This was a long day, and as a result this is a long post.
Since we were in Romania I was interested in seeing Transylvania and Bran castle, the historical castle once owned by Dracula. Unlike the character from the story, Dracula was an actual historical figure in Romanian history, but I thanks to the vampire story his old castle brings in a lot of tourism. And since we were kind of nearby, why not check it out?
I knew that it would be a serious tourist draw, and I wanted as much as possible to avoid contributing to huge crowds and buses and long lines. We usually do this by getting up really early and organizing things ourselves. However, the area we wanted to see was quite a bit north of Bucharest in the mountains with the Transylvania area just beyond, around the city of Brasov. My first thought was to go by ourselves by train, but having seen the condition of regional trains in Bucharest I’m relieved we didn’t take that option.
Next I looked into small group tours, but there were none available on the day that we wanted to go. So the last resort was a big group tour – a busload of people on a day trip from Bucharest. There are good and bad points for a group tour – we’ve had some really funny moments on tours like these, but the trade off for the convenience and low price is the loss of independence, which we tend to value greatly.
Having no other real option we went with the tour, and so early in the morning we headed over to the meeting place with our cash in hand for admission to Peleş castle (Dracula’s castle had online tickets – nice!). There was more than one bus lined up waiting, and we checked the license plate to find ours. When the time came to board, a line sort of naturally formed and our guide, a lady named Otilia asked for our name and then checked off a list as we boarded.
Once we boarded we could watch all the chaos around us as each bus tour guide had to try to get the correct people on the correct bus. One lady didn’t have cash for the castle ticket – our guide sent her off in the direction of the closest ATM. Apparently she had trouble and went searching for another one, but she still hadn’t made it back by the departure time so the guide called her and said sorry, but we’re going.
An old sort of confused lady kept trying to get on our bus but she wasn’t in our group, and Otilia patiently told her to check elsewhere. The old lady wouldn’t give up, and our guide lost her patience quickly. “I told you that you are not in our group. Go away!”
I’d hate to be a tour guide on one of these expeditions.
One more dramatic event occurred before departure when our guide made an announcement, asking for David to raise his hand. Nobody raised their hand, and the guide said that actually, the real David just checked in outside, and having shown his ID to prove his identity revealed that there was a fake David on board. The passengers listened in silence while this interesting new development played out. A liar among us? “Come on guys, this is illegal,” complained our tour guide. In the end the real David was allowed on board as there was an empty seat available (since the poor lady couldn’t find an ATM) and finally we were off with an imposter in our midst.
As we left town the tour guide went through the basics of the trip, “Guys, we are going to have a long day so please listen carefully.” She explained the plan for the trip, and also mentioned that as we were insured by the company during the trip we would need to write down our full names on a sheet, which she started passing around. Was this a ploy to flush out the false David? That seemed quite a clever ruse. In the meantime the guide went person to person to collect the cash for the castle entry.
I was on the edge of my seat. The suspense was better than a mystery movie – happening in real life!
Meanwhile, Kuniko dozed off asleep next to me.
The end of the mystery turned out to be pretty anticlimactic. Turns out that the guide asking names at the beginning of the tour had checked in someone named “Devin” as “David”, not looking at last names and apparently not noticing that “Devin” had never been checked off. The whole thing was due to poor organization, and I was thinking that this was going to be quite a tour.
On our way out of town we passed the Romanian Arc d’ Triomphe, which seems to be a popular architectural landmark around Europe. The bus made its way through many roundabouts, which helps speed us along towards the mountains north of Bucharest. During this long stage of driving through the farmlands the guide gave us a history lesson on the Romanian people, and some of the customs and culture that they hold dear. Especially interesting was their feelings about money, funerals and generosity – nobody wants to be invited to a funeral because they’ll have to pay big money. It was an interesting contrast to Japan where the same sort of idea happens but at a wedding, instead.
Kuniko continued to sleep as the bus rocked back and forth through the heart of Romania.
After a nearly two hour drive the bus started to climb through some beautiful mountains and past smaller and smaller towns. This area was home to the royal family retreats over the years, and once the royal family set up that meant that other nobles wanted to live nearby, leaving some beautiful homes and palaces behind for history. The guide explained about the history of the royal family in Romania and the good ones, the bad ones, the horny ones, etc. She insisted that Wikipedia information wasn’t really true and every true Romanian knows this stuff. My bullshit alarm started to go off.
Because Kuniko was asleep she didn’t get the history lesson. Maybe she had the right plan all along.
