Dreaming of winter? Outside the train window, Romania drifts past like a half-remembered childhood story, rewritten in frost and breath. Snow swallows the fields whole, villages crouch low under its weight, and the world feels temporarily forgiven. The carriage rocks gently, a lullaby for adults who forgot how to sit still, and for a moment bliss is not loud or dramatic. It is quiet, persistent, and deeply personal. This is the cold that built the country. Rails cut through plains where winters

Who sets the rules here? On the lower reaches of the Transfăgărășan, a mother bear advances with sovereign indifference, her bulk deliberate, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond human urgency, while two nearly grown cubs trail behind like inherited myths learning to walk. Snow slips from the sky in hesitant flakes, catching in their fur, the forest closing ranks around them as if this asphalt were nothing more than a rumor. This road was blasted through the Carpathians in the 1970s with dynamite and

Who let winter drive? In the frozen amphitheater of Cheile Grădiștei, you strap yourself into a sled and hand your better judgment over to gravity. The track dives through snow-drowned firs like a drunk poet chasing a good idea downhill, fast and slightly unhinged. This is not polite tourism. This is Romania cackling through chattering teeth, reminding you that joy sometimes arrives sideways, on steel rails, with your lungs burning and your grin completely unearned. The alpine coaster barrels th