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Published: November 14th 2006
Brasov, Romania
It was cloudy and wet, but made for a spooky ambiance hanging out behind the Brasov sign.Hello Everyone!
Heading into unknown territory and we weren’t exactly sure what to expect. When we told some of our German friends that we were going to Romania their first response was, Why? Well, my reason was to hunt and kill Count Dracula, but I don’t think they would have believed it if I’d told them. The other reason was to utilize our rail-pass because it was only recently that Romania and Hungary were included on the Eurail Ticket. We had a few bumps in the road, one major one, but in the end we survived our adventures into the unknown.
We knew we had fare length of train riding ahead of us so we stopped at a book store in Berlin before leaving and I picked up a copy of Bram Stroker’s Dracula to get me in the vampire killing mood. We were all set, bags packed, and made it to the train station with no problems. After a lot of confusion we reserved our tickets for the night trains to Romania and Hungary (the person we were dealing with was having trouble understanding what trains we wanted because not too many people venture into Romania), but before
we knew it we were on our way.
To get to Romania we had to pass through Vienna, Austria. I had been there before, but Heather hadn’t, so we had planned to stop there for our first night and do a quick little tour before leaving for Romania the next day on a night train. We found our seats in the first class and after about 30 minutes I picked up the train schedule that listed all the stops we were going to make, and realized that we were going to run into a little trouble. This was probably our 75th train ride that summer and I couldn’t believe I had never considered the possible problem. Germany and Austria were both valid countries for our rail-pass and we thought we were just heading south through Germany then over to Austria, but we learned that the train was heading east and was also going to go through the Czech Republic…where our rail-pass was not valid.
We thought maybe it would be ok because we were just passing straight through and our final destination was going to be Austria, but at the border the train crew changed over to a
Czech crew and before we knew it we were asked for our tickets. We showed the rail pass and she let us know that it wasn’t valid and we would have to pay a lot of money for our seats since they were first class. After some arguing we got her to let us move to second class and a border to border ticket was €60 for the two of us. Well, when I went to pay I realized we only had €30 and she said that would only get us to Prague and there we would have to buy another ticket for a later train. This would have totally screwed up the rest of our schedule and we were getting quite frustrated when a kind gentleman sitting close by pulled €30 out of his pocket and covered for us. We had a 10 minute stop in Prague so I ran off the train to an ATM and we were able to pay the nice gentleman back and we were still on our way to Vienna…and a little frustrated.
We arrived in Vienna and it was dark and rainy. We jumped a street tram to our hotel and were
Who ever said that size doesn't matter?
There were offers for XXL, but we held out for the jumbo jet of Schnitzels! happy with our lodging choice. We found these old student dorms for a great price and we had our own room with two beds and two desks that at one time were used for studying. It was definitely a flash back to our university days! After the rain let up a bit we left for a night time stroll around Vienna. We were pleasantly surprised with all the buildings that were lit up at night and enjoyed our stroll. We actually saw so much the first night, the second day we were able to finish our walking tour of Vienna by the early morning in enough time to find ourselves a delicious Vienna Wiener-Schnitzel!
If you remember back to our blog about Salzburg we talked about the first-class lounges they have at the Austrian train stations, well we remembered and made a point to have some extra time at the train station to enjoy before our night train to Romania. When we first experienced the first-class lounge it was early in the morning so we didn’t know what to expect in the evening hours, but were happy with what we found. They not only offered a variety of drinks
From Vienna to Brasov
We finally get to lay down on an overnight train! and snacks, but they included complimentary beer and wine! We enjoyed a couple drinks and jumped on our train headed to Brasov, Romania where we were going to base ourselves to visit the Castle of Count Dracula.
The train was a good ride—it was actually the first overnight train we took where we actually had a bunk to sleep in, all previous were just chairs. Unfortunately, our sleep was interrupted quite a bit due to the border patrol. The train went from Austria to Hungary then to Romania and at each border you were visited by each country that you were leaving and entering—so in the end we were woken up about four times and found our passports to be getting filled up with many stamps! We were a bit nervous about Romania, we had been told to watch out for the many thieves at the train station, but we were prepared and had our money belts tight and secure. It was a bit uncomfortable at the train station, many eyes staring at us, but the hostel we booked had a guy at the train station that led us through the back of the station to a private taxi
and got us out of harm’s way.
We were only staying in Brasov for one night before heading to Hungary, but we had two full days ahead of us because we booked a night train for the journey. Our original plan was to check out Brasov the first day then try and make our way to Dracula’s Castle the second day on our own. Once at the hostel we learned that they had their own tour to Dracula’s castle for a little more money, but it also included stops at two other local sights. We decided that would be the best way to view the area and signed up. After getting settled in we grabbed our umbrellas (skies were a bit dark) and hit the town for a little tour.
