I am going to tell you a story about the most spontaneous and adventurous trip I have taken, but first if you can, I want you to put on my Romania playlist so you can be transported to 2021 Romania with me.
It all began on a maybe not so average Thursday evening, since there really is no such thing as an average Thursday in Ireland. I came back to the apartment from the pubs with some of my Irish friends from my history classes. In the living room my flatmates were on their laptops looking at Ryanair, just for fun. Next thing I know I join in and suddenly we book a 10 euro trip to Sibiu, Romania. If you’ve never heard of Ryanair, it is an Irish airline that provides cheap flights from Ireland to basically anywhere in Ireland. Every once in awhile they have cheap deals, which is how you score a 10 euro round trip to a random city in Romania.
We didn’t think this through. It was all spontaneous. One of my roommates, Anna, booked us a place to stay, so we at least had somewhere to go in this random Romanian city. As she did so I called my parents and explained to them my plan to travel to Romania in two weeks. They just laughed at me. It did all sound kind of insane. Romania isn’t exactly at the top of anyone’s list of destinations to visit in Europe. And top to it off, it wasn’t even the capital. When people visit Romania, they go to Bucharest. We were going to a city we never had heard of in Transylvania. At least we all know what Transylvania is.
The next two weeks were full of planning. I began to listen to Romanian music, which became our new dinner making playlist. We also found a Romanian movie on Netflix called #Selfie. It was weird, but somehow enjoyable. I also booked us transportation. I found out taxis are easy to get from the airport, so I didn’t have to worry about that, but I do some research into tours. The one thing we really wanted to do in Transylvania was go to Dracula’s castle. I thought the safest thing for us, since we don’t know anything about Romania was to do a tour, but they were just too expensive. Instead I booked us a train online. At least I hoped I did. The website was all in Romanian, so I had to use what I knew from Spanish and the other romance languages to try to figure out what everything meant. It was mostly straight forward, so I wasn’t too worried.
All of our planning was going smoothly until a few days before the trip. I wanted to have all of the information for our trip downloaded on my tablet. I downloaded the train tickets, plane tickets, our bus tickets from Galway to the airport in Ireland, and reservation information. Thats when I discovered our rental was booked for the 19th-22nd of December, not November. We all had a laugh, well for myself a little bit more of a panic laugh. Anna called the place to see if we could change the dates. Luckily the guy was really nice and changed it for us. I am just happy they didn’t have anyone already staying there at that time. Afterwards Anna got really excited. She was geeking out over the accent of the guy on the phone. Thats when we all realized that we were actually going to Romania! Then we all were excited!
Day 1
On Friday November 19th, we woke up to finding out that one of our roommates, Olivia, would not be going to Romania with us. She had something come up. It was sad, but we didn’t really have time to problem solve and come up with a plan. We had a bus to catch to Dublin. The bus ride consisted of homework. I had a big paper coming up in European Politics the next week.
At the airport we checked in. I had to pay to have a carry on bag. Ryanair only allows a personal carry on that fits under the seat. I didn’t have big enough of a backpack so I bought a duffle and paid for the extra carry on, which was totally worth it. We grabbed some lunch and then snacks before boarding our flight. It was about 3pm when I discovered that our flight finished boarding at 3. We all had a mini freak-out. We misread the ticket, because usually the time listed on the ticket is when the flight begins boarding. We finished checking out and ran to the gate. We got there at about 3:10. The desk workers were really nice and allowed us on the flight. We were the last ones on. We sat down on the flight. Sadly, the four of us were not seated together. Then I let my heart settle and continued my homework.
After a couple hours on the plane we jumped two time zones and arrived in Sibiu, Romania. We navigated through the small airport and found our way to customs. We had a little bit of a communication issue at a table before passport control. They were checking vaccination statuses. At least in Ireland, they recognized that the US uses paper CDC proof of vaccine card. In Romania, I don’t think they ever saw these. Everyone in the EU used a digital covid cert, which is what they were looking for at the table. After we tried our best to explain to them that we were American, they understood and handed us a piece of paper to show passport control. We found our way to the passport control officers and they all were really nice. The four of us went to different officers, but it was like a big conversation between all of us, since we all were staying at the same place. The best part of this is that we got a stamp! I didn’t think we would because we were still in the EU, but because Romania is not the Schengen Zone, we got a stamp.
