Day nine. Bran, Romania.
In Arad, we stopped at a bakery named Gigi's and got breakfast for on the road. The pastries were superb! Then the long trek to a small cluster of bed and breakfasts and farms just outside of Bran, Romania.
The one we stayed in was very clean, comfortable and had a lot of communal space for all seven of us; plus there were three restrooms! The hosts were super friendly too. After settling in we took a walk down the road to a restaurant. I ate cow tongue in a red sauce with mashed potatoes. Everyone's food was delicious. While we waited for dessert to be hand made our waiter brought us all shots of a cherry liqiour, on the house, and hung out with us discussing our trip and his time visiting America. As Brian stated later on our walk back to the hostel, his English was so good that he had even mastered sarcasm.
Lesson of the day:
1. Large pretzel looking pastries in Romania are filled with a variety of fruit jams and they are the most amazing things you could ever eat
Day ten. Bran, Romania.
As per the traditions of a bed and breakfast, we were served breakfast. All of the food was fresh grown straight from the farm and it was very tasty.
After breakfast we went down into Bran and went to the only place I had requested to visit, Dracula's Castle! Four out of seven 'herd' members purchased tickets to see the tourture chamber in addition to Dracula's castle. As we assembled ourselves outside the castle entrance I had the chance to feed another stray Romanian dog, he ate every thing I gave him and wanted more.
The castle itself was nicely remodeled but disappointing, I had expected a stone walled medieval style monstrosity. Instead it had white washed walls, beautiful wooden beams, worn down wooden stairways, and tons of windows. Inside the first foyer there was a plaque relating the history of the castle and it's rulers. It said the whole place had been redone multiple times since Vlad Tepest ruled, thus I assume it now looks nothing like it did during the Impaler's time. As we ventured through the secret stair cases and marveled at the beautiful views from the top floor we eagerly anticipated the torture chamber.
Once we found it, I began snapping pictures of all the tourture devices, drawings of them being used and the written description of their use. Many of the descriptions also included a specific instance of the device's use and for what petty crime the person was tortured for. I'm glad to say my group and I all have a conscience, we found each device more and more disgusting. On a higher note, I did get a smashed lei (penny) with the castle on it!
Just outside the castle's gates tons of little booths were set up, everyone selling the same trinkets for the same price, a stark contrast to the undercutting we normally see at home. We managed to purchase a small amount of touristy things along with my first ever schwarma! It was so good, now I see why Tony Stark wanted some schwarma at the end of Avengers 2, which was also the whole reason we tried it.
Eventually, all of our energy was spent and so we made our way back up the pothole-riddled road to our bed and breakfast. It seemed since we had such a 'hard day' we were all in the mood for a cold beer, we took a short quarter mile walk down the road to the local beer stand, yep, beer stand. Unfortunately for me there were not any wheat or red beers, sad day. Our host came over and shared some famous Romanian plum moonshine, although they don't call it moonshine, as a traditional welcoming gesture. Like I said, they were very nice.
Afterwards we took another walk down the road to a pizza restaurant. Their pizza was odd but still good, their tortellini however was not so hot. The national spice of Romania is paprika, we knew this, but it was still an interesting moment when they brought out pink tortellini. It took us forever to figure out why the sauce was pink but we felt a lot better about it after connecting the dots. The tortellini was still gross to me, but some weirdo didn't mind it.
Lessons of the day:
1. Schwarma is good.
2. Pink tortellini is not.
3. Beer stands are a great idea
4. Matthew is a weirdo.
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