I reached the hostel, which was a much more happening, youthful place than the Budapest hostel. I was in a room alone with a bunch of
bitchy Australian women (they're seriously everywhere) who were constantly hogging the one computer in the place. I walked to the Braşov city center, which turned out to be a really pretty little square. Well, except for this one street that led to it. It had entirely been dug up (hopefully to be renovated?) and the streetlights were all out. Stray dogs were wandering everywhere. A
dark shadowy figure suddenly emerged and started walking towards me. I definitely wondered if it was a vampire for a second.
But anyway, the city center. It has a lot of cool restaurants (including a
KFC!). I ate lasagna at a nice little Italian place while having to endure two American couples in their 50s having the kind of obnoxious conversation that all American couples in their 50s have while tipsy. Outside, all the pubs had set up big tv-screens so everyone could watch the big Romanian football match. I watched some of it, while eating
20-cent ice cream.Oh, and I should mention the best thing about the town. In a hill visible from the square, they've put up a super tacky Hollywood-style sign.
Back at the hostel, I sat and watched
Click with everybody else before going to bed. The less said about that film the better.
The hostel had planned a bustrip the next morning to a few local sites, so I signed up and tagged along with a crew that included a few of the bitchy Australian women, some bitchy Australian teenage girls, some Canadians, an 18-year-old English boy, a German girl, a couple of women from London, and a weird American and his Russian wife. The first stop was the
Râşnov Fortress, built around 1215. Not much to say about it. There were some ruins. Pretty views. They were setting up for some kind of archery contest too, I'm not sure what was going on. But, yeah, it was nice. Didn't take too long.
The bus took us next to
Bran, Transylvania's biggest tourist trap. Everybody refers to it as
"Dracula's Castle", but really, he never lived there. There's a
slight possibility he spent one night there while fleeing from the Ottomans. Outside, a bunch of people hawk ridiculous Dracula shirts.
While I was at Bran, I got to practice my German talking with that German girl. She seemed to really light up at the opportunity to not speak English. She was an environmental law student from Bremen. We had the usual conversation that people who don't exactly speak the same language do, describing in simple terms the pros and cons of our respective hometowns. Exciting.
The finally destination was the one that was really breathtaking -
Sinaia. We were given a tour of the
Peleş Castle where the royal family used to live (the Romanian government actually just announced that the castle is being given back to King Michael). Both the exterior and interior are just amazingly beautiful. The best part is that there's actually a hidden passage accessed by opening a fake set of bookshelves in the library. There was one room made entirely of something like 40 different kinds of wood. And then, for some reason, one room has a
Gustav Klimt frieze. I really liked how the tour guide would introduce each room, by saying, "We now enter the Large Ballroom," bowing down real low, and saying, "Puh-lease."
When we returned to Braşov, I headed off to this restaurant that my guidebook referred to as one of the best and most famous in the town. Of all my cosmic lonely eating experiences, this was perhaps the most cosmic, lonely, and awkward. I sat completely alone in this long, sterile white room with no decorations on the walls. It was also
completely silent. "Oh well," I thought, "at least I'll be getting a nice
traditional Romanian meal." Then the waitress brought my plate. It was a couple small pieces of chicken and french fries. When I was able to flag her down to bring me the bill, I took my credit card out of my wallet. She immediately gasped and jumped back in shock and fear, as if she had seen...well, a vampire. So I paid in cash instead and left quickly.
I ran into the German girl and the English boy, who invited me to hang out in this Irish pub with some of the others from the hostel. We sat and talked about...school...music...American foreign policy... The English boy said that Radiohead is much more popular in America than the UK. He also said that he always defends Americans because he knows that the majority of us don't agree with Bush's policy anyway.
Our plan was to go downstairs to the lower level of the pub, where
karaoke night was going on. But all of the tables were occupied or had "Reserved" signs on them. Everybody down there were locals wearing some kind of factory uniform, who just stared at us until we left.
We decided instead to go to the next best thing to an Irish pub - a Scottish pub. Along the way, I started talking a lot with the two Canadian couples with us, who were both really cool, one set from Toronto and the other from Vancouver. We talked about the Canadian music scene, and I got some recommendations for good alt-country bands, among other things. I gave them all my sightseeing advice for Chicago, which some of them were planning on visiting soon. I made the two British women feel more at home by reminiscing about British television shows that I, too, grew up watching while living in Hong Kong. These included such gems as
Bananaman,
SuperTed,
Captain Pugwash, and
Postman Pat.
At some point a very strange drunk old man at the table next to us tried to talk to us. "You speaking English!" The English women replied, "Yes...that's because we
are English." He mumbled a lot of gibberish and finally said, "I am Welsh!" He mumbled a bit more, and it took his Romanian friends to tell us that he was from Cardiff. I'm not sure if he was just completely drunk, or if he had really forgotten how to speak English.
I don't think this necessarily came across, but Transylvania is really a very cool place. It's beautiful. I just don't know what to say about it. Just believe me.
Die Wiener Kompilation
