Poiana Brasov / Bran Castle

ROAD TRIP. We were off to visit the neighboring cities of Brasov and Bran with Mihai as our non-official tour guide. Marya gets carsick so she automatically claims shotgun leaving Marc and I in the backseat. Now, Mihai had warned us about the winding crazy roads to get to his home town (Brasov), but I didn’t think they could be that bad. I have driven up and down mountains countless times traveling to PSU (R.I.P. my little Shadow). No, this was bad. I’m talking practically coming to a stop on the curves just to maneuver the wheel to turn in the right direction and not hit any oncoming traffic. I think Marya’s face turned five shades of green at one point.

So, we finally make it there and are greeted by Mihai’s parents and brother. His mother had prepared us crepes with apricot jam and a yummy bean dip. So, we talked to the rents a while and then made our way up to Poiana Brasov, a highly respectable town/ski resort. According to Mihai, this was where they all came in high school to “hang out”. Here’s a view of the town of Brasov on the way up to the point:


Chillin at Poiana Brasov

Marya and I didn’t want to ski (she’s terrified of breaking limbs, I’m terrified of skiing in general) so it was off to Bran. For some reason, this is widely known as Dracula’s castle even though Vlad the Impaler maybe stayed here once in his entire lifetime. This castle was mainly used as a defense mechanism to protect Romania from invasion. Apparently some nasty things went down outside this palace causing whole armies of invaders to retreat. I forget the details, but that’s the basic gist. Anyway…it was cool to see.

Here I am in one of the old wells/torture chambers? I’m laughing because it was super creepy in there and Marc thought it would be funny to stick his head in and startle me. It worked:


Can we say Blair Witch? Good thing there weren't any corners.


After that we went to grab some authentic Romanian eats with Mihai and his friend Radu. We placed our orders and the waitress walks by and places a plate of what looks like curly fries on our table. Oh, no my friends, it was pigskin. Yes, you read it right…pigskin. Lovely. I really didn’t think I could do it, but Marc and Mihai were eating it like crazy so I decided it couldn’t be that bad:


Ew

It was gross. It had the consistency of calamari but the taste of…well…skin? Ugh. Never again. We walked around the square in town for a bit and then thought we should hit the road again to make it back at a decent hour. Marc’s iPod batteries went dead, so to keep ourselves amused, we played a movie trivia game. Ya know, we’ll name an actor, you name a movie he/she was in, pretty simple. Teams were boys against girls and Marc’s seen tons of movies, so we thought our chances were slim. It so happens that Marya and I have seen lots of “chick flicks” and teen movies so we used that knowledge to our full ability and pulled off a 20-14 win. I had no idea that seeing stupid movies like “Joe vs. the Volcano” and “Bring it On” would someday eventually pay off. It felt good to win.