Hi All, We have had a great time since I last updated. We left Lake Balaton we went to Budapest (Would have stayed longer but the English bloke we met had cabin fever and wouldnt piss off). Budapest was lovely and easy to get around......in bare feet!. Just got into town and in the old section i.e miles from the shops and my flipflops (thongs to any aussies) broke. Luckily Scott was wearing my shoes - (make of that what you will!)--(Well they are hiking sandals actually)) so he gave me those and he walked in bare feet across the hot [View Full Entry]

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Sighisoara and Viscri Day 5-6 (June 11-12) Train travel to Sighisoara which is a fortified town in Transylvania. Claim to fame being Dracula’s birthplace (but Vlad didn’t live here long). There was an a museum with old artefacts, especially Saxon which this area still holds a sizable population of. The museum was in a tower, and there was a great view over the area from the top, as well as being able to look at the clock mechanisms. We were glad to be sheltering here from the storm which had come over quickly. As it abated we headed up the covered [View Full Entry]

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Saturday May 23rd..Today we travelled Northwest to Sighisoara by a dirty old rambling train with lots of character. Our new friend Wieteke from the Netherlands took the train with us because she had also planned to stay a night in Sighisoara. When stepping off the train, it had a distinct small town feel about it. Sighisoara was high and low. The main city was low in the valley in between two mountains (well, to the locals they might be large hills but they were mountains to me) and then there was another city, a fortress city high in the mountains on [View Full Entry]

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It's finally that time of the year... = Yeah, yeah, I know not everybody gets into the Christmas & New Year spirit! So? What do I know? 1st of December it's always a great day for 2 reasons: - begining of winter holidays (for those who love snow, the sledges, traffic jams and so on) - and due to the fact that on 1st December we celebrate Romania's National Day (actually this year we are celebrating 90 years since the great union in Alba Iulia) ... as you guessed that means free day/no work and fortunately this year 1st of December [View Full Entry]

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Wow time is really flying. Vienna was wonderful, what a beautiful city. I ended up spending two nights there, one just wasn't enough, there were so many sights to see and galleries to wander, saw some van gogh paintings and climt paintings and so many more. On the second night I thought it being the city of music and arts, that i would attend one of the jewish music festival gigs and get some local culture. So much for the local culture, the first act was a guy from california, and the second was a group from montreal. Argh. It was [View Full Entry]

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Okay so the last time we talked we were about to head to Romania on an overnight train. We boarded the train in Belgrade, only to be told by the conductor that there was an error with our ticket we had purchased the day before. We went to the desk and sorted it out. It turns out the error was that the date had been written as 1.11.08 instead of 11.1.08. Seriously. Big f**king deal. With that fixed we boarded the train and our compartment was next to two Aussie girls we had befriended back at our hostel. It is important [View Full Entry]

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Sighisoara Tuesday 12th February 2008 Ecstatic we were as the night train pulled into Budapest Keleti station, ready and willing to take us to Romania. The 3-birth sleeper carriage was fantastic; we were like children, excitably claiming our bunks. Unbelievably we managed to sleep through the entire journey, bar the odd interruption from passport control as we crossed the border. Transylvania greeted us at 8am with mist, smoky chimneys, and the distant spires of Sighisoara. Stepping from the train the cool and fresh air gave us a tremendous welcome. We made our way from th [View Full Entry]

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Sighisoara Wednesday 13th February 2008 One week into our adventure and we’d already travelled through Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary and Romania. Our second day in Sighisoara was rather quiet... well some of it. We spent the morning exploring the town, seeking out medieval watchtowers and churches. Rob and I posed for a photograph outside Vlad’s house and visited an underground internet café, whilst John caught up on some much needed sleep. For tea, we ate in the Casa Vlad Dracul Restaurant, conveniently located within Vlad the Impaler’s house. I had [View Full Entry]

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27/08/08 - A day in the life, and Ceausescu’s Mad Road Today we set out to drive along one of the highest roads in Europe - the Transfagarasan which borders on southern Transalvania. “The road was constructed between 1970 and 1974, as a north-south crossing at the historical border between Transylvania and Wallachia. It came as a response to the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union. Ceausescu wanted to insure quick military access across the mountains in the event the Soviets attempted a similar move into Romania. Consequently, the road was built ma [View Full Entry]

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26-08-08 Vlad’s House has chocolate cake We are in Sighisoara at present, we travelled across the north of Romania yesterday to arrive here late last night. It was a 12 hr day on the bike (for only 400 miles!), we saw some incredible winding roads, little villages, lots more horse power on the roads and lots of traffic. Back on to the subject of driving, Romania has another style all together, rules are guidelines, and guidelines only suggestions. They don’t see many motorcycles on the road here - mainly scooters and bicycles, from what I can make out a motorcycle [View Full Entry]

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