Our first stop was at Brasov’s famous Black Church that many years ago caught on fire and left the exterior looking black. We didn’t think it was all that black, but still an interesting story (Now, Edinburgh…Edinburgh had some black churches). We thought it would be free to enter like most of Europe’s churches, but they were asking some ridiculous price so we skipped entering and admired from
the outside. Then the skies opened up and we mean really opened up. We had seen rain, but this was more like a waterfall from the skies. It rained so hard that an umbrella was rendered futile because the rain would hit the ground with such force that it would splash up and get you soaked. We found shelter at a restaurant, grabbed a bite to eat and attempted to dry off. The rain eventually let up and we decided the last stop for the day would be to take the funicular to the top of the mountains surrounding the town. Once up top, the clouds seemed to clear and we had some amazing views. They recently added the city name on top of the peak (similar to the Hollywood sign in LA) and that’s where our lookout was.
Before long we saw some large clouds rolling our way and before we knew it we were swallowed up by some thick fog…very eerie in the land of vampires! At this point I was about finished with my book, but was saving the last 20 pages for the drive to the castle the next day. Back at the hostel, craving
a little comfort food, we ordered up a pizza for dinner (spinach and garlic that was to die for…garlic also good to keep vampires away) then hung up our shoes and clothes in an attempt to get them dry before calling it a night.
We awoke to find our shoes still wet as could be, but had no other ones with us so we strapped them on and were off for our day of touring. Our first stop was in the town of Sinaia to view the amazing Peles castle where the first king of Romania lived, then to Dracula’s hang out, with our last stop in an old fortress that was used to protect Brasov. We didn’t know what to expect at the first stop, but we were surprised with what we saw. The first king of Romania came from Germany and was a man about possessions. We had a tour guide that explained many things about the elaborate interior of the castle which was loaded with ornate wood-inlay works of art, gigantic Venetian mirrors, and some wooden furniture from India that took a single family three generations to carve. We were very happy we decided to do
A shot from the courtyard inside Dracula's Castle
At this point Ben had removed his garlic necklace. the tour because otherwise we would’ve passed the place by.
Our next stop was going to be Dracula’s Castle and I was able to finish my book about one minute before arriving. Although the book is fiction, it did have something very much in common with the castle…they both weren’t that impressive. The castle was made famous by Vlad Tepes who was only a guest there, but he did stop the Turks from invading the area by capturing 20,000 Turks, cutting off their heads, and impaling them on posts. When the Turks came over the ridge to invade they were greeted by the many heads of their kinsmen and decided maybe it wasn’t a good idea to mess with that Vlad guy.
We didn’t have a guide for this tour, just a walk on your own sort of a thing, and you would expect a dark and dreary castle, but it was actually recently renovate with some new bright white paint which gave it more of a cheerful feeling. For those of you that have read the book Dracula, the castle’s nothing like the one described in the book, but it was an experience nonetheless. After the castle
we headed to our next destination which was an old fortress that used to protect Brasov in times of war and we were also able to view how the old life was in Romania. We then headed back to the hostel, grabbed our bags and were off to the train station to head to Budapest.
Once again we were booked in a train car with bunks and were able to get some sleep, albeit with the same border patrol interruptions, but had no problems at all. We had arranged to couch-surf in Budapest and our train arrived quite early, but our hosts gave us directions to their flat and said they had no problem getting up for us. Denes and his girlfriend Virag (meaning “flower” in Hungarian) were wonderful and I don’t think we could have asked for better hosts in the land of Goulash. Our first morning Virag pulled out a map and a guide book, and highlighted a route for us to see the best of Budapest—we can’t thank her enough, it was fantastic! After a quick shower we were off for the day.
Budapest runs along the Danube River and is a beautiful city. They
Dohány Street Synagogue
Also known as the Great Synagogue, it is the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world! had a great vegetable market where we were able to purchase some of their famous paprika so one day we can make our own goulash (which Heather is now a big fan of), there was a great look-out high on a hill top to give you great panoramic views of the town and everyone was very friendly. We walked close to 10 km our first day and once back at our host’s flat, Virag had made us a wonderful dinner and we all sat around talking before we were ready to crash from exhaustion.
The next day we continued some sight-seeing around town, but the highlight was grabbing a bus and heading out of town about 8 km to a big flea market where we found old WWII memorabilia and a ton of other junk! We didn’t make any purchases and headed back to town where we met up with our hosts and another couch-surfer who was in Budapest, but staying at a hotel, for a couple of drinks. We tried the local liquor called Zwack Unicum, not very good, but we visited some amazing bars. We were walking down a street with not a lot of lighting and
then we walked through these two unmarked doors and ended up in an open air bar with a guy juggling fire! We stayed out probably a bit too late because our train back to Berlin was around 5am, but we got a few hours of sleep before heading off.
We had a great time with our hosts (they are opening up a chocolate café outside of Budapest really soon!) and really enjoyed our time in Budapest. Our Europe trip was coming to a fast end. We spent four days in Berlin relaxing at Daniel’s before heading to London for our flight back to the US for my brother’s wedding. On the way, we made a quick stop in Brussels for one night visiting with our friends Ben and Cendrine before taking the Chunnel across the English Channel and then to Gatwick for our flight. We had a lot of fun and learned a million things about traveling, but we knew there were more adventures in our horizon, so look forward to our next blog where we tell you about our triumphant return to Europe for the Oktoberfest, the hostel from hell in Prague, visiting a church decorated entirely by
human bones, and much, much more!
Love Ben and Heather
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Kim & Bill
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Love it!
Sure enjoy reading about your travels. I am so envious. The pictures are awesome.