Romania; Cluj-Napoca, Brasov and Sibiu

Since travelling in Romania I have not written a lot, the time flies and you only have little time in every city or village so to be writing all the time didn't feel right. Now I am in Sibiu and at 1100 I will take a bus to Bucharest, probably for one night and then tomorrow night take a night train to Bulgaria. I don't know this yet because I don't like to plan things too much.

Eger
Before cluj-Napoca I was in Eger, a small town in Hungary. I was there two days, to get a bit of rest and see another city in Hungary and not only Budapest. This was a train ride of about 9 hours so I arrived in the evening and then went walking for a bit into the town, they have a place called Valley of the nice woman and it is filled with restaurants and places where you can try a specialty red wine; called Bull's Blood. There are a lot of stories about why this is the name. The next day I just went walking and suddenly I heard a lot of sirens, there was a dozen of police cars, fire trucks and ambulances, with a lot of children in it. I followed the sound and came into a parc. There was a stage and on this were people who looked official, in the rest of the park there were stands where little children could try on police clothes and helmets and ofcourse a lot of food and candy stalls. I was supposed to go to the termal this day, so after walking around a bit I went here. It started to rain and I left, to take a walk in the city, after that I went back to the park and the police were about to show a dogs show, with the real police dogs. They were so big and strong and fierce, when they bit into the (stuffed) arm of another policeman they really wouldn't let go, it was nice to see this in real life, after this I went back to the spa because it was open for another hour. After this I ate some hungarian food (GOULASH!) in a restaurant, alone, that was a pity. In the hostel where I was it felt like there were no other people . It was quite nice though because I also shared the shower (as you Always will in dorm rooms) but this shower was tooo shared, I will post a picture later, the coverage of the glass was worn off so you could look into the other shower carbins. To leave Hungary i had to buy a train ticket and it took the men 15 minutes to make my ticket and check all his books, because of this I almost missed my train but I managed. It was really funny, an older lady per sé wanted to help me with my suitcase (very, very heavy!) and then on top of the perron she told a boy of my own age; you have to help her and carry this suitcase into the train, very funny, she really insisted.

Cluj-Napoca
Ik kwam aan in het hostel in Cluj (say: kloesh) and I felt really welcome, I could drink some tea in the reception and there was a girl from Bucharest (Cristina) who was a friend of the guy of the reception. We went to walk around in the evening and I got some nice (cheap!!) food, then we walked up a hill and watched the sunset while we also had a really great view of the city. We walked down and in the hostel Cristina went back (she didn't stay here and also had to work the next dat) I was chilling 3 Dutch guys, which was funny, I was really not used to talking dutch anymore so we started talking in English and later on we talked Dutch. With them I went on a little pub tour through the city. These pubs weren't easy to find but thanks to the hostel we knew about them. The first one was the smalles pub of the town, the owners were just joking around, beer for 1 euro and a good company (2 people from Wageningen, Sister now I have my own Wageningen friends!). Then we searched for a pub in the center, we thought it was closed but then we opened one door that seemed locked and a very alive pub appeared, we had to walk downstairs, the pub was decorated with lp's on the walls, drawings, they had football tables and of course cheap bear for the guys. After this we went uphill, to a teahouse. Also this one didn't seem very alive but once inside amazing. We sat down in a room which they had painted full of stars, with lights and a lot of nice effects, there were big pillows and you could ordered tea and we ordered a shisha, still not a big fan of it but I guess I have to get used to it for Turkey haha, or not :P. The last stop was on top of the hill (walking 25 minutes from the hostel), there was a club/pub and there was a reggae party inside. There were maybe 10 other people inside, all locals. It was really funny it seemed like they only wanted to drink beer, so we started dancing and enjoying and had a pretty fun end of the evening. What was really funny was tht a guy came up to one of the Dutch guys and just started telling him about where he could buy drugs and about when he was in Amsterdam, some story like this. We walked home and my first night in Romania was a very good one!

