I want to suck your bloooooood

The destination today is Transylvania, deep in Romania's Carthian mountains and Dracula's castle. From Bucharest it is a 3 hour trip, on Romanian roads. The distance is maybe only 200K but there arer various nonmotorized vehicles on the road, not to mention the gas station break to use the facilities and to refuel with water, chocolate or beer. The landscape as we near the castle which is in the province of Transylvania is absolutely georgous! Here the mountains are small with increadibly dense forest. We travel on a highway that is narrow and winding which only adds to the area's appeal as often it is as though we are snaking through a tree tunnel. Very similar to parts of BC.

The the castle (actually named Bran Castle for the area we are in - Bran) is increadibly crowded (thankfully it is a cool day) and small compared to what I expected. Surprisingly also, there are very few references to who we know as Dracula.

Once out of the mountains there is plenty of farm land - nothing remarkable about that other than the method of farming totally without machinery. We saw one plough pulled by an animal - the rest of the farmers work the land by hand.

On the way back our bus is showered with a solution to prevent bird flu. This is spray comes from something comparable to driving through a sprinkler, not much spray at all - very much like a garden sprinkler.

The money here is unusual not just because it comes in huge denominations - for example, the cost of a beer would be 6,000 lei which is equivqlent to about 2.5CAD. The bills all have a transparent part to them in the shape of a bird or an animal and the coins are very light, like money that comes in board games.

In the evening I am feeling more comfortable and with a general destination in mind we find an area with many cafes and people smoking water pipes. We order a meal that consists of a glass of wine for me and a beer for Chris of course and something that I can only describe as somewhat like a burrito. The only real resemblance is that it is stuffed and rolled. The stuffing is cheese, chicken and some veggis - very tasty. Goulash is definitely not of any interest to us as we had it for lunch and surely will get our fill over the next week. We sat next to a very lucky woman who had a bird poop right in her glass! What is it with bird poop this trip???