Today we visited Sighisoara, home of Dracula, a Romanian folk hero. NOT the Disney Dracula! The castle dates back to the middle ages, although the settlement is probably older. Dracula pushed back the Turks who continually invaded Romania. We went there via train; a forty minute ride. Today was Peter's birthday, although we celebrated last night already with Peter, Hailey, Gerrit, Jane, Ed and I while the young people were at the youth group in Lunca. Tonight we had children's ministry in Cenade again. They are meeting with about twenty-five kids in a tiny home made out of cow dung and [View Full Entry]

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Night one: We spent the first night in Belgium which was so cold the tents froze at night. I spent the night shivering and wondering where the nearest airport was to get the first flight home!! Night Two: Night two was spent at our first proper stop in Cologne. We had two nights there and had time to look at the spectacular Dom Cathedral and went for dinner at a traditional German restaurant which sold Sausage by the metre. Night 4: Night 4 was spent in Bamburg where we sampled the local smoky beer. It tasted rather like a pint [View Full Entry]

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SIGHISOARA - TRANSILVANYA Aca nacio realmente Vlad Tepes AKA - "DRACULA". Sighisoara esta como a 4 horas de Bucharest tomando el tren rapido pero para ahorrarme unos pesos tome el tren lento y dure como 6 horas para regresar luego a Bucharest hehehehe....Los trenes si son un poco caros, este cuesta aproximadamente 40 LEI = $16 una sola via y el rapido 55 LEI. El pueblo medieval de Sighisoara es super pintoresco y tiene la particularidad que todas sus casas estan pintadas con diferentes colores como lo pueden ver en las fotos. Las colonias Saxons se establecieron en este pueblo en [View Full Entry]

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Well...Sorry to leave you all hanging... We made it out of Athens! We went to the Embassy and right when we were there, our credit cards arrived - amazing! So, we hopped on the metro, transferred to the ferry, and traveled out to beautiful Ermoupolis on Syros Island. We spent the next few days exploring the island's beaches and feasting on delicious Greek seafood. Traveling back to Athens, we caught a train to Thessaloniki, Greece (where we would transfer to a night train to Istanbul). If Tirana to Athens was a nightmare bus ride, this was a train trip from Hades. [View Full Entry]

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well here we go again...lets try and get up to date.. Ian in the cockpit again. Seems like ages ago we last wrote. We left you in Turda in the north of Transylvania and our plan was to head south to the Saxon towns of Sighisoura and Brasov, see the castles and mountains of the Transylvanian Alps and then head due south to a border crossing to Bulgaria. We really would have like to have gone to the monastaries of the north and the 'rural idyll' of Maramures but this would have taken too long and unfortunately you cant do everything. [View Full Entry]

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Vlad Tepes Drakula iz dinastije Basaraba, rodjen je u Sigisoari - Transilvanija 1431. godine. Bio je vladar Vlaske oblasti u Rumuniji. Po rodjenju prorocice su predvidele da ce Vlad biti pravedan, ali surov vladar i da ce sve svoje protivnike nabijati na kolac, zbog cega je i dobio ime Cepes (Tepes), sto na Madjarskom znaci kolac. Naziv 'Drakula' je nasledio od viteske titule svoga oca. Zapravo, negov otac Vlad je pripadao viteskom redu Dragon. Kada se vratio sa viteskom titulom i zastavom u Rumuniju, neki grlati Rumun pogresno procitao Dragon i nazvao ga Drakul, sto se Vladu svidelo i to je [View Full Entry]

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ARGH....><" MEMORIES!! I need them!!! [View Full Entry]

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Hey there! So... we are now in Budapest... and need to update you all on our travels through Velicko Tarnovo (Blugaria) and into/through Transylvania (Romania). Our new plan with blogs is to write far less, and post more pics, with longer captions. It may not work out that way this time though--we have been in some small towns with minimal internet access. Velicko was great. Very pretty (although not many great pics to be honest). Quiet chillout uni town. Got lost trying to find the hostel when we first arrived which was particularly annoying cos Velicko is VERY hilly. Had [View Full Entry]

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... Life is the road and I wanna keep going Love is a river and I wanna keep flowing, Life is a road now and forever.. a wonderful journey! Veni, vidi, vici.. actually Sighisoara conqured me!... nothing I could write can describe the feeling I had while I was staying there... First thing I noticed when I arrived there was the train station...not very clean and first impression always counts for foreigners. Coming from Bucharest Im very used to crazy taxi drivers who try to overcharge the clients but I was amazed to meet really polite and honest people. It was [View Full Entry]

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Woke up around 7am and we were somewhere in Romania. The old lady in my compartment was on her way to Bucharest to visit her mother. She was German and spoke a little English, plus lots of Romanian and Italian. We managed to communicate though and she told me a few stories about Romania, and taught me a few Romanian words (boo-nah-dee-ma-naat-za = “good morning”, boo-nah-zee-wah = “good afternoon”, boo-nah-zeh-rah = “good evening”). All of a sudden the door to the compartment ripped open and instead of seeing a cop or soldier or someone wanting to mug us, there was a [View Full Entry]

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