Off To See The World

Of course right after I mention that we’ve had enjoyable whether, John and I get a day of drizzle. To make matters worse, the train from Bucharest took a little longer than expected. The train was supposed to be 18 hours long (leaving at 2pm and getting here at 8am) but for some reason, the ride ended up being 24 hours long! Needless to say, John and I were hungry when we finally got to the hostel.

Now, you’d think we’d go out and get some of the great Turkish food that we’ve heard about but nooooo, for some reason John and I had a big craving for spagetti. So yes, we went to a place and had spagetti (but it sure did hit the spot). It also came with Turkish Apple Tea… sooo good. Mom, expect some in the mail.

Anyway, after filling our bellies, we went to see the Blue Mosque. It was quite impressive. They only allow tourists in when there is no prayer going on so basically, the mosque was filled with tourists and a few people praying on their own. It was quite a different site to see.

Afterwards, we headed down a street that was lined with little stores… seems like everyone came out to try and sell us a carpet. I don’t know… I wouldn’t think we’d look like people in the market to carry a carpet home. There were stores with lots of trinkets and what not in it though. I think John and I will go back tomorrow to take a look. The prices weren’t bad and the trinkets were pretty nice.

Tomorrow, we are going to see the whirling dervishes and maybe go on a walking tour or something. I really like Istanbul so far and I look forward to actually eating the local food here.

Lata!

So John and I went to the second biggest building in the world yesterday. The Parliament Palace in Bucharest is Ginormous! Very impressive, with marble everything, huge chandeliers, 1-tonne curtains, etc., etc. etc…. Again, seems like a big waste of money considering they pretty much booted all the people on the town that used to be in that spot in order to build this building… and it’s not like Romania is exactly swimming in money. Regardless, it was pretty sweet to see (even though the tour was very very limited).

After that, we didn’t really see much… we walked along the river that runs through the middle of the city, as well as a collection of fountains in one of the main traffic circles. Ummmmm, yeah… that was about it.

To answer Chris’ comment about the weather, I’d have to say John and I have really lucked out so far (knock on wood). We’ve had amazingly sunny days for 95% of this trip and the rainy days were usually the days we were leaving that city anyway. Today is rainy but we will be boarding our train to Istanbul soon so we won’t be seeing the rain much longer.

Anyway, John and I are really pumped about seeing Istanbul. See you there!

Hello all,

We made our way to Bucharest today with a big group of backpackers. It was kind of funny though… we were going to catch the bus to the train station so we all went to the bus stop and the bus was there but I guess John didn’t hear me so as the big group of backpackers rushed towards this bus, John went to the store to buy soccer magazine….. so as I hopped on the bus (expecting to see John on the bus), I was surprised to see John…. running after the bus waving his soccer magazine in the air. I couldn’t help but to laugh…. a lot. Anyway, John ended up taking a taxi to the train station so no harm no foul.

We checked into a hotel this time around (all the hostels were booked up and the ones that weren’t were either far away or seemed really dodgy). The hotel is the cheapest in the city so it’s not like we are indulging. We didn’t do much other than check out the momument symbolizing the fall of communism(shown below), and a romanian art museum. Tomorrow we will go check out the big Palace here (second biggest building in the world).

Things to mention:
1. I can’t remember if I mentioned this in the blog from Botiz so if I post this twice, it’s worth it. I remember in the first Botiz post, I mentioned that there must not have been an asian there in ages… well, I was wrong… We caught a taxi one night back to John’s grandparents and he asked me if my dad was in town last year. hahaha…. Apparently there was an asian man who worked in the town for a little bit last year. Just thought I’d post that ’cause I thought it was pretty funny.

2. Kent mentioned language barriers so I thought I’d throw this in: There wasn’t any language barriers between London and Munich really… many people are willing to help and John and I can get by with our French and English. Vienna wasn’t bad but we were only there for a short time. If I were in Romania/Hungary by myself, I’d be screwed but since John in fluent in Romanian, it hasn’t been that much of an issue.

3. Thanks for people posting their thoughts on this blog too… although I don’t always have time to respond or anything, it’s nice to hear from people and what they think too!

