Don Miller
It was an easy walk to Bucharest’s train station from the guest house since I already did it the day before. From there, it was an easy trip to the Transylvanian city of Brașov, about a hundred miles north. A pretty little town once you get out of the non touristy section. Which I found out the hard way is quite large compared to the touristy section. I got off the train and walked into the more modern (and a bit ugly if I am being honest) part city. I walked around for a couple hours looking for a sign or at least and internet connection. I walked up one street then down the next. Walked in circles, walked in squares. It took one bar, one restaurant and 2 coffee shops before I figured out the mostly right road to the old section of town. It turns out that the Old town is at the end of an out of the way valley but not all the way to the end of the valley. Guess how I know. Yep, I walked all the way to the end of the valley and only found found a church, a pub and a hostel. Wasn’t what I was expecting by far. I was getting pretty tired and thinking I needed another internet cafe to figure it all out and reluctantly retraced my steps.
A few blocks later I noticed a crowd of people down at the other end of a side alley. I usually avoid alleys but this looked promising. It was. The other end of the alley opened out onto a huge plaza, lined with the usual restaurants, bars and shops. I found the Old Downtown Hostel right there on the square and got a bunk. As it was off season, not only did I get a bunk but I got all of them, at least all of them in my bunk room. It is one of the nicest hostels I stayed in. Clean, bright and in a great location. I dropped bag and headed out to explore and get some dinner. The old section is mostly a long pedestrian only walkway lines with the aforementioned restaurants, bars and shops. The side streets had more restaurants, bars and shops. Pretty standard old town amenities for any European old town. It didn’t seem like it was too corporate though so I was pretty happy to roam around with out signs flashing sales at the GAP or Pottery Barn. There is a McDonalds and KFC but they are easily avoided in my opinion.
I spent the evening roaming around, reading menus and having an occasional beer when the spirit moved me. I finally had a rare sitdown dinner with a waiter and everything. Google seemed to have found me too boring to track because there is no record of my ramblings for the last few days of my trip so I can’t tell exactly where I went the last couple of weeks of this trip so I can’t offer up a recommendation but there looked like there were plenty of good options.
I got a big beer at the beer store and went back to the hostel to see if there was anything interesting going on. There wasn’t so I went to bed to get ready for my bid vampire tour.
