Music is a very important part of their life. They attend all the important moments in the village life such as weddings, baptisms, funerals and all the other family or community celebrations. The musicians are men and their instruments have been passed on from father to son for generations. Roma being involved in performing at the weddings have always represented an important link in economic and social life of the local community.
• Continue to Botosani city.
• Dinner and check-in.

Included meals:

• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Dinner

Full day dedicated to the Gypsies

Included highlights:

Full day dedicated to the Blacksmiths, Lingurari (producers of domestic products of wood tools) and musicians at Stefanesti. Formerly also an important jewish center, Stefanesti exhibits a very interesting mix of the 2 Roma groups plus Jewish remains and influences. Return to the hotel.

Historically gypsies were divided as follows:

• “rudari” or goldsmiths, were dealing to pursuit the gold in rivers;
• “ursari”, who wandered the country with their bears;
• “lingurari” dealing with domestic products of wood tools;
• “laiesii” who were blacksmiths, builders, manufacturers of combs, were small thefts. They did not have stable housing, living in tents and wandered the country in order to get the bare necessities of life.

Discovering the Gypsies from Moldova

Included highlights:

• Visit Soroca, the Gypsy “capital” of the Republic of Moldova with a sizable Gypsy minority settled here.
• Visit the fortress which is a unique monument of defensive architecture of Europe.
• Visit the “Gypsies’ hill” where we will get acquainted with local sightseeing -“Palaces” where the gypsies live. Here you will have a tremendous possibility to visit a gypsy family owner of a bakery, to get familiarized with the gypsies’ way of life
• Try the dishes of traditional Gypsy cuisine.
• Visit Chateau Vartely. Here we will have an excursion around the complex, visit the wine factory, have the wine tasting
• Have dinner in traditional Moldovan or European style at Chateau Vartely.
• Check-in

Included meals:

• Breakfast
• Lunch
• Dinner with wine tasting

Wine tasting in an underground wine city

Included highlights:

• Check-out
• Discover TIRASPOL (capital of Transnistria) - the old USSR is still alive and well in Transnistria. It is a breakaway territory within the internationally recognized borders of Moldova.
• Enjoy a brandy tasting and lunch.
• City tour of Tiraspol
• Visit the Football Academy.
• Departure to Chisinau,
• Check-in
• Wine tasting in the underground wine city Milestii Mici, registered in the Guinness Book of Records for being the biggest Wine Collection in the world. It contains over two million bottles of wine highly appreciated by the winemakers from all over the world. The wines lie right there, at a depth of 80 meters, in bottles covered with dust and mold, in small elegant houses which are completed every year.
• Return to our hotel.

Included meals:

• Breakfast
• Lunch with brandy tasting

Departure home

Included highlights:

• Departure from Chisinau.

Included meals:

• Breakfast