Monday.. that one day everyone hates…. people post about it on social media and complain about it at work….it seems to be the one day people just don’t like, i used to be one of these people i would complain about it being another Monday, I’m not going to get philosophical on you but the best way to get through a Monday is to get up and do it, don’t complain your problems that are “Monday” are just a drop in the ocean.
As you can guess today is Monday and we awake to one of the most beautiful cities in romania, Braşov is home to about 200,000 people but you wouldn’t think so…the sound is almost of that of a wee village in rural Ukraine.
However it is 9AM and Fatih and Ahmed are already up, i open one eye and look at Fatih and I’m sure the look in my eye said “is it that time already” he had been up at 6AM and gone to the supermarket and got bread and cheese to make some toasted sandwiches for breakfast.
I got up and made my way to the kitchen, we dined on the finest Plastic cheese and homemade bread Romania could offer us, after breakfast we all made the unanimous decision to stay one more day and let the Day Manager know.
We walked to the Rocket Ship… or Volkswagen Polo of you want to downplay this fine piece of automotive engineering, and hit the road, our first stop today would be the town of Râşnov, its about 30 minutes up the valley and holds and old citadel that was founded in the early years of 1255AD and was build as part of a defence system for Transylvanian Villages. The buildings are starting to deteriorate however it looks like the Romanian Governments are starting to borrow from the EU to start restoring these old buildings to preserve there history.
We park the car and make the 20 minute walk to the top of the hill.
The citadel is stipulated on top of the hill that looks out across Râşnov and takes us abut 1 hour to walk around, there are spectacular views of the plateau along with some nice shots of the slowly decaying brick and mortar, at the top you are greeted with a 360 degree view of the area which is humbling to say the least.
We slowly made our way out of the buildings and agreed that we need to get moving to Bran Castle, Bran castle is the home Dracula and is the most famous castle in Romania, however he wasn’t a real vampire, that is just folk stories…. what he did like doing is putting people to there deaths by Impaling them on display, he got the name Vlad the Impailer!…. fitting really, it is thought that he impaled over 20,000 people during his ruling and tortured over 80,000 More during his time ruling throughout history.
The drive from the citadel to Bran Village take about 40 minutes and the road is being heavily repaired as it seems to be quite a main arterial route across the plateau, Fatih uses his finest Turkish driving to negotiate the pitted and cracked road and threw in a few dodger passing manoeuvres that keep us all awake, however Kamilla isn’t worried and I’m sure she has been in worse driving situations back in Russia, when she starts worrying ill join in!
Bran is about another 30 minutes across the plains and we arrive at just after 12PM, we park the car….illegally i might add (don’t worry everyone does that here) and make our way up to the castle gates. We are greeted with a cue of people that i would say is probably about 20 minutes wait and it only seems to Be growing so we hop in and wait patiently.
As we edge closer to the ticket we get excited and cant wait to see what Bran has to offer us, its perched up on the hill with amazing manicured gardens, once we get to the ticket desk and 25 LEI later i am in…. i am the first through the turnstile and then my heart sinks…. there is a line… and not a small one…. it would be probably 1hour wait if not longer… i look back at the crew and yell “guess What?”
“What?”
“Your not gonna like what you see in about 10 seconds” (fit of laughter)
…..
…..
***a lot of sigh’s can be heard from the crew***
There wasn’t a lot we could do except be model citizens and line up patiently,
As the minutes ticked by Ahmed made a very good observation…. no one coming out was smiling or looking happy … so either the castle was disappointing or lots of unhappy people like to visit the castle. As we neared the top of the walkway we could see the final stair case leading in.
Finally we had arrived, we walked into the castle and were greeted by narrow hallways shoulder to shoulder with tourists and we suddenly understood why people weren’t happy when leaving, it was like being in a rugby scrum and the only way to get through was to be aggressive about it.
We made our way thought the castle taking photos and pushing little old ladies out of the ways, the castle its self was beautiful but in a very different way to what we had seen yesterday, it comes down to the fact that the castle was build 700 years earlier so was a more traditions castle in the sense that it was mainly build out of Brick rather than the modern wooden construction we had seen yesterday.
The castle takes around 2 hours to get around, not cause it is big… but because it is busy.
The only thing i would recommend to the government is that they need to put English translation on a lot of there displays as none of us could read the plinths at each display.
The time was creeping up to 3PM and we were all getting rather hungry and Fatih wanted to make sure we knew our Turkish kebabs and the different types, so we sped our way back to Brasov to find a Turkish Kebab shop… these are not in shortage at all in this part of the globe that is for sure.
After a quick bit of lunch Fatih wanted to go Paragliding across the plateau and we decided to make our way to the local office of where you can do it. It costs around 350 Lei but unfortunately we couldn’t do it today as we had left it too late, we assessed weather we should do it tomorrow and did the calculations… somewhere along the group discussion we decided that for 350 Lei we could do a lot with that money…. you could rent a car for that, stay in romania another 3 days and so forth so i was kinda glad we didn’t do this but at the same time the views would have been amazing… maybe next time.
We were parked at the bottom of a hill and Fatih had been doin some googling while we had been in discussion and wanted to drive to the top of the hill, in true Rally style Fatih hit the gravel roads at the Red line making use of every ounce of power the rocket ship would allow as we made our way though the farm land situated on the hill we started to near the forestry
The Carpathian Mountains are amazing the trees look almost black and over the top is a light haze of mist and it give a very mysterious look from the distance, when u used to work for Land Rover we had a Colour called Carpathian Grey and i can see why the called it that as the colour very clearly represented the area of the globe we were in.
