We started the by sharing breakfast with our neighbours in the hostel, then heading off to Sinaia for the afternoon. It was an easy journey, compared to the four hour train from yesterday, only lasting about an hour.
Cosmo & Wilfred taking the train
After arriving in Sinaia we headed straight to Peleș Castle, and the monastery. The views were incredible and Cosmo and Wilfred thoroughly enjoyed them selves, forcing us to take photos all along the way.
After spending most of the morning and afternoon at Sinaia we headed back to Brasov to grab something to eat. After finishing up some delicious pizza we went to the fountain in the council square to meet up with team 3. It was good to see team 3 as we had not met up with them since the first day of our expedition.
Cosmo & Wilfred enjoying the fountain
After saying our goodbyes to team 3 we met up with the leaders, filling them in on how our explorer belt had been going.
Australian James
We now only have two days left of our expedition, where has the time gone. over the next two days we will be staying in Brasov, hopefully heading up the cable car, visiting some more of the local attractions and finishing up all of our minor projects.
For Team Troon, Day 7 was a busy day with all our minor projects becoming complete and traveling out into rural Romania.
The day started by parting ways with Team 5 who were off to meet the local scouts again, whilst we were getting prepared to make our way into old town. With this new day, we planned to complete the rest of our minor projects including taking a picture with the most interesting person we can find, dress in traditional clothing and many more.
The day continued with a spot of lunch before revisiting all the three major churches of Sibiu, along with the Bridge of Lies.
With all the activities in Sibiu done for the day, we headed back to the accomodation, but not before a stop at Kaufland (the BEST supermarket!) for some food for the next few days in rural Romania. Afterwards, we loaded the rucksacks and headed for City Burger, the place to be for dinner.
With a meal finished, next on the list was to catch the 19:20 train to Carta. On the train we encountered a drunk man (although a very nice man) who took a liking to chatting to us, well, grunting at us! After he had expressed his liking of Andrew’s muscles and Cami’s braces we arrived at the stop and hopped off.
Now, we weren’t expecting much from this small town, but boy were we wrong! As soon as we stepped in everyone was as friendly as can be, hello’s and high-fives all around, along with horses and cart’ s lining the streets.
With the arrival at the campsite, we pitched the tents and prepared for our journey up the Transfagarasan into the mountains the next day. Till next time, yet again, adios from Team Troon.
We started off the day by exploring the rest of Sibiu, and getting some lunch while we waited for our train to Brasov. The journey was long, almost four hours, though Cosmo and Wilfred still seemed to enjoy it.
After arriving we headed straight to our hostel, though it wasn’t your typical hostel as you can see.
After grabbing some dinner we headed to Mount Tampa. It was quite the climb leaving Cosmo and Wilfred rather tired, though the view from the top was defiantly worth it.
Cosmo and Wilfred really enjoyed the view almost refusing to leave when we told them it was getting dark, though the promise of food helped to convince them.
Cosmo & Wilfred enjoying the view.
Whilst heading back down Mount Tampa we ran into team 1, it was good to see them. The last time we had met up was on day 2 of the expedition. That is the first week of the expedition done, only three days to go.
Tomorrow we will be heading out to Sinaia for the day, then returning back to Brasov to finish up exploring the last parts of the city.
Well you’ve had 4 days where blog o’clock hasn’t come around once but you’ve now got two in two days, we’re just spoiling you guys!
Morning number 2 in the Art Hostel, and it was time to hit the road, which sadly meant an emotional goodbye to our dear friend David. We’d been through so much together; the cereal incident; the other cereal incident; the weird guy that kept showing us his cool jug of water that was full of floaters; and sadly for David the time we abandoned him for 3 hours while Alex and Xander taught him the history of Scotland. We sat for hours crying with David, begging him to come with us but eventually we had to leave… without David😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Off to the bus stop in Brasov, and because we got there 40 minutes early we had plenty of time to sit and bask in the sunshine. Sadly this wasn’t the case, as soon as we sat down we started getting circled by a lady with a glass bottle of lemonade in each hand. She came over and told us we couldn’t deny ‘the touch of a woman’ and that her price was only 50 lei (£10, an absolute bargain). We declined but Lewis had caught her eye, she danced for him and told him that they could ‘change the world together’, an offer too good to turn down for most but tragically we had a bus to catch so he declined again.
