Romania, day 5 – Sibiu

Manhole covers in Sibiu.

One thing I noticed about the pigeons and sparrows here was that they’re all very thin. I’ve never seen such emaciated birds in my life. The ones in London and Taipei, and all the other cities I’ve been to, are so rotund they practically can’t get off the ground. The sparrows in Taipei positively look like Snitches or blowfish, they’re so fat. In the future, I will use this as a standard to determine whether a district is wealthy or not – the skinnier the pigeons/sparrows, the less well off it must be.

Witnessed England being crushed by Uruguay yesterday, which I watched with the girls in our kitchen last night. I don’t need to turn on the TV, or go on facebook, even, to tell when a goal has been scored. The noise last night was something dreadful. I didn’t realise that the World Cup would be played during my masters year in London, but it is a fortuitous twist of fate, and one I’m happy to have been privy to. Did I mention how interesting it was, being in Romania while the madness of FIFA began spreading itself like rabies? In our Brasov hostel, a bunch of guys would huddle over the television set every night. My first real shock came when the invincible armada of Spain turned out to be not so invincible, suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of the flying Dutchmen. And then there was Portugal against Deutschland on the 14th, which was…whew. And so begins the Decline of Iberia.

We spent the whole day walking around Sibiu. It’s a very picturesque little town, idyllic yet bustling with energy, which won the much-coveted title of Europe’s Capital of Culture in 2007. Our hostel (about 8 pounds a night) was located slap bang in the middle of the old city centre, the Piata Mare/Piata Mica (pronounced like “piazza,” with a wee sound of “t” right before the z). There’s always some sort of event going on there. When we first arrived, there was some sort of concert/festival/carnival, which went on and on for the duration of our stay. Joanne was very excited about this.

This reminds me of the Wizard of Oz

We rented bicycles at the Hotel Ibis, about ten minutes walk from our hostel, which cost 8 lei for two hours and is a LOT cheaper than renting it at the tourist office in the piata. We cycled for about forty minutes to a lake, which was beautiful, but a bit crowded.

Not the most beautiful lake I've seen, but it does have a certain je ne sais quoi

I don’t think I mentioned this before, but it’s also one of the major defining parameters of our Romania trip. The people here act like they’ve never seen East Asians before. Everywhere we walked, people would slow down and stare at us, and even point at us. Some of them would even take pictures. The teenagers would, in some instances (once in every town at the very least) jump in front of us and call us names. I felt like we were a walking zoo, or as if there were horns sprouting out of my forehead. Both of us found this VERY unamusing. It can really ruin things and your whole travel experience per se when all the people do is stare, stare stare. I do not think Romania is too high on the tourist friendly scale (again, thanks to the negativitybias effect of bus 780 – you’re going to haunt me till the end of my days) and the environment is especially hostile for people who look noticeably different azn. During the whole of our trip, we did not see one single black/Indian/Muslim/any other race/colour other than white. The teenagers are plain xenophobic. Then again, their adults are wonderful (except again for the ones on the bus). When I was in Rasnov, a man told me that I was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen in his life, and that he had lost his heart to me. I was flattered, although sceptical – I don’t think I looked my best after a whole day of climbing and sweating.

So, yeah. If you look Asian, or not white, you’re going to stick out like a sore thumb, and boy don’t they let you knowit. We’ve had people coming over to us at restaurants and approaching us on the street, asking where we’re from. (“China? Japan? The land of the chopsticks? Chopstickland?”) I personally would not recommend Romania to anyone Asian, unless you’re travelling with a group of at least 7 people or you have a burgeoning desire to challenge yourself and push your limits. It’s not a trip for the faint of heart. Even then, you will be gawked at, but at least when you’re in a large crowd, the teenagers probably won’t be so inclined to use google translate to call you a slant-eyed monster in Chinese and Japanese (apparently these are the only two countries in East Asia) while you’re on the bus, minding your own business. I’ve never had a problem with my race before. Hell, I LOVE being so ostentatiously Asian azn. But in Romania, when people consistently look at you like you’re some character from Hellboy, it’s really annoying. To be honest, me and Joanne were relieved to be going back to multicultural, melting-pot London after 8 days of being goggled at. I actually think I could write a whole blog post on the racism we encountered in Romania. Even the people who mean well can come across as very offensive. One of the people who came over to give us the Spanish Inquisition in a restaurant told us that he’d worked in the States for ten or more years, that three of his ex girlfriends were Asian sinophile and that he still couldn’t tell the difference between all of us. I had a cow or three when he guessed Vietnam and the Philippines after China and Korea fell short. The ball really dropped, though, when he excused his ignorance by saying, “Well, you all look the same, you know – the Chinese, the Filipinos, the Viets and the Koreans. Exactly the same.” I felt so insulted, even though I knew he didn’t mean any harm, and retorted rather stiffly, “Well, we can say the same about you people, you realize – you Romanians, Serbs, Slovaks and MAGYARS all look alike to us azns, too.”

