Day 7 of our Spring Break trip would be spent taking in the countryside of Romania with a circuit that included stops in Fagaras, Sibiu and Sighisoara.
We began with a drizzly drive to Fagaras and a visit to the Fortress Castle Citadel. It’s called all of the preceding, but however it’s called, it was a great place to visit. It was built in the 16th century, and the museums and preservation efforts make it treasure trove of history with minimal crowds. We pretty much had the place to ourselves while we visited. Workers would make sure we had shoe covers on for certain areas of the interior. The museums focus mostly on the royal inhabitants, local guilds, and medieval prison slant. There’s not much on the period that it was used as a communist dissident internment camp, but I can’t blame them for that.
We stopped for some roadside food to take with us on the stunning drive to Sibiu. We arrived and parked in the Lower Town so that the return trip would be downhill. We walked up the stone passageway to the Lutheran Cathedral of St. Mary and went inside for a visit. I took the kids to see if we wanted to make the 73 meter climb to the top of the steeple. I valued my life more than that, and the kids quickly agreed. We met back up with the rest of the crew and sat in the cathedral while a choir practiced for an upcoming performance.
We headed out and crossed the Bridge of Lies. There’s a few local legends tied to this bridge, but the most common is that if you tell a lie while on it, it will begin to shake. We walked through the small Piata Mica and found the first of the Easter festivities taking place. There was a market set up with lots of food and craft vendors. We passed under the Council Tower and into Piata Mare, the main square of the Old Town. There were some carnival rides and lots of stalls with small crowds mulling around. The skies opened up on us, and we took shelter in the entrance to the Brukenthal Museum. We debated on making a run for the car, but decided to stick it out a little longer. After a few minutes, the skies cleared and we spent some time sampling sweets and spiced nuts while shopping for some souvenirs. We grabbed a bag of Galuste cu Prune (plum dumplings) as we left. Excellent when fresh and warm, but as we discovered later, barely palatable after cooling.
Our next stop was Sighisoara, by far the funnest city name to say that we’ve visited. Siggy-shwoara. The drive was another beautiful road trip, with a small hail storm mixed in. We saw the highest concentration of horse-drawn buggies on this stretch of the trip, still a common sight across all of Romania. We considered a small side trip to Fortified Church of Biertan, even making the turn on the road leading out to it. There was a smaller fortified church at the turn-off. Some local kids, taking a break from kicking around a soccer ball, tried their best to convince us this was the church we wanted to visit. We decided to skip the side trip and returned to the main road.
The town itself is one of the best preserved medieval towns in Europe, and an UNESCO World Heritage Site. It’s also famous for being the birthplace of Vlad Tepes. The Dracula kitsch is heavy here. Not quite as heavy as what we’d see around Bran Castle, but you can tell Transylvania’s tourism industry was built to cater to Dracula chasers.
The walk up to the Citadel was dominated by the Clock Tower. The meandering streets made getting lost the best approach to seeing the small village. We took in the views and then visited a few of the towers and streets before making our way up the Scholar’s Stairs to the Church on the Hill. We spent some time at the top of the hill, exploring the church grounds and the cemetery. We stopped to enjoy some buskers at the top of the stairs before making the return trip back to the village.
A quick stop was made in a shop with some locally crafted knickknacks. A sign for gelato pulled us into a small restaurant that made us all cones to take back out into the sub-50 degree day. A local lady thought us crazy, and I thought her totally sane.
We proceeded to find Dracula’s birthplace, the home of Vlad Dracul where Vlad Tepes (Dracula – son of Dracul) was born and lived for four years. The first floor is a restaurant, and we accidentally entered from the back door. Most of the workers were sitting around a table talking, and when we told them we would like to visit the room he was born in, one guy jumped up and led us to a set of stairs cordoned of with a thick red rope. I struggled to make change for the admission fee, and he took about half what the signs had posted and seemed happy to get that. It was a slow day in Sighisoara. Sighisoara. HeHe. He flipped a light switch a few times and we walked up the stairs into a dark room lit in low key red with a casket and Dracula in the middle. The kids where play-it-off laughing and joking, but made sure an adult was between them and Dracula the whole time. Dracula jumped up with a halfhearted jump scare attempt, then told us to visit the rest of the house. There was a dining room connected which had some paintings and decorations of the real Vlad Tepes with some background. That was the rest of the house. We made our way back to the birth room and cheesed for some pictures. The guy was friendly, and we left with Dracula – Vlad the Impaler, Son of the Devil, Son of the Dragon, the Undead, Nosferatu, the Count – wishing us a blessed day.
From Tennessee To Texas to Saudi Arabia 