The Transfagarasan, one of the most scenic roads in the world

We left Brasov, heading to Harman, or Honigberg, to visit one of the famous fortified churches.

As you have heard in the last post, this area was called the Burzenland and was given to the German Order of the Knights by the then ruling Hungarian King Andreas II in 1211.

They started bringing in German settlers to populate the towns they were building and fortified their churches to be able to defend them in case of an attack. 
And attacked they were, but hardly any of the over 150 churches were ever conquered.

We couldn`t leave the country without having a look at what is marketed as Dracula`s castle. Never mind that Vlad has never been here, not even Bram Stoker has!

Still, Bran Castle is a tourist magnet, with over 1 million visitors annually. 
It was built in 1377 by the Saxons and today houses a museum displaying art and furniture collected by Queen Marie. 

I think he needs to pee!                                                                                                            

Towards the bottom: "There is only one man in Romania, and that`s the Queen". Great sentence!

From here, we headed for one of the most scenic mountain roads in the world! It`s name is mentioned along with Karakoram Highway (Pakistan/China), Milford Road (New Zealand), Pacific Coast Highway (USA) and the Grossglockner High Alpine Road (Austria).

And its name is Transfagarasan! Slowly, slowly, one letter at a time!

The 100km road leads from Wallachia to Transylvania by crossing the Fagaras Mountain Range with the highest point reaching 2042m at Lacul Balea, a serene mountain lake.

I don`t think anyone has ever counted all the curves and turns, but there are many and I know a couple of people who would have been sick out of the window after about five minutes.

A huge dam on the way up the Transfagarasan

                                                          Not too sure what this guy is all about

The area is also known for its population of brown bears.

Around 300 specimen are known to live in these mountains and have become accustomed to humans. There are hefty fines of up to 2000€ for feeding a bear and signs are posted along the road.

We were not even on the road for 5 minutes when we encountered "our" first bear.
Six more would follow, one of them a cute as hell cub. They were all very relaxed and just seemed to chill by the roadside, people (or car) watching, for all we know.

We spent the night at a great vantage point a few meters from the lake with an awesome view of the road that we were to drive the coming day.

Once the Transfagarasan was in our rear view mirror, we went on to visit three more cities in Transylvania, Sibiu, Sighisoara and Cluj Napoco, with the latter one being the second most populous city in the country.

That doesn`t mean much, though. After Bucharest with its 1,8 million inhabitants, the numbers drop dramatically until the reach Cluj with only 300.000 people.

All three cities have pleasant old towns to wander around in, lots and lots of restaurants and bars and one ice cream parlor next to the other. 

Sibiu, view from the tower below

Bridge of Lies; the first cast iron bridge in Romania. There are many legends regarding the name. One says that the bridge will collapse when someone tells a lie on it. Doesn`t speak for the architects.

German house and street names everywhere

Sighisoara

A slice (or glass) of haven in Romania!

Cluj Napoco

In Sighisoara, my human was finally able to try Papanasi, a traditional desert. It is somewhere between a Krapfen and a doughnut, deepfried, crispy on the outside, soft and tender on the inside, smothered in sour cream (remember, everything is better with sour creme) and sour cherry jam.

Dinner was called off that night!

And so, with one last stop for the night 50km away from the Hungarian border, our time in Rumania has come to an end already.

This country deserves a lot more attention than we were able to give it this time around.
But it will still be there in the future and maybe we will return one day.

We crossed Hungary the next day. It being a Sunday, traffic was very light and only once did we get into a bit of a jam at a construction site around Budapest.

We had factored in some time for the border crossings, only to realize there are no checks, since we were back in the EU already. What a marvel!

After a day in the car, my human couldn`t wait to move and ran up a couple of mountains and through a nice canyon in the next couple of days, before we went to visit friends in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee.
You might remember them from last year.

Prügelweg, nice!

And this, my dear constant readers, is where we will leave you for this year.

We visited three countries, drove more than 11.000 kilometers, met many great people, saw amazing sites and beautiful nature, deep dove into history and sampled some interesting food and drink.

If this sounds like every year before this one, you are right!
Not one of the 29 countries we visited in five years was one to forget!

You reap what you sow is a good motto to go with, we think, and will get you far!

Until next time, stay healthy and be happy!

 Fagaras Mountains