Back to Sibiu. The old town was beautiful. This is their main church. Note the colourful tiles of the roof.

This is the old town – see the windows, which look like peeping eyes? It’s a very common feature of Sibiu’s houses.

The Piata Mica.

On our way back, we were fortunate enough to encounter their parade.

 

See the "Banca Transilvania" in the background? It's a blood bank

And we got a lovely view of the piata bathed in the light of the late afternoon sun.

Dinner in a bar off the Piata Mare. I had polenta, again, and Romanian meat rolls (sarmale) – the vampires continue to dazzle me with their culinary skills. sparkle sparkle, glitter glitter.

Again, I realise this picture is really bad, and again I excuse myself by the fact that I was starving at the time.

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.

Romania, day 3 – Peles Castle

Featured photo: the picture-perfect Peles Castle.

Do you ever feel that heady drowsiness when you eat too much? That’s what happened to me right after dinner. Sugar crash is what some people aptly name this curious phenomenon. And I crashed so hard, but now it’s midnight and suddenly I’m not so tired anymore. On the other hand, I don’t feel I can get my dander up for my dissertation. So it’s hello blog again.

Our destination today was Peles (pronounced Pelesh – yes, I missed that toggle again) Castle. Peles is located in a beautiful village called Sinaia, tucked away deep within the Carpathians and about an hour’s train from Brasov (2.7 pounds). The scenery along the train route took my breath away. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any good pictures since the train was moving too fast, and the windows were dirty. Mountain after mountain, forests upon forests, was my impression. I come from a mountainous country, where the terrain is very similar to the Carpathians, so I’m used to them, but I can see why so many people fall in love with Romania for its geography. For my part, I was imagining Jonathan Harker’s terrible first journey to Transylvania, and his coach rolling through the Borgo Pass. It all seems so easy by daylight when you’re safely stowed away in a train hurtling through hill and dale, but it must have been terrifying for the people back then to navigate these vast, seemingly neverending stretches of mountains, especially during the treacherous winter months, without technology on their side.

Anyhow, here’s a picture of Sinaia’s train station – just to give you a vague idea of the mountain ranges.

We took a cab from the station up to Peles Castle, which was a rather steep drive. The driver was a decent, elderly man named Gigi Dumitrescu, and the fare was 5 lei per person. A big thank you to Gigi for alleviating our fears regarding the awful taxis in Romania. I don’t know if anyone will visit Sinaia any time soon, but if you do plan to go there and are stuck for transport, his number is 0722 259 622. He speaks Italiano, Francais and Deutsch.

Peles Castle is ridiculously photogenic, but it’s one of those places you end up taking a million pictures of, and when you come home, you sort through about 50 pictures which all look the same. I would have loved to live here if I were, oh, some sort of voivode or a rich boyar in the sixteenth century. You get a spectacular view of all the surrounding mountains, and that feeling of being nestled amongst all this splendidly majestic greenery is awe-inspiring.

View of Peles while ascending

 

Standing in the main courtyard of the castle. The people there were very friendly and obliging.

An actual view of the main courtyard.

Fantastic view of the mountain ranges - too bad about the clouds

We didn’t go into the castle, but had lunch at a swanky restaurant nearby. As always, the food was superb.

I know this picture looks weird and I did a really bad job with it, but I was ravenous at the time, so give me a break.

The people here know that Dracula is their claim to fame, and they don’t make any bones about it.

So now Dracula's a national dish

The Bulgarian salad I’ve been raving about. To be honest, I’ve been eating a lot healthier ever since I got here. Mountains of the most delicious salads I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. Who would have known that the vampires were such good cooks?

One word: YUM.

.

The waiter here was very cute, and when Joanne was in the ladies room, he hurried up to me and whispered furtively in my ear, “You are beautiful.” I recently read on another blog that the Romanians are Latins who got stranded on the wrong side of the continent. I’m feeling this sentiment more and more. The way their men vampires act and talk, I sometimes think I’m in Italy.

