Cheese... or fromage?

Budapest - Brasov

So, to finish up Budapest first:
After a Sunday night of beers and Palinka at the hostel, we stumbled out into the bright daylight of Budapest for a final exploration before taking the train away. Lunch was definitely order of the day, oversized portions of Schnitzel and Chicken Kiev was deeeelicious. We then attempted to visit the Terror House (Museum) in order to take advantage of its potential air conditioning, but, closed on Mondays. So we walked for ever and ever up to Hero's Square. Thinking we were clever we decided to take an alternative route back to the hostel - a foolish decision because we mostly walked next to a motorway... in the searing sunshine.

Indeed, that was Budapest. Armed with a bottle of Jagermeister to ease the night train - we headed to the station, destination: Brasov. First impressions of the night train were rather lovely - spacious and reasonably comfy - rather modern in fact. Alas, people arrived and sat in the seats next to us, restricting our lounging abilities and consequently sleep. We shared our Jager with some Spanish guys and they in return provided us with some bread, ham and cheese... and an insanely oversized watermelon. We also had some crisps to contribute - mysteriously one packet was cheese flavour, and the other... well, fromage. Mysterious indeed.

Eventually a bit of sleep was caught, about two hours in all. So we turned up shattered in Brasov, revived ourselves with coffee and promptly caught the wrong bus. After walking around confused and asking a random man on a bench to point out his position on a map, we gave up and caught a taxi, which cost us about 2 pound - prompting a series of taxi abuse, its just too cheap not to take.

Having napped for an hour and a half, we then set off to Bran castle - known as the home of the fictional character Dracula. It rather perplexed us the fact that we were looking at where a FICTIONAL person lived, so therefore not lived... Anyway, we walked around the castle. Until it started raining... A LOT. Then the lightening... and the thunder commenced... Rather fearing that Dracula wasn't fictional, we sheltered in the castle awaiting the moment to escape. Until the castle got struck by lightening, and indirectly myself as I got a shock through the wall... This set off the fire alarms and we all had to be evacuated to become moving lightening targets as we tried to run to the bus stop (rather difficult on a wet downhill cobbled slope). Eventually we got back to Brasov and proceeded to get again rather drunk over dinner, mostly due to the sampling of the next local liquor - a plum brandy of 50% alcohol. Bad.

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