Brasov is a charming city. I didn’t know what to expect when I decided to come here, but I can tell you it hasn’t disappointed me at all. The best way that I can explain it is that it feels medieval in the older part of the town. The town can actually be broken into thirds, the ancient or old town, the Soviet era, and the modern age. There is some mingling of the three, but I spent most of my time exploring what can be considered mostly the old town. I really got a sense that I am actually stepping into a medieval town… of course I have to pretend that I don’t see the cars, and have to squint when I look a the shops around the touristy parts, but you get the idea. The one thing that I’m really loving here is the roofs of the houses, they look ancient. I don’t think I have a roof fetish, but for some reason the roofs here are absolutely picturesque with charm.

I only spent a few hours wandering because I think I got sick from something that I ate in Budapest. I didn’t eat that much, but I think what did it was some black berries that I had from a market. I didn’t rinse them off like I usually do, and I think they are what’s giving me the distress. For the record though they were huge and tasted so good. Hopefully I’ll have the energy to head out later on today too. Tomorrow I’m planning on going to Bran, home of Dracula.

Okay, here’s the obligatory travel story. You know, I realize that it seems that I speak a lot about the travel part, I guess even more than I speak about the destination, but the travel part can be the hardest or most interesting part that sticks with me. So without further ado, I present the trip to Brasov. the train left Budapest at about six. I get to my cabin and all but one seat is taken, the overheads are packed with luggage, so much luggage that there wasn’t a place for mine. At that point I kind of was resigned to the fact that this was going to suck. That the trip was going to be the worst that I’ve had up to date. I told someone that I needed room for my backpack and that someone was going to have move their things. I guess I may have sounded like a jerk, but all hope was gone and if I was going to be jammed in a cabin with seven other people there wasn’t any way I was going to be holding two packs for 14 hours. I think I gave a description of the cabin in an entry before, but to clarify, these cabins have two rows of seats that face each other. Most cabins hold six people, these hold eight and there is usually only enough leg room for a normal person to put his feet flat on the ground, any further out and you hit the person you’re facing. In a full cabin it’s not a pleasant experience by any means. Anyway, no one is speaking English and it appears that I’ve been placed with a family to make matters worse. All of a sudden someone is trying to take my backpack off, I twist around and say, “No.” As I’m trying turning around, someone else grabs the backpack, and I started to get upset. A lady sitting down sees this and tells the others to leave me alone. They finally make room for me and I sit down, and it turns out that there are only three other people sharing the cabin, the others that were in there were actually seated in the next cabin and were over to talk to the ones in mine. So that’s good, but now the nightmare actually begins. One guy that was evidently not part of the group is from Germany and speaks broken English. At first I think that this is a good thing, but it soon turns out that he just keeps saying the same thing, over and over again, and acts out what he says. For example, he didn’t like border guards so he would say, “Control, phooey.” Then grab his crotch, then lift half of his butt up and point to his butt, then points to his head, and finally waves his hand in the gesture that is best described as, “What can you do?” At first I thought it was funny, but after about the tenth time I was pretty much over the humor. I was so much over it that I got my book out and read about sixty pages, never once looking at him for fear he’s think I was taking a break and it was his opportunity to starting pointing again. J From that point on, the journey got even more bizarre. The German guy finally got off and he was replaced by a very large Syrian man who spoke no English, but seemed like a really nice guy. I finally dozed off and woke up a little bit later to see the Syrian asleep, head back, mouth open, but next to him is another guy in the same position, asleep, head back, mouth open, but he was resting his head on the Syrian’s shoulder. It looked so strange, almost cute in some weird way, and I dozed off again. I woke up shortly afterwards to see another guy slapping the face of the guy who was next to the Syrian. He was really slapping him too, but the guy wouldn’t wake up. He was getting upset though because every time he was slapped he would kick his foot, and since I was facing him, he was kicking my leg. The one dude finally did get the guy up and they both left. I guess all the commotion woke up the two Romanians that were there and they decided in the quiet of the moment to have a conversation… for four hours! They weren’t even trying to be quiet, they just kept talking even after I gave them the “evil eye.” I finally did manage to fall asleep again until the couple was getting ready to leave. I guess they figured that I just magically woke up at the same time that they had to leave the train, so they didn’t even have to pretend to be quiet. I dozed off again, and woke maybe five minutes later to some guy sitting across from me. I swear this guy looked like Dracula. He had dark eyes, dark hair brushed back, and a goatee, I know how stupid that sounds, but maybe because I’d had maybe two hours of sleep in a train traveling though Transylvania that I was open to suggestion, but the guy wouldn’t let me look anywhere without watching me. I’d turn my head and he was staring, I’d look at the reflection of the window, and I could see that he wasn’t looking at me, so I’d turn my head and he’d look at me. I finally, yet again dozed off and I swear I dreamt of vampires. At this point it was getting light, actually it had been light for a while, and I did wake up again not more than ten minutes later, but this time I was fed up so I grabbed my packs and found a different cabin, leaving the Syrian at the mercy of Vlad. :)

So that was the fun part of my trip, actually when I write about “Vlad” it does seem almost fun right now. When I woke up the train was traveling through rolling hills, some with trees and some with just grass. Every now and again we’d go by houses that looked right out of the 19th Century, complete with haystacks. The weather was cold and although it wasn’t raining, there was a mist/fog that was sticking the some of the hills. It really made for the perfect trip into Transylvania.