Vlad in Wallachia

At our hostel in Bucharest, we met a young Mexican traveler who tagged along with us as we explored the National Village Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum in the back of the grandiose, enormous, and epically useless Palace of Parliament, and wandered through the city. Brian caught a flight to Dublin on the 22nd, which left myself and Ben (a friend who was with the Peace Corps in Moldova) to travel onward.

Our Mexican friend Gabriel told us he was going to visit Poenari Castle, the "real" castle of Vlad Tepes aka Dracula. Brian & I had already visited Bran Castle, erroneously called Dracula's Castle by the tourist crowd. The real thing is somewhat off the beaten path. The next morning Gabriel, Ben, and I took a train to Curtea de Arges and spent the night in the town after seeing its famous church & monastery. The next morning we grabbed a shared minibus to an un-sign-posted village, walked 3 km up the highway, and then found ourselves looking up a couple thousand steps to ruins of a fortress overlooking the high mountain pass and winter-weak river below. At the top, we had fantastic views of the surrounding mountains and villages, as well as the ruins to ourselves to explore.

We climbed back down, got some tea and crepes at a nearby restaurant/pension, and walked back to the roadside where we'd eventually snag a minibus back. The villages were a mixture of new and old--sitting by the highway for an hour, we saw horse carts with hay clip-clop by, sharing the road with brand new Hyundai SUVs and swarms of homegrown Dacias. The air was hazy with all the trash fires, and laid-back dogs (owned, strays, who knows) roamed around with the chicken and geese.

Ben & I said goodbye to Gabriel (who headed to northeast Brasov) and caught a train back to Bucharest. A couple hours later, we boarded an 11hr night train to Sofia! (Italy has officially lost its claim to fame as having the Worst Train Bathroom Ever--I won't give details; I'll let your imagination do the work....)

So yep, I'm in Bulgaria right now. We arrived at 6am and walked from the train station to our hostel, which has a friendly old man who fed us breakfast and doesn't really speak English. Bulgaria uses the Cyrillic alphabet (SS Cyril & Methodius invented it here), so navigating the streets was moderately challenging. Luckily Ben can sorta kinda pronounce the words, having been exposed to some Russian. I'm excited to see Sofia and the rest of the country--we'll be working our way northeast to Bucharest for my flight to Dublin on the night of the 28th. Ciao!