Bran Castle…this is the image I associate with the Dracula movies as the Dracula castle.  But no… it turns out that of all the places we’ve gone this week, this is one with no actual connection to Vlad. He is known to have passed through the Bran Gorge but the castle was built to protect German colonists in Transylvania. [read more]

Oh, and did I mention that we are in Sighisoara, the birthplace of Vlad?  Nothing creepy here. [read more]

We arrived in Hunedoara early this afternoon.  Some of our fellow travelers had arrived with suitcases full of very elaborate costumes.  Since we had done the backpack week in England, we were light on costumes.  I brought some black and white make up and a pair of skeleton gloves but that was it.  We took off into town to see what we could find. [read more]

We arrived in Bucharest last night after dark.  We opted to take a bus to find our room.  We found our way from the airport to the main city terminal but it was not so straight-forward from there.  We ran into no one who spoke English and waited at the bus stop for our connection and figured out just in time that we were at the stop for the right bus but going in the wrong direction. [read more]