Cardon
Of all the places in Danube Delta, Cardon has definitely been my favorite place to make fun of. And for no real reason except its name. I’m not sure about English, but in Romanian, it sounds hilarious as hell.
[adsense]I think I first heard about it when one of my aunts threatened me that if I keep doing whatever I was doing that she thought was bad, she would send me to Cardon.
That cracked me up! Cardon? What kind of place is that? It definitely must be somewhere where those beastly kids like me were being punished, but really, how bad could it be?…
Well, a couple of years later I got my hands on a map of the Delta and guess what! I found Cardon in there and burst out laughing again! Hahaha, that place actually existed!
Well, almost…
It definitely is one of the most isolated places in the Danube Delta. It is a small village a few kilometers north from Sulina, following a nice canal, side by side with the Musura Gulf, close to the border with Ukraine.
There’s also a dirt road that will get you there. But come on, you’re in the Delta. You use a boat to get to places.
What’s intriguing is that on your way to Cardon, you’ll stumble into the “Buna Vestire” monastery, a totally isolated retreat for a true believer. As a matter of fact, I had no idea that there was anything built there until I saw some pictures a couple of years ago.
[adsense]Seeing is believing indeed 🙂
As for the village itself, I have no idea how many people live there. Less than one hundred for sure.
I saw a very boring movie a couple of years ago where two of the main characters were two old people in Cardon, a man and his wife, who were among the main characters. Stereotypically, they were spending their life drinking, going about the house chores and nothing else.
The movie did nothing more than to strengthen the very positive image I had about the village 🙂 You can actually view the film of Google Videos.
Nevertheless, the place is very poor and besides fishing and planting a few plants, there’s no other work the villagers can take up.
It’s interesting to visit the village for a couple of hours, but you’d better have a different destination like Letea CA Rosetti, because you’ll die of boredom here. Me and my friends can definitely have a great time there, but I doubt it going to be the same for you, especially if you’ve traveled 5000 kilometers only to find yourself in the middle of nowhere 🙂
will you do a story about Letea CA Rosetti?
is there a good place to stay in some of these deserted places?
I wrote about the forest in Letea, but not the village. Also, I’ve never been to C.A. Rosetti.
I’ll probably write an article about these later this summer, once I talk with more people about them and especially if I manage to pull that bike tour I’ve always wanted to do in that area.