on the road: Saxon ‘n Dracula tour of Romania

David had a semester break at the end of January and we had the opportunity to travel a bit. We really want to SEE Romania because it’d be ashame to live here for two years and not see what Romania has to offer.  And so we began our Saxon ‘n Dracula Tour of Romania.

We started in Brasov and found a guy to drive us to Bran Castle and a few other sites.  We knew we were in for an adventure when our Romanian pal said about a random U-turn in the middle of Brasov, “Is illegal, but is OK.”  He seemed to say that more often than one might expect.

Bran is not Dracula’s actual castle, but the one from the book (but don’t bring that up to Melody). It has enough Dracula paraphernalia that Vlad fans are in heaven.  The nearby cafe/bar has coffins for seats.  There are cheesy haunted houses, tons of tacky t-shirts and magnets.   Bran, the castle, was impressive, peaceful and almost fairy-tale like in the snow — monochromatic in all greys and whites.    It’s a really beautiful and impressive castle and David and I enjoyed photographing it.

From there we were supposed to go to Poenari Castle (Dracula’s actual castle), but it was along the Transfagarasan Highway and the roads were closed due to the snowfall.  So our Romanian pal, drove us to two old Saxon fortified churches — in Prejmer and in Harman.  These fortified churches are super interesting with ginormously thick walls and lots of cells lining the churchyards where people could stay if the town was attacked.  Added to that, we had them to ourselves.  Our Romanian driver, bless him, forgot that these churches were closed on Mondays (the day we were out and about).  But rather than turn back because they weren’t open, he rousted the clergy out to open them for us.  Of course, a little banii was exchanged.  But the churches seemed more stark, cold, massive, and quietly powerful since we were the only ones poking around them.

After a quick stay in Brasov, we hit the road to Sighisoara.  I heart Sighisoara.  It has color and tasty pastries.

The blending of Romanian, German, and Hungarian culture is wonderful in the architecture, in the people, in the feel of the town.  The old city is quite charming and still has centuries-old towers for each guild of craftsmen.  There’s Vlad’s birthplace and statues of Vlad that Melody just ate up.

Of course Lutheranism is popular in the more German areas of Romania.  As Sighisoara is one of those areas, that translates interestingly into the architecture.  Walking around Sighisoara, I spotted churches that definitely looked Catholic on the outside, but from the inside felt completely Protestant.  A nice Romanian woman explained to me that these were all Catholic churches, but were Lutheran-ized — stripped of icons, stained glass was replaced by plain glass, frescoes were painted over.  And up went austere portraits of Martin Luther.  As they’ve been restoring a few, they have uncovered massive paintings that were covered during the Reformation.  One that caught our eye was a depiction of the Trinity in which the Holy Spirit was shown as a woman.  I had forgotten that there was a time in Catholic art when a woman was the face of the Holy Spirit.  Kinda neat.

But aside from the buildings and history of Sighisoara.  I liked the people.  We went to their Wednesday market and I bought a woven corn stalk door mat from an old Hungarian guy.  He only knew a little Romanian but since I only know a little, it was a great little interaction.  As was the delightful interaction with an older woman who wanted to sell us her live chicken for 30RON.  We had to refuse, but we snapped a picture.

From Sighisoara, we headed to Cluj where we had our obligatory vacation meal at McDonald’s and we saw a sign for the Angry Doughnut place.  That made me smile. In her excitement over finding fresh spinach, Melody left her gloves in the piata.  But magically, when we returned to the piata, the spinach guy graciously had held on to them for her. Yay for the random kindness of strangers. Then it was across the country from Cluj to Suceava (where we said goodbyes to Melody) and then on home to Targu Neamt.

Definitely a good time, even in the cold.  All our pictures from the trip can be found on flickr.