The airport exit was a bit sketchy at night, but it all felt a bit more comfortable when we stepped outside. Already I saw the streets lined with Romanian flags. We followed the signs to the taxis and approached some men we assumed were taxi drivers. It was a bit intimidating because they were talking to each other in Romanian. Luckily one of them spoke English. They made us split between the two cars, because neither of them would be able to fit all of us. At first we thought we were getting scammed, but then we ended up going with it. The reality of Romania is that things are really cheap. It ended up costing not even 20 Romanian lei, which is only a few dollars. Taxis are insanely cheap in Romania, which is something we would take advantage of.
Thankfully both cars made it to the house we were staying at and at the gate was a really attractive Romanian man. He shook all of our hands and then I gave one of my friends a look. We were thinking the same thing. He was the home owner and was the one we talked to on the phone. He showed us to the house and gave us his phone number if we needed anything. When he left, we all just laughed. None of us were expecting a young good looking man.
Our next step was to figure out dinner for the night. We decided we would try to walk into town to get something. It was almost 10pm and the streets were dead. We put on our masks, because in Romania, you were supposed to wear them everywhere, even outside. We got a couple blocks down when we began to get concerned about the lack of people out. There wasn’t even a lot of traffic. Maybe just a few cars would pass by us. One of them honked at us, and we weren’t doing anything other than walking on the sidewalk. That’s when we thought about the fact that there might be a curfew. We didn’t read anything about it before, but we didn’t want to take any chances. We began to walk back and I looked into the covid restrictions. There was a 10pm to 6am curfew, but only for unvaccinated people. In Ireland or even Minnesota, this curfew wouldn’t mean anything because so many people are vaccinated. It would just seem like normal life. This is not the case in Romania though. Their vaccination rates were so low, that the car that honked at us probably assumed we were unvaccinated too.
Romania got the worse of the pandemic. Not only did it have one of the lowest vaccination rates, but at the time we visited Romania, it had the highest number of covid cases. This is a result of the lack of trust in the government by the people. Prior to our trip, the government collapsed. When I told these things to my parents, they were a bit worried, but they trusted me. I was aware of it and I knew what I was getting myself into. Also, why else would the plane tickets be so cheap? It only makes sense that I was visiting a country with a fallen government.
Anyway we returned to the house and went with the option of delivery. We ordered from a Mexican restaurant. There was a bit difficulty with getting it ordered though. The driver had trouble finding our place and when we called the restaurant none of them spoke English. They thought we were speaking German and gave us a person who spoke German. Eventually it all got sorted out and we got our food. It was not the best Mexican food I had ever had, but it made do in the moment. I was so hungry that not even the fact that they gave me Doritos for chips and salsa phased me.
The rest of the night was just spent messing around in the house. We made a fake tinder for our group mascot Dookie Daryl and talked to Romanian guys. It was actually really fun. We met some interesting people. Then we watched some Romanian television and a channel that played music videos. It was really good stuff! We also made some Tiktoks and video-called Olivia back in Ireland. We also discovered that Anna had lost her passport. We did a lot of research that night into what to do. We discovered that there was an embassy in Bucharest and realized the very real possibility that Anna would have to go there. In the morning she was going to make some phone calls. We stayed up pretty late, but that was ok. We didn’t have any plans for the next day, except exploring a new country and a new city.
Day 2
We woke up really late the next day. Like really late. We didn’t leave the house until about noon to go into town to get food. Anna called the airport and they had her passport, so she headed there to get it before we headed into town. We were so thankful to have found it. Even though we were prepared to have to go through the process to get a lost passport taken care, this was the better alternative. Also, now we know what to do if we ever lose our passports.
We headed into town with our masks and hungry stomachs. We walked around the city a bit until we found the main square. There was supposed to be a Christmas Market opening there that weekend. We were sad to find out that it had been pushed back a couple weeks. We were really looking forward to a European Christmas Market, but we instead just settled on seeing the decorations that were already up.
At the square we met an interesting group of young people from Italy. I am not sure how the conversation started, but they asked us something and then suddenly we were chatting about our lives and why we were all in Romania. One of the guys was born in Brasov, so the group comes to Romania often. Then they asked us about our religious and spirtual life. I explained to them that I was Catholic and then they told us that they were missionaries. They were really nice people and we exchanged information so we could meet up later in the day after we ate, because we were starving. It was past 1 and we hadn’t eaten anything.
