European scarf count: 3
This is quickly going to be a losing battle…
Originally, I was going to head to Belgrade, Serbia for a couple nights, but when I was planning things, I did not realize that the train ride between Bucharest and Belgrade was about 15 hours and required spending the night on the train. Since that did not sound like fun to me, I decided to take a train through Transylvania and go to Dracula’s Castle instead and then continue to Budapest as planned.
Before leaving Bucharest, I headed to Obor Park (where I started every day) and there was a lovely wagon of flowers to send me off!
From minute one of my Transylvanian adventure, I knew I made a good life decision in revising my plans. I hopped on a morning train to Brasov, the closest big city to Bran, which houses Bran Castle, the castle that is said to be the home of Dracula. I met an old Romanian women who was amazing. Neither of us spoke the same language, but we communicated with some miming and me being able to figure out some words with Spanish (language is really only a barrier if you let it be). On all trains, there are always people trying to sell you something, and I could tell she told everyone I did not speak the language and not to bother me. She never slowed down or tried to dumb things down, just knew that eventually I would understand what she was saying. I liked her. J She gave me a mint at the start of the journey and halfway through the three hour ride split her apple with me. It was so lovely. I think we were both really intrigued with each other.
Her sister lived in Bucharest and she lived in Brasov, so she was just visiting for the weekend. She pointed out the towns during our journey and talked about the popularity of skiing in the region. She was interested in my travel plans and where I was going, who I was meeting up with and what I was doing in Romania. She really enjoyed telling me what she could along the way and sharing the place she calls home with me. I was taken away with how beautiful the scenery was and was (almost) constantly snapping pictures of the countryside. It is a little hard to not be absolutely obsessed with the train ride when it includes fall foliage, mountains, rivers and adorable alpine towns.
Before heading to Bran, I walked through Brasov and snapped some pictures of the town which literally looked like something out of a movie (and I even found a Columbia Sportswear store, so it reminded me of home!).
The city of Bran was very cute and there were many hotels, attractions and stores catering just to the crowd looking to visit “Dracula’s castle”. Every town seems to have a theme of popular items sold at the street markets, and Bran’s was “traditional produce” or meat and cheese purchased by the slab.
The castle was pretty bomb dot com if I do say so myself. It was super windy (which I feel like is only appropriate for Dracula’s Castle) but I was able to brave the wind to venture inside to all the rooms, small openings, secret staircases and courtyard that made up the wonderful Bran Castle.
By the time I made it back to Brasov, it was dark, so I didn’t get a chance to snap any more pictures of the town, but look forward to more exploring before heading to the next town!