We got to the top of the road and there was a barrier across the road… in true tourist form and with out any second guessing i hop out and give it a kick…… and what do you know… UNLOCKED!
We drive in not quite sure what to expect next… my plan was that if anyone was to ask what we are doing, our response would be ‘we are looking for the Supermarket” just to ensure confusion for anyone who came across us.
The forestry road made its way up the hill giving unparalleled views of Brasov and we realised we had actually stumbled upon something quite special…. turns out if you break the law good things do happen, we parked the car and all sat down on the edge of the road and had a drink of water and watched the sun start to set across the plateau thinking the this was the end to a good day… however i still had one more item up my sleeve that i wanted to do…. and they crew would hate every moment of it.
The time was about 8 PM by the time we got home to the hostel and Kamilla and I Felt like beer… one piece of advice always bring a Russian traveling … if you feel like a drink… they will always keep you company…. turns out Fatih and Ahmed don’t drink at all which is not ideal for a Kiwi Traveller so i was lucky to have Kamilla along for the ride.
We walked the quaint streets of Brasov in search of a bar and came across a Jazz Bar. We headed in and it was cramped we took a stool at a black Bar leaner in the corner. Fatih had a Latte…. Ahmed a Coke… and for the Alcoholics in the back seat… Beer… cool sweet golden nectar of wisdom.
We had a few laughs and Kamilla had to take a photo of the boys so she could show her parents that she was in good company so we got that out of the way and settled in for our drink. The music was a light piano in the background and we started to make our plan for the next day as plan is always a good starting point, they knew me as a ‘yes man” what ever they had , or wanted to do … i would say yes happily.
The Transfagarasan was the mission for tomorrow that is one of the best roads in the world and tomorrows blog will depict that to you.
It was creeping on about 10.45 and Kamilla was hungry….. she is always hungry … .we think she might have worms, however we decide that food is in order, we leave the jazz bar and make a left… however the restaurants are starting to shut, up here they shut a lot earlier that’s in Bucharest…. restaurants i the capital don’t shut until midnight usually… up here it is 10-11PM
Fatih has a great idea… Turkish for a second innings….. at this point food is food and we make our way back to the Turkish restaurant we had gone to earlier and with no surprise they were open!
We sat their and ate… now if you haven’t been to Brasov they have there own version of the Hollywood sign… but it says “Brasov” and is at the top of the hill behind the city… as everyone is quite i said..
“Tonight we are going to climb to that sign”
I’m pretty sure everyone thought it was a joke and i had drunk one beer to many
They all said “okay lets do it’
… at that point i think they thought i was just kidding… however in my alcohol fulled inhibition I wasn’t… in my mind we were doing it… and no one would stop.. if they wanted to join… they would join… if not I would have done it alone!
We finish dinner and start our way back to the hostel.. oddly enough the mountain road up to the sign is only about 100M from our hostel… so as we walk down the road to the hostel i then instruct everyone to take a Sharp left and start to head up into the trees…. they suddenly realise that this is happening and reside themselves to the fact that they are going to be lugged up 4.5 KM into the bush to see a sign..
How ever what they don’t realise is that at the top we will be the only 4 people in the world at 2AM to witness Braşov at night on the 21st of August 2018 and i wont tell them that till they get to the top…. call it there reward.
I pull out my Bluetooth speaker and it on Dance Anthems playlist by Spotify to get some upbeat music… turn on my phone touch and start the climb….
The path is highlighted by a white triangle with a red centre and as we ascend the mountain the it starts of gradual… easy.. no problem …. about 1 KM into the hike the pathway starts to deteriorate quite heavily… there is a white rock littered across the path and i is very slippery and with his being located in the trees there is a constant dampness to assist with the treacherous conditions… i must admit at about the 3KM mark i started to wonder if i had made the right decision and I’m sure the were all thinking the same… however i was the pack leader at this point and there was no way i was going to let that show on my face… Fake it till we make it..
Dripped in sweat and regret as we wound our way up hairpin after hairpin Kamilla decided to share her inner thoughts and in her finest english she said “Andrew i think i hate you a little bit”.
I acknowledged her and said sorry but promised here that it would all be worth it.
The last 600M on google maps seemed to be the longest and as we got to the top there were a few courtesy lights to greet us and light our final steps toward the sign… once we got to the look out everyone understood why we had to do it at night.
We looked out across the city and Transylvania in astonishment, Fatih whipped his camera out and wished he had brought his tri pod. I then told the crew…
“Currently at 2AM on the 21st of August 2018…. we are the only 4 people in the world to witness this sight , so you should feel proud that we took 2 hours to navigate a pathways that wasn’t designed to walk at night”
They all agreed that it was something special.
It was time to navigate down… the best thing about walking up is walking down.. the walk down took about 35 minutes and everyone was tired.. even i was tired and my legs had that soft burn you might get when skiing in trying conditions… that pain is almost like a reminder that what you have accomplished is worth it.
We got back to the hostel at about 2:40 AM and as i put my head on the pillow I apologised to Kamilla once more…. and 3…….2……..1……..dead to the world once again
Quantum Entanglement 