4. If you’re counting, we are about a month in now 🙂

Hello all,

We are now in a town called Brasov… it is a very nice town nestled between some reallllly nice mountains. The temperature is DEFINITELY colder here. It is a little more developed than any of the other places in Romania that I have visited but I think that’s because of it’s close vicinity to the Bran Castle and the Peles Castle.

Anyway, we went to Bran castle today and just spent some time in that little town near there. The view from the top of the hill where Bran castle is located is AMAZING. I took a bunch of pictures. I still haven’t found a place that I can upload some pictures but I promise I will as soon as possible.

Speaking of pictures, John’s camera broke today… and one of my digital cameras broke in Botiz, so we are down to one digital camera and one SLR right now. I think we might get a new digital camera in Paris… wouldn’t want to miss out on any pictures!

Well, I guess I couldn’t get any time away from John since.. well, there isn’t really a lot to see or many places to stay here. Satu Mare is pretty much a working town where people work to live and live to work. Everyone we’ve visited were busy working on their farms with the exception of where we are now. We are in Negresti now, where it seems to be a little less farming and a little more development.

Romania in itself is quite nice… very nice country sides, very nice people (even though some of them kind of stare… I think I’m the first asian who has made her way here in a long time), and LOTS of food. The Romanians are not unlike the Italians where they MUST feed you when you go to their houses… and it’s kind of funny when John tells them that I don’t eat meat because their faces are all of shock. Either way, it’s been really nice here and very interesting to see the country for what it is (not just the touristy stuff).

This is a picture of John picking grapes with his grandpa, and a picture of John`s grandma making buns from scratch.
Thoughts from John:
Romania is pretty nice, it’s pretty much exactly as I remember it from when we came 5 years ago. Not a whole lot has changed, all the relatives are still having the same problems as before. I wish I had a little more time with the family (seems like time is just flying by). It’s nice to see that the family is still growing with the new little baby girl Daniella (Romana’s daughter), not to mention Roxy has grown like crazy since the last time I was here. Mom, Dad everyone says hi and they are all wondering why you guys aren’t here and when you’re going to be moving back for good?

Side note for Kent:
Man, I think you would like it here in Negresti… they are in the process of building a ski hill nearby and the country side is kind of like…. it kind of reminds me of Kent (the place in BC). Everyone grows their own fruits here (lots of grapes and plums). The land is not that expensive and building a house is cheap (compared to Alberta)… that and you can take as long as you want to build the house so it’s not like you’d even have to build on the land right away.
Anyway, I don’t know if you’d ever be interested in seeing this side of the world but I thought of you when I saw this city and heard that they are building a ski hill.

Miss y’all lots!

Well, the stay in Vienna was very short but when we found out the train ride to Satu Mare (Romania) is over 20 hours, we decided to get an early start. So, I’m guessing there won’t be a post in a couple days or so.

John and I will be taking seperate paths for a little bit in Romania so we can get away from each other for a couple days. Keep posted.

Well, we’ve made it to Vienna this morning at 6am… I guess there’s not a lot open at that time but we found a nice little coffee shop called Andreas Blocher (sp??) and had a small breakfast and sat for like 3 hours until our hostel opened. We pretty much just went to sleep when we checked in because it wasn’t easy to get sleep on the train (we were sitting by two drunk girls leaving Oktoberfest who wouldn’t shut up and then the ticket people kept coming in to ask to see our tickets).

Anyway, by the time we woke up, we only had time to go check out a couple museums: Das Kunst Historische Museum and one other giant museum that housed musical instruments used by the likes of Bach, Mozart, Hayden, etc… It also had an exibit on one of the 7 ancient wonders of the world… can’t remember the name right now. That in itself was quite a bit of walking and the buildings that these museums are in are AMAZING. Marble everything and just an unbelievable amount of detail in everthing.

All of the museums seemed to close at 6pm today so we headed back in the general direction of our hostel. To our surprise, some restaurants were closing at 6pm too! WTF… that just didn’t make sense to us. Now we are at the train station where the ticket office ALSO closed at 6… I guess this town closes at 6… So we’re off to do… I dunno…

Well, Peace.

