Klooiplek

(and the long ride from Tulcea to Iasi)

The first part of this trip we followed the Danube in western direction. It is a stunning example of an undisturbed river-ecosystem. No dikes, no levees, no fences, no industry.

The river still has many side-streams and swamps providing good breeding grounds for fish. And the broad beds of reed aside give room to many birds.

Slightly higher up the riverbank there are the zones that don't get flooded anymore. Here are small scale agricultural fields. Without fences, so shepherds wander freely over the area. Next to the (geographically young) river are the (very old) rounded hills. We visited these hills near the town of Macin (two hours stop) before taking on the track to Iasi.

With an hourly average of barely 50 km, travelling through the Romanian countryside is much different from what the internet route planners want you to believe. Of course the roads are not always as good as you would like them to be. But on top of that traffic gets slowed down by the omnipresent horse-powered wooden carts, still widely used for transporting peaple as well as cargo. Many are driven by Roma people, and often they are loaded with complete hay piles.

So after some five hours we arrived in the city of Iasi (pronounced as “jashj”) to meet our guide Alex Strugariu.

Iasi

Iasi is situated in the district of Moldavia, the poorest region of Romania. Moldavia existed as an independent state from the 14th century until 1859. The western part of Moldavia is now a part of Romania with Iasi being its capital. East of the river Proet, the eastern part of Moldavia now forms the Republic of Moldovia.

After Bucharest, Iasi is the largest city of Romania, with more than 500.000 inhabitants. The city is the economic, cultural and academic centre of the region Moldavia. Iasi has five public and three private universities and accommodates almost 60,000 students. We were surprised by the beauty of Iasi’s churches, university buildings, theatres, not to mention its colourful people.

On the edge of extinction: Europe's rarest adder

The hills surrounding Iasi are covered with forests and halfopen country, with friendly small villages scattered around. Our main goal here was to find Vipera ursinii moldavica and Vipera berus. The next morning, after a good night’s sleep in a typical Romanian hotel, Alex took us to a grassland area just outside the city. At first sight, the area, although rich in flowers, did not seem particularly interesting for reptiles. We probably wouldn’t have stopped here at all if it wasn’t for our guide Alex to tell us that these small pockets of grassland host one of the last remaining populations of Vipera ursinii moldavica. Given the nearby, and ever expanding, city limits and the increasingly intensive farming practices in the surrounding area, it is even more astonishing that this last resort of V. ursinii moldavica has no protected status! Romanian biologists, however, do recognise the importance of this habitat, and have been trying for years to convince the Romanian government to legally protect the area. For this single field belongs to the very last acres where this subspecies still occurs!

We made a walk through the grasslands in the morning. The diversity of flowering plants seemed unbeatable. The downside of this was that some of us were struck by a severe hay fever. After a while we managed to locate five Vipera ursinii moldavica. All were found in patches of bare ground and low vegetation. Other highlights of these steppe-like meadows are mammals such as sousliks and several species of hamster and molerat, not to mention the variety of insects.

The burrows of the molerats (Spalax graecus) form small open patches in the vegetation, providing the adders places to catch some sun.

Barnova forest »