Brașov

The walk from the station to the hostel, located in the middle of Brașov's busiest old town street, has shown me more of that weird and wonderful sci-fi architecture.

The arrival at the hostel has been positively James Bondish. Or Sam Fishery, for the youngest amount us. Nobody was at the reception, but a sign, with a telephone number, told to call in case of absence. I did and I was instructed to follow some instruction by a woman.

«Go out, turn right and enter this code in the safe box.»

«Done, it opened.»

«OK, you can take key number 6. Close the box and use the key on the electronic pad of the door.»

Not bad for a start.

After a quick shower and rest, I ventured out. Brașov immediately appeared as a nice mix of old and new. A fashionable old street was lined with new shops, while many young people walked by. The central Piața Sfatului (Council Square) is a perfect place to sit and enjoy the consistent sun. From the square, you can see the Biserica Neagră (the Black Church), so called because of the charred colour after a huge fire in 1689. It's huge, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) gothic churches in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, taking pictures was not allowed inside (you know what? Stop with this bullshit!), which is a pity, for the sheer number of interesting sculpted gravestones, though I admit it didn't give me the Tardis Effect like the Duomo of Milano. You know what I mean.

After the Black Church I headed to see the Biserica Sfântul Nicolae (Saint Nicholas' Church), not far. This had the classic pointy towers seen in many Romanian architecture. Unfortunately, surrounded by other small buildings, it was impossible to get a proper angle, especially considering that from the side I was having another against the sun moment.

After a quick tour of the bastions, which gave a nice overlook of the city, I decided to walk up the citadel, the Cetățuia Brașovului, from where you can enjoy a view of the town. Yeah, great view, if it wasn't for the two huge new building popping up into view, which fortunately are a bit blurred with light in this lucky sunset shot here.

Once down again, I went back to the hostel, where I met a Korean girl and a Romanian guy. The girl spoke English, but the guys didn't. He spoke good Spanish though, so I took it as an exercise for my learning. Let's say that, as usual, reading and understanding are a different matter than speaking, but we managed to understand each other enough. Especially when he tried to talk to me about alien abduction and the resulting pregnancies...

The second day has been a mostly resting one. I went to have lunch Ina good city centre restaurant, where again I was the only patron (I'm specializing in this) and joint the Romanian guy, An US guy and a Brazilian girl for some beers at the pub downstairs. I originally wanted wine, but the first two I chose weren't available, so I opted for a nice unfiltered beer and it wasn't also available so I prayed to the waitress to bring me ANY damn beer...

Good bye Brașov, you also treated me well! Tomorrow morning let's hop on a train to Bucharest!

Sighișoara

It didn't take more than 10 minutes to notice how beautiful Sighișoara is. Surely, in Italy we have plenty of hilltop medieval citadels, but because one thing is pretty, doesn't mean others aren't. And this has a different feel, maybe that slavic atmosphere, with pointy towers and scaled roofs. Or maybe the cold temperature, which can't but make you think of people shutting themselves in at night, which actually happened. I explored the citadel streets at night and there was not a soul in sight.

Sighișoara, as many of you surely know, is Vlad Dracul III birthplace, the one that would have been later called Vlad Tepeș, Vlad the Impaler. In fact, the town is unfortunately dotted with vampire-themed tourist traps (the Vlad as a vampire thing is 100% Bram Stoker, here he's just a popular hero who defended Wallachia from Ottomans), starting from Vlad's alleged house, where a restaurant advertises its goods with very 90s Geocities-style bloody fonts. Skipped.

The clocktower, sitting atop a medieval gate, is beautiful and contains a very interesting museum, with a very interesting pharmaceutical section and a collection of several of the town guilds' items. Stuff from the guild of smiths, shoemakers, tinners, butchers, locksmiths, etc. The top overlooks the town and you can see the entirety of Sighișoara from it. Small brass plaques indicate the direction of distance of main cities and capitals. I am still thanking my unbelievable luck with the weather. Not a single cloud in sight. They're probably all in Vanadzor, Armenia (Sorry C.) by now.

At noon, you can see the clock mechanism in motion, inside, moving all sort of small figures, taken from the Zodiac.

