Beauty and Decay

Every year our school arranges a trip to Transylvania for the 40 best students in year 11 (the penultimate year of school) and this year I went as a supervisor. The trip is paid for by the school as a reward and it's quite and honour to be chosen for the students.

I got a taxi to school as my bag was stupidly big because I had no idea what the weather would be like. I went to N's house where we invented the phrase 'safety pee'! A turned up so P and him could have a man night.

We left at 10 pm and I was very excited. I settled myself down with a blanket, cushion, no name Bob and Harry Potter on my ipod and managed to sleep most of the way there. We stopped once in Szeged and then drove through the night until we arrived in Deva at about 6.45 am.

The sunrise and mist over Citadel Hill was beautiful but I was too out of it to think about taking a photo. I felt a bit stupid waiting outside the doors of Mcdonald's for it to open at 7 am. Deva didn't seem like the nicest of places but I did only see the car park so shouldn't judge. It had a weird smell and kind of sad feeling to it.

Back on the bus I went back to sleep and woke up when we stopped at the side of the road to take photos of the mountains, wow.

Our next stop was Brasov which has a Hollywood like sign on the hill. First we had a short walk and went down Rope Street which is one of the narrowest in Europe at 1.32 metres wide and 83 metres long. We visited the Black Church which is a large Gothic style church. This was really interesting especially as I had a leaflet so could find out what everything was. This is important as at most places we went I didn't have this. After that we walked up to a tower which was part of the medieval fortification system but has been rebuilt many times after being hit by lightning. It gave a great view over the city and of the roofs in many shades of red. We walked back to the main square and had my first Romanian beer,an Ursus which turned out to be the best in cafe looking out at the fountain and the Casa Sfatului. It was a busy town even though it was Friday afternoon with lots of people out having lunch or coffee, very nice atmosphere.

Back on the bus I noticed for the first time how many forests there are in this area of Romania.

We stopped at the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the village of Prejmer to vist the fortified church. It was a really nice church and the rooms within the walls were really interesting, especially the little school room. We went up into the top of the wall to look out and found an abandoned chest, I wondered if it had treasure.

We arrived in Kézdivásárhely, at the hostel where we were staying which was a school hostel (a bit like a British boarding house) and our students quickly realised that ours is like a 5 star hotel. After dinner we all went to the centre for a walk round and a drink. The students were told they were allowed to have a drink or two on the trip and they were all incredibly sensible about it. Here I tried my second and third Hungarian beers, Silva and brown Silva.

Back at the hostel we played cards, had some supper from SD's magic box full of yummy salami, sausage, and 2 types of bacon (I ate a lot from this box during the trip). Then it was time for bed.

I have chosen this photo as one thing that struck me about Transylvania was how beautiful the buildings were, with ornate releifs but most are in very poor condition. This was a cafe in the town where we stayed.

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