The bus journey was long, we all slept on and off… there was just one stop, but don’t worry, it was a good one. There was a toilet at the service station that Lewis, Xander and Alex trekked up to and it was not worth the walk, or the 20p. An inch of pee covering the floor meant Xander and Lewis came back to the bus quickly, but Alex, being the people’s champion, decided to persevere.
We were just waiting on the bus for Alex to come back when we saw him coming around the corner.
He’s just walking towards us.
Oh, he’s turning left.
He must just be going for a wander.
Yeah he’ll just be seeing the dogs.
Wait a minute…
Is that Alex that’s just got onto that random bus?
Why’s Alex on the other bus?
He’s just walking up and down the wrong bus.
Good job Alex.
So we rescued Alex from the wrong bus and when you heard his sound reasoning it was an understandable mistake; you know our bus was a big white one, the other was small and grey; our bus was full, the other bus was empty; our bus had the rest of his team on it, the other bus WAS STILL EMPTY… But Alex had used his keen perceptive eye and noticed that the other bus actually had different seats.
With a full team once more, the final leg to Bacau was under way, a nice lady sat down next to Lewis on the bus. Her English wasn’t great but she offered us some unbelievably chewy, yet delicious pastries and told us that she taught physics, so Lewis told her about his holiday to CERN, the home of physics, and she took that to mean he worked there. So he just ran with it, and accepted her applause for getting to the top of his field of study.
We met up with the Bacau scouts when we got off the bus and got some pizza together. They were all really friendly but despite their impeccable English they weren’t able to understand why we even wanted to go to Bacau. They took us to the nature museum, which was pretty much abandoned, although Peter was able to hide Lewis’ phone twice and forget that he’d hidden it twice and we got to swap neckies with one of the locals.
After the museum we had… a bit of an altercation. Somehow Alex’s glasses ended up in the fountain in the middle of the park – super scout Andrei saved us by being more than happy to wade through the water and save those poor, helpless, 60p sunglasses – a great relief to us all!
By now it was getting late so we made our way up to the observatory to see Mars, Venus, Jupiter, all the constellations you can imagine, but waiting for us at the top of the observatory… just on the other side of that telescope… miles above us… were in fact clouds. We couldn’t even see the moon. So instead we watched some videos about space and an unnamed member of the group caught some much needed sleep…
Despite it being after midnight at this point… we still had to have dinner, so it was back to Damien (the leader)’s house to get something to eat. Damien’s mother, the goddess of fire, got a massive fire roaring in her garden and had all sorts of unknown meats cooked in about 3 minutes.
Wolfing down dinner and refusing the crates of beer and wine we kept being offered meant that it was bed time. Craig point blank refused to sleep in a bed with anyone else so he was banished to the floor while Xander crawled into a tiny couch for the night.
Anyway that’s Thursday down, just Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday to post. Wish us luck with getting through that… We most certainly won’t.
Late start to the morning after big day yesterday… & a huge thunder 🌫 and lightning⚡ storm overnight…. although all but Debs slept through it and heard nothing…
James & Debs headed to the gym whilst Jackie & Tedward headed to pick up some food supplies…
After lunch and a reorganisation of upstairs in anticipation of Nathan’s arrival later in the day, we decided to head out for a wander around Rasnov…. James announced his feet hurt after about 5 mins and had to go back to look after the new garden chairs … Tedward decided that James couldn’t be left unattended so went too…. 😁
Jackie and Debs continued on as planned…. meeting Team 1 along the way…
Rasnov is a beautiful town with cobbled lanes and roads lined with some stunning old buildings…..overlooked by the Citadel high above the town
Our walk was cut short when the skies darkened and sounds of thunder with the inevitable downpour…. Happily Tedward came to our rescue in the red jallopy 😀
After an hour or so though the sun reappeared and Grellow got to go outside for the first time….
Eventually the 5th member of the Leader team arrived after a mamouth 4 hour transfer from Bucharest….
Day 6 was an early start for both ourselves and Team 5 who we were going with to Sibiu for the day. With a 4am start, we were up and out of the hostel, on the way to Bartolomeu Train Station.
Once there, a snack was in order so a petrol station was found and snacks were consumed. We noticed that there are many different types of trains that passed us, seemingly different companies or locations. With the sun rising we hopped on to our train and found our seats.