Going up the hill, where the historical Biserica sin deal ("Church on the hill") sits, is the famous covered staircase, with wooden roof and walls. I didn't see it the first day, and for the better, because going around there's an amazing view, with one of the best sunsets ever. And since it was sundown in Transylvania, what better than a visit to the local cemetery? Mostly German and Hungarian people are buried there, guarded by flocks of... ehm, by murders of crows (surely put them by the Transylvanian Ministry of Tourism). I visited the Church the day after. Not as stunning as other orthodox churches, but interesting nonetheless. And there was a crypt! What else can I wish for?

The last evening, I met a Croatian and a Spanish guy in the hostel, while an Israeli guy joined us afterwards. After dinner, I ended up drinking wine and playing pool with the latter in a local (rather quiet) club. No Wicker Man scenes here. No one watched us, whispered us "Foreigners, leave at once!", told us we're in danger or even crossed themselves. Disappointing. Hollywood, did you lie to me?? Even worse, the radio played Toto Cutugno after a while and many locals sang to it. That was worse than a mob attack. After the club we went to a still open restaurant (he didn't dine) where a Zoolanderesque gypsy waiter, with a permanent raised left brow, sat us. While my companion ordered a pizza, I ordered a lichiu, which was listed as "plum dessert with cream". Expecting a slice of pie, I was quite flabbergasted when I got served a huge pizza with cream and plums. Don't get me wrong, it was GOOD, but I had gulaș just a hour or two before. I surrendered halfway. Romania - Giorgio, 1-0.

In the morning, after a quick breakfast, I headed to the bus station, where I met an old nice Romanian lady, speaking a perfect English, whom I shared the trip to Brașov with. As with old grannies all over the world, she was quite worried by me traveling alone, but I managed to reassure her. Brașov, here I come!

Romanian Odyssey

Back to Deva, I went straight to the station, where I got the first bad suprise: as doomingly predicted by Internet, there were no direct trains from Deva to Sighișoara. What I can do is take a train to Teiuș, then take one to Sighișoara. Problem: the first (and only train to Teiuș is at 20:30, takes two hours to get there, then the "coincidence" is or hour later. All in all, that'd mean getting to Sighișoara at 02:30am. Well, not much to do I guess, so I decided to go with it.Since it was rather early, I decided to get something to eat, something local. Which proved near to impossible. Deva closes early, thought I suspect being Sunday might have helped. I roamed the streets for one hours, with no luck. But hey, why nobody told me how wicked is Deva modern architecture? Everywhere seemed like 60's science fiction at its best, all white, curves and weird shapes. I tried to look it up on the Internet, but "Romania batshit crazy" architecture didn't give many results. Shame it was too dark to take pictures. In the end I ate some quick fast-food stuff in front of the station, and the wait began.

The train arrived in time (and it was rather nice), my seat was there but the electricity sockets didn't work, so I asked the ticket dude and he led me to some other seats, where I could recharge my devices. Darkness outside prevented me to enjoy the scenery.

We arrived at Teiuș with 30 minutes of delay. Since I had to wait a hour anyway, this didn't bother me. What bothered me, was having to wait another hour for the train, as the second was late as well. I am sure that somewhere, in Romania, someone says that when Nicolae was in power, train ran in time.

One hour in that station was surreal. It was a mix between Silent Hill, the Langoliers and some bad Balkan movie. People slept everywhere, dogs came and went. The toilet was Stephen King's material.

Finally, after all lost were about to be lost, the train arrived. It was greeted by a collective whisper. We could finally leave that god-forsaken station.

The trip has been rather awful. It was one the classic treni della speranza (train of hope), crammed with people, huge luggages and bad mood. A huge nerd, both literally and figuratively, watched bad anime on his monstrous laptop, while in front of me, the three ages of woman tried to get some sleep, mostly in vain. I read a bit, tried to sleep also but without any success. Finally, after an endless journey, we arrived in Sighișoara. The fact it's Vlad Dracul III (Vlad Tepeș) birthplace is clear from the start.

There was no way for me to reach the hostel, which closed after 0:00 anyway. Between being extremely tired (I left Timișoara in the morning) and not wanting to brave the -5°, I decided to sleep in the station. My extra jacket made a good pillow, the room was warm and I ultimately managed to sleep a bit, despite frequent wakes. In the morning I went to eat something warm (my first ciorbă!) and finally reached Burg Hostel, right in the middle of the fortified citadel, where I could finally sleep! Good night, friends!

