Palinca is deadly stuff.

This kind of thing just sickens me.
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Wow, the train ride from Sighisoara was just as beautiful as the guidebooks say.  Green rolling hills, and farms that still use a horse and buggy for transportation.  I had taken a local train, which means that it stops wherever somebody tells the conductor to stop, often in the middle of nowhere it seems.  Still it was a very peaceful ride.

Brasov is an old town too but its on the verge of becoming a city.  While I was there I attended a pipe organ concert in the Black Church and went for a nice little jaunt up the nearby hill to get a view of the city.

shocked at the sheer lack of respect that other people have for their country's natural beauty.

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The concert was sadly a little bit of a letdown as the organ wasn't as loud as the one I had heard in Poland and the songs that were played were a little gloomy or obscure, they could have easily picked something by Bach or Beethoven for some real power and shown what the pipes can do.

The hike up the mountain was rewarding (I could've taken a cable car but I'm too cheap) but disappointment caught up with me again when upon reaching the top I was dismayed to see a massive pile of empty water bottles scattered around the garbage bin- not in the garbage bin, but around it.  To this day I'm continuously shocked at the sheer lack of respect that other people have for their country's natural beauty.  Something that we take pretty seriously back home in Canada.  While the garbage was a letdown, the views certainly weren't.  Below me spread the valley and almost the entire city of Brasov was in sight.  At the top of the hill is a very large and somewhat cheesy Hollywood style sign proclaiming the name of the town (in case we didn't catch it at the train station).  While I was gawking at the lay of the land a parasailer glided silently in front of me and worked his way up the valley.  Looked like a lot of fun but for 90 Euros I didn't feel like splurging.

Down here is the Black Church, called that because of fire damage on the outside. Inside its gleaming white though.
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Shunning the crowds at the top (I'm seeing a pattern here) I headed onto the backside of the mountain and found some more hiking trails and a another quiet spot to catch some sun and have a nap out of sight. Heading back down a different route took me on a winding path through a forest that reminded me of home and by the time I got back to the hostel I was missing home a little bit.  But Paul and Anna were there and we went out for our complimentary beverage provided by the hostel.  I was to keep traveling with these two Aussies for a few days as we were heading in the same direction: Bucharest and then on to Constantia at the coast of the Black Sea.