Is this Germany ?

Given I got the entire day to go in Brasov I want to go and see another small city in Transylvania. It is also an old Saxon town and it is just a few hours train ride away from Brasov. So on the train to go and see this place.

 

Sighisoara is another little Saxon town which is famous for its old town - and of course as the birth place of Vlad Thebes himself. He lived in this tiny town until the age of 4 which would probably make the place a Dracula tourism magnet in itself even if there where no attractive old town around it.

 

First thing I do when I get to the train station in Sighisoara is to see when there is a return train.

I look up at the board and see there is a train which is listed as sosire at a bit after 15 and one at around 17.30 - perfect there is several return trains to choose from. The first one will only give me a bit over 2 hours in the town and the second more than four - hence I initially aim for the second train.

 

From the train station it is only a short walk up to the old town - on the way old horse drawn carts are going past me on the streets of the new town. This always makes me think I have travelled a bit backwards in time to the age of grandparents or even great grand parents.

 

I walk up the hill past the Orthodox Church and the river - and there I enter the old town. If I thought Brasov where a bit of a German town I just got to the heartland of Germany.

Sighisoara is everything you would connect with an old German town. Walking the streets you pass old village house which could be anywhere in Germany and the churches is classic Lutheran German churches. There is a covered stairway leading all the way up to a church - you walk up there through the dim lighting and get to the main church of the old town. At this church there is the town cemetery - and when you walk out there to take a look you soon notice all the names are German names. And when there is some writing on the tombstones it is all in old German. Most of the graves are pretty old - but there is a few which is only a couple of years old. It is the last people from the old German population who still live in the area who get buried on the old German graveyard.

 

I keep walking around the town for a couple of hours but it is a really tiny little place and I start to wonder if I want to go back on the first train - but this would mean I would have to rush back to the station - so I just wonder a bit more around town until I am sure I have walked on every street in the old town at least once - several of the streets I pasted more than once.

 

In the end I can't spend the full two extra hours in the old town so I got to go to an internet and do something else to kill time. Then back to the station - and I get a train ticket - but the time is all wrong - the train leaves a few minutes before the train I wanted to get on. Keeping in mind my recent train incident I want to make sure I get on the right train - and then I realize my Romanian is not quite as good as I thought. Sosire means arrival hence the train I had seen on the board in the station when I arrived did not depart at a bit after 17.30 - it arrived. Departure in Romanian is plecare - luckily there is a departure and arrival at more or less the same time - hence I don't have to hang around the train station too long.

 

Back in Brasov I really don't have too much on the agenda except getting something to eat before I will be leaving for the station at night to go for my long and actually unwanted overnight train ride.

One little issue with eating in Romania is trying to get a beer to go with the meal. But for some reason it is virtually impossible in several places to get a local beer - there is a long list of foreign beer on the menu - all Tuborg, Tuborg Gold, Carlsberg - and so on. But I have not gone to Romania to be drinking Danish beers - I want the local stuff. And it is not good enough that the beer is brewed in Romania - the Tuborgs come in different bottles than back home - I want local stuff. If you do insist a little and look all the way down to the last beer on the menu it is usually a local one - so I can avoid the Danish beers in the end.

 

In the bad old days with high prices on air travel I always took overnight trains to escape the coldness and rain in Denmark to get down to the warmth and sunshine around the Mediterranean.

But  for many years I have never really wanted to travel by overnight train - and I have not done that in about a decade or so - un till last year when it kind of worked out I had to take a overnight train across Bulgarian - and then afterwards one down in Egypt. So it looks like that overnight train travel somehow has caught up on me. This train is the kind of train which has two classes of cars for the overnight journey first and second seats - no choices for sleeper cars or anything like that - you just have to try to sleep in the compartment you are in - fortunately it turns out the train is more or less empty so you can have a row of seat to yourself to try to stretch out - which is not all that easy when you are slightly above the average height in northern Europe which makes you way above average height in Romania and to tall for a standard compartment row of seat - but you make do with what is available I guess.