Transylvania

The town of Brasov is our home base for exploring Transylvania. It is a ski resort in the winter, and I imagine is quite picturesque with snow. There is some cool gothic architecture, like the "black church", here in the distance behind the town square.















There's a hill with a hollywood-style sign spelling out "Brasov" that you can take a cable car up. We took it up, and hiked down back to the town. Here's a view from up there. The "white tower" here provided defensive look-outs for the walled-in town. You can imagine them defending against the invading Turks here.
















In the square, there was a protest against embedding RFID chips in passports, as far as I can tell. They handed me a flyer, and I accepted with a "multumesc" (thank you), but it's in romanian and I can't read it.














One of the tourist stops in town is "rope street" here, which they say is the narrowest road in Europe. Perhaps. It's wide enough for two people to pass each other.



















We hung out last night with our hostess, who fed us some homemade wine and liquor. Apparently everybody around here makes their own wine. And many make palinca, a very strong liquor. It's pretty tough to shoot! She's a real world-traveler, and she loves being a hostess to people from all over the world.

Romania's a great place. It's off the radar of most tourists, which is kinda nice. Less people! Outside of old town, if you don't hear anyone speaking, you could imagine that you are in the US. Though there are some obviously communist-era apartment buildings. Things look like they are improving for the Romanian people. It's hard to imagine a bloody revolution just twenty years ago, or the roller-coaster ride of government changes they have had since then. Things look positive now.

Then, farther out from the towns, it gets very rural. I mostly witnessed it from the train. It would be interesting to see about staying in some of the rural areas. There are farm towns with very basic houses, and only dirt roads. They still use old-fashioned farming methods. You can see men using scythes, and people plowing their fields with horse power. Some people still use horse-drawn carriages as transport. It all seems a bit Amish.

It's nice to relax here. That's difficult to do in a city, or in an expensive place where you feel like you need to move on to keep the budget in line. We're gonna stay here longer than planned for sure.