you can call me "Castle Fetish Girl"

After being underwhelmed in Sofia, I was pretty nervous/excited for Romania.  Nervous because of all the scary stories I've heard about backpackers being robbed on the night trains going in/out of Romania, and excited to see some castles.

Thankfully, I didn't have any problems on the night train from Sofia to Bucharest, and arrived at Hostel Tina (seriously, I got a kick out of that) tired but intact.  At the hostel, I met a couple girls from Mexico and a Swedish guy, Anders.  Anders and I had a similar sightseeing agenda so we decided to team up and tackle the itinerary together.  And therein started one of the best 3 days of my trip to date!

Bucharest, unfortunately, suffers from what I deem 'Communist architecture syndrome'.  i.e. a lot of the cool old architecture was razed to make way for large, ugly things.  Between eating, loitering around town, and philosophizing about life, Anders and I managed to see the main sights.  

In front of the Parliamentary Palace, on Unirii Boulevard, which was purposefully built just a smidgen wider than the Champs-Elysees. The building is the biggest, most expensive public building... ever.  And it's still not finished yet.  They ripped up a lot of historical neighborhoods to build these two.

The next day, I convinced Anders to travel with me to Brasov, in Transylvania to go castle hunting.  You see, I find the whole concept of castles incredibly romantic (in the literary sense), and Transylvania is where you go to find castles. 

Well, Anders and I missed our train.  We are so special.  Our train didn't leave until around 1pm, but we loitered in the hostel, and then took the metro going in the wrong direction (doh!).  I should mention now that I'm an expert in taking trams/subways/buses in the wrong direction.  But I am also an expert at figuring it out fairly quickly.  :-)  Luckily, there was another (slower) train we could take, but the time passed quickly as we got back to our usual- asking each other random rhetorical questions and then discussing them.  I feel like I met my best friend!!

As soon as we got off the train in Brasov, Anders bumped into a few other backpackers he'd met on the night train from Istanbul to Bucharest.  We were all coincidentally heading to the same hostel, which was great. On the way to the hostel though, there was quite a bit of drama involving unpurchased bus tickets, the police, and some fast talking/escaping on the part of Anders friends.  It was great.  I'm sure all my Italy friends can attest to the drama involved with transit police and bus tickets.  Luckily, I escaped due to some nice British hikers who handed us a couple extra tickets right before the police demanded to see them.  Unfortunately, there were 5 of us and only 2 tickets.  Haha.

Our buddy James escaped out the back of the bus and Ken- a veteran of 3 round-the-world trips- talked the cops out of tickets for the others.  After pretty much getting kicked off the bus, we walked the rest of the way with our packs in the rain to the hostel.  It was huge and literally filled to the roof with beds.  We all got beds in the attic, and proceeded to hit our heads on the ceiling every 5 minutes.

our hostel room in Brasov- you could have rolled from one side of the attic to the other, without touching the floor!

Me and the 'Istanbul to Bucharest night train party' crew at dinner in Brasov

Within 24 hours, the group had dubbed me 'castle fetish girl' due to my incessant ramblings about castles in the area.  However, I did manage to convince them to join me on my expedition the next day to Bran castle, which is marketed as the inspiration for Dracula's castle (though Vlad Dracula prob never set foot there).

Bran Castle- probably more ominous looking at night

After the trip to Bran, the group started to disperse, as people were all heading in different directions.  We had just enough time to wander around Brasov for a bit (after I missed yet another train- sigh) before I had to say goodbye to the guys and to Anders.  :-(

Next stop for me was Budapest, via Sighisoara- the birthplace of Vlad Dracula.  My train schedule dictated that I'd be in Sighisoara for about 3.5 hours... catching my connection to Budapest at 1am in the morning.  Well let me tell you- Sighisoara is just about the most terrifying place I've ever been alone at night.  I nearly scared myself witless and convinced myself that vampires are real. 

Sighisoara's famous clock tower

Perhaps I should back up... I arrived at Sighisoara just before sunset, and walked into town to grab some food and do a lightning fast tour of the city.  The city's architecture is very Gothic and age-darkened- everything scary movies are made of.  After making a few rounds of the squares and some interesting looking buildings (including the one where Vlad Dracula was born), I made possibly the worst decision- to climb an old covered wooden staircase (the "Scholar's Staircase") 175 steps up to the hilltop church and cemetery.  At night. 

