Dear All

Well, it's Friday and I'm still in Brasov which I am enjoying thoroughly. Monday night was good fun with about 15 of us from the hostel going out. Nightlife in Brasov isn't exactly hopping so it took about 30 minutes of wandering around just to find a place that was open but it was fun anyway.

On Tuesday, most of the hostel (about 20 of us) took the day trip to Bran and Rasnov castles. Bran was pretty spectacular from the outside but a bit of an anticlimax on the inside. The most exciting part was the 'secret staircase' complete with a large sign proclaiming it to be secret. It was just a narrow, steep, stone staircase, much like being in the catacombs again. There were lots of random Dracula crap stalls at the bottom of the hill that the castle was on, but it was pretty much just absolute crap, not the fun kitchy crap that I was expecting. Rasnov castle was pretty cool and there was a gorgeous view from the top of the castle. We spent some time being silly there and taking stupid photos. We also found a random staircase that lead into a black pit so we did the only sensible thing we could think of - we all went down the staircase. Which led into a completely empty, tiny room. So about 7 or 8 of us crammed into this tiny room that had nothing in it. It was very amusing at the time. The ride home was somewhat interesting as our trip down the dark staircase meant that we got back to the van a bit late and Joe, an english boy, and I got stuck sitting in the front of the van where noone wanted to sit. People in Romania like to overtake on the wrong side of the road when there is on-coming traffic. Joe and I spent some time clinging to each other whilst on the wrong side of the road driving directly towards a large truck. Also there are no seatbelts. We all survived, however, and made it back to the hostel in one piece for a party in the basement of the hostel, which has pretty much become the norm here.

On Wednesday I had planned on having a lazy sort of day and had wanted to go up the cable-car to the top of the nearby mountain. They have a giant sign that says 'Brasov' exactly like the hollywood sign. It's pretty funny. My day got much more energetic when I discovered that the cable-car only operates in summer so I hiked up the mountain instead. I also did it the hard way for a while because I was chasing a bird and ended up going fairly vertically up the mountain for a while. The Carpathians are fairly rocky though so climbing is sort of a combination of hiking and rock climbing. Then I rejoined the normal hiking track and things got much easier. I made it to the top and back, only falling on my bum once (which makes a total of twice for the whole trip, for those of you playing at home: I also fell on my bum in a luggage storage place at a train station in Paris). I went to a cafe for lunch/dinner at about 4pm and decided that since I hadn't had either vegetables or red meat in a few days that I would get a spag bol and a salad, expecting the salad to be a side salad type thing. Instead the salad was main meal size so I pretty much had two main meals. Oh well, my tummy was pleased with the vegies and meat.

Yesterday (Thursday) I went on a day-trip to Sighisoara, which is where Vlad the Impaler was born and lived until he was four. Sighisoara itself was pretty cool. It's a very small place with a citidel on top of a hill, very untouched buildings and, of course, Vlad's first home, which is now a Dracula themed restaurant. I had a candle-lit lunch/dinner (I seem to frequently combine those meals...) at Drac's house which was pretty cool on the inside. Annoyingly, I had slept in a bit in the morning so had gotten to the train station til 11:30ish. The train to Sighisoara took 3 hours (to cover 115km!), not the 1.5 hours that was written in the Lonely Planet! So by the time I got there, I only had about 2 hours in town before it started to get dark. Lucky it's a small place. I got the train back to Brasov at 5:30 by which time it was pitch black. I was pretty annoyed at spending 6 hours of my day on a train but I did enjoy the very brief time I had in the town.

I'm catching the night train to Budapest tonight so I'm just having a relaxing day doing not much.

Love, hugs etc.