It was like battling through a group of vultures swooping in to eat us alive when we got off the train. As we later found out, there was an annual medieval festival on the weekend that we got there and people were selling their spare beds out to tourists. We were approached by one particularly scary man. Slicked back hair, white singlet with a big gold necklace, had taken lessons in How to Intimidate Like You’re in the Mafia. “50 euro, you can sleep in my room”. Yeah… NAH.

We were stopped by a few other people as we made our way to the city centre. An old man in a very smart suit with a cowboy hat came up to us. “You can stay at my place, cheap and I live right in the middle of town. I’m a good man, I live alone and I’m a good Christian. I won’t go through your stuff like others might”, Marcelo translated for me.

Sure, it sounds like a nice story but it was sort of overshadowed by the fact he had GOLD FANGS, Dracula style. Regardless, we were planning to give him a chance, it’s just we accidently lost him when we went to get some food.

We wandered past a gypsy fair that was there for the festival. As we started to make our way towards it, a wave of anxiety hit me. I didn’t want to go to the fair. I was sick of people staring at me, I was sick of carrying my backpack and I was especially sick of strangers getting in my face to sell me crap. “No” I managed to squeak at Marcelo. “No, I don’t want to go to the fair”. I felt about 6 years old. After a quick cuddle and a promise to find somewhere to stay, we ended up at some old woman’s house who’d pulled out her sofa bed in the lounge.

After a well needed nap, we headed out to the festival. There was a giant food market which had a stage and medieval band and characters fighting each other with swords. One guy was hilariously awful trying to crack a whip and got demoted to swinging a pole around. There were alleys filled with stalls of jewellery and I realised just how amazing this place was. It was so historic and gorgeous, the most beautiful city we visited. Surprisingly, there were a helleva lot of bogans. Everyone was wearing all black and band teeshirts and majority of the guys had shoulder length hair.

The next morning we wandered round the streets again to do a bit of sightseeing and wander the markets before heading back to the train station. Two guys smelling of alcohol and clutching 1.5L beer bottles turned up out of nowhere and sat next to us and a pretty girl with red hair. After Redhair wasn’t giving them the time of day, they turned their attention to us.

“Want some beer? Marcelo, being the most polite one, accepted. Either because he’s polite or he’s mental, I forget. They told us in broken English that they’d just been to a Metallica concert in Bucharest and were on their way home. The conversation turned to money. “How much do you pay for cigarettes? Oh hah, that’s so expensive, here it is cheap”
“Wow” I smiled, trying not to let them breathe on me.
They continued comparing pounds to Romanian Lei.
“For £3, I could buy half a litre of glue”
Marcelo burst out laughing.

“Where are you guys headed? Brasov? We’re going there too! You should sit with us!”
So we did…

To be continued in Part 5: In which we make stupid decisions.

Sighisoara Photos