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Published: October 17th 2011
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Rasov
me and Sean From Moldova me and Sean went to Transilvanyia. Although Draculas castle in Bran was actually quite disapointing, Transilvania is a very beautiful Romanian mountianous region with some great quaint medievil looking towns and a peacefull atmosphere.
i was quite shocked entering Sigosohara and finding the place crawling with nazis and the German Wehrmacht riding about in troop trucks and sidecars. it took along time trying to convince our German frineds there that we had just inadvertantly walked into a multimilion-pound film set and it wasnt real (they were quite tramatized).
From the window of the train to Sibiu we saw the ghostly skeleton of a partly destroyed power plant - blackened shells of buildings surrounding an imposing cooling tower which looked like it could topple over at any miniute. being the curious types, we got off the train (which seemed to be in the middle of knowhere), hid our backpacks in the bushes and went exploring. walking over the rubble we discovered whole lakes filled with strong smelling oil and chemicals, and saw what looked like burnt out clothes and an old gas mask lying about. the place looked like it had been abandoned for over 30 years and
had no signs of visitors. we manged to climb over alot of rubble and actually go inside the vast concrete cooling tower, it was simply incredable! i later found out the place was called Copsa Mica and was one of the most polluted towns in Europe - with the life expectancy 9 year lower than the rest of Romania.
After the refreshing town of Sibiu, me and Sean split ways and i got a night train to Constanta on the Black sea coast. i was quite scared by all the stray dogs there, who seemed to all conspire against me and wanted my blood. i was actually quite impressed when i was pickpockated by a couple of gypsies - they somehow managed to get my wallet, take 80% of the money and return it without me even noticing.
From Constanta i managed to hitchhike in 9 cars a few hundred miles to Burges on the Bulgarian coast. it was quite strange how the last truck driver took me to a desrerted car park (in the middle of the night), and started brandishing a pistol (he said it was incase he had trouble with the gypsies). the slightly scary
man then kindly got in a car and took me to a hostel.
i then hitchhiked another 7 or so cars the last 300miles into Istanbul. the city is simply gargantuon, and i really loved it. although i was there well over a week i didnt actually see many of the tourist sights (such as the biggest and second biggest palaces in the world, gigantic mosques and so on). i spent most of my time wondering about the huge labarenths of the Bazzars and watching the world go by and talking to locals whilst sipping tea at the pavement 'cafes'. i also stumbled upon a big international film festival, and managed to watch 9 films in 3 days.
In the end i somehow managed to hitchhike (and get a couple of trains when i cheated) over 3000miles covering 8 countries in 7 weeks. now i am back home i just cant wait untill my next adventure next summer!
Note: there are a few more pages to my blog if you want to see the rest of the photos
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Frans
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Hey James!
Sometimes you drink too much wine and start googling for people you once knew......like now.. I see that you had some more travels after Thailand....Great! These times will stay with you forever... All the best Frans, from the Dutch couple in Thailand, way back.......