I've always wanted to travel to Transylvania, and given the tricky logistics of travelling around Romiania independently it all seemed too difficult to organise myself so I decided to join a tour group. I was a tad nervous about it, because I don't really react well to being told when to wake up and what to do with my day, but luckily it was a really good group. There were only five of us, so it would have been beyond tragic if the other people sucked. In the end it turned out to be a really fun week (whew!).
We met up in Budapest, and began with a scary 8-hour bus ride into Romania. The mostly-appalling Romanian music was so loud that the driver was wearing earplugs. Not earphones, ear PLUGS. Bizarre. We started off with a walking tour in Cluj-Napoca. Despite being anti-tour group in general, I really enjoyed learning the history of the city and the story behind the statues etc that I would normally photograph on the basis of prettiness then walk away from. Our tour guide had an amazing memory for facts and dates, and there was also a Russian girl on the tour who could engage with him about historical events and how they affected her country as well. Amazing. I'm so completely clueless, and even now I've forgotten pretty much everything I learned on the tour.
We also travelled to Sighisoara, which was a gorgous old walled town, Brasov with its Hollywood-style sign up in the hills, Bran, home of Dracula's castle, Sibiu, this year's European Capital of Culture, and stayed overnight in a teeny village called Sibiel. It was a great week. I saw just the right amount of castles and cobblestones and also managed to have a few nights' worth of drunken adventures. It was the end of my trip, so I was quite tuckered out from skipping around Eastern Europe and was actually very well-behaved and tame. Seriously. I still managed to let myself get snapped looking like a drunken fool in several photos though. Will I never learn?
I've always wanted to travel to Transylvania, and given the tricky logistics of travelling around Romiania independently it all seemed too difficult to organise myself so I decided to join a tour group. I was a tad nervous about it, because I don't really react well to being told when to wake up and what to do with my day, but luckily it was a really good group. There were only five of us, so it would have been beyond tragic if the other people sucked. In the end it turned out to be a really fun week (whew!).
We met up in Budapest, and began with a scary 8-hour bus ride into Romania. The mostly-appalling Romanian music was so loud that the driver was wearing earplugs. Not earphones, ear PLUGS. Bizarre. We started off with a walking tour in Cluj-Napoca. Despite being anti-tour group in general, I really enjoyed learning the history of the city and the story behind the statues etc that I would normally photograph on the basis of prettiness then walk away from. Our tour guide had an amazing memory for facts and dates, and there was also a Russian girl on the tour who could engage with him about historical events and how they affected her country as well. Amazing. I'm so completely clueless, and even now I've forgotten pretty much everything I learned on the tour.
We also travelled to Sighisoara, which was a gorgous old walled town, Brasov with its Hollywood-style sign up in the hills, Bran, home of Dracula's castle, Sibiu, this year's European Capital of Culture, and stayed overnight in a teeny village called Sibiel. It was a great week. I saw just the right amount of castles and cobblestones and also managed to have a few nights' worth of drunken adventures. It was the end of my trip, so I was quite tuckered out from skipping around Eastern Europe and was actually very well-behaved and tame. Seriously. I still managed to let myself get snapped looking like a drunken fool in several photos though. Will I never learn?
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