Montclaire Brasov

... rocked in the next 3 days: Using Brasov as the base, I visited 5 nearby cities and (of course) 5 castles – Brasov, Bran, Rasnov, Sighisoara, Sinaia. All of them have some interesting medieval buildings, but I liked Bran and Sinaia the most.

Bran Castle is famous for two reasons. For most of us, Transylvania means Dracula, that blood-sucking creature who, as the story goes, travels from this castle to England, terrified a bunch of English there before ...

... a Winnie the Pooh room." "Clouds? I thought those were paints chipped off the wall." Brasov is the biggest city in Transylvania and definitely had sights worthy of a day or two of exploration. We looked at various churches in Brasov and rode the cable car up to Mt. Timpa, which displayed the white Brasov sign reminiscent of the glamorous Hollywood sign. Even the font looks the same. On the main road by the city square ...

... in, eventually l*ading Mic's sn*wb*ards int* the tiny vehicle. Adrian the cab driv** was c**l. We have a little chat. He menti*ns the weath**. "It is raining again. It's a M*th********." Turns *ut he lived in the states f*r a few years, and he can really thr*w M*th******** ar*und like a pr*. As we are gunning it d*wn a side street, th**e is a fl*ck *f pige*ns milling ab*ut in the middle *f the r*ad. I can see the speed Adrian is g*ing and the distance between the birds ...

... we'll have another match. They all love taking photos so much, so today I took in some cardboard photo frames, paint, stamps, glitter and wrapping paper to cut up to decorate them. Then we'll get them to dress up a bit and they can take photos of eachother which i'll print out and put in the frames later this week. We'll have to do that tomorrow though, because with starting school they had all sorts of things to do today. Some were out shopping... and some went potato ...

... larger city in the region. It was a beautiful little city, stayed in a cheap communist-style hotel and watched crazy Romanian TV in my room. Went to see an old Saxon fortress in the next town and visited a friend of a friend in Prague who runs eco-tours in Romania and has turned her office into a lovely replica of a traditional Romanian home. I know where I got my coloring now, all the Romanians look quite mediteranean and every little old lady on the street looked like my ...

... seat, along with 2 cans of Hell (knockoff Red Bull) and told the driver to wake me in Sinaia. Glad I've become famous for falling asleep on buses, obviously someone had already told Julien to fill me with energy drinks and even then I may be sleeping in an hour. The driver of the minibus wasn't too friendly at first, but he sneezed once, I said Narook (I was told it means bless you, along with cheers) and then he was my buddy. We couldn't really talk but he offered to share ...

... Bozo-the-clown orange (and not on a "punk" person), blonde that is so yellow it almost looks greenish, and a spectrum of unnatural browns khaki to light tan. So, naturally I thought I could dye my own hair much better than these people, right? I mean, I have spent countless hours in hair salons watching the technique, and more that $15,000 over the last 10 years on coloring and styling services (that number is shockingly huge, but I seem to have a lot of free time to contemplate ...

... Brašov to Bucuresti which would then delay our travel into Bulgaria. But once again Christi came to our aid and we made it to Bucuresti. The little we saw of Bucuresti was that it appeared to be a large city with LARGE estates that have been abandoned or really let run down. Lots of evidence of prior communist regime. Arrived at the train station and had an instant mistrust of the officials - asking for money just to get through to the platform ...

... very liberating about being so anonymous in a crowd this large, while everyone around us was singing in a language we didn't understand. We have since bought the cd and are proceeding to drive our flatmates mad since we play one particular song on repeat that they sang at the concert! I must share a funny story which happened a couple of nights ago. Heather, Lianne and I spent the evening in the village square. On our way home, we encountered a little old lady, hunched over, probably ...

... that to "nearly everyone." We didn't think Rasnov was very special, just some piles of rocks and a few old crumbling walls. Probably good for Romanian history buffs, but not the average tourist. Our second day trip was to Sinaia, where we saw the Sinaia monastery and Peles Castle. The castle was built in the late 1800's for the first King of Romania, Carol I. Since it was built so recently, it has had electricity, elevators, and central heating since it was built. It was the ...