Hotel Bradul Brasov

... on the bus and ended up spending the day with them. Sighisoara was cool with loads of colourful little buildings and towers. All very quaint. We wondered around for a few hours climbing a clock tower and wondering around a graveyard before we left the Austrian girls and headed back to Brasov so we could get our train back to Bucharest so we could then take our train to Kiev in the morning...

Disaster Strikes! The train to Kiev was fully booked ...

... were very happy to find the fortress was open! We walked around and got more great views of the Romanian mountains and countryside. It was pretty cool but it would have been good to have more signboards telling us a bit about the fortress. We did watch a video about Romanian fortified churches in general, but not this particular one. However as we were leaving we did notice something intriguing: a sign pointing to a human skeleton!

We went into the little building and looked ...

... own power, and just for the sheer pleasure of seeing the suffering of his numerous victims. Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Vlad III, Dracula, Drakulya, or Tepes, was born in late 1431, in the citadel of Sighisoara, Transylvania, the son of Vlad II or Dracul, a military governor, appointed by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund. Vlad Dracul was also a knight in the Order of the Dragon, a secret fraternity created in 1387 by the Emperor, sworn to uphold Christianity and defend the ...

... below. Being a "young" range they are pointed and rugged as true mountains should be. We stopped for lunch at a service station on the banks of a lake, with the mountains beyond. The setting was superb, the staff friendly, the building an old wooden chalet which could have been in Switzerland. The food? Well, I opted for meat balls with boiled cabbage and onions. The meat balls were stodgy potato dumplings with a ...

... 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 ...

... about after getting off the train from other backpackers who had been closer to the end, but still, pretty scary. Besides the gang and a few bums(which i will tell you about later) we also got stopped 3 times for passport checks by tipsy Romania Border guards. After actually getting to this town it was quite easy to find the hostel (they had a guy waiting in the station for us), and get everything checked in. The ...

... or worse, there was a mysterious fog throughout the day which led to some pretty interesting pictures. The castle tour was part of a package through the hostel and turned out to be a great deal. Again we topped off the day with a 4 star meal before heading to hungary on an overnight.

... I hope, as always you are doing well. I also hope you understand that since arriving to site in Navoi, going thru all the transitions there, and then being kicked out of country and now in a whole new place...that you will cut me some slack in not having written too many personal emails in the last month. I apologize, really I do. Don't take it personally, and by all means, don't stop writing me whenever you have a break in your crazy schedules, too. Much love to all, Amber