Romania, day 4 – Rasnov Fortress

I feel compelled to justify my obsession with the bus 780 incident, which I think of every time I blog. I just finished reading a fascinating study today on a psychological trait prevalent in homo sapiens, called ‘the negativity bias.’ Basically it says that we’re engineered to remember negative encounters much longer than positive experiences, because that’s what 600 million years of evolution has done for us – you can mistake a shrub for a bear and walk away unscathed, but mistake the bear for a shrub and you’re dinner. The bear’s, that is. This article is well worth a read, and I feel equally justified in spending my dissertation time on…understanding human behaviour.

We went to Rasnov Fortress today, 4.5 lei by bus. Like all outgoing buses here, they had their destinations marked VERY clearly on the windshield.

 

The bus.

Rasnov Fortress was built by Vlad’s grandfather, Mircea the Old (or his soldiers and the civilians, more likely), and it was a REALLY steep climb up. I hadn’t anticipated doing so much exercise – by the time we’d reached the top, both of us were huffing like a bad Victorian steam locomotive. Or maybe we’re just too out of shape.

The village of Rasnov was another of those dry, dusty places where they’re redoing the roads. The weather was hot and stuffy and did nothing to improve my mood. It was a gloomy, blustery day, and the aerial cables made it impossible to take a good picture of Rasnov Fortress on its hill. It’s another of those Hollywood signs.

Photoshop has failed me on this occasion

Aha, here we are finally. I think the man on the horse is meant to be Mircea.

This is the outer fortress of the, um, fortress. Again, we didn’t go in, since it didn’t look that impressive. It reminded me of Montjuic Castle in Barcelona, which in turn reminds me of all the blog posts I haven’t written.

And this is the other side.

Finally, a decent picture.

When we were done, we visited some of the outlying souvenir shops and bought some stuff helped boost their economy. I got a beer mug with a bird’s eye view of Rasnov Fortress, which was handmade, quite exquisite and cost 15 lei. I also got a thimble – embellished with the words “Romania, Rasnov”, for my supervisor. Joanne got a mug too, I think. The girl at the shop was very nice and presented us each with a purdy postcard of Rasnov, a gesture which we both appreciated very much. I really should work on our hard-wired mentality of negativity bias.

When we went back to Brasov, we did a walking tour that ended in shambles – I got hopelessly lost following the itinerary on the usually reliable wikitravel entry, and Joanne’s GPS crashed. Nevertheless, we did manage to locate St. Nicolas’ church.

The church from the outside

There was also some very interesting graffiti on the wall.

We then caught a VERY late bus to Sibiu (around 30 lei I think – you can book tickets/look up the timetables here). The highways here are horrendous – we were practically rattling around the minibus like beans in a can. Thank goodness we’re not the carsick types. We arrived at our hostel without incident. The hostel owner is a guy with a fantastic sense of humour – when we were talking about our travels with some of the other people at the hostel and happened to mention Edward Cullen, he indignantly wrote and held up a plaque bearing the legend, “Vampires are not sparkly.”

I think I’ve still got two or three entries worth to write about. In case anyone is interested, my dissertation is on The Picture of Dorian Gray, and my mind is bursting at the seams with aphorisms and Wildean witticisms. And England lost to Italy today, 1:2, much to no one’s surprise.