I went to Romania during my semester abroad in Vienna. This was part of an ESN trip, planned by volunteers through the University of Vienna. There were limited spots on this trip and many interested students so I was very lucky to have gone. The bus ride was long, super long. I believe it was 15 hours long. We had to go through border control between Hungary and Romania. We had to surrender our passports to a border guard. This made me uncomfortable. I don’t like leaving my passport out of my sight. We were at the border for about an hour and a half. We arrived in Sibiu, Romania at about 7 in the morning. We arrived earlier than expected and could not check into our hostels yet. We were separated into three separate hostels. I chose the last one. My roommates were the guy from Poland, a guy from France, and an ESN volunteer from Austria. Their names: Marcin, Ben, and Aaron. All of them are super nice. Unfortunately, us four got stuck with the noisy group of Argentinian guys. Thankfully, we got a room separate from them. There were only two beds though so that meant we had to share. I have had to do this many times before so it did not bother me.

After checking into our hostels, we had breakfast at 11:30. More like lunch but they insisted that it was breakfast. The breakfast was delicious and I ate everything on my plate. After breakfast, we had free time to explore Sibiu. The city is quite small but very neat. There is a huge market square and lots of little pathways. There are many churches too. We then had a tour of the city and this was very interesting. I learned that the windows in the market squares are always in patterns of three and form a triangle. The windows are shaped like eyes, symbolizing that god is always watching. I also learned that Romania and especially Sibiu is a very multicultural city. It was originally a German populated town. After the tour, my roommates and I went back to our room to take a nap before dinner. Dinner was at the same place that we had breakfast. Dinner was also very good. 

The next morning we woke up at 7. We had breakfast at our hostel. Plates full of food were all set out for us. There was a hot dog in the middle of the plate. An odd choice for breakfast but I didn’t mind. Breakfast was very good. We met up with the students from the other hostels before heading to the bus. I quickly learned that the other hostels had to make their own breakfast. They just had eggs in the fridge and could make what they wanted. I am very glad I picked this hostel. We all got on the bus and headed towards the Bran Castle, aka the Dracula castle. The bus ride was about three hours. We arrived at the castle and I expected it to be a lot bigger. The castle looked cool though. We got a tour of the castle and I learned about the connection to Dracula. The author of Dracula described a castle that Dracula lived in through a few sentences in the book. The only castle in Romania that fits this description is the Bran Castle. In reality, Dracula never lived in the castle. He was only imprisoned at the castle for one night. I was disappointed. I thought there would be a cooler story. The castle was cool to see. My favorite part were the young dancers in the courtyard in the middle of the castle. Children and teenagers were performing traditional Romanian dances. This reminded me of my days as a Junior Tamburitzan.

After the castle, we headed to Brașov, Romania. We arrived a bit late and only had thirty minutes to eat lunch. I went to a pizza place and by the time I got my pizza, we only had five minutes to eat. I asked for a to-go Box and ate my pizza and toured at the same time. The skies were so grey here and it was hard to see the beauty in this town. Our tour guide was very interesting though. He even showed us where his house was. We then got on the bus and headed back to Sibiu. We were responsible to find our own dinner so I just got a chocolate covered soft pretzel at a bakery. It was delicious. 

Breakfast was at 6:00 the next morning. Breakfast consisted of bread, a hot dog and some chicken nuggets. I was quite amused but it tasted great. We checked out of our hostel and headed towards Corvin Castle. The bus ride was about three hours. This castle was much bigger than the Bran Castle. We did not have a tour of this castle so we could just roam around as we pleased. It was very boring, I did not know the history of this castle and nothing was that exciting to see. My friends and I finished within an hour and had two hours to spare. We we to a market in the parking lot and shopped and just talked to one another. Finally, we had lunch. Lunch consisted of a huge piece of chicken. I was satisfied. It was now time to embark on our journey back to Vienna. We got on the bus and departed.

We were rolling along just fine and then we pulled off on the side of the road in Hungary. Apparently the bus was broken. So they couldn’t find or fix the problem so the bus drivers called a mechanic. Now the mechanic took an hour to get to the bus. Let me note that it was about 10 at night. The mechanic took about three hours to fix whatever problem there was. Apparently, we had the option to call another bus from Vienna that would have only taken two and a half hours. That would have been to simple I guess. So after about four hours, we begin to move again. Five minutes later, we pull off at another rest stop. We sit for another thirty minutes, then move again, then pull off at the next rest stop, wait for another twenty minutes, then move again. I had no idea what was happening, I was completely miserable and had no food or sleep. We arrived back in Vienna at 6:00 AM, Monday morning. We were supposed to arrive at 11:30 on Sunday night. Oh how I love traveling! I had about five hours of sleep in the past 48 hours. Besides this tragedy, Romania was a wonderful trip.