We found what looked like a pretty authentic Romanian restaurant. We went inside and then they directed to us to a table located in a heated tent outside. They provided us English menus and an English speaking waiter. We all ordered different kinds of fun lemonades. We asked the waiter what were the authentic Romanian foods on the menu and I ended up ordering his biggest suggestion. I was really hoping they would have cabbage rolls, but I was really happy with what I got. I can’t remember the name, but it was chicken stuffed with cheese and vegetables on top of fries. It was amazing!
After lunch we explored the city some more. There was a weekend market that we went to near the square. There was a guy with elf ears selling jewelry. We were immediately intrigued. The man not only had really good English, but he was really interesting. He told us a bit of his story and we bought his rings. Then we continued through the market where we found a toy pineapple to be Dookie Daryl’s wife. We would need to give her googly eyes when we got back though. We continued through the market and then bought the chimney cakes that are very popular in Eastern Europe. We all shared it and still had more for later.
We then walked over to a little park, called Astra Park, near the city center. It was lined with statues of significant figures to Romanian history. It was really interesting to read the stories of these people. Not all of them were even Romanian! We were supposed to meet our new friends hear to play guitar and sing, but by the time we arrived, one of their guitar strings broke. We just hung out there and chatted with them for awhile. We found out that they were a whole group there doing missionary work. It was really cool, but after awhile we realized that they were more of Evangelists. We ended up parting ways and exploring the shop street. We went to a book store. Here I bought some postcards and a magnet. Honoria bought a CD by a random Romanian band that we would listen to later. It was a cute book store and it was really fun looking at the books in Romanian. There were so many book covers that I recognized, but were in another language.
Afterwards we walked to a grocery store to get food for dinner and breakfast and some snacks too. We bought some Romanian bread after some pressure from me, but I didn’t think about the fact that we didn’t have butter until we got back to the house. We also got some fun snacks like strange candies, some cookies, and crunchy pretzels that seemed to be a pretty common Romanian snack. We checked out, which was another challenge due to the language barrier, but we managed. As we were leaving, Alora pointed at the Disney collectable patches that they seemed to be giving out to kids. We couldn’t tell what they were all about because the sign was in Romania, but one of the cashiers must of noticed us looking at them because he handed us hands full of them. We tried our best to say thank you and he smiled as we left the grocery store. This was one of the more wholesome things I witnessed in my life. Even when there is a language barrier, the act of giving is universally understood.
That night we decided we needed to work on our homework, so we put on Honoria’s CD and ate our snacks as we did that. It wasn’t too crazy of an evening because we needed to wake up pretty early the next morning. We had a 7am train from Sibiu to Brasov.
Day 3
We were up bright and early the next morning. We had a bit of a walk to the train station so we made sure to give ourselves plenty of time, except fun fact about me is I never really am early. I had plugged the direction into Apple Maps and that when I discovered Apple Maps is not reliable abroad. Alway use Google Maps! We walked about half an hour in the dark just to discover that my maps took me somewhere that was still about 10 minutes away from the train station, so I got the proper directions and we ran.
Getting to the train station was the first task. Now it was trying to find our train. At this point I still wasn’t super familiar with trains (now 3 years later I can say I am quite the expert.) We got on the train that we thought was ours right at 7am except there was not one there. We were there for a couple minutes until we realized this metro looking train with holes in the walls and cracked windows was probably not our train. I hate asking strangers things, but I was not missing my train so I went up to the conductor and asked if he spoke English. He was a little hesitant but I still asked him if this train went to Brasov, which I hoped he would at least understand the city and he did. All I needed was the shake of the head and him pointing to the train a few platforms down. I thanked him and we ran to the other train.
When we got to the train we ran into this really nice Romanian man who probably figured out we were not from here so he helped us out with his really good English. He confirmed that this was the train that we were supposed to be on and asked us if we had any luggage. Awkwardly we didn’t since it was a day trip which probably wasn’t very common.
We found what we thought was our spots. I took a window seat in which I could stare out at the Romanian countryside. It was November so there definitely wasn’t a lot of green, which only added to the Transylvania vibe. I was also pretty surprised by the look of rural Romania. It seemed much less developed than the city. It sometimes was hard to believe I was in Europe. Eventually the ticket checker came around and that was when we realized we were in the wrong car. Apparently the tickets I bought were actually for first class. When he told us that I looked at my roommates and I told them I swear I bought the cheapest tickets! So we moved carts to where we ran into nice Romanian man again who helped us find our seats. First class was so much cooler! There was a bar, but I was not drinking at the early hours of the morning.
