I took a minibus out of Braşov (previous blog) in the early afternoon and arrived in Sighişoara a few hours later. Back in Bucharest I had heard many good things about Sighişoara and wanted to see it for myself.
Sighişoara is very old, originally founded as a Roman town named Castrum Sex (yeah, it doesn't 'sound' like a good name) and by the 12th century it was a thriving German trading town by the name of Schässburg. This is where, in 1431, Vlad Ţepeş (“Dracula”) was born and there is another statue of him. Sighişoara is much smaller than Braşov, 30,000 as compared to 300,000 people and the town center – the medieval part - is extremely small. However, it is one of the last medieval hill towns in Europe that still serves as a functional town center and is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
It is absurdly picturesque and very cool, really like stepping back in time as the city center, perched atop its hill, is still surrounded by its medieval walls, most of its towers and fortifications still stand and inside everything is cobblestone, narrow and winding. Of course there are lots of museums (the most original being the torture museum in the town's old torture chamber), little cafes, and stalls selling tourist crap. Unlike Braşov, that does have some industry, Sighişoara has absolutely nothing but tourism. I met a lot of people from Sighişoara and the surrounding area in Bucharest, people who had moved there because there is no work – and no hope for work – in Sighişoara. There was a definite feel of prosperity in Braşov, but this isn't the case in Sighişoara, at least off-season.
When I first got to town it occurred to me that I had completely neglected to get the directions to my hostel online, which was a pretty big problem. The bus dropped me off at the stop and I had absolutely no idea where to go. I knew my hostel was in the medieval town and that was obvious enough to see on top of the hill, so I went that way. However, it was a hot and sunny and toting almost 50 kilos of shit on my back and going uphill made it quite a task. I stopped at a nice little cafe (Cafe Bar, He. Olbercht #32, at the bottom of the path up to through the medieval walls, with the big Bergenbier umbrellas out front) where everyone was friendly enough for a few beers and to wait for the sun to go down a bit. I asked directions, and though no one knew English, we managed to work it out. The walk up the hill was a real pain with all my stuff, almost as bad as that enormous hill in Terracina back in Italy.
I did finally get to my hostel, settled in, showered, and was pretty happy with the place. They had good stable WiFi that I could access from my room and since I arrived on Monday the place was almost empty. Although I was just paying for a dorm room, for the first night it was all mine, which was nice. I went out and walked around a bit and went back to the cafe for another beer. At the cafe I ran into an older lady – an Australian doctor – that I had seen at the Scottish pub in Braşov, and we chatted a bit, which was also nice. English is not a popular alternative language in Sighişoara. After Romanian, then comes German, then Hungarian; so English-speakers were few and far between. Anyway, the sun was going down and I was pretty tired, so I went back to the hostel, played around online, and went to sleep early.
The next morning – May 18th – I woke up early and on a mission to explore Sighişoara. The timing was perfect as in Romania virtually all museums and the like are closed on Monday (the day I arrived), so everything was open once I was ready to start exploring. It was a beautiful day out as you can probably tell from some of the photos. Not surprisingly, medieval hill towns are very hilly, so after about six hours of going non-stop, I was about exhausted. This is when most of the photos were taken.
I went back to the cafe for a few beers – which are, like everything else – extremely cheap in Sighişoara if you avoid the few places specifically catering to Western tourists. I was literally paying two lei for a beer (2 RON = 0.5 EUR or about 0.75 USD) which is incredible compared to Bucharest. The problem with the cafe is that they don't serve food (except ice cream, which doesn't go with beer very well); so I went to a pizza place at the bottom of the hill. Again everything was incredibly cheap. I ended up getting quite drunk and stumbling around Sighişoara for a little while longer (without incident), went back to the hostel and passed out.
Sighişoara really is small enough that you can do the basic tourist thing in a day and there isn't much else to do, at least that I am aware of. I saw later in Lonely Planet that there are a couple little clubs catering to tourists, but I totally missed them. It is a very small place and everything dies off pretty early. A nice place to visit, but I would hate living there. Further, since my train to Budapest (next blog) was fairly early, passing out early and getting a good nights sleep was the right thing to do.
Next, Budapest...
No comments:
Post a Comment