But once we approach Peleş castle, Kuniko was awake and ready to check things out. The bus dropped us off in a tiny little mountain town, in a turnout designed to drop off big groups.
“Guys, we need to meet back here no matter what at 11:30, OK guys?”
Despite what it sounded like we were still going to all go through the castle together, but it was smart of the guide to give a meeting time just in case. From the bus we all walked with the guide down the hill and through a beautiful forest. Along the way some babushkas were selling berries by the road to tourists, and I suppose making a pretty good buck doing it.
We passed through a sort of gate that now was also a shop and some restaurants, with some construction going on nearby. The construction was quite loud and some of the construction workers looked more like somebody’s really big uncle than trained professionals.
After the gate we could finally approach Peleş castle, which was undergoing some renovations to the exterior at the time. That’s always a bummer because it makes it tough to appreciate the architecture and take nice photos, but what can you do? We lined up with our group in the courtyard, along with a whole bunch of other people and at least three other bus groups.
Ahead our tour guide was holding up her flag and she had our cash so we all just sort of waited for something to happen.
Nothing happened.
People around us sort of jockeyed for position, some wasps flew around causing people to react dramatically – maybe wasps in Romania are much more dangerous than other wasps. We stood and waited – but the castle wasn’t really letting anyone in. The guides were consulting with each other and no information was forthcoming.
After about 30 minutes of this I was starting to wonder if all of this was worth it. I was really interested in Dracula’s castle more than anything, the exterior of this castle was more dramatic but it was covered by tarps and equipment, and how long would it be before we got in?
So after consulting with Kuniko we decided to just head out on our own and meet back at the bus at 11:30. We squeezed ahead to our tour guide and told her our plan, and she looked like she never considered that something like this might occur. After some half-hearted attempts to get us to wait she finally said that she understood, and she gave us back our cash for the entry tickets that we’d no longer need.
Hooray – we were on our own! We did some walking around the castle, taking some pictures of the grounds and enjoying views of the mountains and heavily forested valley between them. The line for the castle was getting even longer (as nobody was going in), but we meandered back towards the buildings by the gate to look around. We stopped in the little shop but there were really only history books, so we thought to kill time at the restaurant with a light breakfast.
We sat outside overlooking the square that was under construction, and ordered a couple of lemonades and an omelette to share – we didn’t want to over order and get caught waiting for the bill if our tour group suddenly finished and walked past us.
The construction guys were making a lot of noise and using heavy tractors for little jobs that seemed like overkill to me – but it was nice watching them work while we sipped our homemade lemonades. Mine was mint, Kuniko’s was standard, and they came with packets of honey to adjust the sweetness to your taste.
At the table behind us four large ladies sat down and one accidentally sat on a wasp, all of which I understood through the gestures and reactions around us – I couldn’t recognize the language spoken.
And despite all this I really had a great time sitting out there with my wife in the fresh outdoors eating an omelette. It seems like having the freedom and the choice of what we want to do makes all the difference.
About this time our guide texted me and said that they’d be entering the castle in 5 minutes if I wanted to change my mind, but we thanked her and said no, thanks.
We finished our meal, used the clean restrooms and headed back up the hill. The way the area was set up was convenient – our group would have to leave the castle using one road, and so we just needed to keep an eye on one road to know when they were coming back.
We waited patiently at the bus stop at 11:30, but no bus came. After 10-15 minutes I texted our guide, but her response was, “12:30 guys”. I guess due to the late entry they had shifted the bus pickup time.
So we had more time to kill – we went over to a nearby cafe and had some gelatos while sitting outside on a wooden patio with a view of the exit road.
Finally, we saw our guide and the members of our group coming out, and we were able to get back together with them and head to our bus. A pair of women were 15 minutes late to the bus – they had been waiting somewhere else, apparently. As they came running up the hill the bus driver gave them some loud blasts from his horn to motivate them to hurry up. We were running pretty far behind schedule as we left the mountains.
Our guide scolded the group as a whole for putting us behind schedule, and then told us that she had been saving bad news for later – there was a road closure on the other side of the mountain and that all traffic would be routed to the road we were on. It looked like we’d have a long day ahead of us. The driver apparently knew a shortcut, and so we traveled on some back roads and over some train tracks to try to get to Brasov, our next stop.
