Transylvania Stop #2: Sighisoara, Romania

From Brasov we took a commuter train about 3 hours northwest to Sighisoara to spend Nick’s birthday. I am pretty sure that Sighisoara is Romanian for “land of a billion stairs” and if it’s not, it should be. The old city center is built on top of a hill, so our walk from the train station was entirely up hill and a lot of that hill was stairs. Once you got into the old city center, it was more stairs to climb to the church on the top of the hill, or up to the top of the beautiful old clock tower the sits at the entrance to the old walled part of the city. Despite all the stairs, we really enjoyed Sighisoara. We decided on Sighisoara after reading that it was “so beautiful it should be arrested.” We found that to be very true, it was incredibly beautiful and small enough that we were able to enjoy it thoroughly in the 3 days we were there without all the walking we have gotten used to. Most cities we have visited have so much to do and see that we find ourselves running around, all over the city, almost constantly. We have on several occasions wondered how many miles we are averaging a day and whether our shoes will survive a year of walking as much as we are. Sighisoara was a nice break from all that walking, but we still got to see lots of beautiful, old things. And we got to enjoy Nick’s birthday!

We arrived in Sighisoara and wandered the meandering streets trying to find our pension. We decided to step up our hotel game since it was for a birthday and opted for a cute pension (I am not actually sure what the definition of a pension is, but it was in the name of the place- Pension Citadela. Maybe like a bed & breakfast?) right outside the citadel walls with an awesome view of the clock tower. We arrived in the early evening and checked in- it was then that we discovered that we had booked a room with a maximum occupancy of 1 and only 1 breakfast. The lady spoke very little English and our Romanian is limited to “noroc” (cheers) and “pardon” (excuse me- fortunately this works just about everywhere we have been) so we had a real issue- she kept trying to tell us the double room we booked was single occupancy. We kept saying it was a double room. We eventually had to rock/paper/scissors for who got to stay and who had to go find a hostel somewhere else- just kidding, we paid for the second person to stay and to have breakfast but ended up keeping the tiny room with the worlds worst shower design because it had a balcony that looked over the city and faced the clock tower. The place was super cute and the people there were very friendly (Nick even got a wink from the lady cooking breakfast!) so despite our tiny room and very tiny bathroom, we really enjoyed it.

Almost every building in the walled part of the city was labeled as historic, the streets were winding, hilly, cobblestone streets with souvenir shops and restaurants around every corner. It was great for exploring. We climbed a covered staircase up to the church on the top of the hill, only to be greeted by more stairs, but the view was amazing. We saw the old church and the first school house, an old Saxon cemetery, and of course, Dracula related things- this time it was the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler. We had birthday dessert at probably the cutest cafe I have ever been to. It was outdoors in a very small courtyard. The back wall of the courtyard was stone and covered with grape vines and twinkling white lights. Some seats had a slated roof overhead which also had grapevines and bunches of grapes growing overhead. It was absolutely adorable and a great place for a birthday dessert!

 

We left Sighisoara the next day and headed towards Bucharest. On our walk to the train station we were adopted by a little stray dog. This is not the first time we have been adopted by a stray dog. In Monteverde Nick was adopted by two strays who followed him all over the city for about 20 minutes before wandering off to follow someone else. In Bariloche we were adopted by a huge black stray who followed us for a long time, despite a group of people petting him and talking to him while we ignored him completely. Our Sighisoara dog (who we named Grapes) was the same way. With absolutely zero indication from us that we were interested in being adopted, Grapes started following us to the train station. We did not pet him, talk to him or in any way acknowledge him, but he followed us anyway. He would walk in front of us, occasionally turning around to make sue we were following him. If we weren’t, he would adjust his course to the direction we were going. We have no idea why dogs keep following us but we decided that this one was the perfect size to travel with us! So we named him and discussed whether we would be required to purchase a train ticket for him or if he could travel for free. Just as we were becoming attached to Grapes and working him into our trip plans he spotted a big park and darted off to explore. We cried a little and continued on toward the train station… Grapeless!