Day 2, in the morning I met Cristina around 10:30 and we went to see a few Second-hand shops. I really love these, I bought sneakers (blue colors but you wouldn't find them in the Netherlands and a boy;s vest but a nice one 12+3 euro's) , the next secondhandshop had a sale, second article for free, I found a long black skirt, the ones that are in fashion now and a top that went with it, together for 3 euro's. What is funny is that these clothes all come from the Netherlands, donated and it reminds me of the second-hand shop where my grandparents volunteer.
Cristina had to leave to work and I went to do something turisty on my own; to a salt mine. this salt mine was crazy, you had to walk through a long tunnel, they had an echo room where you could scream and the most entertaining part was that inside it was really turisty; small bowling alley, table tennis area, boats to row in a lake, people playing badminton and more things i forgot. This was apparently so that the people will stay in the mine for a long time, to really breathe in the salt air which is goo dfor your body? I met really boring people there, I was with them in the salt mine (one traveller and 2 romanian girls that she met on couchsurfing), in the end they wanted to go to a city close by but it meant that I had to wait with them for 1.25 hours and I couldn't, so I chose to go back alone. I didn't really know how to get back so I did hitchhiking (sorry mom), it was very easy and people were very helpful, there was a lady in the car and she brought me to a busstop, i was very Lucky because when I got in the car it started raining. Other people were also hitchhiking for a longer time, so I stood like 30 metres away from then and hitched a ride first, haha! I came home and was tired, because this took longer then just going with the straight bus. In the hostel were people who wanted to do a car trip in the area Maramures, north of Cluj and to the border of Ucrain. I wanted to do this becaue it is difficult to get out of the city on your own, very expensive.
In the evening I met Cristina again and we went to an open air concert in the botanical garden, it was free and a guy performed in French (Marc Aymon), he was from Suisse. It was a nice atmosphere, there was also dancers, we were entertained! Everyone would sit on bays of hay and look at him. BTW, it's pretty cold here!! especially in the night.

Day 3, renting a car with 2 germans and one guy from Singapore. We rented a car (33 euro's per day, automatic... :( and of course gas)), a pretty good deal with 4 people! I didn't have a plan but the guys knew what them wanted to see, a cemetery that is nicely decorated all the way in the north, so on the way we would stop. Me and one other guy had a driving license, it was nice to drive, a lot on the highway and some parts in the mountains what I liked more. We stopped about 3 times, one time to climb on rocks and enjoy being in the mountains after the highway, once  at a village that seemed nice, we didn't have time to do this but we thought they bred their own fish and you could eat it really fresh there. The third time was to see a wooden church from the inside, there were a lot of those and I will post a picture. Then we found out that close to is was another church on the Unesco list, we couldn't go inside but after one wooden church i kind of got the idea of how it would look. We also stopped one time, the guys got food at a restaurant (menu for 4 euro's), but I was stupid and brought my own food so I was full while the restaurant was so cheap, I would have really liked to eat there as well.
Being at our destination point, the cemetery, was nice and weird at the same time. You pay entrance and you enter a cemetery, I will post the decorations but it also feels like disturbing people's private life, a cemetery should be a resting point for the ones passed away, not a tourist place. But it was still special to be here. In the churches in Romania you can light candles, you have a part for vii and morti, so I lit 2 candles for my grandparents that I luckily still have in the vii department and two for my passed away grandparents. This felt really nice, that you can light candles for the living. On the way back we stopped at another church, it was more like a little village, one of the buildings was built in 1993 so it felt more like a tourist village because down the village were tourist stands and the churches seemed quite new compared to others. Then we had to rush back home because I would get a night train to Brasov, to the South and thus closer to my destination. We barely made it, we rushed, I grabbed my bags and one of the boys carried my suitcase into the car and we drove to the train station, I bought a ticket really fast and could take the train. I was in a coupé with two older fat men , they were talking all night so there was one other girl in the coupe but other people want to sleep usually on a night train. I was glad for it because I felt safe with them in the coupe and I could sleep after a while.

Conclusion: I like travelling alone , it's very easy to meet new people in the hostels and you will see that the age difference doesn't really mean  a lot. At the beginnin gof the trip I didn't know if it would be fun (sorry guys!!) because they were all older than me and we didnt make jokes before, we got in the car as strangers but pretty quick we joked around, talked about the travelling of course and had a really good day together, love travelling!

Brasov: I will write about Brasov later, to tell the whole story takes me really long and because I am only for a short while in every city I really need the time to explore!