Speaking of Italy, I recently heard this great song on the Romanian radio. It’s called “Mamma Mia, he’s Italiano” by Elena, and the lyrics are something like this:

He’s name is Tony
He’s from Milano
He whispers softly in my ears in Italiano
He never leaves me
Coz I’m his Cinderella
He say that I’m his only one molto bella

He says I love you
So let me touch you
But mama told me
That Italian is a macho
He says come love me
Don’t listen to your mama
And I just hope that
It’s not gonna end in drama

I know you’re dying. I know I am. But it’s really catchy.

Anyway, we asked the restaurant to phone up our cabbie to pick us up, and as we got into the cab, the waiter waved a shy goodbye to me. La revedere! I’ll never see you again, since I don’t expect I’ll be coming back anytime soon. The next time I visit Romania, it’ll be off to all the places I didn’t see this time – Curtea de Arges, Sighisoara, the Iron Gates, Cluj and Targu Mures.

The driver took us to see the Painted Monasteries, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. My first taste of Eastern Orthodox churches so far, and they’re very different to the soaring Gothics of West Europe, with an enchanting appeal to them. I didn’t dare take too many pictures here, since to do so somehow felt like desecration.

Exterior of the main monastery

We then went back to Sinaia’s city centre, which was a mess of rubble. I think they were rebuilding the roads. Either way, it was extremely dusty and uninspiring, and we ended up going back to the train station, where we tried to see if we could catch an earlier train back to Brasov. The ticket lady said no, and we ended up sitting in the shadow of the Carpathians and talking about life while waiting for our train. The passengers on the trens would wave at us as they chugged into the station.

A Romanian post box

One of the trains that called in was bound for the land of the Magyars, the sworn enemies of Romania. To this day, most of Transylvania is populated by Hungarians, and the people there speak Hungarian as their first language – according to wikipedia (I know I’m losing my credibility here), the people there identify more with Magyar than they do Romania. I wish I was going to Budapest, but I couldn’t fit it into this trip.

Wish I was going there with you..

When we returned to Brasov, we went to a restaurant on the old city square for dinner. Travelling always makes me so hungry. Food was splendid, as always – I’ve come to expect nothing but the very best from yon vamps. I wonder why Romanian food is so underrated? Every time I tell their people that they serve the best food ever, I get incredulous looks much like the ones we get when we tell them we’re here for the tourism. Children dancing and twirling, the sound of music and laughter, the smell of wine and love wafting on the light summer breeze. Every night, they have a public screening of some recent film. I forgot which one was scheduled for this particular day, but I do remember that the day after was The Grand Budapest Hotel, since Joanne wouldn’t shut up about it (I hope she doesn’t read this).

I know this post isn’t as witty as the previous ones. The bird and bush of my mind have been sucked dry by my dissertation, which I’ve been working on for the whole day.

To be continued..

 

The gorgeous city square

Romania, Day 2 – Dracula’s Castle

A little cottage lying in the shadow of Bran Castle, but this batch is a good one if I do say so myself.

Me, my peers and our first world problems. Every angsty, twatty teenager/tweenager moaning about not being able to get a boyfriend/girlfriend/good job/degree/working visas/studentships/Coldplay concert tickets etc., should go on a trip to Romania. It really puts things in perspective. When you have hordes of gypsies and prostitutes hounding you everywhere you go, begging for money, destituteness written in every sun-burned wrinkle of their faces, and when people keep attempting to scam you – you stop sulking about why people didn’t like your insightful, wittily worded Facebook status.

When I think of Romania, I think of Benjamin Sisko saying “It’s easy to be a saint in paradise.” (Star Trek: The Maquis, part I.) The poverty in this country is shocking. Either that, or I’ve had it far too easy. In any case, I am immensely fortunate, and grateful, that I was able to live as my life as I have so far. These poor people. In a way, you can’t really fault them for scamming/begging/extortion, due to the ridiculously low living standards here. Their locals told me that the average Romanian earns 98 pounds per month. Their prices, although cheap compared to the rest of the EU, are pretty much the same as Taiwan. I’m never going to gripe about 22K again – but I still want to earn more than that.

That being said, I’m still very angry about what happened on bus 780 in Bucharest and despite all the stuff I just said, I still think that nothing can justify what they did and the mental scarring they left me with. What terrible people.

I also think of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII: ‘Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.’ Despite the fact that the majority of the local Romanians were amazing people, generous, hearty and welcoming, the bus incident will always loom ostentatiously in the backdrop of my memory room. It’s always going to be the first thing I think of when I remember this trip and Romania. As a matter of fact, whenever people ask me now about Romania, my initial response is, ‘Incredibly unsafe.’ I feel that this isn’t entirely fair, but as Shakespeare said, unpleasant memories tend to linger a lot longer. Tolkien similarly noted that ‘it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway’ (The Hobbit). Anyway, I’m going to have to stop all these quotations before this blog post turns into my dissertation.

