I am in wind-down mode, since my trip is almost over. Getting up and motivated is becoming more of an effort. The sky was grey and overcast again. After a late breakfast, I headed out. I made my way to the Old Town and to the Bratislava City Museum, which is housed in the former Town Hall. The Old Town Hall building dates back to the 14th century and the tower was built around 1370. The Old Town Hall was originally three different buildings that were people's houses; Jacobus' house with a tower, Pawer's house, Unger's house and the Apponyi Palace. The museum is also the oldest in Bratislava and was founded in 1868. The entrance is through the courtyard and it was 5 euros to visit the museum. After ditching my coat, I made my ... read more

The free walking tour didn't start until 11 am, which was nice and late. This meant that I could have a relatively lazy morning. I made my way to the Old Town for the start of the tour, but I managed to get lost, prominent street names are not Bratislava's forte, China has definitely spoilt me in this respect. I thought I was going to miss the tour as I wandered the streets trying to right myself and find the meeting place. I made it there, only about five minutes late, and saw quite a group of people. This part of Europe is definitely busier. My first impressions of the Old Town of Bratislava was that it was really cute and quite a lot busier than the places I had just been, which is understandable as ... read more

10th Jan: The train from Brasov dropped me off at Sighisoara around 11 am. The journey had been uneventful. The station was small and dead. I headed straight to the ticket office to buy my ticket for the overnight train to Vienna for the following day. I had tried to buy the ticket online, but they had to post the actual ticket to you. I don't know why they can't just use e-tickets like for the domestic trains. Thank god there was no queue as the ticket proved to be a bit of a ballache to buy. The woman couldn't find a ticket for sale on the system, but seemed to think there should be tickets available and she ended up having to phone someone, but after about 10-15 minutes it was all sorted and I ... read more

The place I was staying didn't have a kitchen, which meant I needed to find somewhere to have breakfast. In a big tourist town like Brasov, I thought that would be easy. I was proven very wrong. I had found a place online that looked quite good, but I had forgotten the name by the time I got in the right vicinity of the restaurant/cafe. There were quite a few places that looked shut, another cafe that was completely dead, normally that wouldn't bother me, but for some reason it did here. So, I ended up at Starbucks on the main square. I had a coffee and some kind of cheese, pesto, and I think tomato focaccia/ciabatta thing. It was quite nice. I enjoyed relaxing in the cafe as it wasn't too busy. Now, I was ... read more

5th Jan: The train journey to Sibiu took about about five hours. I had gone for first class since my credit card didn't seem to like it when I tried to book second class. The carriage was big and comfy, I would need to take a second class journey to see if it was worth the extra money (I did later in my trip, and second class was more than adequate). I had bought some snacks from the bakery to eat and I scoffed them pretty quite as they were delicious. The pretzel/bagel type thing, Covrigi, was particularly delicious and reminded me of those I'd had in Poland. I watched the scenery go by as the train made its way to its destination. Soon after leaving Bucharest, we entered places covered with snow. We stopped at ... read more