Once we arrived in Bran we took a cab (because they're just so damn cheap and it was freezing) to our hostel a few miles away. It turned out to be a large family home where an older couple lived with their mid-30's son. I guess they decided to turn their home into a hostel because they just had extra rooms in a big house. There was one room with 3 bunk beds for girls and another for boys but because no one else was there, we slept in the same room. (The family thought we were dating and suggested it, haha.)
Here's the view from the room.
And here's another shot from walking around town after we got settled and left our bags.
We hit up a local shopping mall while wandering around and tried the local beer in a restaurant on the second floor. It was pretty damn good for being so cheap. We saw it all over Romania but no where else.
The next day we took a bus ride to Brasov, Romania which was about 40 minutes away. Brasov is home to Bran Castle which is mostly credited as being the castle from Bram Stoker's "Dracula" novel and at one point the home of Vlad the Impaler. It was a very cool castle but nearly as creepy as I had expected.
A grave stone right outside the castle.
Wight taking pictures of god knows what with his fancy camera.
The awesome stone stairway that led from the part of the first floor that was partially underground up to the second floor.
A picture Wight took of me standing above the courtyard.
Somehow I managed to accidentally delete my picture of the entire castle as a whole. Hmm. Anyways, just before we left the castle grounds Wight and I snuck back behind the castle in the employee-only area and smoked a joint, which is apparently punishable with a 100 lev fine but I mean, that's like 35 bucks, haha.
We were hungry and had a while to wait on the bus back to Bran so we went a bar and grill style restaurant right outside the entrance to the castle (seriously, it was like 20 meters away) and ate lunch. Before we went in though we were looking around at the souvenir shops and I accidentally stumbled upon the restaurant because I thought the music coming from inside the bar was hilarious:
After lunch we realized we had another hour and a half to kill so we sat down in a bar near the bus stop and just relaxed for a bit. I accidentally left my two liter of unopened beer on the floor in the bar but it was only a couple bucks at the super market so I wasn't too mad about it.
Back in Bran we walked around more and took in the sights. We had an amazing 3 course meal that came with free pre- and post- dinner shots, a local tradition for digestion, for about 10 bucks a piece. I really miss eastern Europe!
The next day was mostly spent riding the wrong city bus to get back to the train station and then sitting at the bar near the station while waiting for our train to Hungary to start boarding. Here we are trying another delicious local beer and being goofy as usual.
We got on our train and headed for Budapest, where we only stopped for about 30 minutes before boarding another train for Austria. We stopped very shortly again in Vienna and headed directly to Cologne, Germany where we spent the night. What was really crazy about Cologne though was that as soon as we stepped outside the train station there was literally one of the biggest churches I've ever seen. There was no where I could even stand to get more than half of it in my cameras viewfinder. Plus it was dark as hell. Here's a video clip, but it doesn't nearly capture how intimidating the real thing was.
We slept in a cheap hostel that night and boarded a train the next morning for Amsterdam and arrived there around noon.
