Weekend adventures

Typical street corner architecture

Sighisoara Clock Tower

Saturday: Castle tour
On the weekend we visited the major tourist site in Transylvania: Dracula's castle. We also fulfilled our goal of seeing snow! The 6 of us all piled into a taxi with Arpad coming along to facilitate communication with the driver - a pretty essential component to having a successful day! All morning he sat in the front seat and kept offering us to try his cooled down mulled wine; we said it was too early but we finally gave in and really enjoyed the cinnamon flavour of the wine his friends made. We got very excited with our first glympses of snow on the side of the road and rushed out at the petrol station to get a better look but absolutely froze in -5C weather! The first stop on our historical tour was Sighisoara where there is a beautiful old clock tower and ancient citadel, as well as a sculpture of Vlad the Impaler who is the character becoming famous through the "Dracula" adaptation. Hannah and James became very good friends with a little dog whom Hannah named "Siggy" there.

A couple hours north of Turgu Mures we found Bran Castle (Dracula's) and had a cool tour of the 600yr old fortress. We tried out the famous Hungarian "chimney cake" which is a 50cm long cylindrical pastry that is traditionally flavoured with sugar and vanilla. Some of us also tested out the frozen lake and made a few snowballs. At the base of the castle we found ourselves in souvenir heaven, or something like that: there must have been at least 50 stalls set up, all competing for of the  traditional hand-painted Horezu pottery, traditional costumes, furry hats and all kinds of Dracula themed items.

Our last stop was Brasov which again, blew us away with it's christmas festivities. The centre of the city was decked out with sparkling lights and reindeer and we walked under a complete canopy of lights with christmas carols ringing in our ears. From there we could see another very old castle in the surrounding mountains; the sign reminded of us Hollywood!

First sight of snow!!

Bran Castle = "Dracula's Castle"

inside the castle

Arpad, myself, Hannah, Amanda, Jason, James, Tori

This lake was completely frozen!

Hungarian Lunch

After braving such cold weather we stayed in for the night and managed to navigate our way through a Hungarian/sign-language conversation with the hostel receptionist who organised delivery pizza. It was the perfect thing after a big day but I can tell you it's only in Romania one orders a vegetarian pizza and finds the top 2 ingredients are peas and corn!

Amanda & I enjoying the lights of Brasov

****

Sunday we spent sleeping in and enjoying a brunch at Negro's which produces a cappucino most resemblant of what we're used to in Australia and walking around our temporary city home. Amanda, Jason, Tori, Hannah and I walked up to the Mures River which has a nice walking track along either side and a suspension bridge. On our way back we found a lake that had frozen over!!

Probably not quite enough to skate on yet though: the surface couldn't take more than a 5cm-diameter stone but we had fun skimming them across nevertheless. The Irish Pub 500m walk from our hostel provided us with a hearty dinner.

it's a different world.