Monday 27th May After breakfast George, our local guide, took us on a walk around the town, explaining that in the 14th century the Hungarian king had invited Saxons from Luxembourg & Germany to come to the town to help defend a pass in the Carpathian Mountains between Transylvania. After WW2 most of the German speakers left the town to go to Germany receiving assistance from the West German government & now only 4% speak German as a first language. ...

Sunday 26th May We set out for Turda to see a salt mine. The Romans quarried salt here but abandoned it due to the collapse of the walls. Since the 13th century the salt was mined until 1932 & more recently the mine has become a tourist attraction. We entered the mine from a stairway which took us down to one of the old passages about 4m by 4m leading to various chambers a huge one housing the 'Crivac', a giant windlass installed in 1881 to haul up the...

Saturday 25th May Our hotel is the Fronius Residence, a 17th century house with a huge, impressively furnished bedroom with a vaulted ceiling. It is in the walled town set above the new town down around the river. After a leisurely breakfast we were led around the town to have the sights explained. The main square is dominated by a tall clock tower & the Lutheran church. On one side there is the house in which Vlad Tepes, 'the Impaler' was born in 1431...

Thursday 23rd May After breakfast we walked to the cable car station arriving well before it opened at 9.30am. The car took us to the top of the ridge & we had some fine views of Brasov on the way. The top was a bit of a disappointment as the viewing platform was closed & the surrounding trees limited our sightseeing from the ridge. We descended on the car & set off past the Weavers' Bastion to see St Nicholas's Cathedral in the Romanian part o...

Tuesday 21st May Left the hotel at 9 am but the minibus was held up in traffic, so we got away at about 9.20 & crawled out of Bucharest at snail's pace for 15km. Eventually we cleared the city & drove past the world's oldest oil refinery & an abandoned power station from the Communist era at Ploiesti. We also later passed a couple of modern oil donkeys pumping it out of the huge plain. A nearby city was the target of American bombers in WW2 to k...