Christmas in Romania

You may have noticed that I have not updated in two months... A lot of things have been going on with work and we've been doing a lot of things, but mostly I am just lazy. So I am going to attempt to play catch up.

A couple of our coworkers had started planning a trip to Bucharest for Christmas weekend. Word about this little trip spread quicker than the flu spreads throughout our kindergarten and soon we had a group of 15 people going. Sam and I left with two other guys we work with on Thursday afternoon but most of the group showed up on Friday. I am really glad we chose to leave early, not just because we didn't have to be at work but because it also gave us a better feel for the city of Bucharest.

Underworld Bar/Wonderland Hostel

The hostel we stayed in was interesting to say the least. It was attached to the back a punk rock bar called Underworld and unless you knew it was there, you would have absolutely no way of finding it. There were no warnings, no signs on the building, nothing... So we spent a good while walking around Bucharest in the freezing snow trying to find this place. The Friday group was smarter than us and brought a map on how to find it... Whoops.

Interesting decor... To the left, a shower that didn't work that everyone ended up peeing in.

The hostel was pretty clean and nice, despite the weird surroundings. The worst part about it is that it only had two bathrooms for all 15 of us, so we were pretty rank by the end of the trip.

After we settled into the hostel, we set out to find food. There are not a whole lot of restaurants in the part of Bucharest we were staying in, which really bummed me out but we ended up finding a great little place called Zattara for dinner.

Our coworkers, Ben & William.

Sam and me

GRILLED PORK! Potatoes WITH HAM!

The next day Sam and I set out on our own to explore the city a bit. With me being from Southern California, then moving to Texas and Sam living in Dallas his whole life we were not prepared for how cold it actually was in Romania. Our day went mostly like this: 

1. Walk around until we're frozen.

2. Find a bar or cafe and have a drink until we warm up.

3. Walk around and do some shopping until we were frozen.

4. Drink some more. (Note my seriously awesome and seriously warm new hat.)

Rinse and repeat that cycle about seven more times. We saw some cute little churches, some nice architecture, a couple different Christmas markets... but mostly we drank a lot of coffee and alcohol and ate a lot of pork. 

Big Christmas Market

A little church we stopped in

A big drinking square that I am sure is really fun during the summer time.

Guys doing ice sculpture... The ice had tiny bottles of Jägermeister in it.

The next day we all woke up super early to spend some time away from Bucharest on a guided tour.

The man on the left is our awesome and super knowledgeable tour guide.

Before we set out for our tour, we asked to stop for some food and coffee. In a normal circumstance I would have been disappointed about eating McDonald's in another country... but this was McDonalds in a pork eating country so there was sausage and bacon involved. YUM. 

After breakfast we had about an hour and a half drive until our first stop, Peleș Castle.This was by far my favorite place we went in Romania. Sadly, though, we only got pictures of the outside because the castle had a "photography tax" added onto the price to get into the castle and we were all too cheap to pay it. The outside of the castle was beautiful, though... and we got to play in the snow!

Walking through the snow next to a really pretty, but shut down  hotel.

First glimpse of Peleș Castle.

Peleș Castle in its glory!

Me playng in the snow.

The next stop was a cute little monastery...

From the monastery we had another hour + drive to Castle Bran, also known as Dracula's Castle. The real kicker about Castle Bran is that it had nothing to do with Dracula or his inspiration, but it was the closest castle to where Bram Stoker put it in the book so the Romanians started marketing it as Dracula's Castle for tourism.

The little tourist shopping center outside of Bran Castle... so cute!

Snowy walk up to the castle (and a big fuzzy dog).

Bran Castle

Santa was on the top floor of the castle!

 After Castle Bran we took another short drive over to the medieval town of Brasov where we had a late lunch/early dinner... of course it was more pork :)

The town square

Huddling together for warmth!

Loooong drinking hall/restaurant where we ate.

PORK! and potatoes.

When we got back to the hostel that night we had our own mini Christmas party where we filled each others stockings (or boots, or hats, or whatever you had) with little stocking stuffers, listened to Christmas music and generally got in the Christmas spirit.

Running up and down the stairs, filling stockings with goodies :)

The last day in Romania was spent much like the first, except that it was Christmas and basically nothing was open.

Christmas breakfast of Doner Kebap sandwiches... The only food place open. Oh, Bucharest... 

Although we had fun on our mini-trip to Romania, I definitely wouldn't recommend anyone going out of their way to spend time there. It was nice for a really cheap weekend visit and a reason to get out of Istanbul for a little bit and eat some pork.... but besides that it wasn't anything super awesome.