Casa Luxemburg Sibiu

... which is not in keeping with the exterior but is still interesting. The castle as many places in Transylvania attempt to make a connection with Dracula or Vlad Tepes, an inspiration behind the character. Most connections are a stretch as is the case with this castle in which he may have visited once.

Museums are very cheap, generally, $1-8 entry. But, photos can only be taken if a special photo ticket is bought in addition to the entry, as is the case with Bran. This has been on ...

Our night passed with pleasure and we departed through the lobby entrance door onto the road to the Transylvanian hills. We have to share the road with other traffic and the speed is not as high as we wish, on the other hands its easier to avoid the many potholes.

We depart from our tour and want to see a subterranic glacier. Wow, the road gets very rural, then very very rural ...

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

... taste: the more local it is, the stronger it tastes and the more like rubbing alcohol it smells. But I'm a trooper and I try to take my share.

The next day we came to Sibiu, a larger city on the way to Brasov. The town square here is also really nice, and we did some standard tourist fare on the first day-- museums, clocktower, churches. Today was a full day of activities in surrounding towns, starting with a ...

... the gist on how they lived. It was neat that by every building they would have pictures of that building before they took it to this museum. It looked like they still used mills, blacksmiths, fullers, and sawmills in the last 100 years!

Went strolling around the old town some more and I get such a kick out of the street vendors. You will have a lady selling lottery tickets at a simple table on street with all the tickets spread out in ...

... that have a community well and the house are made of what looks like untreated old and dry wood, the size of a shack. Most places will have haylofts in their back yard as well as a garden and lots of chickens. There are a lot of streets in town that are still dirt roads.There were horse and carts, sheep herders and a few gypsies. One thing I noticed about the few Gypsy people that I have seen here is the women dress in such bright colored ...

Day 51 of travelling and 5700km are gone. I spend a night in the mountains on a lake on the way from Bukarest to Hermannstadt. I went to Siebenbuergen - Transilvanian, to Hermannstadt (Rom. Sibiu) and Kronstadt (Rom. Brasov), each town 1 day. Really nice towns with a special set up. The towns ...

I did not wake up until almost 1 pm the next day. Oop! Of course, I still hadn't got over it. I still could not get over that fact that, I just lost my camera and DV, together with the memory card with hundreds of pictures (and the memories they represents), merely a day ago. I really needed a few more days' rest before I could move on to continue my journey. Now I was in Sighisoara, a city near the geographical center of Romania. With only about 36,000 ...

... open field, we hardly cared. The water felt invigorating. The storm, without too much more than wind and those large drops, passed quickly. When we finally took the time to survey the village, our eyes were quickly drawn to the imposing church upon the hill. Yes, I answered to myself, it had been worth it. After viewing the church grounds we walked back down its steps and sat upon the stoop. The church had been locked and I didn't see anyone around that seemed to have the ability to ...

... outdoor ethnographic museum, tucked away in the middle of the Romanian woods just outside of the town. When I say tucked away, I mean it, you literally have to walk down an overgrown wooded trail that starts off the highway in the middle of nowhere. When you come to a fork about a half mile back, signs point towards a strange zoo (right) and the ethnographic museum (left). We peered into the zoo and saw a massive bear in a cage that was significantly smaller than ...