Searching for Snowmania: February 25th - March 6th, 2024
After our string of city days we were looking forward to our time in Sinaia where we had a very nice apartment booked. Sinaia is a small town in Romania's Bucegi Mountains. To get there we experienced our first Romanian train. We had been warned that Romanian trains were old and slow and not up to European standards. To us Americans they were marvels of public transit, though we could see the complaint that much of the infrastructure in the country dated to the communist era and was in sore need of investment.
There were no indicators of which stop we were at so we had to use Ben's phone GPS to anticipate which stop we needed to get off at. The station was small and cute and we managed to order a taxi to take us the short distance to our place up the hill. It was raining, which was depressing as we wanted snow. We took the day to run grocery errands and the following day we spent relaxing in the apartment and planning future parts of the trip.
After some much needed rest we ventured up to the ski hill at Sinaia. Online this resort seems to be a very complex system of various companies. In reality the nice guy at the ski shop explains how easy it is. We got some solid skis from this shop. Again we had to ask for longer skis and we were starting to think maybe we are the weirdos on long skis.
This resort was mostly open due to amazing snow making skills. They had groomed the slopes well and the first few runs we flew down the ice hard corduroy which vibrated through our body making our legs feel numb by the end of the run. As the day progressed and the sun softened the snow, we had a few really fun runs with surprisingly good snow quality. Then the sun did its job and we started skiing slush. I took a pretty high speed fall when my ski hit something weird in the slush and I went flying off the piste and sliding into the grass. I popped up and had to hunt for one of my skis. Surprisingly I didn't feel too bad from the fall. I took one more run with Ben but then decided to call it a day as the snow wasn't fun any more. Ben took a few more laps before calling it as well. It was a good day of running pistes.
After our day of skiing we spent a day walking around the city. We went by the monastery and saw some more pretty tile work. The main event in Sinaia is to tour the decadent Peles Castle. We paid to see the first and second floor of this mansion house. The wood carved spiral staircase and the inlaid marble were my favorite eye feasts in this castle.
The following day we had planned for skiing but with how much rain had fallen on those already battered slopes we decided to save the money and go for a hike instead. We hiked up to Piscul Cainelui with great views of the mountains that hug the town of Sinaia. It was a very steep hike, but we got to enjoy some early spring flowers and great views from the ridgeline. It was nice to walk with no weight for once.
The next day it was time to move on to Brașov. We ordered a taxi to get us to the station. One, two, three, four, five, six bags into the car. Get to the train station: one, two, three, four, five bags out of the car. Wait taxi, come back! Ben manages to call the driver and he swings back to give us the bag that contained all of our electronics. Thank you, kind sir!
The train to Brașov was easy. Still no indicators for which stop we were at so we needed gps to tell us when to get off. Leaving the much busier train station of Brașov many people shouted out that they were taxis. We accepted a guy who said a number that sounded high, but not ridiculously so. He dropped us off at the end of a pedestrian only street and we piled out and double counted our bags while the driver gave us his number in case we needed a taxi to get to Bran castle. He quoted us a number that seemed a little too high but not ridiculous. Later we discovered he kind of ripped us off for the ride to our hotel, but that his quote for Bran was actually going to be cheaper than both of us paying for a spot on a tour bus.
We wandered down the street looking for our Airbnb hotel. We found the number, tried a code, scurried down a tunnel and took a guess that the number in the booking title corresponded with the room number and wandered into our room! We often feel like we're are playing video games or escape rooms when following instructions to new Airbnb's. It is both highly amusing and kind of fun and also a little stressful and at times I'm kind of over it.
We finished our travel day with a trip to the grocery store. The next day we spent wandering around the old town of Brașov. Old town Brașov is surrounded by a medieval city wall periodically broken up by watch towers that the various guilds were responsible for maintaining and defending. Their main square in the middle of this messy wall is full of restaurants, a fountain that wasn't on yet, a museum and the Black Church. The Black Church got its name due to a fire darkening it's stones...er no that's just the PR according to studies it got the name after pollution darkened the stones after Brașov industrialized - gross. Originally Roman Catholic, the church quickly switched to Lutheran services after the protestant reformation.
After the church and a coffee stop, we walked to the fortress wall and checked out the Weavers Bastion. This is a medieval fortress and the weavers were in charge of defending it in the event of an attack. Some of the signs mentioned there being very few fire arms and those it did have didn't have any bullets and the gun powder was wet. Not sure how many weavers relished the idea of defending this bastion.
The following day we chilled out at the apartment and worked on logistics for future trips planning. We tried to go ice skating but we didn't understand their schedule so ended up never timing it correctly.
We woke up to a sunny day so we loaded up our climbing gear and hiked up Mount Tampa. Since skiing seemed out of the question we figured we may as well climb. We hiked up and wandered around and took the wrong way a few times before we bushwhacked to the base of the climbs. This sports cragging area was warm in the sunshine and intimidating. The first bolts were high off the ground and seemed to assume you would bring a stick clip, which we didn't have. Feeling weak and frustrated, but also scared of injuring ourselves we decided to not climb these rocks. Instead we enjoyed a nice picnic in the sun and a leisurely walk back down to the old town, where we went out to eat and I enjoyed a delicious pig knuckle dish.
The next day we spent packing for our trip to Negoiu hut, doing a little bit of souvenir shopping and we went to check out Brașov's climbing gym. While getting ready to climb we noticed yet again that Europeans take time to stretch and warm up before climbing. When in Romania I guess. We surreptitiously watched and copied some of the stretches and warm up exercises they were doing all the while thinking "Heckin' Europeans taking care of their bodies, preventing injuries, what do they think they are? Healthy?"
I ended up chatting with a Russian lady who had helped us at the front desk and showed us to the changing rooms and the warm up area. I mentioned we were hoping to ice climb at the Negoiu hut in a few days. She promptly told us that there was no ice up there, her Romanian husband is a guide and knows there is no ice up there right now.
I was pretty cautious about gym climbing with my back and my hands. Every time we come back to climbing in a gym the tendons in my hands get sore and tell me they need to stop long before any other muscles in my body say they are done. So I held back and made sure I didn't take any big falls off the boulder as I wasn't sure how my back would like landing on the mat. My back ended the day feeling mostly like I had made a good choice.
Our last day in Brașov before our cabin trip we visited Bran castle. We called up our taxi driver and he picked us up to drive us to Bran. He kept wanting us to book him for another day to check out the bear sanctuary or to check out the fortress in the area, but we just wanted the trip to Bran.
Bran Castle has the best marketing of all the castles. This castle was never seen by Bram Stoker, but the marketing director for this castle made sure people believed that this was the castle described in Bram Stoker's Dracula novel. Some people also figured that because Dracula was loosely based on Vlad the Impaler that this must have been Vlad's castle. Wrong again, he was actively beheading the people who owned this castle...so he wasn't particularly welcome there.
So despite not having any historical connection to Dracula, this castle is completely entwined in the story of Dracula. The castle was built as a fortress to control trade through the Bran Gorge. The city of Bran gifted the castle to Queen Maria in 1920 who renovated it into a Royal residence, then during the communist era the castle was removed from royal control and turned into a museum, most recently in 2006 the heirs regained control. Royal problems: "whine my castle that was gifted to me by one government was taken by another wah wah wah now another government gave it back to us, but it was in poor condition whine!”
Despite my eye rolls it was fun to explore this old building and check out some of the exhibits on Romanian folk tales. It was a lovely day, not busy and was a fun way to spend a day since we couldn't ski, but I was getting hopeful for our upcoming time in a mountain cabin.
So cool!!!
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