Brasov

The next day, Deni takes me all around Brasov, the nextdoor town. Not only have an excelent host, but also an excelent guide. I get to know everything about local history and see all the monuments, the city wall etc... Better than a hundret words, some pictures:

Old town center.

Same place, other angle, old defending towner in the back (one of several)

Church, forgot the history about this one, sorry Deni, its been a long time... Can you refresh my memory?

Beautifull view from up on the road.

The Black Catherdral, remember the little anecdote about this one :) Merchants going from the far East to Europe had to pass trough a dangerous forest full of robers just before getting to Brasov, where the "safe" part of the journey started. So They old stoped in this church to thank God and offered something, mostly Carpets from the east. Also it is named Black because it burned a couple times.

Country side

Yep a view from the castles window on the country side.

And some lovely country side food, specialy dedicated to my father and Rayan, though about you guys eating that delicious corn!

Bran Castle, Dracula style

Next Day is unfortunatly (you will soon understand why...) a Sunday and it starts with an unlucky hitchhicking attempt to Bran, some 20 kms from Rasnov. I end up taking the bus to get to a famous castle of the region. It is not exactly the castle of dracula but supossed to be a very nice one, quite renovated and representative of castles in the area.

Aproaching the Castle.

Queing for entery... This is why i hate tourist Saturdays...
Check out the price (12 lei = 4 euro), 100 people per quater hour getting in... and do the math.

Before getting inside there is a reconstitution of what villages looked like in different places of Roumania, once upon a time.

This is what it looks like inside, damn small bed :)

Now, that is better, inside the castle, they must have had more to eat, be taller and have nice big and fancy beds... Pretty dark too, I bet you would have loved it Greg.

View from inside the court, again, loads of people quing they way through the visit, an arranged oneway circuit through all the rooms.

Inside stairs... Immagin it with no light, or candle light :)

The castle from its best angle in my opignon, better than the inside full of people.

Getting to Rasnov and first Castle.

Gypsy life in Romania

The hike to Rasnov is quite interesting, after getting out of town as usual, i get to a spot where loads of people seem to be hitchhiking... I join them and soon people start asking where i go. Direction Pitesti I say and soon i have the company of a young nice woman going the same direction. Meer 5 min later a car stops and of we are! This is hitchhiking in Romania fast but not free... It is like a taxi service, people join in for expenses.
Raluka is very happy to meet me, she didn't speak French in 5 years! She still has a very perfect pronunciation and wide vocabulary. Sometimes she mixes up some Italian (she speaks fluently) and makes excuses all the time :) She invites me to here home anytime and pays for the ride as she gets of and when i get off later the drivers refuse payment.
The next ride i get after walking my way trough the city for an hour... Once at the right spot, a guy picks me up in a mater of minutes. He doesn't ask me for money, i think it is implicit but since i sit the whole journey with my heavy bag squeezing me in, i just get out of the car and he drives away. I don't understand Romanian but the two guys in front didn't seem like nice guys and the other hitchhiker seemed oppressed and like they made fun of him...
The two next rides are real hitchhiking rides, people not caring about money, rather about you. This said i understand the fact of paying rides given the price of fuel in these countries compared to wadges... and In Romania i will contribute a couple times. The first dude is an old man in a n old Dacia, turning of his engine when it goes downhill, the next one is young and has a new Dacia Logan. He speaks little Spanish and we sorta communicate :) He feels like he has to show me how good the Logan is and drives like a madman on the beautiful mountain roads.

Rasnov Caslte

We entered the mountain region and are getting close to my goal. He drops me of at the petrol station where i meat my host Deni. He takes me to his house where i meet his caring mother and father. They speak perfect German and communication is easy again :) Deni is full of knowledge about the region and takes me to the local castle which history i get told. It was boight by an italian fastinated with castels and who wanted to restaure it. He did in a very authentic and beautiful way and then started to make littel money out of visits. The city of Rasnov understood there was money there, and tooke the mater to justice to get the castle back. The italian dude died and the castle is back to Rasnov and since they put this very big Hollywood style hudge RASNOV signe in front of it. Like Deni remembers, in the sim city game, this is the cheapest way to make people in your town feel happy :) Up there, looking at the woods I also get to hear stories about Bears, camping, mountains and Bucharest.

The castle from under the pooring rain.

After a good meal of cheese, tomatoes, ham and a lovely stew with meat, I get a good shower and we go to meet Denis friend who is celebrating her birthday! There i get to meet more lovely People and talk about all sorts of interesting subjects.

Craiova II

Some more pictures....

Craiova Curch

An other church somewhere around Craiova.

Villagers... the storks :)

More storks, acctual 3 or 4 in one nest sometimes (didnt know about those habits they have)

Eduardoes Home :)

My shower this afternoon :) very nice!

Andrea

Craiova

Walking around Craiova:

Gardens and Town hall (if i remember right)

Having fun with a camera and some fountain...

Something went wrong? first floor only...

In Craiova i meet Guillaume, my host from France and his friend Andrea from Italy. We grab a beer, talk about India and mostly the road to get there, over Iran. We then go to his place for dinner and later meet some friends of his to play PlayStation with a camera, something close to the Wii but you don't hold anything. The camera captures your motion and whoever is fastest in realizing some move like jumping around our waving a lot whith your hands wins. In the end you sweat a lot (especially in the middle of summer in an apartment) and look really stupid but you have a great time.

Looking stoopid? no, having fun!

This day i also made plans a little for the next days and asked an other couchsurfer in Brasov to host me. This is in the Carpatian mountains where i want to do a little bit of castle visiting (long time i didn't see a castle :) and some trekking. But before leaving Craiova, i will Andrei on his job. He is working for Terre des Hommes and we will do a toy delivery to some schools in poor, remote areas around Craiova. This allows them to organize summer activities for children there.

