It was a good thing we got to Brasov (pronounced Bra-shov) yesterday afternoon while the sun was out and town centre was packed with people enjoying the gorgeous spring day, because it has somehow turned into a soggy quagmire overnight. But at least we had a brief glimpse of the beautiful old medieval precinct of town under a warm spring sun, before the weather decided we also needed to experience winter!
Our main job for the day was to get to the train station and organise our tickets for the start of the rail journey through to Berlin. This first leg will take us through to Budapest in Hungary, and It rudely expects us to be on board
at 6am before pulling out, and making the 11 hour journey west. I have no idea what to expect, but hold some vague romantic notion that we'll be criss-crossing the Carpathians, stopping at the occasional village where we might be able to stretch the legs. Farmers and peasant girls will wave their embroided scarves at us as they hold back the reigns of their donkeys to avoid a collision between the 150 tonne locomotive and their milk carts. But if it rains all day?! If it rains all day I won't see any of that!
The walk back from the train station turned into a race to get warm again, but thankfully there were a few op shops along the way, and I scored a cheap scarf to keep the chill back. We swapped some of our cottons for woollies back at the hotel and walked back into the old part of town keen for a good strong coffee. So with fresh caffeine coursing through our bodies we sloshed on over to the gigantic Black Church which looms above everything else in it's vicinity. Completed in the 1400s it holds the record of being the largest gothic church in Eastern Europe and takes it's name after a fire in 1689 that destroyed everything but the stone walls that were left blackened and charred.
Nearby was place that held another record, that of being one of the narrowest streets in Europe, Strada sforii, which maxes out at 135cm. Ok, so why did they call it a street then, huh? Obviously no records held for most intelligent town planners in those days!
By now we were being harassed by more rain, so I cursed the wind gods when the first decent gust bent and snapped my $12 K-mart umbrella! Fortunately, we replaced it without getting too soggy, but the trauma gave me an appetite, and remembering a tip from our guide Andrei yesterday, we made our way to Restaurant Sergiana, a fabulous underground restaurant serving local cuisine. 'Leave your worries at the door' they advised us, but we found the boiled plum brandy had more of an effect!
So we let the rain fall and made our way back to the hotel on full bellies, and decided to watch the rest of the day pass from our windows as we tackled some basic phrases in Hungarian! Now there's a language that resembles nothing like anything we're familiar with!
