Danubius Health Spa Resort Sovata

... I had some traditional Romanian 'Goulash'. That was about it for that day. Next morning (9:15am) i hopped on a train to Bucuresti. The trip was about five hours from Sighisoara. On the train i met up with an Israelian woman. She told me she stayed in Brann (The town where Dracula lived in his castle) for 10 days and was going to fly back to Israel. It was nice to find someone who could talk fluent English. It made the five hours less boring. I arrived in Bucuresti at ...

... After the mandatory picture taking of all the sights we walked up the covered stairway to the highest point in the city where the Saxon church and graveyard are located. Most kings choose to put their palace or castle on top of the highest point in the town but for some reason in Transylvania, in the childhood home of Dracula, it seemed only fitting that a graveyard would occupy the best piece of real estate in the city. While walking through the graveyard we noticed that most ...

The train ride from Budapest started out uneventful until the train approached the final stop in Hungary before entering Romania. The platform was covered with a large mass of people and a much larger mass of bags, boxes, and every other container imaginable. As soon as the train stopped, there was a mad rush to get all the bags, etc. onto the train through every available door and window. The tattered bags were threadbare in many places stuffed full of ...

... of Copsa Mare. Our taxi driver had never been there before, but the church up on a hill wasn't difficult to find. The place was over-run and deserted, leaving us to explore the yard, discovering an open door leading inside. No services had been held in a while and all the hymns for the next service had been set to 666, but it was a nice enough sanctuary. Before leaving, we took a stroll down the main street, Paul telling Taylor the lack of ...

... enjoyable. It is disappointing in situations like this that we can't speak the language as we generate fascination wherever we go and people just love to talk. On our next train this was also the case. A woman and her young daughter sat and stared at us for an hour before summoning up the courage to ask us if we were French. On discovering our nationalities, they wanted to know how we communicated with each other - me too ...

... to find a pathway up a large hill to the southwest of town. From there, after a bit of huffing and puffing, my curiosity was quickly rewarded with an unobstructed view over the whole of town, with even a couple distant villages visible on the horizon. Since neither my guidebook nor the local tourist literature seemed to know anything about it, I felt quite proud of my spur-of-the-moment discovery. Sitting up on a bluff under a cool breeze, watching the city go ...

... perfectly timed my visit with a big music festival that was taking place in town across the next few days, and hotel costs had doubled as a result. So for the privilege of one night in a central hotel, I had to shell out 176RON (159 once they knock off breakfast) - over three times what I had planned. Ugh. . . . In light of that ugly financial dent, I decided right then and there that I was only going to spend one night in town. So first thing in the morning today, I checked ...

... encrusted pork and potatoes. Yes, weight is being added on this tour! My evening ends with a frustrating attempt to connect my laptop to the internet so that I can post this blog. The café I visited has no wireless service available, and for some reason the direct link will not work in my computer. I check my emails on another computer, and retire to my room to write this entry and get ready for a slightly earlier departure tomorrow. I couldn't be happier with how this tour is going! Hugs, Dan

... have not seen, even in rural Hungary. It was a fascinating place, I will be back. A return to Brasov in the pouring rain, a quick dinner and onto the night train. Our conductor warned us to be careful of bandits 'once in Hungary;' he then quickly asked our nationality, I must have given him a dirty look. I assured him that we would be careful, and we slept comfortable en route back to the city.

Had a dream in which i was leading a group of about twenty-five people, Odin and all my closest friends, some I hadn't seen in years. Peter was there, and we were so happy to see each other again. Like Noah and the Ark, we were all working together to save humanity and the animals from the coming apocalypse. We we hopping trains, carrying reptiles, and eventually comandeered a rocket ship like futuristic pirates. But REALITY: Tirgu-Mures is a town ...