Hunedoara

Halloween party has been excellent nonetheless. It wasn't an Halloween party actually, just a nice night in a nice place with good music, where I got to meet some of Silvana's friends. By the way, difficult not to mention the humongous dinner we had in a Serbian restaurant. Whoa.

My mind was mostly set on the upcoming departure. According to several websites, going to Hunedoara from Timișoara and then to Sighișoara is just a big fuck you. Especially the first. Apparently you have to go to Deva, then hope to take one of the two buses that mercifully go there. Miss that, and you're fucked. Impaled, even. Easy thing, considering that buses from Timișoara don't seem overly frequent. So I just decided to change strategy, ran a quick BlaBlaCar check and found a ride. Some Gabriel dude, going to Bucharest and passing through Deva. We got in touch, set a time and bam! Problem solved. Both him and the other guy we picked up spoke excellent English, so the trip has been quick, cheap and pleasant.

Getting to Hunedoara from Deva was even easier. "Two buses per day" turned out to be Romanian for "every ten fucking minutes". Well, THANK YOU INTERNET. Anyway, I managed to get there in 20 minutes and... well, Castelul Corvinolor is just majestic.

Built in 1446 in Gothic-Renaissance style, as the hands of John Hunyadi of Hungary (over the site of an older fortification and on a rock above the small Zlaști River), the castle is a large and imposing building with tall and diversely coloured roofs, towers and myriad windows and balconies adorned with stone carvings. It's a Witcher III fan's wet dream.

Exploring it all takes around one hours and a half. Unfortunately, it seems that the leitmotiv of the trip is "against the sun", that while nicely fits the Transylvanian theme, also mean that most of the photo will suck. As with the Orthodox Cathedral in Timișoara, I always arrive at stupid hours, with the sun hanging behind my subjects. Damn sun! Never trusted the bastard anyway...

Timișoara

The trip from Milan has been remarkably good, despite not having slept altogether. No crying kids (but an annoying group from Brescia) and a smooth transfer once landed. Timișoara is a pretty city, despite still showing the wounds of the Ceaușescu regime. Notably, it's the city where the revolution that ended communism in the Romania began, in 1989. A curiosity, it was the first city in Europe to have electric illumination, in 1884. The first in the world was New York. Unfortunately, I lost my SD card adaptor, so I can't really download pics from my Lumix, until I either get another one, or I find a way to transfer them, so my photos here will be limited to those taken with my iPhone, which aren't that bad anyway.

Before meeting with Silvana, my CouchSurfing host, I wandered around a bit, taking random pictures and listening to people talking in Romanian (it's unbelievable how much similar the language is to Italian, mostly when read, but also heard).

After me and Silvana met we went at her place, where she introduced me to a local spook, the Wandering Woman, an ancient woman who patrols the building ground floor, without any specific purpose than scaring the hell out of people, especially when she pops up from behind a corner. I am not that surprised anyway. It's Transylvania, right?

Silvana is a great host, she has an extraordinary culture and we share so many things (mainly music) that it can't but reinforce my idea of choosing your hosts (and guests) with care. We then went to the supermarket, cooked some food and spent the rest of the night talking about people, CS and music.

The day after I decided to live the city in a slighly less touristic and more local way, so after a couple of obligatory church-checks, like the Catedrala Sfântul Gheorghe (St. John Cathedral) and obviosly the Orthodox Catedrala Mitropolitană din Timișoara, I just walked around, sat by the canal and relaxed in a cafeteria.

Unfortunately, the Halloween party that I we were supposed to attend got canceled in solidarity with the victim of a Bucharest accident, where around 30 people died in a club fire. No Transylvanian Halloween party, but we will find somewhere else to go.

Here we go again.

In a few hours I'll leave for Romania, for a full week of usual wandering.

This might be one of the few places where I won't mind rain and gloomy weather. My steps will be Timișoara, Hunedoara, Sighișoara, Brașov and Bucharest. Cluj-Napoca was initially part of the plan, but time is limited, so it got scrapped.

Corvin Castle, Hunedoara

It will be the usual mix of CouchSurfing and hostels. I'm eager to try local food and apparently tomorrow I'll go to some good local (goth?) night. Way to celebrate my 39th! :)

It's important to know that after my first trip to Caucasus, my iPad kinda died. To much misuse, drops, etc. It resurrected just the day before leaving. Then it died again.

