Hello Rural Romania

Yesterday I had my $25 flight to Transylvania. How awesome is it that you can fly for that cheaply? Except that my plane was a little shady, and for a minute I thought I might die as we were landing. Rough would be an understatement. Especially on an alcohol ridden stomach.

The airport in Budapest was pretty small and there were no boarding docks, so they loaded us all into a tiny bus where I had to stand with my backpack on my back while we just sat for 15 minutes for who knows what reason. When we finally moved, it turned out our plane was the one approximately 50 yards away. Why? Why was that necessary? People can't walk 50 yards? It would have saved us 20 minutes and about a gallon of community sweat.

The plane landed in the countryside outside the town of Targu Mures, where I had to catch the bus to my first destination, Sighisoara. Since the plane was late, I missed my bus by seven minutes - of course - and had to wait in the one room shambles of a bus station. Which oddly enough had wi-fi. Still trying to figure that one out. I got to Sighisoara at about six and was passed out by 7:30 (which was really 6:30 since I gained an hour entering Romania). But it was the first night since Friday that I'd gotten more than a few hours of sleep, and it was long overdue.

I only spent about two hours out in Sighisoara; it's a small town, and I covered all there is to see in that time. It was more of just a stopover point so that I didn't have to go all the way to Brasov from Targu Mures. Brasov is the main town in Transylvania, as well as the most touristy. Apparently there's corny Dracula souvenirs every five feet. It's sort of a bummer traveling alone off-season, because if I want to go to less touristy places, I probably won't meet anyone. Whereas hostels are still full in the big cities.

I've only been in Romania for a day, but so far it's been incredibly interesting. It's definitely the least Western place I've been so far. In Sighisoara the roads were shared with horse drawn carts full of dirty gypsies, and in the Old Town men were redoing the roads by hand. Stone by stone. (Pause - I'm on the train and we just passed these gypsy men with brightly colored head wraps standing with shotguns and their cows just staring at the train. That's sure not something I see every day). Romania's awesome. I especially liked the old, toothless women who started babbling to me at the train station and wouldn't stop, even when I said I only spoke English. She seemed to understand, and I'm wondering if she was speaking English and I just couldn't understand on account of her having no teeth. I met two Romanian guys in Budapest, and they told me everyone spoke English in Romania, which does seem to be more of the case here. Which once again seems to make little sense. Who would of thought people spoke better English in rural Romania than in Budapest?

It's so nice to be in the country after six weeks of cities. Brasov is at the base of the Carpathian mountains, so I'm crossing my fingers that it doesn't rain, and I can do some hiking. I think I might try renting a bike too. It's high time I got some exercise to try to counter my on- the-go diet of paprika chips, snickers bars, and activia yogurt drinks.

Speaking of food, I went to this fantastic Hungarian restaurant with these two Brazilian guys on Monday night. It was sort of fancy, and I felt a little underdressed in my cut-off jean shorts over purple stockings, but when backpacking, you start losing any interest in what other people think. Anyway, I got beef goulash, and then I asked for the most Hungarian dessert. It turned out to be these bready, poppyseed dumplings in a sort of vanilla pudding. Absolutely delicious. Later that night, we went to a bar that had 500 forint (~$3) cocktails before nine. I got there at 8:50, so I decided to get two long islands before the deal ended at nine. I figured they would be really weak since they were 75% off, but apparently they haven't caught on to the American way of selling at a discounted price. The drinks were so strong I had to chase them down with my lemon wedges. So much for my early night. That hostel was dangerous. I could easily see myself staying there for weeks, drinking myself into oblivion. Which is what several people seemed to be doing. One guy had been there for six months.

Well I think I've written something close to a novel, but it sure made the train ride go quickly. Hopefully I'm almost there. I'll be in Brasov until at least the first, and I'm still undecided if I'm going to head down to Bucharest or go straight to Belgrade. I want to spend another week in Istanbul, which means I only have four weeks from today to see everything else on my list.