The name is Turkish, and so is much of Babadag's past. Baba means father or holy elder, dağ means mountain, and the town is tied by legend to Sarı Saltuk, a thirteenth-century dervish said to have carried Islam into the Balkans, whose tomb, one of several that claim him, has drawn pilgrims here for centuries. Under the Ottomans this was a garrison town and a seat of local governors, and its stone mosque, built in the early seventeenth century and named after Gazi Ali Pasha, is among the oldest standing in Romania. The minaret still pokes up over the low roofs like a pencil.
Today Babadag is a small, unhurried town on the main road between Constanța and Tulcea, with Romanian and Turkish-Tatar families living side by side and a large army training area on its edge. What makes it odd, geographically, is the forest. North and west of town spreads the Babadag woodland, a real oak and lime forest sitting like an island in the dry, open steppe of northern Dobrogea, and east of town the shallow lagoon of Lake Babadag reaches out toward the great Razim system and the delta. Stand on the shore at dusk and you may count more herons than people.
On a bike, the main road through here is something to get over with: wide, mostly straight, and in July full of lorries and cars heading to the delta and the beaches, with overtaking that ranges from brave to suicidal. Peel off it, though, and things improve. The lanes into the forest wind gently under the trees, cool and shaded on a hot afternoon, and the side roads toward the lagoon give long low views across water and reed. There are no mountains to speak of, but the steppe wind is a constant companion, leaning on you from the side on every exposed stretch.
The town is the last proper service stop before the lagoon villages, so fill the tank and buy water at the stations on the main road. A couple of bakeries and small restaurants cover lunch, and in summer you will smell grilled mici, the little skinless sausages, from half the street. Save a few minutes for the mosque, which is plain and quiet inside, and for the view of the lake from the edge of town in the evening.