*What am I pointing at?… Big Balls… yeah, you heard me… you’ll really have to just go take the free walking tour in Munich to get the full story.

Wow, we went on the best walking tour of Munich today. For one thing, it was Free (aside from the tip we gave at the end)… and for another thing, Ozzie, the tour guide was awesome. For those of you who know me, you’ll know one of the reasons it was a great tour… haha.

Anyway, Ozzie looked like every other Bavarian in his hot hot lederhosen with one exception. He’s a black man… Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about it but as we went on the tour, it seemed like the locals were giving him the up and down and checking him out constantly. Now, if I were doing that, it would be to check out the package… but I guess here, there aren’t exactly a lot of people who are a visible minority that are Bavarian too so the local here seemed to be astonished to see such a thing. It just kind of gave me a wake up call that I myself am a visible minority and although I wasn’t wearing one of those wicked dresses, I wonder if I would get gawked at… Anyway, that was just a side thought….

Ozzie took us on a wonderful tour starting at the Glockenspiel (A wonderful little clock that plays out of tune bells and has a little story played out with a bunch of characters spinning aroudn the clock… well, it wasn’t that wonderful). We also went to see the Devil’s footprint inside the Frauenkirche (Munich Cathedral), visited various sites around the city, had a beer at Hofbräuhaus (Munich’s most famous beerhall), and the last but not least, “sex, beer, and scandal” in Ozzies words. So I was a little let down when it was actually a story about Ludwig… which makes more sense than a free orgy.

After the tour, we pretty much just chilled and relaxed at the hostel and we will be catching a train tonight to Vienna.

P.S. Kent, Fathead is in many pictures!

(October 2nd)
Well, we ended up skipping out on Prague for a chance to see Oktoberfest. Although I don’t know what I missed out on in Prague, I’ll have to say, walking into a beer hall full of people singing, dancing, drinking, and just having a great time was quite an experience. The halls are enormous but at the same time, John and I had a difficult time finding an empty seat anywhere!

When we finally did find a seat, it was in the “patio” area of the beerhall (outside) so we didn’t really get in on the singing action and what not…but we DID, however, get a strong German woman bring us our 1L Steins of beer (which I only managed to drink maybe a tenth of). John was able to polish off his drink but he did admit it made him pretty drunk…. which might explain his liquid courage to go on some of the fairground rides. He went on 2 giant roller coasters, a giant spinny thing, and a big swing thing (you gotta love my descriptions). I can’t do rides in the best of conditions so I basically just took pictures and stuff. The fairgrounds were pretty much like Klondike Days (in Edmonton) but everyone was dressed in traditional German clothing (Ledehosens?? for men and those funky dresses for women)… Oh and the food there…. wow.

They have stands that sell half chickens/ducks, meter long brats, fish on a stick… Noreen, now I see why you said losing weight in Europe isn’t as easy as it may have originally seemed!! Regardless, Oktoberfest has been really fun and I’m glad I got a chance to see it.

Well, since I have a few moments before having to head to the train station (We’re taking the night train to Munich), I guess I’ll post what we did today.

We took an hour trip out to Sachsenhausen, which is a Concentration Camp built in 1936. More than 50,000 were killed there and ironically enough, after the new Communists occupied this concentration camp, they used it to detain the very people who previously ran the camp. It was quite sad and quite eerie touring the grounds where hundreds of thousands of people passed through or never made it through.

After we returned to Berlin, we went to see Brandenburg Gate and there happened to be a festival of some sort in the park behind it so we went there for dinner. While we were walking around the fair, we found the Holocaust Memorial, which is a large piece of land where there are many different sized cubes all lined up… it’s tough to explain but it was very neat.

And just down the block, we stopped at Hitler’s bunker and stood on the very spot that He and his wife Eva ended their lives. The bunker is all sealed off now but there is a sign showing what used to be there… it is a parking lot now and rightly so, no momunment has been placed in that spot.

Well, we are off to the station now. Thanks to those who have been posting comments or emails… it’s nice to get a taste of home while I still can. I’m guessing the posts will be few and far between once we get into Africa. Anyway, it’s off to Munich!!