Well, we spent the night at the Kretan Hostel, which cost us 7.32 for a night. It was fairly nice, though it wasn’t really anything to write home about. We left for Brasov by train at 0830, and the first thing I said as we watched Bucharest roll away in the distance was ‘Good riddance.’

Bucharest. Why does my camera always make things look so much nicer than they really are? Rose coloured lens?

Again, the actual city looks a lot worse

The journey took about 3 hours and cost about 7 pounds, was moderately comfortable (I slept through most of it), and when I woke up, we were in the land beyond the forests, Transylvania, Wallachia of old and the legendary home of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The countryside was very nice, although the mountains reminded me a lot of the ones back home in la belle Taiwan. And the Taiwanese don’t scam poor, innocent travellers.

We arrived in Brasov, our destination, without any problems, where we were based. It’s a very pretty town, and seemed a lot friendlier too. The weather was also scorchingly hot.

The Romanians have a way of signposting their town names, Hollywood-style:

This is probably irrelevant, but the one thing I don’t like about travelling in Europe is pronouncing things wrong and embarrassing myself. I think I’ve given up pronouncing things in France, but in Romania it’s fairly easy to get the hang of their names. Basically “ș” is pronounced “sh,” so Brașov is Brah-shov. And no, I didn’t forget the little toggle at the bottom when I typed Brasov – I just can’t be bothered to press ctrl+insert every time. The “oa” is pronounced “wa,” so Sighișoara is “Siggy-sh-warah.” I will never forget the look on the Luxembourg boy’s face when I asked him how to get to the Maison de Victor Hugo. Try saying that with an English accent, seriously.

Another probably obvious but oft-overlooked fact is that if you learn some really basic local phrases, you’ll get a much more positive reaction. One of my friends is Romanian and keeps trying to get me to learn his language, and I managed to pick up some elementary phrases from him. “Ce faci” (cheh fah-chee) is how are you, while “Multumesc” (mool-tsoo-mesk) or “mersi” is thank you. Frumosi (just the way you read it) means beautiful/handsome. I got lots of frumosis during this trip, much to my gratification. “Tren” is train, while “autobuz” is bus. And the Romanians keep telling me that Romanian is the hardest language under the sun. I think they forgot the fact that my native tongue is Mandarin Chinese.

We left our luggage in the hostel (6 pounds per night), and went to Autogara 2, the bus station connecting Brasov with all the other outer towns. The bus from Brasov to Bran costs 7 lei and takes about 50 minutes. The plan for today was Bran Castle, which was supposedly the fortress that Bram Stoker based Dracula’s castle on: ‘Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky [...] the castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.’ It was actually a rather accurate depiction, although I didn’t think that the cliff was that sheer. Or maybe it looks sheer by moonlight.

(A/N: None of these pictures are photoshopped or filtered in any way, because I’m lazy. Shoot me.)

The valley was very pretty.

The castle’s interior was quite interesting (5 lei admission fee I think), although if you see a certain amount of castles in a short period of time they start to all look the same.

  

We headed back to Brasov for a very satisfying dinner. The food here is amazingly cheap: full course meals don’t usually cost more than 7 pounds. Some of the things they specialise in are polenta (mămăligă – Jonathan Harker ate this when he was in Transylvania too, Bram Stoker really knew his stuff), Moldovian stew and Bulgarian salad. They also make a mean mojito. I don’t usually drink, but the booze here is super cheap. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I LOVE ROMANIAN FOOD. Or is it because I’ve lived in the UK for too long?

YUM!

To be continued – I need to wrap this up quickly, since my dissertation is laughing menacingly in my face.

Romania, day 6 – Corvinus Castle

Got up fairly early and caught the train to Deva, which was approximately 3 hours ride and cost 34 lei. Were hounded by gypsies when the train stopped for a longer duration at one of the train stations, but we continued blasting our music through our headphones and ignored them, and they eventually gave up and moved on.

Corvinus Castle was in the cards today, and it is known for being the place where Vlad was imprisoned after he was deposed in 1462. It’s named after Matthias Corvinus, the Hungarian king who built it, blood enemy of Vlad Tepes and the son of John Hunyadi, who was both Vlad’s greatest ally and enemy. All these sightseeing hotspots are so hard to reach, and they’re not signposted clearly enough – I definitely think this is something the Romanian tourist board needs to work on, among many others. After we took the train to Deva, we had to take an hour-long bus ride to Hunedoara (8 lei per person, gates 5 and 6), and then a cab up to the castle (2.5 lei apiece – we met another honest cabby).

