Beautiful Brasov, with some hot castles on the side...

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the train ride to Brasov was uneventful, though we did talk to that Austin woman for half of the time. Being from Texas, her speech was painfully slow and sometimes we just wanted to smack her and tell her to get to the point.

arriving at the train station, we were approached by this woman Maria who apparently worked at Rolling Stone hostel, a place we had read bad reviews about. she kept trying to tell us our hostel was booked and to take a flyer but we just said 'bye' and kept walking. about ten minutes later while waiting for the bus to the old town plaza she came up to us once again, telling us that people had come to her from our hostel, kismet dao, and that they had a reservation but were turned down, so we should go to her hostel. i wasn't buying this shit, nor was i in the mood, so i just started speaking in spanish to her, hoping she'd get the picture. WELL, the dumb whore starting speaking back to me in Spanish, saying how I thought i was SO clever whipping out another language. she said she knew I wasn't a native speaker because of my blonde hair, but I didn't even bother getting into it about that, considering in Galicia and other regions there are plenty of blonde-haired Spaniards. Ignorant. She went on and on, saying how she's worked in the industry for 20 years, and that she's the "real Maria" and to remember that. I had had enough, so I plunged a Bulgarian dagger into her cold Transylvanian heart...aka I started speaking to her in Bulgarian. She was like "What is that, Russian?' Um no, stupid. Nice try, though. She said not to show up at her hostel and that she didn't want someone so "fussy" like myself there. Whatever, I had clearly won the battle...

we took the bus, but i stupidly had us get off at the wrong plaza in old town, so we ended up having to walk a bit to our smaller plaza, piata unirii. having our packs on it wasn't the most pleasant walk. our hostel was nice enough, and the girl at the desk said everyone there knows about that Maria character, and that she has a bad reputation. Good. She gave us our free drink tickets (we get a free beer, soda, or whatever each day) and showed us to our 6-bed. I also got to see the scary men's shower room/bathroom. It's literally a tub, "shower", and a toilet. all three have a curtain around them, except that the curtain doesn't go around all the way, so basically i would be looking forward to putting on a free show everytime i showered and used the bathroom.

we were hungry, so we headed to the piata for some food at casa romaneasca, this traditional restaurant, except there was like a private function going on, so we had to walk back down to the center of old town. we first explored a bit, and tons of memories from my time here with metropolis came back. there was the black church, the cable car up to the mountains, etc. good times back then...we stopped at an atm and then went to this restaurant 'ambassador'. it was through a little passageway and was actually really nice. i started out with ciorba de legume (a sour vegetable soup) and then had muschi de porc la gratar (grilled pork) and a beet salad with horseradish.

we went back down the cool street (which has a kenvelo...ugh) and stopped at a gift stop where kasia bought these stupid but addicting magnetic things that make a "rattlesnake" sound when you throw them up in the air. fun. we got some kawa mrozona (it had been TOO long) at a Nescafe and then continued to walk around. i got an ice cream bar and then we did some internet where i was once again disappointed at the fact that i couldn't upload pictures. back at the hostel we chilled over some beers and watched parts of 'the punisher' and 'the island'. we also met some of our roommates, ed and sarah from the uk. she's about to start being a doctor and he's starting med school after getting a degree in russian and german. i can respect that. our hostel was also invaded by like 20 french people, which was kind of annoying. oh well. i awkwardly climbed into my bunk bed with the 1 inch thick pillow and went to sleep.

waking up the next morning it was freezing, but i feel like the cold misty atmosphere really just added to the feeling of being in Carpathians. after the most awkward shower of my life where i had to battle not flooding the entire room as well as preventing everyone in the hostel from seeing me naked. someone came in and farted on the toilet, but that was about it. haha. i sat on our awesome balcony with a view of the mountains and journaled while kasia showered. then it was time for some delicious breakfast of bread and jam. we made friends with a girl from sweden, and we gave her some tips for budapest.

soon it was time to head out. still hungry we bought 2 lei worth of these chocolate filled pastry things. pretty decent. seeing that the cable car up the 960 meter top of the mountain was running (we thought it was closed on monday), we decided to give it a go. we waited a little bit and then bought our tickets. the ride up was quick, and we trekked along this path to the lookout point for spectacular views of the city. it's a crazy juxtoposition of the beautiful old town with this ugly communist-style new part of the city with block-style apartments and whatnot.

feeling ambitious, we decided to walk down the almost 1000 meter mountain. HAH. we picked the serpentine path which was quite...interesting. we probably almost died a dozen times. considering it was raining, we were slipping and sliding on rocks and leaves and mud and pretty much fearing for our lives. nonetheless it was beautiful with the lush greenery and the light peeking through. it took us almost an hour to get down. the best part was that once we got to the bottom kasia fell on her ass on the cement stairs after managing to climb down the friggin mountain.

