Kismet Dao Hostel Brasov

Well, the rest of my stay in Bulgaria was pretty uneventful. I discovered an amazing vegetarian restaurant just downstairs from the hostel, and over-ate there both Saturday and Sunday nights. The place seriously belonged in Manhattan - not Sofia! Saturday night I drank wine & beer with two funny lesbians from Manchester (UK) who'd been waiting a few days for their luggage to make its way from the airport to the hostel. It made me happy to be carrying my world on my back. The next morning ...

Since Meghan and I couldn't get train tickets to Brasov from Lviv we will be heading to the random Romanian city of Buzau today. We get there are like 5pm, but we are gonna try and just catch another train right away to Brasov in Transylvania!!! ~~~~~ Oddly enough, we were allowed to sleep through the night, though I did have a very strange dream about being woken up to go through customs and then falling back asleep before getting my passport back. It was so real that when I woke up this mor...

Well, i managed to get out of Hungary to see the rest of Europe, thus far it's been slightly too interesting for my liking. While taking the night train into Romania, there were actually a gang of 5 guys that got onto the train all dressed in black and looking quite intimidating. The rail cops chased them off once, but they just went around the train and got on the other side, so they were with us for 2 stops! All this i learned about after getting off the train from other backpackers who had...

From Budapest to Brasov in Romania, it took a 12 hour train ride. Trains here are very slow. Brasov is a good place to base oneself to visit the castles and surrounding countryside in Transylvania. The Dracula castle is in Bran, the citadel is in Rasnov and the impressive Peles castle is in Sinaia. At Brasov, I stayed at the Kitmat Dao Hostel. Dao you ask? Yes, this hostel is actually opened by a Korean-American who was a backpacker hinself. Throughout the hostel you can find framed comic str...

I am addicted to moving the pins on the map. I don't have the time to write entries. -edit- Ok, here is the entry: We are staying at a hostel called Kismet Dao. Kismet means fate, and Dao refers to Daoism. Our room is called The Sweet Room. It's next door to The Shagging Room. Inside, we exchange a conversation like the pessimist (me) and the optimist (her) that we are: "I like this room. It has clouds everywhere. It's like a Winnie the Pooh room." "Clouds? I thought those were paints chipped...

Natasha and I decided to explore Sibiu, the 2007 European Capital of Culture. There was a 9:45am train- easy enough. We sadly said bye to GT and Romain. I became particularly fond of Romain, so it was really too bad that he was leaving today. Funny, the morning train to Sibiu got cancelled (or maybe it was delayed or arrived in the wrong lane or spun off the track killing 60 people, we do not know), so I tossed a coin. Ataturk ordered us to go back to the hostel. So we did. GT was on his way ...

Nach dem stressigen Tag gest**n, haben wir spontan beschlossen, in Bukarest nur umzusteigen und gleich in die kleinen rumaenischen Do**f** zu fahren. Uns** **stes Ziel ist Brasov, ein kleines, sup**schoenes Staedtchen in Siebenbu**gen. Wir v**suchen im Kismet Dao Hostel uns** Glueck und tatsaechlich, sie haben noch ein Zimm** frei fu** uns. Nach ein** Dusche (wie toll nach den ganzen Nachtzuegen) fahren wir mit dem Bus nach Bran, einem winzigen Dorf etwa 40 min entf**nt von Brasov. Dort besic...

I half expected to find a countryside dominated by steep, craggy mountain peaks framing narrow valleys cover by the omnipresent rolling dark clouds and lightning that strikes day and night. Brasov was anything but that. Instead, what I found was an attractive, Bavarian-like city with a real Austrian look, nestled in a treed lower alpine setting. It is nothing like Bucharest. It's clean and nicely maintained with a big cobble stoned, pigeon filled central square. It is the jumping off point f...