Please Reed: Dracula didn't actually live here?

Blogging about Romania... never too late. Seeing as it's midterms week, I have decided that it is a perfectly good time to write about my trip to Romania last weekend. :)

Our trip to Romania started off with a 15 hour train ride to Bucharest. I don't know what it is about long train rides that just beckons the creepers, but they seem to all book international train rides scoping out foreigners. One guy (told us he was in college, but my guess is that he was in high school. Proof: he was traveling with mum and dad) gave us one "ticket" in the form of an old receipt to join him for a movie on his laptop. We politely declined. Unfortunately, creepers don't take the hint very well, so he sat with us quite awkwardly for a good 20 minutes and didn't say a word. ???

We spent the day in Bucharest just wandering and enjoying the city. It's an interesting city, not what you expect. The old architecture and churches are closely intermingled between the shopping malls and modern buildings.

The highlight of the trip (other than 50 rounds of "asshole") was the castle tour we took the next day. Our guide, Mr. Vlad (no joke), picked us up early in the morning with the conspicuous mini-van with castle pictures on the side and "I Love Romania" stickers all over. He was entertaining, with his slightly off hair color and eagerness to please. He didn't really give us any tour information, other than the 3 minute cassette he played for us in the mini-van about the capital of Bucharest, but he did cater to our musical desires. Anytime he noticed us humming or singing along to a song he would turn the volume up, but would quickly turn the volume down if the next song was not met with equal enthusiasm. When we said we needed coffee, Mr. Vlad promptly would pull over at the nearest gas station to fulfill our caffeine needs, along with his need for a cigarette break.

When we arrived at the castle destinations, Mr. Vlad would drop us off and point in the direction of the castle and inform us there were English guides available. Peles Palace was beautiful, with themed rooms and Venetian chandeliers, but we were definitely waiting to see Bran Castle, aka Dracula's Castle.

There was no guide for Bran Castle, so we were left to find our own way around. In true "tourists from America" style, we went through the castle backwards which is quite difficult with narrow winding passage ways. Needless to say, people were annoyed with us. Jessica and Danielle bought some AWESOME Dracula teeth and had fun posing around the castle, so if people were annoyed with us at least they were also entertained. Unfortunately, when we finished walking through the castle and taking pictures of snowflakes, we noticed there was NOTHING about Vlad the Impaler in the castle. So "Dracula" never lived in Dracula's Castle. It was very disappointing, but we did get some cool shirts.

Good trip. Back to studying...or a movie perhaps?