Vila Vitalis Predeal

The village was founded back in the XII century by the Saxons and over here you can find one of the best preserved fortified churches in Transylvania.

The church was built as a Catholic monument in the XIVth century and then, in the XVIth, became Lutheran.

At the entrance there is a niche which was used for weapon storage during mass, and in case of attack the men were ...

... we were from and tried to answer her questions as best as possible. She did not seem to think that our lack of Romanian was a barrier to conversation, however, and proceeded to weave a beguiling tale about a massive factory in town, a great loss to her five years ago, and her excellent Hungarian. This could have been a true “local” experience, something which I seem to lack in travelling, but, ah, I blame my Romanian. It was immediately after ...

... castle, looking up to see that it didn't look all that scary or Dracula-like. Maybe it was the bright, sunshiny day with big, puffy, white clouds, but I expected the castle to look at least a little ominous instead of pretty and friendly. Inside the castle was set up as a museum of the family who had lived there, including old furnishings. It was also semi-interesting, but nothing special. My favorite part was a well with a ...

... The hotel is far from beautiful; it's a big box, with high ceilings and big open spaces. The air is thick with smoke even with that spaciousness. The people are all doing business of some sort with each other...wearing black suit/uniforms, both women and men look alike...some are toasting success with champagne...it's a very cold feeling envt...not like the streets of Brasov...this hotel was built by the communists and it looks it...square and ...

... up the traffic... put a roundabout in when it shouldve been lights. I assumed this happened every day. So i walked half way across the road and stopped on an island in the middle. The cop came over to me yelling at me in romanian. I said, i only speak english i dont know what youre talking about. I apologised and said it looked like I was able to cross He said .. 'ok. just stop right here and wait. We're ...something i couldnt understand...official.' So i stood ...

... attention and affection from people. Danny is the oldest boy, he is 16. His parents are german. Then there is Sebi, hes about 14. Danny and Sebi share a room so they showed me around it and then we played ping pong for a while. There's another 2 boys who are a bit younger. Niku is Hungarian. He asked me what i can say in Hungarian, but all i could remember was 1-10 and hello. The oldest girl is called Niko and she's also 16. She speaks ...

... itīs a pretty impressive building. Halfway back to Brasov is the town of Rasnov, home of an impressive fortress, that we all wanted to see especially since it was on the way back from Bran. All of us crammed into one cab for the 20km trip. With an American on my lap and a cab driver that had just started his job we where off. Only one wrong turn and a twenty minute detour later we where on our way up the steep dirt road to ...

... and sometimes inpatient. At first I was slight annoyed that she assumed that I understood very little English and kept repeating "do you understand me?"(later I ran into an Korean guy who really understood very LITTLE English, so I appreciate that Diana did try to be more helpful to us Asians). The public area is a little tight and it is even more crowded in the attic room I was assigned to. There are like 15 mattresses in ...

... for a drink. They'd been told that occassionally, when food is scarce, the bears wander down into Brasov for a bin snack, which was news to us and certainly not something we'd read in our guide book. The year before a frustrated and hungry bear had killed a Brasov man as he could not get into the bins, which the Mayor of the town had encouraged residents to padlock! - SIGHISOARA - Arthouse Chihuahua Our final stop in Romania was UNESCO listed Sighisoara, another small town in ...

... backpackers to take back to her ad hoc hostel, basically an apartment converted for that use, entirely DIY auto-pilot. God help you if one of your back-packer buddies leaves the door open or some other such irresponsible nonsense. A couple days of this is enough, but I still like Romania, so book a train to Timisoara.