Arriving in Transilvania

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We hadn't gone to sleep until almost 2 am last night, so we were kind of tired when we had to wake up at 9.30 to pack and check out from the hostel in time. After that we walked to the railway station and decided there that we would take the train to Brasov. We have plans to visit three Transilvanian cities, of which Brasov is the biggest one. Train schedule was the deciding factor regarding which city to visit first. To Sibiu and Sighisoara schedules were such that we would have arrived only in the evening, and we didn't want that because we didn't have accomodation booked.

Train journey to Brasov lasted about 3 hours. Scenery changed from flat fields to more mountanious landscape the closer to Transilvania we got. At the Brasov railway station we found a guy who arranged for us accomodation at Lucie's (or however her name is spellt) apartment. Lucie is a very talkative and cheerful lady, and she speaks to us quite a lot even if we don't really have a common language. She rents out a room in her apartment for travellers, and that's where we are now staying for two nights.

We spent the day and evening walking around in Brasov. Again we were somehow surprised by the city. I, and I guess Leo too, had an image that it would be much less developed around here - but in fact we found the cutest old town ever, which actually is quite large in area, surrounded by green mountains. It's something like Tallinn old town, or on the otherhand maybe like something in Austria due to the surrounding mountains. These Transilvanian towns have German history and you can really see that in the architecture: it's easy to imagine that instead of Romania, you are in Germany or Austria. Ok, it is somewhat more run-down and the fact that it is in Romania makes it feel a bit more exotic :) We managed to check out the old town and most important sights during the afternoon/evening, and ended the day by dinner at a restaurant which was recommended to us by the guy at the railway station. Again, extremely good value for money: we both had a starter, main course and shared a bottle of wine, and paid about 15 euros each.

General image of the town after today is that it is more rich here than it was in Bucharest, and it is much more "European" than we expected. I was expecting something more exotic, or like said before, less developed. Basically I thought I might see people riding in horse carriages or things like that. Once again, found my images about Romania wrong.

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