Mara Hostel Brasov

... at the outside fortified like a tiny medieval castle, with watchtowers moat and pull up bridge in some cases. In Prejmer/Tartlau and Harman/Honigberg you can visit the best preserved of these architectural treasures.

The churches still belong to the German Lutheran congregation. In Petersberg I got a tour by one of the few remaining members of this old minority, a lady in her late forties with round features and very blue eyes who told me about ...

... were laughing, whistling and started to drop their pants to give us a brown eye for the pic. Amelie arrived home not long after me. It was the first day of her placement yesterday. She is at a home similar to where i go, but there are only 6 kids. She was very nervous about it the night before so we chatted about some of the things that we had done with the kids that they liked. It was her birthday yesterday so she decided to make a cake with the kids. She ended up having a really ...

... audience like when i do an AX demo ;-) I even sang for them. I sang the rainbow song.. red and yellow and pink and green etc. I had coloured cards that i put up for each colour so they could sing with me. Was quite cool having them all standing there around me tryng so hard to sing the song. They are lovely kids though, the girls all fight to sit next to us and give us hugs. They are all dying to tell us their names, count in english and name animals and colours ...

Big Day! Me and another one of the girls made an early start to find water, an ATM and breaky before 9:30.Once we had completed our mission we met everyone back at the hotel and caught our minibus. Julien was our guide again for today and was showing us the Dracula side of Transylvania among other things. We stopped at Rasnov to see the old fortress on the Hill. I had a look around, tried some shots at archery and got in a hole with a 400 year old skeleton. Not the normal Castle ...

... In the middle of the road. And then there were groups of people walking next to the street and this girl crossed herself, when walking past the cemetery. And the castle looked even more beautiful than the previous day; it was lit up in the morning light, while the rest of the valley was still resting in the shadows. For a very short moment I pictured the Count, standing next to one of the windows, observing modern world.

... We ate super fast and then headed into the supermarket to buy snacks for the bus. We only had 30 mins in total so it had to be fast... but we managed to make it without totally ******* off the guards. That afternoon we visited Bran Castle. We were worried about this stop as several people were looking forward to it and the guide books were conflicting. My guidebook said closed Mondays (today was a Monday), Sandy's guidebook said open in the afternoon and it ...

Romania was like getting back to the proper Eastern Europe, bit shabby, lots of Dacia's splurting fumes everywhere and a great atmosphere. We bumped into Gabriel at the train station and he let us a room at his house for the nights we were in Brasov. The town has a big square in the middle and a cathedral. There is also a picturest gate over one of the roads near the ...