after another failed attempt at finding an internet cafe with something more recent than windows 98, we went to find a place to eat. i have no idea what the place was called, but it was good. i got some kind of turkish-spiced chicken (because i want bird flu) with homemade chunks of bread and a yogurt sauce. i basically shoveled it down my throat, but i tasted it enough to be able to say it was delicious. after lunch we did some shopping, and i bought an instructional romanian book as well as a book on transylvanian castles. god knows i needed something to weigh down my pack more. we also found a postcard of sighisoara that was really nice, though the brasov ones were all nasty looking.

after that we hit up the black church for basically 30 seconds because it was closing. it's called the black chuch because of the charred look it got after a fire a few centuries ago. next we went in search of the citadel from i believe the 16th century. we walked all over the place trying to find the right way up, and we passed that green asylum i remember from when i was here last. kasia said she heard wailing from inside. fun! we randomly found some american guy who pointed us in the right direction aka where i wanted to go prior but where kasia said not to. on the way up i saw a wolf go into the brush, which was cool but a tad scary. the citadel was kind of lame and pretty much abandoned. at one point i suppose it was a nice tourist place since it had like a winery, some shops, a "disco-club" and other stuff up there inside.

after that little adventure we wanted some coffee or something warm so we went in search of a cafe. the outdoor one we chose wasn't open for another half an hour so we had to walk around a bit beforehand. when it was ready we ended up going inside anyway and yea it was mad overpriced. i got like a tiny glass of an ice cream/kahlua/havana/espresso combo. not worth it at all. it had started raining and we were hungry, surprise, so we went next door for a little bit of food. it ended up being the big, long, underground-ish restaurant i ate at years ago with metropolish where there were all those traditional singers and dancers. well this time it was dead and we basically hated it. they didn't even have any soup on the menu, so we both ended up with salads plus some polenta because kasia was a weirdo and really wanted some. then i thought i'd frustate myself with another attempt at uploading pictures...

the next morning was our big castle tour organized through the hostel. first on the agenda was Râşnov, an i believe 14th century fortress atop a small mountain used in defending the region against ottoman and tartar advances. it was pretty awesome, despite being half in ruins. it appeared as though they are trying to repair it, so it would be cool to come back in a couple years. the views were, as typical in transylvania, incredible - lush forests upon mountains dotted with small villages and all that good stuff. we had about an hour to explore there. oh, our group was 10 people - 3 australian girls, 2 canadians, a Swedish girl, and then two friends from Italy and France. They met during a semester in Greece, and since the best common language they had between them was Spanish, they spoke Spanish together. Naturally I butted in from time to time.

The second stop was very close, that being Bran castle. I had been there last time I was in Romania, but a refresher is always good. There was the big 'Bazaar Dracula' in front of it, despite the common knowledge that Tepes didn't live there. The castle itself was...underwhelming. Queen Maria of Romania, who decorated most of it, could use a few tips from Martha Stewart. We had to put on these funny slippers and went in and out in like 20 minutes. Back outside we got a pastry thing with sweet cheese. I managed to burn the roof of my mouth off because god knows I could't wait to eat it. Good times...

We continued on our journey and headed up through the mountains, stopping at a restaurant for lunch. I got tochituri moldoveanasca cu mamaliguta, aka the same pork/sausage combo with polenta. it was still delicious. then the last place on our excursion was Peles Castle, finished at the very beginning of the 20th Century by King Carol I, the first king of unified Romania. The palace was probably the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen. Though much smaller, I would say it kicked the asses of places like Versailles. Every room was ridiculously ornate and themed, from practically a Turkish-stype hookah lounge to an armory with weapons from Iran to England. Of course there were no photos allowed, but god knows that doesn't matter since all of these computers are pieces of shit and won't allow me to upload them.

after peles, which was in sinaia, the driver dropped us off at the train station there, since we were practically halfway to Bucharest. We bought tickets for the Inter-City train (faster and nicer), though we managed to get ourselves in different train cars. Soon our adventure in Bucharest would begin...

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Photos

Piata Unirii
the black church in the old town square

Rasnov
gorgeous castle ruıns

Peles + kasıa
gorgeous + not so gorgeous

Comments

[Jack]

Hey Jeff! Thanks so much for your postcard! I'm glad that everything is going well for you and that you're having a fun time. By the way, how was the museum of communism? Does it sound cooler than it really is? I leave for China in less than 3 weeks - I can't believe it! This summer has gone by way too fast. I just got my visa in the mail last week, so now all I have left to do is learn Mandarin. Hopefully I'll remember some of what I studied over the past year. I'll definitely update you about my travels in the Far East - maybe I should do a travelblog too? -Jack

[Meyer]

lmao
Jeff, I agree with your dad. This is hysterically funny.