Finally, a full day in Brașov.

Brașov narrowest street, "Strada Sforii", The Rope Street. The tourist legend tells of a girl whose father wouldn't let her marry anyone without a useful skill, so her over wove a rope as long as the street. For some reason, the girl is still standing there, waiting :)

Street art:

Tree:

The old city wall:

City roofs:

Sports Museum:

Tourist Info:

Old city gates:

"Wildlife":

Halloween:

A fairy:

Prăpăstiile Zărneștiului (Zărnești Gorges) are one of the many, many places in the Carpathian mountains where you can just walk on forever, lost in the forest, the rocks, the crags, the air.

Beware the bears! It's not a joke: there are wild bears in the mountains, and in some places people advise you to wait until the weekend to visit some places, because there will be more people there.

You may feel small:

Visit in autumn:

Grab your climbing gear:

Get lost in the beauty of it all:

This castle has nothing to do with Dracula, and everything to do with Marie of Romania, the last queen of Romania. This doesn't stop the advertising and marketing, and hordes of tourists.

It's a sham, avoid at all costs

In the park below the castle:

The castle itself is rather small and cozy. When you manage to remove 100 tourists per square feet.

It was Halloween time

Plenty of austere rooms re-built and refurbished during the time of Marie (early 20th century).

What prevents men from dressing like this? Though even the clothes on display in the castle are based on movie props.

Brave the ascent to the bat:

I wouldn't mind having one of these at home:

One of the many fortifications scattered around this region.

What makes this fortress unique is that it was painstakingly rebuilt almost from scratch in 2000s to preserve the history of this place.

Legend has it, Decebalus, the last king of Dacia committed suicide inside the fortress

It's well worth a visit

A city with a UNESCO Heritage site in the middle of it.

It is quite good, and the photos can't capture it.

Flowers:

Deer:

Streets:

Letterboxes:

Basements in old churches:

Souvenirs

More streets:

Even more streets:

Suspicious houses:

Houses:

Originally a Roman Catholic, but later a Lutheran Church in Brașov's historical center. The modern legend goes that it's called The Black Church because it was sooted by fire in late 17th century.

At one time it was common in Romanian Saxony to decorate churches with Ottoman carpets, and The Black Church has the largest collection of such carpets.

You can see them hanging from above:

Or on the sides

Not only carpets are elaborate and/or colorful. Tombstones are, too. These are just some of the tombstones, because original graves were removed from the church after the plague.

The rest of the church is a regular Lutheran church inside an impressive building.

A small cave near Râșnov

The approach is quite steep, so pace yourself. It is very beautiful in autumn though.

The cave itself is small but well maintained and cared for.

IIRC this horse carved by some speleologists while they were exploring the cave.

Libearty Bear Sanctuary by Millioane de Prieteni (Millions of Friends) is cool place and worth a visit just for the history of the place and of the bears.

The whole thing started as a dog shelter in 1999, but since 2005 they've been taking care of bears, too. Look at them go. Or, well, look at them be leisurely:

They are taking care of 126 bears. And they are still getting animals rescued from private homes and illegal zoos.

These bears are in a limbo state:

• they are still wild animals (that's why all the photos are taken from a safe distance from behind a fence)
• if you release them into the wild, they will come back to people because they've grown dependent on them for food. In extreme cases they can't even take care of themselves because they have been declawed, and their teeth have been removed

So the sanctuary adopts these bears, sterilises them (so that no cubs are born in captivity to perpetuate the cycle), and gives them a huge chunk of a forest to roam, with lakes, pools, trees, places to build dens and so on. And also treats them, takes care of them, monitors their health, and provides them with additional food (because there 126 bears after all).

Each bear comes with its own story, and many of them make you lose all faith in humanity. But the sanctuary restores that fate, because the people who work there are awesome.

The first day was spent traveling to Brașov and sleeping off the fatigue, but we did walk around a bit.

Colorful walls:

"Wildlife":

The mountains are never too far away

The Black Church (we'll visit it another day):

The Church of Dormition of the Mother of God

Cats

The railway station in Chișinău is, or could be, beautiful. It suffers from neglect and Moldova's inexplicable love affair with dull gray paint.

The train that runs between Chișinău and Bucharest is charitably called an express train. It's also charitably called modern. It consists of Soviet-era carriages mildly refurbished to be able to connect to Romania's actual modern trains:

The corridor and the rest of the carriages are unchanged from the Soviet times. It should be noted that everything is very clean even if it doesn't often look like this in the pictures.

A view into the "restaurant". Snacks, and alcohol:

The toilet is still a hopper toilet. That is, you step on a pedal, the bottom opens up and everything is dumped outside. They keep it locked during stops, for obvious reasons :)

It's an unwritten law that you must eat when you travel. This time with some traditional plăcinte.

The track gauge in the former Soviet Union is wider than the track gauge in Europe. On the border with Romania the carriages are lifted up and fitted with new wheels (called bogies).

As you can probably guess, the entire system was built in Soviet times and never updated or repaired since.