Sunday arrives at 6AM for me and i toss and turn praying to the gods that a few more hours might be up for grabs…. however this is not the case.
I am out of water so i decide to get up at 7AM and head to the local convenience store before the sun gets too hot, i have to carry my 21KG’s about 3KM today to the train station on the red line, the air is actually almost crisp and it is a cool 15 degrees.
The convenience store is located at the end of the street and across the road so it takes all of 5 minutes to walk there, i get my usual 2.0L bottle of water and also a pro-biotic yoghurt drink to get the cylinders firing in there correct sequence.
As i make my way back up the street i get that sensation of sleep come across me and i look at my watch… 7.20AM , with any luck i can get another hour and a bit back into my sleep pattern!
I get back to the hostel and my favourite bunk mates are snoring there heads off, i put my iPod on and boot up some Ella Fitzgerald, i close my eyes and hope for the best.
Success! I reawaken at 9.30AM… at least i feel remotely better about my sleep now.
I have to meet the guys at the last stop on the northern train line at 2PM, from there we will make our way to Braşov in fine form.
The station i need is Angel Salighny, it is the last stop on the line so cant be hard.
I make my way out f the hostel and navigate to the metro, surprisingly the metro is relatively easy here , 5 lines…. 5 colours….. just get the right platform!
A day ticket is 8RON …. about 2.50NZ, so i head to the kiosk and get a ticket, i head through the turnstiles and make my way to plat form 2…. what they don’t tell you is that the yellow and red line work on the same line from the main station so i hop on not knowing any better
I keep tabs on the stations as the roll past.. so far so good.. i get to the last 3 stops where the yellow line and red line now seperate…… oh no… this isn’t a stop on the red line and i suddenly realise that I’m on the wrong line!
No problem as experienced many times before i just hop off and get on the same line heading back in the direction i came, this happened a few times in Japan and also london!.
I have to go back one stop to “Nicolae Grigorescu” this take about 10 minutes and from there i see that on the platforms there is actually a tv monitor… the next train will finish at “Anghel Saligny” <<< the one i need!
Momentarily i am on the right line and i will be at the correct station….1 Decembrie 1918 rolls past, then Nicolae Teclu….. and finally i am here.
This is the last stop on the red line and is toward the outskirts of Bucharest, i text Kamilla and see where she is as she was making the commute to the same station as well, she is already here and at a shopping complex about 200M Up the street. Fatih (Pronounced Far-Ti) agreed that this was the best location , one it has a supermarket so we can get Supplies for the road as Brasov is around 3.5 Hours Drive from our Current Location and 2 it has a bank and furthermore he also needed to get something from a shop called Decathlon.
No for the sports goers who haven’t been to Europe, in about 2006 a german sports company started up across Europe and these are sports superstores with everything, the quality of the products is very high and very cheap, as they only supply there 1300 stores across Europe so its a very good shop if you ever need or want any sporting good, they sell everything from push bikes to surf boards, clothing ,Lycra and so forth.
It’s about 1.30PM and we take shelter in the Spots shop, Fatih is only about 20 minutes, we sit in silence, Kamilla is shy natured but also as we only met each other for 20 minutes there isn’t much common ground for conversation.
Fatih arrives and we make our way to the supermarket…. or Mega Marts as they are known here.
The mega marts are the Romanian equivalent of Walmart and they have literally everything, very similar to the MEGA shops in Japan we get water, food , snack and also and AUX cable for the car… the most important thing!
We will be riding in style, a late model VW Polo and it has AC… which you need to pay more for in a rental car here… but without it you would not last in the heat of summer, the car is painted in what i would Call Russian Military Grey with Black Steel Wheels… it looks like we are about to Run the finest Romanian Cocaine from Bucharest to Brasov!
The reading here is actually very good and the motorways are just glistening black ribbons of tarmac and although the speed limit it 100KPH no one seems to take notice of this, we set off up the motorways at about a casual 140 and start our 170KM Journey to the picturesque town.
The motor way passes through amazing Fields of Sunflowers all pointing towards the suns rays which is basically directly to our left and out the right hand side of the car we stare into the faces of 100000 Suns, the ambient air temperature would be around 35 degrees.
Fatih has his favourite Turkish music playing and our windows are down…life is easy right now.
the heat radiating off the mountains of Transylvania seems to create its own Micro Climate and with every KM we close upon the Fairytale land of the Carpathian Mountains the sky gets darker and darker and eventually we are struck with a thunder storm and lightening complimented by the finest Rain storm in all the land, Fatih has to slow down to about 60KMH and the Rain dances off the windows creating visibility of about 50M.
As the storm started to ease the Suns rays pierced the clouds above creating an almost biblical scene of light hitting the ground incrementally across the fields making a great photo!
Our first stop on this leg of our journey will be a small town called Sinaia, this town is located up in The mountains and is the home of a beautiful castle called Peles castle, it was built in 1873 and is nothing short of beautiful, the Castle is surrounded by Beautiful grassed Areas and the architecture of it is something to Marvel, the castle is worth about 200,000,000 USD today and was built for the King Carol the 1st who lived from 1839 – 1914.
He was an avid hunter and this house is situated right within the forest above the town.
The castle has 7 Auxiliary buildings including a hunting Lodge, Econo mat , royal Stables, servant quarters and so forth.
You can stay at the castle for a small fee of about 1000 euros…. unfortunately we wont be taking part in this as its not within our budget.
We head back to the car and we have about 45KM to go however this road is like a plate of spaghetti and will take about 1hour 45 Minutes just to navigate as there are no passing lanes and you can only go as fast as the car in front…
I manage t get some shut eye as my last nights sleep was rather rough and when i open my eyes i am greeted by what i would call the centrefold of a National Geographic Magazine.
At the top of the mountain there is a beautiful plateau with an old village, the city was founded in 1200AD and is about 546 Meters Above sea level, in winter it snows for 4 months and the town becomes a ski resort of sorts with ski mountains nearby.
It is about 7PM now and we need to find accomodation as no one has prepared, Ahmed who is a friend of Fatih has also come for the ride and he has found a hostel called “downtown” it is only about 3 months old and costs about 15 Euros a night… substantially more expensive that what we are used to paying however we are in tourist town so its expected.
We check in and get a cosy 4 Bed Room and dump our lives off and put kamilla in charge of finding a restaurant! Surprisingly to all of us she does an outstanding job of finding one that specialised in Romanian cuisine called “Blue Viking”.
The food was fantastic i had a Chicken dumpling soup followed by a Chicken stew with Mashed Potato, the food had a lot of flavour and was very cheap compared to Bucharest
It was getting late and we had to get up early and make our way to Bran Castle (Draculas Castle) so we decided to call it a night at about 11PM
Quantum Entanglement 