The Pearl of Transylvania...

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well well well...what a surprise, here i am again in romania without an updated-enough system to be able to plug in my camera and upload pictures. this time we're gonna pretend i'm still in sighisoara....

the train ride to sighisoara was uneventful besides meeting a really nice romanian girl with excellent english skills. her dad works in chicago and she aspires to study medicine in chi-town, so the three of us exchanged e-mails. it would be cool to show a romanian around town...not that i'll be home anytime soon.

pretty much as we stepped off of our train we were met by this guy trying to get us to stay at this hostel. it just so happened to be the one we had reservations at so he showed us where it was, 50 meters to the right of the station. not too shabby. this scary woman somewhat reminiscent of death itself showed us to our room. for about $20 we got a room with two double beds and a private bathroom ~ talk about cheap. once getting settled we set out to explore.

my first impressions weren't the greatest. going into this little grocery store across the street ot buy a pepsi, i couldn't help but feel like everyone wanted to rob me. i hate to perpetuate stereotypes about roma and all of that but that's just how i felt. continuing down the road and more toward the center, everything was incredibly abandoned/rundown looking with stray dogs running around. as we got closer, there was a really nice looking orthodox church that gave me a ray of hope.

walking across the brownish river, we started seeing more people and then started to trek up some stairs up toward what we imagined was the citadel. as we continued to climb i started to realize why this town, the birthplace of Vlad Tepes (the man we call Dracula), is considered the pearl of Transylvania. sprawled out before us were gorgeous old stucco rooftops with incredible mountain greenery to the background. then looming over us was the 12th century clocktower, one of the best preserved in all of europe.

on the main level of the citadel we actually saw tourists and whatnot, so naturally we went into tourist mode. we checked out the awesome views and then walked through the main square taking pictures. it started to rain, but luckily we were hungry and right in front of cafe dracula, which is actually the house vlad tepes was born in, now converted into a restaurant. we sat on an open-air terrace with a big tent over it - quite nice. i started out with some ciorba cu porc (a sour soup with a nice chunk of pork in there) and then had a tomato, cabbage, and cucumber salad followed by some pane cascaval, blocks of breaded and friend cheese. pretty delish. the inside of the restaurant was really cool, too - very dark and eerie with some cool pictures and statues of vlad, himself.

by the time we were done it had gotten nice out again, so we continued our exploration. unfortunately the clock tower had already closed so all we could see was the "torture museum" which was basically a room, but it was cool and mad cheap. once that was over with we pretty much had run out of legit things to do that were open so we went back to the hostel for a bit to chill and use the internet.

after a couple of hours we were hungry so we ventured back into the center and although i wanted a kebab, i had to give into kasia's vegetarian desires and go to a pizza place. luckily it was good, having a really good farm-ish tasting cheese. after picking up ice cream at a mini-market we were pretty much set to go back and sleep.

the next morning we still had the clocktower on our agenda, and our train wasn't until 1:50, so that was totally doable. night was really cold and it continued to be cool the next day to the point of us needing hoodies. the sky was absolutely gorgeous, and i basically redid every picture i had taken the previous day. going up to the clocktower was totally worth it. it was hard to believe we were climbing a structure dating from 9 centuries ago. looking out over the town from the top pretty much solidified my desire to return here and study romanian sometime in the near future. i think being an eastern balkan specialist would be pretty awesome.

we also managed to figure out which was the monastery church so we checked that out. pretty cool inside with german rugs lining the walls from passing traders. the big altarpiece was pretty funny. jesus was posing somewhat like a ballerina on top. we also grabbed some sweet cheese-filled pastries at one point. on our way back from the citadel we encountered these little presumably roma girls begging for money. one was seriously like a year old. it was quite sad...

once that was over and done with we headed back to the hostel to grab our bags and headed to the trainstation, where we were entertained by this little demonic boy who was totally putting on a misbehavior show for us. i bought these bacon flavored crisps called krax, which were kinda gross but also good, because they looked and tasted like bacon. lol. we were joined at the station by this woman from austin whom kasia had met at the hostel the previous day.

soon it was off to brasov...

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Photos

Orthodox Cathedral
nıce lookıng cathedral

Draculas house!
the plates at the restaurant aka house vlad tepes was born ın

Clock Tower
the ınfamous clock tower

up on the tower
it totally looks like ive been superimposed