Sport Hotel Poiana Brasov

... was also right behind the Brasov hollywood sign, which had me incredibly excited. I mean, have any of you ever been behind the Hollywood sign? I haven't!<br><br>That night our tour guide brought his wife to dinner since they live in Brasov, and it was a real treat and honor to have dinner with both of them. We went to a restaurant that was Romanian, Italian, and... Mexican. Interesting combination. But you can guess that our local Brasovians ordered the ...

... restraints, the trade will be better than ever for Brasov. This also helped a lot the development of education and media. "Gazeta de Transilvania", the first Romanian political newspaper in Transylvania, was founded in 1838. This would be the main paper to fight for the independence of Transylvania, which was occupied at the time by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was also issuing a literary review that will promote the Romanian writers and poets living in ...

... me. I either sleep really well or not much at all. This one leaned toward the not much at all as my bunk was just a little bit too short and I couldn't quite fully stretch out. I know I'm a bit on the tall side but compared to some of the Hungarians I saw I am short, so I don't know how they would cope. Strangely enough, I did sleep right through the German leaving the compartment when his stop came. Maybe he transformed into a bat flew out the window, OOOHHH! (trust me I ...

... the women kept parading by looking at me and smiling --- two words for them, DENTIST and BATH! Very tired from my long journey the previous day I decided to take it a little easy so day two in Transylvania saw me exploring my home base of the touristy Saxon city of Brasov. It's not hard to forget where your at when you look up and see the "Hollywood style" Brasov sign on Mt. Tampa, which was one of my first stops on the tour of the city. Thankfully the city ...

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE !!!!!! :) One extremely important phenomenon, seemingly unique to Romania, that I did forget to include in my last entry was the strange occurrence of gypsy children who wander around Bucharest with dirty, old plastic bags containing baby goats. Yes. You read right. baby goats! Picture a dirty child pacing up Martin Place with an old skungy David Jones bag filled with cute little farm animals. Our first encounter was when we were ...

... a bottle of milk so decided they would make up the Ron, which is equal to 1000 Lei... or something like that. Getting change here is a nightmare. If you pull out a $50, they generally start asking all the staff to open their wallets and get out some change. Even in a pub! For perspective, a beer costs $5 so a $50 note is really not unreasonable. I bought a bottle of water the other day and the change was 10c, she said she didnt have any change but offered me one piece of ...

... some time in here in Romania. It's fascinating to think that smack in the middle of the country there's an entire region that is almost entirely Hungarian in character and background. While Romanian still pops up here and there, it's very easy at times to think that you're hundreds of kilometers further west, in a forgotten rural corner of Hungary. Well, the brutal blocks of concrete mixed with red brick always remind you where you really are, but it's a different place all the ...

... haircut never went out of style for men and women! #2 For guys, 1970-80's heavy metal (or at least the T-shirts) are all the rage. #3 Gals, the lower your jeans, and wider your bare midriff, the more "in" you are! #4 Women, 7" stilettos work great for walking on cobblestone streets or even hiking! #5 Ladies, the more unnatural yellow or red you can color your hair, the hotter you are. #6 Why have only one buckle on a shoe when you could have fourteen!

... got back to the hostel very late, but the trip should only have taken a morning. There was a lot of confusion over exactly where we were supposed to be catching buses from; in Rasnov, we waited for almost two hours before giving up and hitching a ride to Bran, which took all of five minutes. In Bran, we were definately waiting in the right place, but one bus drove straight past and another pulled over, saw us then turned around and drove off in the direction from which it had ...

... next day we crowded into a bus to Bran. This thing was absolutely packed! Dracula's Castle was interesting, to say the least. It seemed that most of the castle had been painted white in recent times. While historians doubt that Vlad Tepes (pronounced Tsepesh) had lived here, this had been a castle of historical significance, as evident by it's position guarding the only pass between the mountains. Our next stop was Rasnov Castle, a much less ...