Bucharest to Sibiu, Romania

Friday, May 23

We had a little taste of rush hour this morning as we left Bucharest, happy that, for the most part, we were headed away from the city center as others crawled in.  We also got to see some neighborhoods a bit removed from the old town and center.  The city has some lovely parks, lots of wide, leafy boulevards, a good bit of French-inspired quite lovely architecture, and miles of Soviet-era cement apartment blocks that haven't worn as well as their older neighbors.

We  were headed to Transylvania, and after a drive through the mountains, arrived in Brasov at lunchtime.  We had a bit of a wander around the main square and old town of this pretty town with a mountain in its back yard and then drove the short distance to Prejmer.   

 

There, we visited a spare and beautiful 13th Century fortified church, perhaps the most impressive of many such churches that are a legacy of the Saxons' presence in southern Transylvania; they testify to the fact that the church functioned as a physical, as well as a spiritual, refuge.  The church is in a courtyard reached through a long passage bisected by a portcullis.  In addition to the church, the inner compound contains numerous rooms once used for housing and

to store the supplies necessary to withstand a siege.  The compound is surrounded by walls whose height and thickness testify to its role as a fortification, notably against the Turks.
 

Not far away was Bran, the home of a castle built by the Saxons to protect an important trade route, but known to all as Dracula's Castle.  Though Vlad the Impaler, the historical figure upon whom Bram Stoker's Dracula is based, may have stayed at the castle briefly while combating the Turks in the 15th century, the castle actually became a royal residence in use until the 20th century by Romania's beloved Queen Marie.  Viewed from the outside and below, the castle, with its turrets and towers looks forbidding, but the interior is actually a warren of small rooms, narrow staircases, balconies, terraces and small courtyards.

It was after 6:00 by the time we arrived at Sibiu, where we'll spend three nights as our base for exploring Transylvania.  We have a very large, modern apartment with amazing facilities in an old building on a pedestrian street in the old town.  We're just a couple of blocks from the main squares an a pedestrianized shopping street.  We walked around the very lively scene, with lots of people out and about, enjoying the mild evening; the sun didn't set until almost 9:00!