Toys : mini football, hockey etc...

After work, i meet a Friend of Andrei, Eduardo. We go for dinner and eat an Romanian specialty, Mici, some grilled mixed minced meat with spices. Delicious. Besides being an amazing man with amazing stories and mind which i cannot describe here, Eduardo seems to have met Erwan, a friend form Australia! Damn small world once again...

Getting to Craiova

Before leaving Belgrade i used couchsurfing to find some hosts in Craiova. So my goal for today, after one day of crappy hitchhiking out of Belgrade (late departure, around 3-4 pm and little distance, about 100kms) is to reach that city. As usual after a night outside, i wake up early, about 5am and get on the road to see the sunrise over the opened, empty road.

Damn Dogs

I discover where the noise this night came from, there is a landfill some 500 m from there and dogs are running all over the place. I also see there is a gas station 1km away... good at last i will get some water this morning. The gas station is really 3 km away so i kick of the day with a long mystical walk in the dawn.

Mystical Dawn

I then get picked up by a Romanian driving home from Italy with his sister. And guess where Emil is driving? Craiova of course! This drive is one of the most beautiful landscape so far, along the Danube, we pass the iron gates, a face sculpted into the rock and very wide portions of the Danube before getting to the boarder.

Comfortable mercedes Ride :)

Danube scenery

At the boarder, i get asked for that white paper you get in Serbia after checking in with the police You are supposed to check in and out every time you change the place you are living. Very annoying... Fortunately they gave me this paper at the youth hostel.

Romania trains

After a lunch break, we arrive in Craiova where my diver and his sister who have been awake for the past 18 hours or so get the rest they deserved while I go out to meet my host, Guillaume.

On more night out in the wild

Now for something like "into the wild" :) No dont worry, nothing real bad, nothing realy endangering.
After 2 weeks in a big city, with a confy bed and late bedtime, i am sorta happy to be here, in a field, to find some dry straw to make the most comfortable bed i had outside. I eat my dinner consisting of a bit of dark bread, an old salami and a cucomber... I also realize i am realy tired and i dont have much water left and there is none to find around. The Salami makes me realy thirsty, it seems like i found one more thing i am alergic to : cucombers and the noise of the barking dogs and crickets starts to get on my nerve. All this and the solitude (big contrast with Belgrade party scene) adds up to a small panic attack, alone in the middle of nowehre...
Thank you Apple, Aerius and cortisone... The sweet sounds from my ipod calms me down, th Aerious stops the alergic reaction and the cortisone buzzes me out, i can finaly fall asleep and rest without thinking i will never wake up :)

Straaaaaawww bed

Early wake...

Off to Romania!

After 2 weeks in Belgrade, I decided to attend Exit on the long weekend in about 10 days and bought a ticket for all 4 days off this crazy festival and to explore a bit further east in the meanwhile.
So i start getting ready, laundering, posting, mailing and check my facebook profile. There big surprise checking my friend status updates, i read Cristina is getting ready for Romania!! This cant be possible, i quickly send an sms and ask her when and where she will be. What a surprise! We met in Sydney about 5 years ago and we didn't see each other for more than 2 years! She will be in Bucharest in the time i am in Romania so we can meet there!
Hitchhiking my way out of Belgrade is as in all big city not so easy. I get a tram out of town, wait long time before a get a ride with a dad and son for 30 km. The driving of the father is like his reflexes, very fast :) (don't worry mom, safety belts were available). I then wait for more than an hour, see the father and son drive past me again and about 20 buses stopping there... After so much waiting i decided to catch the next bus for the next town : Smederevo.

Smederevo

From there i walk a lot before finally jump on a driving bus where to driver drives with open doors and listens to loud rock music! I jump off at a crossing and catch an other ride with a auto mechanics / pumpman ( he had a huge pump in his truck ). And as the night is falling, i get a ride with a man from Kosovo going to meet his wife in a small town around Pozarevac. As he drops me, it is getting really dark and i decide to sleep somewhere around here.

Blurry sunset

Belgrade Torture

On the 26th june, the international day against torture is held. IAN, the NGO Jeremie works at (he did the frensh translation :) organized a street performance where people were put in a cage to attract peoples attention and make them aware and sensible to the thematic of torture. The title of the performance was "Torture has no borders" and inside the cage where a Serbian, an American, a Swiss and... and Austrian.

Kalemedgan

The castle in Belgrade, nice and big, it is where i listened to a gypsy concert on the first night i got there, were i had very interesting discussions with Stevan, chilled on a sunny afternoon (with ice cream of course), watched the people go by (this is a local habit is seems) and made some crazy, unexpected, unlikely encounters...

The castle viewed from the park (once again, thank you Jeremie for the picture :)

The view from the castle on Belgrade's brides over the Sava River.

The Castle walls, and the view on the junction of Sava And Danube

The forbidden place where the very unlikely, very surprising, very happy encounter happened!

Meet George, the only guy you can meet in the middle of a national park at more than 2000m and then 3 weeks later in a park in Belgrade. While i did a straight line with two stops from the park to Belgrade, he did a whole tour of the east: Albania, Bulgaria and Romania!
How small is this world really?? How does this work?

Belgrade Cafes and markets.

Markets and especially Cafes are all over the place!

You find everything in there

Except when its closed of course.

You find small cafes like this one everywhere between two street, shaded by a few trees.

Then there is also the big line of cafes on the main walking street of Belgrade, i have no pictures now but will hopefully change this during my next visit in Belgrade! Those cafes are always crowded, from 9 to midnight,it is one of the favorite occupation of Serbs !

The Bohemian Street, also full of cafes, here is where i wrote those postcards nobody except my family thanked me for...

THE Serbian beer :)