Rocking in Romania

Hello all,

Today is day 3 in Brasov, Romania, but our first day sticking around and exploring the town.

First, a Budapest recap:
We were there three nights, and didn't get to bed before 4am any night. Three cheers for great new friends and the outdoor nightlife!

On our last day there, a group of six of us went caving. We spent about two hours underground in coveralls, helmets and headlamps (pictures to come sometime hopefully). We had a guide, and three others in our group, and shimmied through spaces so tiny that our helmets were getting stuck. It was unbelievable. And I'm happy to report that I think I'm now over my small fear of enclosed spaces. Definitely one of the most amazing experiences I've had in my life - I think I may quit school and become a caver.

We got into Brasov on noon the next day. Thanks to help from a bunch of (non English speaking) Romanian locals we found our hostel finally. Maria, the woman running our hostel is completely eccentric, but such a fun person to have as our temporary 'mom'. She sat us down and taught us about the currency. Romania is in the process of changing from ROL (old) to RON (new), so there are bills labelled 10,000Lei and some labelled 1Lei which mean the same thing = equivalent to roughly 25 cents Canadian. We have to be exceptionally careful, because most people would say something costs "10" when they mean "10,000". It's all quite confusing, so we were really lucky to have the help.

While in Transylvania (the region) we've done trips to Sinaia (visiting a pretty but over-the-top castle that used to belong to the monarchy before they were overthrown), Bran (home of the touristy but rather unimpressive Dracula's Castle - not actually where Vlad the Impaler lived, but where the author of Dracula based his book on), and to Rashov (to some really neat ruins of a fortress that protected Transylvania from a tonne of Turkish sieges).

We may be going bear watching tonight - which basically means wander to the edge of town and watch the bears come out of the hills and root through dumpsters. I think it's pretty hilarious, and Maria's husband might give us a ride after the big bbq-ed Romanian feast she has planned for us and some of our hostel-mates.

Now it looks like some of our friends from Budapest (Al and Jeff from Ireland, and Rob from Britain) are arriving in Brasov to meet us tomorrow. We're kind of antsy to get out of here, so we are likely to head to either Bucharest (capital of Romania) or more hopefully Sofia in Budapest.

Hopefully we'll have some pictures in the next stop!