The rest of the ride was spent listening to music, looking out the window, and texting friends and family at home since there was now an 8 hour time difference which meant it was the middle of the night and they were all having fun back home.
Our train ride was just a couple hours. When we arrived at the train station the plan was to take a bus to Dracula’s castle, which is what I learned online that we could do to get there but I couldn’t buy tickets online so I was only hoping that was true. We got something better though when we got off that train. A taxi driver found us and offered for a good price to take us to Bran to see the castle for a few hours and then take us to Brasov city center. That seemed like a pretty good deal! It was only really enough time to see that castle and I kind of wanted to spend a bit more time in Bran since it was a cute very traditional Romanian town, but this was not an offer we could turn down so we went.
It was about a 30 minute drive and it was beautiful! This part of Romania was in the Carpathian mountains. They weren’t huge but rather resembled hills and they were beautiful. There wasn’t much on the drive other than nature. This is when I had a moment I will never forget. On the radio Reggaeton started playing. Reggaeton! This is my favorite music to listen to back home and now suddenly these familiar songs were playing on the radio in such a strange place where I never would have expected such familiarity. I have since learned that probably due to both being romance languages, Romanians listen to a lot of Latin music and even have some of their own songs in Spanish, which is really cool.
We got to the cute town of Bran which felt like it was covered in a layer of fog. We started towards the castle where there was a square of vendors. We looked around a little bit. I bought an embroidered blouse because I have always wanted a Romanian embroidered blouse. We also almost bought a shot glass set that sits in a wooden Romania outline. That would have been cool but I probably didn’t need to spend my money on it. We found the bathrooms, which you enter in the middle of the square and go under ground and then head towards the castle. We got our tickets and toured the castle
It was full of history as we got to see the rooms. Some of the rooms are set up as they would have been in the time of its inhabitation by Queen Marie showing off her art and decor. Others had exhibits on the families that lived in the castle displayed some of the clothes they would have worn.
This version of the castle was built in the 1300s by the Saxons and was used as a defense again the Ottoman empire until it later became a mountain pass between the two Romanian kingdoms of Transylvania and Walachia. For hundreds of years possession of the castle had changed from Hungary, Walachia, to the Saxons, and then the Habsburgs in which it was left under Transylvanian control. In the early 1900’s it was turned into a royal summer residence under Queen Marie of Greater Romania. Under the communist regime in the 1940s it became a museum which it continues to be under the Habsburgs today.
You may be wondering why this is called Dracula’s castle when there is no history of such a person living in the castle. The castle closely resembles the one described in the novel Dracula. There is the possibility thought that Vlad the Impaler who is linked to Dracula may have been held captive here for a couple year.
This is the coolest and prettiest castle I have visited to date (except maybe the ones in Belgium). I have definitely taken the best pictures here. The courtyard in the center surrounded by the white and orange roofed towers with the mountains in the background is so good!
All of this we did in the morning! We didn’t get back to Brasov until a little after noon. We walked around the city center a little bit taking in all of the beautiful pastel Eastern European buildings. We also needed caffeine to keep going so we took a Starbucks break. Afterwards we decided to take a cable car up Tâmpa a mountain peak right next to the city. It gave us an amazing view of the city.
The clouds were also very low that day so we even were above the clouds which was a cool experience. Fun fact though: the only bathroom is at the bottom of the cable car and there is not one at the top so maybe it isn’t a great idea to do this right after Starbucks. Once we returned to the city we decided to get something to eat even though it was only 4 o’clock but we hadn’t eaten lunch that day.
We ended up at Restaurant Pilvax where we were able to get some more traditional Romanian food. I had chicken Pakrikash even though it is Hungarian, and this is where we tried the special Romanian liquor for the first time. The English name to describe it would probably be Apricot Brandy. I was not a fan. I will probably never have brandy again after that. I drank it though because it was special to Romania.
After dinner we walked around Brasov a bit more but this time down the shop streets. We eventually stopped for dessert at a cute little bakery. This killed a little over an hour of time before we needed to be back at the train station around 7pm for out train back. This time we were going to be early for our train which was at 7:30pm.
