Apollo Sibiu

... but get the smallest bottle of .3L. Nice change from the Scotch. I also get some BBQ. Yum!<br><br>Off to Sibiu, our next stop, a couple hundred km away. We can either double back to Bran and take the major road or a short cut through some local towns. I urge the latter. It turns out to be lots of fun. Time Warp. While driving we found ourselves both in the midst of sheep and cattle that are being driven along the road. Lots of carts pulled by horses. <br><br>Signs are sporadic so driving ...

Sibiu is a delightful city, small - about 250 000 people, but ready to make your staying one of the best in Romania.<br>The city, on its German name Hermannstadt, was founded in the 12 century and in 2007 was Cultural European Capital.<br>The Bruckenthal Palace in the Big Plaza, today an art museum and the Evangelic Cathedral are worth a 2-3 hour visit. <br>Also, climbing all the way up in the Council Tower , the 12 century gate of SIbiu, let us see the city from above.<br>Great place!

... horses in Romania. I thought they were only in Vienna, but I think they were brought to Romania when this area was controlled by the Austro-Hungarian empire. We fed apples to some of the horses and then went out back to see a lot of them. Unfortunately, they were completely uninterested in us. But there were several foals there, and baby horses (like baby tigers) are adorable! I sat with the stereotypical "awwww ...

Went to the ASTRA open air museum just outside of Sibiu this morning. It is the second largest one in the world. The bus ride there is always a treat as it's just me and a bunch of rural folk old timers on the bus. I have noticed that most men and women over the age of 50 wear hats. The museum grounds are situated around a lake and the whole area is very big. They disassembled buildings all around Romania and reassembled them here. They have wooden ...

... cities in Germany, Austria and Italy here. I have heard a few Italian and German speaking people here. I stopped for a pizza and a beer at an outdoor cafe and a couple of little raggedy cross eyed kids started talking to me in Romanian and staring at me. I felt guilty that here I am eating this huge pizza that I will never finish (at least not at one sitting), going on and on how cheap it is, and these starving kids are staring at it ...

... I picked up a brochure for mine while in Bucharest and have no idea what it was called or how much it cost. I didn't write it down. It was new and very nice and its pricing was comparable with the others in Romania. I'm not even sure why I went to Sibiu. Its listing in Rough Guide made it sound pretty good and it is on the way to Belgrade. I just took it easy, wandering the town and partaking of two dollar cappuccinos, cheap and delicious ...

... partying, but had some good chilled out ...

... Dupus. But oh, were we wrong! We trudged ahead and immediately the trail split. We continued straight and later the trail split again. We kept walking on, then before our eyes the path became overgrown. It seemed no one had walked this way in months, if not years. This couldn't be the path, could it? We thought not and headed back to the second split. We walked up a large hill that overlooked Dupus well down below. The scene was breathtaking. On an adjacent hill was the vineyard that ...

... but with a bar and some animal heads on the wall. and in the middle a long table with about 20 kids hanging out. i guess this was the hangout place in town. anyway we finnaly got back to brasov about 6 am and he didnt make us pay! we were SO LUCKY! so we decided to go to sibiu and look for the train but we kep t missing it all; day cuz we had to do this and that. we finnaly got there in the evening by bus. anyway now were staying at some salt lakes resort place and its pretty cool.

... into town, walked the city, but there really is not much to see, so we saw all the relevant stuff. There are a few churches, nothing special, except for the big ****er which kind of was !!!!! There is a statue of a wolf with Romulus and Remus, just like in Rome. I wonder if that is why it is called Romania !!!!! Then we found the Cathederal. For a Latin language country, it is not predominantly Roman Catholic, but this was special. All of the paintings, well they were not ...