Blogs from Brasov, Transilvania, Romania, Europe - page 11

Greetings! From Istanbul we caught a night train north to Bulgaria. We nursed a bottle of Raki (Turkish Ouzo) with our cabin mates before nodding off, only to be woken by border guards at 3 a.m. and told we needed to walk to the far end of the station to have our passports stamped. As we exited, the conductor pulled Jub aside, stuffed 15 Euros in his pocket, and asked for three cartons of cigarettes from the duty free store. So after getting his stamp, Jub headed to the store, but realized the conductor hadn't specified a brand. No big deal; ten minutes back to the train, ten minutes back to duty free, only to find they'd just sold out of the conductor's brand. Jub then repeated the process--trying to ignore that it was now around ... read more

Tuesday, May 19th. We took the 6:13am P-train from Gara de Noor in Bucharest to Brasov. We were so excited to get our first peek at the mountains. The train ride was very nice and quiet. We arrived at the chaotic train station and navigated our way by bus to the hostel. Unfortunately, they did not get our reservations and the cheapest dorm room was booked. We had to stay in a private room which was nice but out of our budget. We did what we usually do when we first arrive in a town, ask lots of questions about the town from anyone who will help us and find the cheapest grocery store. We were pleased to find the Kismet Dao Hostel had super friendly staff and that Brasov had a Carrefour grocery store. We ... read more

Brasov is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Still seemingly relatively unscathed by tourists the people were very friendly and welcoming. Musts include trying the mulled wine which is superb and the local spirit shot which isn't. ... read more

Bran Castle was totally dıfferent to how I expected ıt to be but stıll very, very cool. I was ın a buoyant mood all day because I'd thought we were just camping near it, not actually goıng there. The castle was not what İ expected (fairly obvıously ın retrospect, sınce what I expected was for ıt to be very dark and creepy) but I loved every mınute of ıt. A quıck hıstory lesson; Vlad Tepes (the Impaler) was the real life inspiration for Dracula. He was famed for his cruelty (partıcularly ımpalıng people on wooden spıkes as a form of torture/executıon. Thıs probably stems from the fact that hıs father was tortured ın front of hım and hıs brother by the Turks, who educated both of them. The brother was loyal to the Turks, while Vlad ... read more

Brasov Friday 15th February 2008 This would be our last full day in Transylvania, and our last full day of the trip. Due to unforeseen financial problems we’d been forced to terminate the trip early and had booked a flight back to Liverpool out of Bucharest. We spent the first portion of the day returning and booking into the hotel we’d visited the day before. Yes it was expensive but we wanted to go out on a high! The hotel was centrally located, immaculate and I managed to get a room of my own! Our waistcoat-wearing, excitable host was more than a little eccentric; his energy and enthusiasm was greatly appreciated after the previous night’s questionable experience in The Rolling Stone hostel. Snow was beginning to fall, and as this was the first time we’d seen ... read more