Brasov is situated in Transylvania, and it was a pretty town. We were released in Old Town with the idea that we’d be able to get lunch and look around for a couple of hours. I was glad to visit – we both enjoyed the vibe of the town and its picturesque location near the mountains. We chose a recommended restaurant on the square, went inside and had a really nice meal. The manager brought over some tomatoes from their restaurant’s farm, and cut them up for us at our table with a little bit of salt – they were really good. As for lunch, I had mutton pastrami (a little different from what I expected but still great) with a pickled mushroom side, and Kuniko had braised veal with risotto that was excellent.
Despite the fresh tomatoes the service was kind of spotty here, and when the manager finished our credit card payment and started hinting at us leaving some cash as a tip, the whole free tomato service thing became more of a gimmick than a true organic experience. We had only the 100 lei bill and 3 1 lei bills, one was way too much and the other too little. It was an awkward spot to be sure.
After lunch we walked around Brasov, taking pictures and enjoying the town vibe. The town reminded me a little of downtown Dijon when we visited years ago during our honeymoon. We tried to buy some small snacks in case it we were still stuck on a bus late at night, but the convenience store couldn’t (or wouldn’t) break our 100 lei note and so we had to give up.
We caught our bus on time and left Brasov at around 4 pm, and we still hadn’t been to Bran castle, the main event. It was about an hour drive to get there, and we noticed that occasionally on the side of the road were some clutches of wooden shacks, selling crafts and knickknacks. I don’t think the targets here were tourists but regular Romanian people – but some of the shacks were in disrepair or abandoned, and it gave us a creepy vibe.
Bran Castle was next, and it was just as touristy as you’d expect. This is the same everywhere we’ve been – and at least we expected it coming in. There were tons of tourists and buses, and we walked through a lot of tourist trap shops before we got to the entrance to the castle. Our pre-purchased tickets went through just fine and then we climbed up the hill and joined the queue to enter.
The weather that day was clear and a little warm, but not hot. We could wait in the shade with the rest of our group, and after about 30 minutes or so we reached the entrance and could go inside.
The castle itself reminded me in many ways of Himeji castle back in Japan, with lots of creaky wood and low ceilings, historic doorways and expositions of what life might have been like living there. I really enjoyed the interior and because things were so narrow the crowds were forced to spread out. In a nod to the vampire legends a couple of rooms were set up to look a little scary which was the perfect amount of cheese for me – right on!
Having gotten our fill we went outside and then back down to the check out the tourist trap shops for a keychain. It says a lot about these kinds of shops that the keychains available here were too cheesy for even our taste. There was a lot of junk for sale, and the overall vibe was like a gypsy caravan or something.
We went back to the bus, the first people back from our group, and the driver left us in charge while he ran out for a coffee. Talking with him we learned that he gets paid a flat rate, no matter how long the tour takes. He wasn’t really happy with the schedule we were keeping either.
Slowly people trickled back on board, and then we were off, precisely as the doors closed at Dracula’s castle. We had to sit through quite a bit of traffic, nodding off now and then, and there was a pit stop for a restroom (where we saw a beautiful sunset). From the pit stop back to Bucharest was about an hour, and then we were let off at the starting point.
“Guys, I know we were late but thanks for everything and don’t forget to leave a review for me and for our driver.”
I was expecting to be braced for a tip at the end, but in this digital age a positive review is more important. We thanked the guide and driver and then walked back towards our hotel, not too far away.
Even though writing this I tended to point out the negatives, the mission was ultimately accomplished and we saw what we wanted to see. If you know going in that things will probably go a little off course then it should be easier to deal with the trip. It was a good experience and I think both of us left satisfied.
On our way back to our hotel we walked through the adjacent street, the one that had the Nomad Sky Bar, and we almost didn’t recognize it. There were crowds of people at the restaurants, pounding bass and DJ music filled the street from clubs, with masked dancers in the windows, a group of giggling teenage boys ducked into a strip club with video displays of girls licking each other’s butts. Nomad Sky Bar was jammed with people above us – it was a completely different scene at 10 pm!
We turned the corner onto our usual street and again walked by the Irish bar. The lady said hello with a big smile – she had stopped trying to get us to go in since she we were practically locals by now – but this time we went inside and sat down for a very late dinner. She looked surprised and happy, and while we ate a dinner of chicken wraps she went back to work trying to wrangle customers.
It was at this Irish bar that I tried the plum brandy that is a distinctive product of Romania. I had the strong version at 50% (!) alcohol, but despite the strength there was a lot of plum flavor to it. The waiter reminded me of the owner of Bridges Beer Brewing back in Nishi Akashi, on the other side of the world.
It was a light dinner and drinks and then we headed back to the hotel – what a long but interesting day!