The walk to the train station was a fever dream. I have no idea how else to describe it. It was exactly how I’d imagine being in a Soviet country. The old beautiful architecture suddenly became gray blocks. There was no one around so it felt very eerily with the dark and fog. Just walking through an empty park at night felt strange. At one point we even had to go underground to cross the road and under there were shops like at a train station. This experience was probably in my entire life the most, “Where am I and what am I doing?” experience. Does that make sense? Eventually we were back at the train station and things were familiar once more. We found our train and had a very quiet sleepy ride back.
Only we arrived in Sibiu is was almost 11 o’clock and completely dark. We still had to walk the 30 minutes back to our accommodation which was a little spooky. There was absolutely no one and at one point when we were walking through the city center there was a police car following us. I am hoping that it was for our own safely, but it was a little weird. We made it back just fine though and went right to sleep.
Day 4
On our last day we of course slept in after a late night and a busy day before. We finished off whatever food we had left from the grocery store and then headed back into town since we had to check out but our flight wasn’t until later in the evening. The day was spent mostly just going in and out of stores, cafes, and restaurants since it was a bit colder. This is when I regretted bringing a duffle bag instead of a backpack because it was not fun to lug around and it became pretty heavy since it became the designated bag to put things in that we bought, which was the purpose of a bigger bag, but man did it suck carrying around for 10 hours. Anyway the first stop was trying Romanian McDonalds.
I don’t think I have talked much about how I actually like to try McDonald’s in other countries. I am not a fast food fan at home, but McDonald’s is kind of a cultural experience because it varies between countries. For example Irish McDonald’s in my favorite because they have the best fries and they have chicken selects and sweet chili sauce! Best enjoyed at 11pm after some pints. At Romanian McDonald’s I had a Caesar Salad (because we don’t have the Caesar Salad in American McDonald’s) and a McFlurry which I can’t remember exactly what kind it was now but I believe it was something along the lines of strawberry cheesecake.
Our walk around Sibiu included a lot of stops for cats. I even petted one although I probably shouldn’t be petting stray cats, but I don’t care because the kitties needed petting. We also took lots of pictures, making sure we had plenty of group pictures. Once the sun started to set we found a restaurant for our last meal in Romania. After some research I believe the restaurant we went to was Crama Sibianǎ. It was located in a cellar so the aesthetic of the brick walls and the traditional decoration was really cool. I ordered cabbage rolls, pork, and pollenta. It was so good. We of course got more traditional Romanian desserts to share (I promise I don’t usually eat dessert this much!)
We still had time to spare before our 10:20pm flight back to Ireland, so we found a cafe to hang out at where we sent each other all the pictures we’d taken during the trip. We got to the airport in plenty of time but apparently not early enough to check in. This is when we all learned that you have to check in to Ryanair ahead of time on the app. I have never made this mistake since, because we each had to pay $50 to check in at the airport which really sucked. Then of course our flight was delayed. This became a problem because we had been planning to take the last bus back from Dublin to Galway at 12:30am. We in fact did not make it in time.
My friends were pretty ok with staying at the airport and taking the first bus back in the morning. I probably could have done this but I was keeping my mom updated on what was happening and she offered to get us a hotel room for the night. Have to love moms! We got a taxi to one of the airport hotels and I got a us room for the night as well as new bus tickets for the morning since I wasn’t able to change our tickets because the bus had already departed. I later called the bus company about this and they were super understanding and let me use the tickets for a different time which they normally wouldn’t do for a missed bus, so I used those tickets to get to the airport when I left Ireland.
It is a really funny story that we got stuck in Dublin for the night. I just remember the next day all of us being exhausted and hiking through town and campus on the way back to our apartment and running into one of our friends and he was like, “Didn’t you guys get back last night?”
“Yeah long story. ” Nothing ever goes to plan when traveling so it wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen, but I was kind of disappointed that I missed the last lecture for one of my classes. It was worth it though.
I am the type of person that will encourage you when studying abroad to spend your free time traveling the country and really getting to know your host country instead of going to a new country every weekend, especially when studying abroad in Europe. Neither is right or wrong. It just depends on the experience you are looking for. I definitely wanted to spend as much time seeing and getting to know Ireland as I could, but I am also glad that I took advantage of the being so close to the rest of Europe by taking a cheap spontaneous trip to Romania. Romania is definitely off the beaten path and probably wouldn’t be somewhere I would normally plan a trip to. Now Romania has a special place in my heart. I loved the food, the landscape and architecture, and the people. Its not your typical European country but it had its own unique charm to offer up.
The Journal of Wanderlust 