Our last stop in Transylvania was the town of Brasov. We stayed at another Hostel... lots of people, lots of beer, a couple having sex in our dorm room... the usual stuff.
On our first day, we went on a tour of the areas castles with the hostel. We visited Bran castle, where Vlad Tepes spent one night. We also went to Rasnov fortress, where we we're surprised to find a large group on teenagers in medival garb. Apparently they were celebrating the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote... what romania had to do with Don Quixote wasn't clear. Our final castle was the Peles Palace, summer home to the Romanian royal family. This one was only finished in 1913, so it still had all its orignal furniture and stuff. They made us wear slippers to keep us from ruining the carpets. Afterwards we had a nice BBQ at the hostel.
It rained quite a bit on our second day, so we didn't really accomplish much, instead we wandered around the town, played some cards, the hostel had a Nintendo that diverted us for an hour... We went to a cool Mexican-Romanian restaurant for dinner where we got free shots of Palinca (romanian moonshine)...
On our last day we made up for the time we wasted the day before. On the hills above Brasov they have a big sign like the one in Hollywood (except it says Brasov... duh). We decided to hike up to the sign. After climbing up this ridge for an hour, we realized we took the wrong trail and were nowhere near the sign... so we climbed back down. Then we took a cable car up to the sign (we should have done this first).
There was a great view of the town from up there. The only problem was that we were behind the sign, and I wanted to get a really good closeup picture of that sign... So I started clambering down the hill to get below the sign. As I'm pushing my way through the underbrush my arms start to feel weird... first its like I have pins and needles... then its itchy... then they start to burn... I look down at my arms, and I realized that something had gone terribly wrong (see picture).
So it looks like I had wandered into a field of stinging nettle, a remarkable plant. When the hairs on its stalks are disturbed, boric acid is released onto the skin of whatever idiot (IE: me) brushes against it. So I had a miserable afternoon. The only good thing is that the pain didn't last long, and my arms looked normal after a couple of arms.
Tonight we will begin our long journey back to the west...
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