Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Day 37: Sighisoara, Romania

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Today's highlights:
   -Sighisoara
   -Robbie's crazy cool trick
   -Late train and Gabi surprise

We left beautiful Brasov today! But we went to Sighisoara, another beautiul place that I've never been to so that was awesome! It is pretty small and so cute. It actually reminded me of Rothenburg back in Germany a lot, except with a Romanian twist. It's very medieval looking, with a huge city gate and watch tower and tons of beautiful old buildings. I loved it! 



When we first made it into the city gates, we saw a sign for "The Torture Room." We thought it was like a museum, and entrance was only 4 lei (a little over a dollar). Steal! We thought we totes lucked out until we walked in and then we understood why it was only 4 lei. It was literally one room, without a whole lot inside except signs that were mostly in other languages. 

Score. 

We did see some crazy pictures though of medieval torture techniques so......that was gross. 


There was also a sweet clock tower/watch tower overlooking the city. We climbed up it and on the railing all the way around it had little golden plaques that had the names of major world cities on them, the distance in kilometers it was from that spot, and an arrow telling you which direction. That kind of thing is cool for anyone, but FASCINATING for someone with no sense of direction.  Well done Sighisoara.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the city and then got some DELISH Romanian food at this cool restaurant. Sarmale again (of course) but this time with mamaliga (cornmeal mush that really has little to offer other than the sweet nostalgia it brings). Except then we decided to dine-and-dash when I accidentally broke the vase in their centerpiece. Okay, we didn't dine-and-dash, but I absolutely did break the vase with my soda bottle and I felt really bad. Oops!

After our exploring, we headed back to the train station and while we were waiting for our train to show up, Robbie decided to spend his time doing tricks. His first trick was trying to get the OPEN Fanta bottle into his mouth without using his hands from this position. Do you wanna guess what happened about three seconds after this picture was taken?

Needless to say, that was also his last trick. Fanta everywheres. 

Once we got him all cleaned up, we caught our train to Cluj. Our plan was to spend the night in Cluj and then the next day, see some sights and then in the afternoon meet up with Gabi Oanta. 

Gabi Oanta is the friendliest man that no one knows anything about. He is Romanian and lives in Arad, Romania and is super tight with all the members there and any missionaries that come through. His life, from what we have heard, is crazy and mysterious. Apparently he works for the government, some say as some part of a security agency (like the Romanian CIA or something), but who knows. He doesn't really talk about it. But because of his work, he's gone traveling a lot so we have both only met him once and neither of us know him super well. But he is super nice and is friends with all our mission friends so we wrote him awhile back to get some advice. And holy hannah, we got a lot more than advice! When we asked him if he knew of a cheap place to stay in Arad, he invited us to come stay with him! And then, he thought we could travel around a little more together. And then he thought we could go to the mountains together. Before we knew it, we had about three days worth of stuff we were doing with Gabi. Boo yeah! We knew this was bound to be a good time. Here he is in all his glory.


So like I said, our train arrived in Cluj late, around 11:30pm and we weren't planning on seeing Gabi until the next day. Well guess who was waiting for us at the train station as we rolled in, an hour later than expected? Yep, Gabi Oanta. He had come early as a surprise to take us to the mountains, a little village where his extended family lives called Rachitele. At midnight. Wow. What a guy. He would turn out to shock us with his goodness and hospitality. Such a great, great guy.

So the three of us, the former missionary we had hung out with in Buc (Morgan Ott), and Gabi's friend Vali (who had a car) drove to the Rachitele at midnight. Party of five. We didn't get to bed until about 2:00am and when we finally did we crashed hard. 

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