Brasov - Day 1

A new experience, traveling on an overnight train. We booked two seats in a 6 passenger compartment (we weren't sure how that was going to be if there ended up to be 6 of us there, but a private compartment was pretty expensive, so we took our chances that the train wouldn't be full. We were right, who wants to travel to Brasov in the middle of winter unless they live there or they are crazy travelers.  We ended up with our own private compartment. In fact, by the time we got to Brasov we were the only ones in our car. Here we are when we first got on the train:

and here is a photo showing one whole side of the compartment.

You can see the very top bunk where we ended up putting our suitcases. I would not want to sleep there - about 12" between the bed and the ceiling.  Then you see where the headrest is and the mirror - that whole piece folds down to make a middle bed, and then the back of the seat folds down into the lower bed. And it's that way on both sides. So if there were 6 people in that compartment, we would have all been really really good friends by the end of the trip.

It was suggested that we eat lots of garlic before riding through Transylvania at night, but we didn't, and also didn't see any vampires. At about 10 p.m. we stopped at the Hungarian border for the border police to look at our passports and stamp them, then less than 30 minutes later we stopped in Romania and repeated the process.  When you enter or leave the EU you get a stamp on your passport - upper left is a ring of stars (EU) with the initial of the country, on the upper right is an icon of a train or plane (or maybe a car) showing how you entered or left, and bottom left has an arrow showing if you were coming or going. Except for when we arrived in Paris at the beginning of our trip, no other country checked our passports until now. Not sure why they did this time. 

I loved sleeping on the train...the motion kind of rocks you to sleep. The beds weren't like my bed at home, but not too bad. I don't know what a tall person would do though. I had just enough room to stretch all the way and I'm 5'6" so a taller person might not be so comfy.  It was a 14 hour trip from Budapest to Brasov, and we slept through a good bit of it. We kept saying we wish we could get on a train and go back to Memphis. Fourteen hours on an airplane cramped in a tiny narrow seat with no leg room as opposed to fourteen hours in a train compartment where we can stand up, walk to the dining car, lie down and sleep, have plenty of room to sprawl.  I guess we need to win the lottery so we can charter a private jet whenever we travel.

We woke up to snow - pretty new snow, still falling and very pretty to look at.

We got to the hotel at 9:30 and checkin wasn't until noon, but they said come back in an hour. They ended up giving us an apartment - the best room we've had our whole trip. I wish we were staying in this room 4-5 nights!! Or that we could have taken this room along with us the whole time. Although we have had great rooms, except for Budapest which was a bit small. And dark (they needed more lights).

Thru the left archway is the bedroom with the bathroom beyond it, and the kitchen thru the archway on the right.

And here we are in another neat medieval town. 

 

This is the town hall. They used to burn witches in this square.

When we get lost and need to find our hotel, we just look for this street.  Mike, they put an "i" in your name where there shouldn't ought to be one, but close enough - it keeps us from being lost!!

That's a castle up on the hill.

These kids were so cute. Instead of a stroller or a little red wagon, the little boy was being pulled around town on a sled.

In this square tonight there was a big political gathering. Apparently there have been riots in several locations in Romania in the last few days protesting austerity measures. In Bucharest there have been  riots with tear gas. Of course that's where we are headed on Monday so we can catch our plane Tuesday.  We've always heard when you are traveling and see a political demonstration, especially when there are many police around as well, it's best to walk in the other direction. Which we did tonight.

 This is the Orthodox Cathedral

Scattered around the town are some really big hills - right in the middle of the town. This is one of them. There is a chair lift that goes up there, maybe we will do that tomorrow.

Tonight we ate hamburgers in an Irish pub. Armando's been dying for a hamburger.  Me, I'm still dying for a big hot mug of American coffee. Not these little tiny cups of hot strong bitter coffee. But that will have to wait a few more days.

Can anyone tell me why, no matter where you are in the world, all the graffiti looks exactly the same?