One of these pictures is taken before our first stop, and the other is after. Katie and I traveled day and night! Lowest class and not the lowest class! Compartments and wagons! With others and alone!
I'm sure her expressions here don't represent the quality of the trip, probably just the quality of the mode of transportation.
But let me start from where we left off....
Katie wasn't feeling well, and I had bought her every bacon related snack I could find in Romania.
Which we started to test out on our train ride to our first castle. She claimed her throat could handle bacon chips.
It was a beautiful trip through a region I had not been before: East to West through the middle of Romania. Those are the Carpathian mountains under the clouds.
Old watch towers, hotels in this Transylvanian area (yup! West Romania is Transylvania, I live in the Moldavian side of Romania and I have an Moldavian accent too).
Katie saw the coolest thing and got a picture. A cross built high on the mountain top! It looked so ......I can't find the word. Awesome is a poor description.
We were lucky to have such great weather. Pretty.
We arrived in Sebes (where a fellow PCV lives) and were planning to visit a castle in Hunedoare the following day.
Julie was sweet and showed us around her small town. Transylvania; it's a place of its own.
We ate at a nice restaurant where Katie enjoyed her 2nd? 3rd? Vegetable chiorba (Romanian veggy soup that's sour).
We then took a walk around and saw some amusing sites.
The next day we left Sebes and took a train to Deva, and then a short bus ride to Hunedoara.
There was something cool on top that hill in Deva, but we didn't have time to check it out.
We had only that day to get to the castle and continue on our journey. So the search for this castle begins. I only knew about it from online and it's not a top tourist side so it was a bit hard to find.
Here was the only sign we saw at a T-intersection.
So we took a left.
This building wasn't it. Impressive, but mayor's office.
Also grand and tall with several towers, but this is a chuch.
THEN! We see a castle-like building, that's pink and says Castle! but then we saw the title "restaurant" too.
Then! after more walking and no sign of any more "signs"..we saw this thing:
And then we're like..."hey, let's just keep walking still and maybe this tower isn't an active nuclear plant."
And then we found this!! on the left and...
Before us we see TADA!
OoOooOO
Here's the walls of the castle and paths in case we wanted to walk around it.
Nope, we want to cross the bridge and enter through the front gate.
In we go!! (this wasn't the real front entrance, it was a door from the wall into the courtyard)
Here is the main hall. Kings and royals probably entertained here. It was big and there's a long table there. We saw banners and took some pictures, but there wasn't a lot of printed information around.
We went exploring whereever we could go. See the very very bottom? We tried going down there too but go stopped.
Outside view was nice too. Here's a real authentic castle courtyard. As Katie said "this is a real castle because castles are really fortresses for village folk to run into when armies attack." I can imagine a crowd of people down there, waiting for the battle to be over.
He's a path but behind the castle. The villagers can then Run into the forests over yonder, to safety.
We were up, and thoroughly checked the bottom level too.
To the deep dark places.
Guess what room we're in.
Then Katie and I deducted that it must be the bottom floor defense fighting room, not a prison. The spikes from that cage overhang probably allowed the person inside to shoot attackers below without getting slashed.
There was some information written about knights.
Pretty cool stuff! Real stuff!
It wasn't extensive...and Katie and I tried so hard but we couldn't find our way into the other rooms: bedchambers, servants' quarters, stables, etc... =( boo to that.
BUT, it was a real Castle. Not like a museum, but a defensive building for the villagers below.
With its own ar...OH! I forgot to mention that Vlad (the real prince dracula) was held prisoner here for 7 years so he couldn't become king. That's his only connection to this castle.
Towers. =( Which we couldn't find the entrance to.
This was interesting.
That last picture was the well, not part of the animal pit. In the following picture, I am standing IN the wall of the castle.
Here I am shoting a pretend incoming army, and Katie is turning her back to them.
The army left, and Katie managed to live.
OK. CRAZY CIRCUMSTANCE. So Katie and I saw all the tech people setting up and we were thinking: wedding? Goth concert? movie set? wtf?
Turns out (I forget who gathered the gutts to ask) that Microsoft was going to rent the whole castle for a conference that following weekend. Fog makers and all.
I tried looking online but I was never able to find the article on that. I believe it was ~June 3-6th.
Those secret treasures tucked away. I think this was an amazing castle castle. Untarnished by tourism..but I wish we could have seen more of the unopened rooms. The entrance fee wasn't bath either and there were maybe only 4 souvenir shops (which isn't a lot for a castle!).
So: We woke, left Sebes->Deva->Hunedoara (so about 9-4pm). Then we had to make our way back to Sebes to catch the train for our next destination: Budapest, Hungary. But first, we needed a bite to eat.
It was a 12 lei meal = ~$4. Not bad eh? Oh, Katie's was an 8 lei chiorba (so like ~2.75).
Lol to our wait for the train that night.
We got to Sebes at 8pm, then caught the 9pm train from Sebes ->Alba Iulia...and from there ect.. to Budapest, but my point is we were in this small station to about 1am just sitting there inside this one building in the middle of nowhere. This was a personnel train (I tried to shield Katie from these, but this one was inevitable). It was a short and memorable ride. I told her not to use the bathroom even if she was going to pop, and we stayed away from the door that wouldn't' close.
We were very glad! to be on our second train where we had couchettes (beds!). Then we slept the night away to arrive in Budapest at about 9am. Night.
