House Of Dracula Brasov

... it, too.<br><br>Returning to Bucharest via Rasnov/Rosenau and Bran castle on winding mountain roads through beautiful countryside shows more aspects of this interesting and diverse country. You pass gypsy villages, see really bad roads and poverty, industrial complexes in decay and try to communicate with generous cherry vendors on the roadside. As Romanian is a Latin based language they understand my French more easily than my English.<br><br> History ...

... or so minutes to the center. I was overwhelmed. the city was clean and gothic, full of young people and cute shops. The buildings were 1400's and quaint. I just had no Idea it would be so beautiful. Lots of parks and mountain backdrop. I was so happy to be there and so taken that I had to send some text messages to my friends to tell them of my excitement!! I was impressed!!!!

... once. and then while we are at it, lets remove most of the road surface and put in a new surface 6 inches higher than the old one, but ensure that we only do a few hundred yards every mile or so, and keep the drivers guessing as to which side of the road will disappear next. Result, a 75 mile traffic jam. Single file traffic governed by traffic lights every couple of miles. Impatient Romanian madmen ignoring the lights ...

... I headed back to my hostel with my packs and plead to stay several nights if needed on the honor system until I have this money situation sorted out. I had completely empty pockets and my only means to get cash was on that hill somewhere. Credit cards are not accepted in eastern Europe without a pin number, unlike the states - therefore I could not qualify for a cash advance. Within the next two days I was in non stop communication with my mother via email ...

... to skip that and head out to the village with the journalists. Everytime I have asked people why they dont like gypsies they give me a bunch of reasons including: they dont want to work, they steal, they dont mix with other people, they dont school their children, they feed the pidgeons in the main square to bring them closer so they can catch them and then eat them. They all end the conversation with 'you should just go out to a gypsie village and you will understand'. So thats ...

... The kids usually smile back. Sometimes i get an embarrased smile form the oldies. And the 20-50ish woman just look like they are constantly scowling. I was talking to Julia about it and she siad she wouldnt expect anything different in switzerland.. i guess australians are unusally friendly then. Anyway, imgoing to keep smiling at them. maybe i should start keeping count of how many smile back. Things have been going ok with the family here. I think their son ...

... for a geocache. I had never heard of this before, but apparently it is like an adult treasure hunt. She said there is a website that lists locations all over the world where someone has hidden a little something. Once you find the something, you leave something of yours in it (like coins, pin etc) for the next people to find. Sounded interesting so a group of us set out from Bran Castle in search of our "treasure". A very steep climb and a bit of searching and we found our ...

... to this group of British guys that said they were going to the same Castle i wanted to see that day. Bran castle is the place generally referred to as Draculas dwelling place, but it was actually a very overrun with tourists old manor house/castle. It was nice, but i think the other castles in the area would have been better to see, unfortunately they were quite a ways away from the road and we didn't feel like ...

... a public holiday to boot - so would it or wouldn't it? It would. YEAH! But unfortunately, it didn't live up to our expectations - but that was largely due to circumstances. We were aware that Dracula probably didn't actually live there... but still he was apparently from the area. We had to pay to enter the castle (fair enough) and SO DID MY CAMERA! How rude is that? Having to pay extra to take photos? And my camera was almost as expensive as me! So we got ...

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 ...