Ok now let's summarize.  Hometown of Vlad Dracula + creepy buildings + night time + old staircase + hilltop cemetery + me.  Alone.  The perfect recipe to scare the living daylights out of myself.  On the way up to the cemetery, there were other tourists and it wasn't completely dark yet, which was nice.  However, as I was admiring the views from the top of the hill and studiously ignoring the extraordinarily creepy cemetery off to my left, the other tourist disappeared.  Suddenly, it was completely dark, and I was alone in Transylvania standing next to a cemetery. GAHH.

As calmly as I could, I made my way back to the staircase, and that's when I started hearing weird noises coming from behind me, from the direction of the cemetery!  It took every ounce of courage I had left in me not to run down the hill screaming like a wild banshee.  As it was, I kept looking over my shoulder, and made sure to sweep my flashlight around all the dark corners, while walking faster and faster.  Almost to the staircase, my flashlight picked up a dark shadow in the shape of a person just off to my right and I nearly fainted from fright.  After I recovered myself, it turned out to be some other tourist who was walking around in the dark- without a flashlight.  BUT WHO DOES THAT?!?!  I pretty much booked it back down the stairs after that, and it took me the rest of the night for my heartbeat to return to normal.   I gotta say though, it was an infinitely memorable experience... that I will never do again.

And yes, I do believe a little in vampires now- at least in Transylvania.  You would have too!

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men in skirts: where are your knickers?!?

So the Scotland leg of this trip had a bit of a rough start. Upon my arrival at the airport to check-in, I got a text saying the 2 Australian girls who were to meet me in Glasgow had missed their flights due to some traffic accident in London. Crap. Luckily, I had the hotel information, and they were able to re-book their flights for the following day. I ended up with just over 24 hours to kill in Glasgow alone.

Now Glasgow: I don't know how you treat your other 'special friends', but to tell you the truth- you didn't give me the best first impression. Oh yeah, the wifi on the airport bus was impressive, but the sketch guy on the dark street? You know, the obviously drunk one who swayed so badly on the sidewalk that he finally pitched forward... into the steel retaining wall? Not so impressive.

The first morning also started off interestingly. I woke up to the sound of voices in the hallway- the maids, I assumed. In my morning confusion though, I thought I'd somehow woken up in Turkey (my next destination) because for the life of me, I couldn't understand a thing the women were saying!! Was that English?!? It went on all day.  I've never been so utterly confused in my life. I thought every single person I passed on the street was a foreigner. It must have been nearly dinnertime before I could actually detect the English words underneath the thick Scottish accents. Whew! I'm not going crazy after all.

Spent the day at a museum, checking out a cool little street festival, and basically wandering the streets. That evening, Laudy and Lisa showed up and we went to dinner. Funny enough, none of us had any plans for sightseeing in Glasgow, so we decided to solicit some 'local' advice. You know what the locals said? "Hmm, things to do in Glasgow... well, you could go to Edinburgh!" HAHA. And so it was decided. The very next morning we set off for Edinburgh.

Now Edinbugh, whooee!  Gorgeous!  I loved the historical architecture, the castle, the narrow alleyways, the men in kilts!!  :-)  Over the next few days, the girls and I took a few tours of the Edinburgh castle, the Queen's palace, Dr Jeyll/Mr Hyde house, the city, and the pubs.  In fact, we found one pub we quite liked in particular, which had great live music.  What is it about a man with musical talent that makes him that much more attractive?  Hmm.  Think about it and get back to me, k?

Laudy, Lisa & myself in front of Edinburgh castle

The best part was our day trip to the Scottish Highlands, all the way up to Loch Ness.  All the days so far we'd been in Scotland had been rather cold and dreary, so surprise surprise when the day of our tour, the clouds parted and there was sun, glorious sun!  The Highlands have got the be one of the most visually stunning/green places I've seen.  I definitely want to go back.  We saw a 'hairy coo', which is, literally, a hairy cow, and did quite a bit of soaking in the sights at Loch Ness...  Such a tranquil spot, but I have to admit- I was quite gutted that Nessie didn't make an appearance.  Maybe next time?

the gorgeous Scottish highlands!

I had an extra day in Edinburgh after Laudy and Lisa left to catch their flights back to Australia.  Since we'd been pretty efficient at knocking out all the major tourist attractions, the only thing left I wanted to do was a tour of Mary King's Close, which was an underground area back in the day that housed small businesses and homes.  They try to make it scary, and they succeeded... dark underground places that have existed for centuries definitely have an edge on terror.  I'm just glad I opted out of the underground ghost tours.

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