Guess what just happened?

Yes, it came back, so I'm bringing it and I might be able to use it for pictures. Stay tuned!

Akhaltsikhe and the Rabati castle

With my plans for Svaneti definitely svaniti (sorry non-Italian speaker), the choice was between Akhaltsikhe, once an Armenian majority town close to the very interesting city of Vardzia, and the Samegrelo area, noted among other things for its beautiful national park. I opted for the former, also after having discovered that Lucijam had also reached Georgia and was planning to go there. We met in the subway, and proceeded to the Didube station, the same I used to reach Kazbegi last year.

It was like I remembered it. An almost far east feel, with its numerous market stalls selling all kind of goods. I promised myself that this time I would go again in the Station Square underground market, which I only glimpsed on my previous visit.

Once we located the mashrutka for Akhaltsikhe we boarded it and waited for it to fill up. This is how they work, by the way. There is a vague timetable, but they really depart once they're full. A man came up to gather money. He saw we were tourist and started a random litany of prices. First "three", then "six", then "nine". It cleary didn't have a clue on how to tell the correct price, and was even mocked by another passenger, as I overheard the words ar ("not") and inglisurad ("in English"). We gave 10 Lari each, and received 4 back, so we assumed the right price was indeed 6 Lari.

It rained for most of the trip, so I didn't bother taking pics, besides on the bus we managed to meet this chatty French traveller, who made the rainy trip moderately bearable.

Once arrived, we parted with Lucijam, who had plans to reach Batumi for the night, and went to Vardzia immediately (I am not aware if she made it), while me and the chatty French (I don't remember his name, it was similar to Charlie but not exactly Charlie, so I'll call him JeSuisNotCharlie) tried to find a hostel for the night, hoping that in the morning the weather would be better. The address he had pointed to a hotel, not hostel, though. We still asked for the price. 50 Lari for one night. We're talking about roughly 19 Euro for a full room with shower, wi-fi and comfortable beds, so we both said "well, fuck this!" and we moved in. We're not at the Sheraton here, but who cares?

 

 

After resting for a bit and agreeing to meet at 20:00 for dinner, we separately set out to explore the place. Akhaltsikhe (ახალციხე, New Castle) is a town of about 20.000 souls, crossed by the Potskhovi river and, as mentioned before, used to be inhabited mostly by Armenians. Charles Aznavour's father was born here. It has, of course, a tumultuous history. It was captured by the Ottomans in 1576 and by the Russian Empire in 1828.

 

 

Saint Nino

 

The Rabati castle, which overlooks the town, is... weird. It was originally built in the XIII Century and it was recently restored to its original appearance. Now it includes a church, a mosque, a minaret, a synagogue, as well as Jaqelebi Palace, a historic museum, old baths and the surrounding citadel.

 

 

 

As with the Narikala fortress last year and Khor Virap this, I immediately noticed the enormous freedom the visitors have. You can go basically everywhere, climb towers (with internal ladders, of course), go on walkways, explorer corridors and turn corners. No fences, no "forbidden", no "dangerous". Here they must think that dangerous things are pretty obviously so, and if you get hurt, it's your damn bloody fault. I wonder how Americans do here, the notion of "sueing" someone because you fall from somewhere must be source for endless hilarity.

 

 

Yes, of course. Flowers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All in all this seems what it probably is, a large playground for rich people, as the multiple restaurant and wineries in the main courtyard seem to indicate. Some of them have outdoor areas suited for cocktail parties, and it's not difficult to imagine how better this must be with the proper weather.

Once back, we went to dinner at a local restaurant, definitely a not touristic one, where I made a show of myself ordering in Georgian ("Khuti khinkali, erti mtsvadi, puri da erti tchika Saperavi, tu sheidzleba! Ara, kartulad tsota tsota vlaparakob, italieli var da is prangelia"). Both of us got two delicious dishes, bread and the two glasses of wine turned into the whole bottle. We paid around 6,5 Euro each. Just saying.

Before going to bed we enjoyed the sight of Rabati by night. The sky seemed clear enough, so we plunged into sleep ready for Vardzia the morning after.