Well we've not met Dracula, but we have met underpants guy...

After a delightful morning at the Museum of the Romanian Peasant and lunch at the hostel, we headed out to Gara de Nord to catch the train to Brasov, a Saxon town 3 hours away. All seemed to be going well, tickets complete with seat reservations were purchased and we were feeling quite proud of ourselves. This wasn't to last. Having located the platform and the correct train, we dutifully tried to find the correct carriage and, being unable to see an obvious no.1 (our reservation), we just jumped on and hoped for the best. We got ourselves into what we thought was our carriage and dutifully loaded the bags on to the rack and sat down, ready for a chilled journey north. We were sat down about 5 minutes when the lady next to me told me that she couldn't help noticing that we were in the wrong carriage and that we needed to go to the other end of the train. Back on went the bags, and with only a few minutes to spare, we tried to walk through the train to get to our seats. We soon realised that there was absolutely no hope of this as the train was getting progressively fuller and it looked like we were going to pummel some old dears with our rucksacks. Off we jumped and ran towards the front of the train, where a conductor pointed to the carriage marked 2. You could forgive us for being a little confused, given that our tickets clearly said 1. Anyway, at last we found our seats and were ready to go on our way.

It was a very interesting journey. People actually walk along the lines to get home in what look like little shanty towns. Rubbish seems to be everywhere here, although it maintains a kind of beauty and I'm not really sure why. Very soon we were out in the countryside and witnessing a different kind of poverty to that which we witnessed in the city itself - no tower blocks, but houses that look like they are falling apart. We had a lovely little girl accompanying us on the journey, who loved hearing us talk in English. This is the lovely side to the Romania we have seen, everyone is very child friendly and it is quite usual for children to just start chatting to any adult they come across in the carriage.

We arrived in Brasov about 8.30 and were quite tired. Unlike Gara de Nord, here we were troubled by men offerring us taxis and lifts to the hostel and we suddenly felt very conspicious with our huge bags. Luckily, the hostel had given us directions about buses, plus a warning about the dodgy men at the station, so we jumped on the bus and with the help of Lonely Planet, managed to direct ourselves to The Rolling Stone. Upon arrival, we were greeted by whole load of Spanish boys who were staying in the dorm rooms, and the lady who ran the hostel suggested that we might want to take the private room instead, which we gratefully did. This room even had jacuzzi bath, although you had to pay 10 euros for the plug, which we decided was bit of a rip off.

We spent the next day exploring Brasov in the snow which had fallen the night before. It is a beautiful town, with muticoloured buildings and beautiful churches and a giant BRASOV Hollywood sign on the top of the local mountain Mt Tampa. The most famous building is the Black Church, a Lutheran church with a 4000 pipe organ. Bizarrely it is full of Turkish carpets which were gifts from merchants and has really beautiful paintings on all the pews, which seemed a bit ornate for the Lutherans... The church did have a really interesting display on the Reformation in this area, strange to think of it reaching this area, which is predominantly Orthodox and has a notable Hungarian Catholic minority, but they were nothing if not persistent. Lucy spent the rest of the day having a bit more of an explore, but I wasn't feeling great so headed back to the hostel. However, she took some lovely pictures of the woods surrounding the town and the two watch towers. Brasov also has a really interesting cemetry with the graves of all those who died fighting the Communists, including a six year old girl which was well worth a look.

We decided to go out for our first Romanian meal at the locally recommended Casca Romanesca which was absoltuely lovely. Full of locals holding a celebration meal for a christening and with live music, we had a lovely evening, eating locally made sausages and in Lucy's case, even trying the tripe soup! I don't know whether it is an experience she is willing to repeat...

Sunday morning saw us up early for the first time all trip for mass. The service was in either Romanian or Hungarian, it was hard to tell, but that gave an opportunity to fully appreciate the surroundings. It was a large Cathedral which was quite full, with people popping in all through the service and was really rather pretty. We spent the afternoon going up the cable car to the top of Mt Tampa which was just astonishingly beautiful. Fresh snow and pine forests made it look like Narnia and we could see the town below, which was all very charming. We tried the restaurant for something to eat and met the owner, a lovely German man who brought us the coffees we asked for and then realising that we were hungry, brought us sausages and bread free of charge.

Headed off to Sibiu late afternoon and shared pretzels and dried apricots with the woman we were sat with. We arrived about 9 and headed up to the Old Town where the hostel was, which is absolutely beautiful, very clean and again has these lovely candybox coloured buildings. The hostel itself looked out onto the square which was beautiful, but the whole town was very quiet, which is such a change to everywhere else we've been. There were only us and two other guys staying, so we got the beds next to the heater (an old fashioned, ceiling high gas stove) which was great as it was absolutely freezing. We spent the following day just wandering round Sibiu and found another Lutheran church claiming to have the largest pipe organ in Romania, but looked to be heavily under construction so we gave it a miss. The real find of the day was the Orthodox Cathedral which had the most glorious murals we've seen on the entire trip, deep colours and fantastic detail, particularly regarding expressions, which are not often shown in Orthodox art.

Returning to the hostel to cook a stirfry, we discovered that the two guys who were also at the hostel were even odder than previously thought. The older of the two spent the whole time rubbing two candlesticks and the younger seemed to think it entirely appropriate to wander round in his all too revealing underpants all evening. We were not impressed, but did have an almighty fit of the giggles which we tried very hard to link to something other than what he was wearing, without success.

Today we left Sibiu for Sighisoara, another Saxon town, from which we will catch the trin to Budapest tomorrow. We ended up using the slow train to get there which have a universal bad press in Romania for being the worst way to travel, but actually we found it fine. It's basically like the local bus route and the tiny stations you stop at every five minutes look exactly like bus stops, with people just hopping off and walking to their villages from there. It gave us really good oportunity to see what village life is like here. We arrived in Sighisoara with enough time to wander round the medieval fortifications and although all the buildings were closed, we still managed to get a good feel for the place. We also bought some Romanian wine to have with the chicken stew we cooked, and have spent the evening chatting to the other guy who is staying here, who is from Florida, about the civil rights marches he was on and our experiences of traveling so far. A lovely end to our time in Romania.