As everyone slowly started to doze off, the train journey flew by, even though it was 3hrs and 45mins long. Arriving in Sibiu, we went for coffee until the time arrived that we were all able to check into Team 5’s accomodation. Once at our home for the night, Team Troon (us) paid for our three extra people (making a 6 person accomodation into an 8) and made ourselves familiar with the place, even though it was still a construction site!
Before long, we headed out once more with Team 5 to meet some local scouts who they had planned to meet. After a meal and some chat, they showed us around the picturesque city and played a game with us, teaching us the rules.
With goodbyes said, we all parted ways and headed to Kaufland, the mother of all supermarkets here. Supplies bought, a homebound walk to the hostel was undertaken. By this point it was around 7:30pm, and some of us were not staying at the hostel all night!
Three of us, Andrew, Cami and Peter went back out onto the streets of Sibiu. Andrew and Peter went to the running track whilst Cameron went into town in order to get some footage.
With everyone back at the accomodation, we stayed up and chilled before heading to bed, only to find that our very own Andrew had found himself locked in the toilet. With a brill effort from both teams, the door was finally unlocked by Craig. Needless to say, we left it there and went to our beds!
Day 5 for Team Troon involved exploring what Brasov had to offer. After a thankfully uneventful night at the clown hostel, we headed out with the cable car in our sights.
Once we made it to the base of the ride, we paid our fees and were on the ride up. Once we were up there, and a short walk had been undertaken, we arrived at the Brasov sign. Making two for two, visiting both the Rasnov and Brasov signs. With some filming and pictures achieved we headed back down, meeting another passenger who had been involved in scouting recently.
Once down, the exploration of the old town was underway, with a stop at the Black Church and the Council Tower before a bite to eat.
Afterwards, the decision to try the local cinema was willingly made, with Spiderman Far From Home the movie of choice (although we won’t reveal any spoilers!). With popcorn and 3D glasses in hand we enjoyed a peaceful time at the cinema before getting the news that Team 5 had just booked into our very special Clown Hostel!
Meeting up with Team 5 at the hostel, we headed to meet the Leader Team for a quick chat and photo before a lovely pasta meal for dinner. With that, we headed back, stopping at the park and then the hostel.
After consulting with the group, we decided to change tomorrow’s plans and head to Sibiu for the next nights stay, as there was more scope for achieving our minor projects. With that we were off to bed for an early rise, till next time, adios from Team Troon.
After our disaster of a first trip to Braşov we decided to spend one more day in Braşov. We woke up and went for breakfast then visited the First School once again to get all the information. After that we went back to the hostel for a few hours to hide from the heat. We then went to The Black Church.
We then went for dinner. We all ordered nachos and it’s fair to say we were underwhelmed when they arrived!
After dinner we went back to the hostel to let our dinner settle then we went to the running track for an hour. It was at that point at 11pm Stephen and I had the great idea to climb mount Tampa and reach the Braşov sign.
So we set off in the pitch black but at midnight we finally reached the sign and the Views were breathtaking
After the long day yesterday we had an early start this morning, heading straight to the bus station in Turda to catch the 6:30am bus to Sibiu. The bus took three and a half hours giving us plenty of time to catch up on some much needed sleep while Cosmo and Wilfred enjoyed the beautiful views from the bus window.
Cosmo & Wilfred enjoying the view
After arriving in Sibiu we were greeted by some very friendly Romanian scouts who showed us around the city and helped us to find our hostel. Cosmo and Wilfred we extremely excited to make friends with the Romanian scouts and to explore the beautiful city of Sibiu. Though the dino park may have proved a little to exciting for Wilfred.
After having lunch with the Romania scouts we parted ways, for now, so that we could get settled down in our hostel.
We later met up with the scouts again, and some more of their group. After exchanging neckies and getting to know each other a bit better; they taught us how to play a new game, that involved running, holding hands, making seats out of people and even aeroplanes. Cosmo and Wilfred were very tired from all the traveling, so decided not to take part.
After a very busy day we finally headed back to the hostel to rest. Tomorrow we will be exploring the city more and heading back out to Brasov to continue our expedition.
Big thanks to the Romanian scouts for taking us around the city and being so helpful and friendly.
South West Scotland Explorer Belt Romania 2019 