Romanian culture and food

Since we only were in the Transylvanian part of Romania, it would be more accurate to call this entry “Transylvanian culture and food”, but then people might assume it is just about vampires and drinking blood. We had heard that Romania was still culturally somewhat mired in the age of communism, and that we should expect minimal customer service, if any.  Fortunately, this was not the case.

Sibiu

Sibiu

We stopped in our final Transylvanian town of Sibiu, on our way to Hungary from here in Romania.  It is another Saxon medieval town, that has been surrounded by a large and more modern city.  Sibiu was the was the capital of the Transylvania Saxon towns, and now has many museums and a very clean and well maintained central area.  On the way to Sibui, we passed through the countryside and saw Romanians picnicking and cooking out in the fields.

Sighişoara

Orthodox church

We took another day trip from our comfortable base in Braşov up north to the town of Sighişoara.  It was a three hour train ride through more of the rolling hills of the Romanian countryside.  We often saw horse-drawn wagons, old-fashioned domed mounds of grass (kept in fields or near barns) and many small farms as we passed by in the train. Sighişoara is another historical Saxon village similar to Braşov in that the original medieval core of the city is surrounded by walls and bastion towers associated with the various trade guilds, but this village is perched up on a hillside with great views of the surrounding river valley and forested hillsides.  

Râşnov and Bran

Bran castle

From our base in Braşov, we took a short trip to the popular Bran castle and the citadel at Râşnov.  Bran castle is very popular and was somewhat crowded while we were there.  There must be a million digital photos of the place floating around on the internet already, but we’ll add ours just for good measure.

Sinaia and the Bucegi Mountains

Traditional Sinaia house, Bucegi Mts. behind

We left Braşov and headed down the Prahova River valley towards the town of Sinaia, with the hopes of backpacking in the Bucegi Mountains. The train ride down was nice, through the forest  of the Carpathian Mountains. The Prahova river was a sorry little river surrounded by nice forests, with ample amounts of trash in it and hung up on the vegetated creek banks, and it had a tint to it that was too dark given all the clear tributaries we noticed coming out of the forests.

Days of Braşov

Brasov

We arrived in Braşov just in time for their “Days of Braşov” festival, which includes traditional music and dancing in the square, street vendors with wine and other foods, and a big event where horse riders come from surrounding villages and parade through town on their horses.  Like the official looking banners say, Braşov is “Probably the best City in the World.”  While we’re not going to argue about this designation since they have prefaced their argument with ‘probably’, we certainly enjoyed our time here.

Train ride to Romania

Rolling through Slovakia

We left Brno in the Czech Republic on an overnight train for Braşov, in Romania.  We are headed to the Carpathian Mountains (also called the Transylvania Alps in this area)  in Romania to do some hiking, see some more castles and maybe get inundated with Vlad the Impaler (aka Dracula) trinkets.