Hangin' with Dracula and other tales of Romania.

Meanwhile in Transylvania, Jon and Paddington and I have been wandering the little town of Brasov, about two hours from Bucharest. We spent a night in Bucharest, more due to requirement than choice, and found it chaotic, crowded and dirty...I fended off a major pickpocketing attempt by two gypsies within twelve hours of being in the city, and we hightailed it out of the Romanian version of Dodge. Brasov has a population of about 320,000, and is simply gorgeous. Lots of medieval buildings, an open air pedestrian boulevard that goes through the centre of town, and it's surrounded on all sides by forest and mountains. To top all of these natural bounties, there is a huge, white billboard that proclaims 'Brasov' built into the side of the mountain. Yes, just like Hollywood, equally tacky and even more incongruous. We actually hiked up the mountain to see the view and found ourselves standing behind the letters.



We went to Dracula's castle. I had hoped that all of my Buffy training with Jean would be useful, but there was hardly a vampire nor a fang to be seen. Sigh. Must have been an off day. I had to content myself with the tourist equivalent:



And I had to resist very hard from buying a 'Princess of Darkness' t-shirt. But the cloves of garlic and wooden stakes may have come in handy - they were selling them in stalls along the road.

I have to leave you all to mosey towards our night train. We've rented a teeny little studio apartment in Budapest for four nights, and the prospect of our own bathroom and kitchen fills me with delight and compensates for the disappointment of not seeing any vampires vanish into dust!