In the last few days, Laura and I have quickened our pace and done quite the whirlwind tour of Transylvania. We left the slow pace of Viscri on Friday and headed towards Sighisoara, a few hours to the west. This is the first vacation I’ve ever taken where I have not relied solely on public transportation. Laura and I have been getting around in a little white VW Hi since we left Brasov on Wednesday. As I have only about a half dozen experiences driving stick shift, Laura (who has a manual Mini) is our appointed driver. I am navigator, mobile picture taker, chief information officer (courtesy of google and Laura’s international data plan), and occasional passenger seat chef, cutting up apples or doling out chocolate as Laura deals with crazy Romanian roads (and other drivers).
Driving ourselves around allows for last minute itinerary changes (like we had much of an itinerary in the first place – we are making this trip up day by day), and impromptu side trips. It also allows Laura to pull over and take pictures at her whim.
Sighisoara is a medieval (12th century) fortified town that sits on a hill, topped, of course, by a large Saxon church. The walled old town isn’t very large and was easy to tour in a day. There are several towers still standing, but only a few you can go up in to see the view of the town and surrounding “new” city. Vlad the Impaler was born here, so there is a lot of vampire kitsch in the souvenir stands that line the small main square. You can pay 5 lei (about $1.25 US) to see the room where Vlad was born, and yes, we just had to do it. It was fabulously kitschy – eerie music, strobe lights, and a rather bored looking “Dracula” that greets you in the first room. The second room is now set up like a bad medieval movie set crossed paths with a bordello – red and black material draping every corner of the room, several busts of Vlad lit up in red light, and a large dining room table with heavy chairs sits in the middle of the room. We giggled our way through this, feeling a little sorry for Mr. Dracula trying to keep in character. But if you take away all the silly Dracula stuff, Sighisoara is a beautiful town, and would be a great place to spend a few days.
But we didn’t have a few days to stay. Saturday morning we got an early start to make our way to the next town on the Transylvanian loop, Sibiu. Sibiu was once the center of Transylvania, so holds some importance among the old Saxon villages, and now boasts itself as a center of culture – theater, opera, music, and local festivals. We detoured along the way to make a stop in Biertan, home to one of many large fortified churches in Transylvania. This route took us a little into the Carpathian Mountains, so Laura got to put those driving skills to work!
Our original plan was to stay the day & night at Sibiu, and leave in the morning. But we changed plans and turned Sibiu into a day trip, leaving late afternoon to head to Calimanesti, an hour or so south. We drove further up into the Carpathians on this leg, which was absolutely stunning. Calimanesti is at the tip of an area known for hot springs, around which a number of spas and wellness centers have popped up through the years. The Europeans love their hot springs and treatment centers. We checked in to our hotel, grabbed our swim suits, and headed for the Aqua Park a few km down the road. This is a large public facility, with several hot pools with various water jets for some hydrotherapy (think of the most powerful hot tub jet you’ve experienced in the US, then quadruple it), whirl pools, hot tubs, and outdoor thermal pools. It was pretty full, but not overly crowded, and as far as we could tell, we were the only non-Romanians in the place. Our only regret is we arrived too late to get a massage in – that service had closed for the evening. But we went from pool to pool, soaking for over an hour and a half before having to get out before they closed at 9pm. Relaxed, but a bit pruney, we had a small dinner then collapsed for the night.
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