maintenance - ignore

Just keeping the blog alive so I can finish it off someday.

Special note

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GRANDPA!!!

A day in Vienna

A huge cotton candy! We also had a dough boy. The vendor thought we were crazy when we asked for powdered sugar instead of garlic sauce or cheese.

We arrived in Vienna with no plan at all. We didn't even know whether we would spend the night there or take the train somewhere else. We considered going to Berlin and then to Zurich, but the Berlin train, and almost every other night train out of Vienna, was booked. Rather than bother searching around for a place in Vienna for the night we decided we might as well go back to Zurich. That turned out to be a good choice. But it meant we only had about twelve hours to see Vienna.

Our first stop was ice cream. We went to a very good shop near St Stephen's and then walked over to the church. No photos allowed inside. That's okay. The best thing about St Stephen's is the roof, anyway.

Currant and apricot. Soo good!

Sighisoara surprise

From the picture above, Sighisoara looks very nice. But that is not the impression we got when we got off the train in the morning at a  horrible looking station. Contrary to our research there were no lockers or left luggage area, so we headed off with all our luggage to the Old Town. At least, that is what we hoped. There was no tourist info at the station either, just a woman who told us to walk "that way" for "a while." We walked that way for quite a while. It was hot, the bags were heavy, and T refused to walk. The neighborhood was looking worse and worse with bars on windows and stray dogs. Finally we saw a farmer's market. We went in thinking we would buy the kids ice creams and then take one of the taxis outside to old town. The market was a little seedy. When we came out the taxis had all scattered, but there was a police car. E somehow asked the officer for directions and we set off again. This time the houses started looking better and better and with E scouting ahead a little we ended up where we wanted to be. He found a tourist office immediately where they gave him a map and offered to take the luggage he was carrying. We left the rest of the luggage at the sister hotel of our Brasov hotel, and we were off.

Enormous bags of cucumbers and peppers. 

The produce isn't handled as carefully here as in Switzerland.

Romanian history day

From Brasov we hired a tour guide to take us to Bran Castle, which inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the Rasov Fortress. As soon as we got in the car our guide asked if we were interested in hearing some Romanian history. We were, so he started, "Well, forty two thousand years ago..." and four hours later ended with dire predictions of an inevitable invasion of Romania by Russia.  It was pretty awesome. We also learned about geology, the logistics of paragliding in the Brasov region, lies the American media tells, religion, cultural differences between German and Romanian residents, and about a monk who could see the future. 

This is the secret staircase in Bran Castle

Because Romanian currency has bills down to the value of about $0.30, coins aren't so common. 

That explains the bills thrown down the wishing well.

After the castle, we went to the Rasov fortress. But first we were treated to a quick detour up to a mountain ridge with a beautiful view on both sides. There were tons of wildflowers and it almost looked like Switzerland. We could also see where someone had been cutting the grass by hand with a scythe. That didn't surprise us too much. From the train we had seen dozens of horse drawn carts piled with hay, dirt, or whatever else.