Staying In A Romanian Palace – The Climb #264

Thursday 12^th October 2017

Today was the first day of my Romania trip.
As I’ve previously said, I’m travelling to Bucharest with School of the Sword to act as an assistant instructor for an event that’s being held out there. I’d seen from some of the promo videos that it look quite good. However, I wasn’t ready for just how good.
I’d mostly packed last night, but this morning was spent trying to repack my sportube so that my weapons wouldn’t rattle around. I got the sportube from my parents for my birthday last month. It’s basically a hard snowboard telescoping case. Not only will it hold my rapier (which won’t even fit in my sword bag) but it’ll fit my mask as well.
It meant that I could actually take just a rucksack for hand luggage, and even then I only had some clothes in there as spares in case the sportube got lost.
I’ve been so ready for this trip. For months I’ve been looking forward to just running away from all my stresses for a few days, and this trip lined up perfectly.
As tickets were bought for us, we flew from Luton. It was a bit of a drive, but I suppose no worse than Gatwick (which I flew to Canada from snf will be passing through on my trip to Sweden in a few weeks). I’d booked car parking, although I drove the wrong way initially, and then ended up in the wrong car park (and only discovered after I’d unpacked and left the car).
It meant that I was second to get to the airport. Pim had made his own way there and was already through security by the time I arrived. I worried I might have issues with my case. It’s quite long after all, but they took it without question.
I’m so glad I have it. In the past I’ve stowed my kit with others when going to events like Swordfish. But as I hope to do more international tournaments in the future, having my own case has been a must for ages. I also worry that softcases could squash or bend swords, so the fact I have a hard case has made me very happy indeed.
I met up with Pim and we had a beer while we waited to board.
We were flying with Wizzair and the plane was parked just outside the terminal, so we crossed over the road, and climbed the steps up into it. I’m so used to entering via a gangway the experience was quite novel.
Our flight was about 3 hours and largely forgettable. I basically put my airpods on and listened to music for most of the flight.
By the time we landed it was about 11pm. We worried our bags might take a time but they came out pretty quickly (although lucky I was there as my sportube doesn’t handle the corners of airport conveyor belts well and was in danger of jamming everything up.
We rescued it and got met by our contacts, Razfan and Alina. We loaded up the car and quickly realised that 4 people and my case don’t mix. So it was a bit of a squash in the back… to which they were very apologetic (and to which we were simply glad for a ride).
We got taken to our destination which we’d thought would be some organiser’s living room floor. Not that we’d have a problem with that. We were getting a free weekend in Romania, so were more than happy to slum it.
Except we were far from slumming it.
They put us up in the actual palace.
Yep… I can now say I’ve stayed in a palace.
Mogoşoaia Palace is insanely beautiful. The architecture reminds me of Naboo from the Star Wars prequels, and the gardens are going to be the host of the activities. Now School of the Sword prides itself on the quality of its events… but the Bucharest HEMA club have totally outdone us.
Forget that they are putting up their instructors in a palace…they have an actual tent constructed for the seminars and tournaments. They also had huge banners hanging around the palace. It looks so seriously professional in such a beautiful location that I’m truly stunned.
We met up with some of the others in the building we were staying in and had a few drinks as well as some pizza. Let’s hope the organisers are aware of how much a bunch of drunkards, us HEMA types are.
We have a seminar to do tomorrow, which Pim has put together so I don’t have to do much more other than get hit by him and walk round the groups when they are doing the drills.
It looks like this is going to be an incredible weekend, which is just what I need to take my mind off worries back home.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels. Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.