Mountains, Castles, Fangs, and Heavy Metal

After our underwhelming visit to the capital we headed to the countryside to get some fresh air, what better place than Transylvania, home to the Carpathian Mountains and Dracula himself. We first stopped in Sinaia, on the border of Transylvania and Wallachia.  It is a cute village at the base of Bucegi Mountains, and is most popular in the winter as a ski resort.  In the summer, it offers a beautiful escape from the heat and congestion of Bucharest, as well as plenty of hiking through the mountains.  Here we visited the Sinaia Monastery, home to a lovely Orthodox Church, and still residence to several monks. We then continued on to Peles Castle (it is debated whether it's truly a castle or a palace) which was the summer residence of the royal family before they were deposed. It was magnificently decorated, each room having it's own theme, King Carol I personally oversaw every detail of it's design. It boasted being the first European castle to have central heating, electricity, and vacuuming!

From Sinaia we moved on to Brasov an hour away.  Here we stayed in the historic city center. There is a large pedestrian walkway lined with cafes in the shadow of Mt. Tampa and the unmistakable "Hollywood" style Brasov sign that lights up at night. Other interesting sites are the Black Church, so named for its appearance after a fire, and remnants of the old city walls. Our pension was a few blocks from the old city wall in the back of someone's house, unmarked from the main street.  The proprietor didn't speak any English, yet managed to give us good directions to catch a bus to visit Bran castle and nearby Rasnov.

Bran castle is a picturesque castle with fairy tale turrets that was built in the 1300s.  It was used up until the mid-1900s as a royal residence and their are pictures throughout the castle showing how it looked during the period Queen Mary lived there.  It is very compact, on an outcrop above the town of Bran, and is filled with odd shaped rooms, secret doors, and junctions to get from one to the next.  It seems a very livable place and we could picture someone still living there today.  We also had the pleasure of trying a delicious pastry/bread (that we can't remember the name of). It was made by rolling out some dough very thinly, then cutting it in a spiral to make one long strip about 2 inches wide.  The strip was then wrapped around a conical barrel of wood (like a large rolling pin) until all the wood was covered in a spiral of dough. It was coated with butter, then placed over a charcoal fire and cooked until crispy.  Finally it was dipped into whatever topping you want (sesame seeds, nuts, etc.). We had a rum butter flavored one, yummy! On our return from Bran, we stopped in Rasnov which boasted a 13th century fortress overlooking the town.  Parts of it were restored, displaying a large collection of antique weapons, alongside cheesy wooden cut outs of Dracula for a photo op.  Of course we couldn't resist. We had the pleasure of catching the bus back to Brasov with some noble looking peasants, carrying home their folded up scythes after a hard days work.

Our next stop was Sighisoara, the birthplace of the real Dracula (Vlad Tepes). His birth home is now a restaurant. The old town remains within a citadel on a hill. It has a really neat clock tower that use to serve as the town council and had an attached torture chamber (now a museum). There is also an announcer (town crier) dressed in traditional costume that walks around the city with a flag bearer and a drummer and welcomes visitors to Sighioara, much like in medieval times. All the streets in town were cobblestone, and in the middle of being torn up, but that only added to the feeling that we were in a distant and remote small, ancient town. At the end of the main street there's a long covered stair case that leads up to Biserca din Deal (Church on the Hill), with an overgrown cemetery behind it. We caught an organ recital there one evening, which was great. The cemetery had some really old gravestones, but many were unreadable. There were numerous German and Hungarian names, and one section dedicated to 20+ soldiers who fell in WWI. Unfortunately someone had scratched swastikas on the back of every grave.

After a pleasant time in Sighisoara, we hopped a train to Sibiu, the European Cultural Capital of 2007. With this title comes a host of events scheduled throughout the year.  We did not consult this schedule before our visit, and found that it coincided with a 3 day heavy metal concert in the city.  As a result, every hotel in town was booked up, even the most expensive rooms. With our options limited, we decided to hang around town all night watching the concert and then in bars or cafes, then catch the 6am train to Bucharest in the morning. Apparently we weren't the only ones with this plan, and literally had to make room for our bags on the floor of the luggage check at the train station. We whiled away the hours listening to a heavy metal band from Holland that had a similar sound to Evanescence (with a female singer). Then hopped from bar to bar, and finally a 24 hour internet cafe. The train ride back to Bucharest was packed with sleepy heavy metal kids returning home after the long weekend.  We didn't get much sleep.

Unfortunately we have no photos for this entry.