Their town hall

Didn’t get too many good pictures today. It was Rasnov all over again – hot, blustery, stuffy, cloudy. And the castle was undergoing minor renovation, which made it look even less appealing. I think Matthias Corvinus is a really nice name, though.

Corvinus Castle

There was a large gaggle of primary school kids milling around the entrance, obviously out on a field trip. When they saw me and Joanne, they goggled at us as we walked past them. Some of them waved at us. When we waved back and said hi, they clustered around us, chattering excitedly in Romanian. OK, so not all the kids here are awful.

The admission fee to the castle was 2 lei. I should point out that we had our student ID cards with us, and student prices are way cheaper than the normal rate. You’ll get this all over the world, not just Romania. Seriously, though, travel while you can, before you leave school. You won’t regret it. You’ll save so much money, and you get to meet lots of people gorgeous Continental boys your age, who are on the same wavelength as you.

We weren’t supposed to take pictures in the castle, unless we paid another 5 lei. Frankly speaking, they wouldn’t have been able to call us out on that if we’d really wanted to take them – the castle was basically unsupervised, except for the people at the ticket till – but I figured that we should respect their rules, nonetheless. That’s why there aren’t any more pictures of the castle. I did like it a lot, though, it was full of history. There was a 15-metre-deep well in the courtyard, which according to legend was built by three Turkish prisoners in the 14th century. They had been promised their freedom by the voivode after they’d finished digging it, but the voivode died before his time and his wife reneged on her husband’s promise and decided to execute the prisoners anyway. As a dying wish, the prisoners requested permission to engrave the words “You may have water here, but you are faithless and soulless.”

The outermost tower, where the entrance is located, was the infamous Torture Tower. Now this, I did not like. Although I don’t suppose people have been tortured/executed here for over a century, the whole place gave off a very eerie, foreboding aura. You could feel that this was a place where people had died in pain and agony and terror. Isn’t there a theory saying that houses are able to absorb their occupants’ emotions and the happenings that go on within their walls? Well, I could feel it here. It was so palpable, and the atmosphere was so thick with tension that you could literally reach out and grab it, like goo. Or cotton candy. I heaved a huge sigh of relief when we finally got out. It was a miserable, menacing, sinister place. They also have horribly realistic wax figures of people being impaled, hanged and broken on the wheel. We both got the fright of our lives when we went into the first chamber and saw the torso of a man hanging from the room, his face twisted in anger and wordless torment. We knew it wasn’t real, of course, but it was very, very unsettling. On the walls, they have placards of the various types of torture used during the middle ages, as well as a special feature of Vlad’s famed method of impalement. Apparently this castle is maintained by the University of Cluj-Napoca, the capital of Transylvania. They’ve done a good job, but I can honestly say that this place is scarier than London Tombs, which frazzled me too. When fact is stranger than fiction..

We decided to walk back to Hunedoara’s autogara, since by now we knew the way, and according to google maps it would only take half an hour. There’s a cathedral located about 10 minutes walk from Corvinus Castle, which we stopped by to see.

We were feeling peckish, so decided to stop at a pub and have a late lunch. That scare in the Torture Tower really took the stuffing out of me. The pub was very nice. As usual, we were the only customers (their people can’t afford to eat here..)

Romanian traditional dress. The sash is emblazoned with the colours of their flag. The Romanians are an immensely patriotic bunch - you see the flag everywhere you go.

I was somewhat disappointed by the food though. I ordered a polenta, but it was just too oily and salty for me to finish. I only ended up eating about half of it, and threw the rest away. If I had finished it, my cholesterol levels would probably have gone through the roof.

Should come with the warning, May cause high blood pressure

However, this was the only borderline-unsatisfactory restaurant we ate at, in direct opposition to the restaurants in the UK which are revolting and overpriced, every last one of them. Finding a good restaurant in London is like trying to find an oasis in the desert. We managed to arrive back in Deva very early. Our night train was due to leave at 2100 hours and it was about 1800 when we got back. We whiled away the surplus time in the McDonalds, where they have free wifi.

My last chapter will come shortly after. The Romanian NIGHT TRAIN, hurtling us through the shadowy plains of Transylvania and the forbidding peaks of the Carpathians. It was one of the most exhilarating and romantic experiences of my life. Will be back soon.