The Romanian Roadtrip Sibiu to Hunedoara

Part 2

I’m prefacing this post by saying that we loved Romania, we loved its unpolished beauty, the way its unmade-up face is offered to you as a traveller. Its honest and real, exasperating and endearing. It gets under your skin. So this post is offered with a wry smile and love for this amazing country.

We had arranged to collect a hire car from Sibiu and, as always it is more cost effective to collect and return said car from the same place. This is where the effectiveness ends. Romania being, let’s say less tourist oriented than many countries, we had agreed to collect the hire car from the railway station, as that would be the best place to return it. I suspect it may have been the hire company’s family runaround…. The hire company said they would meet us there with a sign with our name on it….how civilized we thought.

Collect the car “At the railway station” they said. You may think that is sufficient detail but you would be mistaken, as trying to locate WHERE in the railway station proved somewhat challenging. Mobile phone calls were unable to connect, borrowed mobile phone calls placed on our behalf by sympathetic strangers in the station went unanswered… Was it in the foyer? (Logical)… was it out the front of the foyer (also logical) however the volume of traffic and drama taking place there perhaps made it a less than favourable spot…was it a coffee shop 150 metres away and around a corner from the station? Yes, you would be on the money there. Two Ukrainian guys smoking up a storm and drinking coffee were in fact the representatives who held no sign, and in fact were not technically at the station, were our contacts.

Liaison and collection complete, with only a slight spike in the blood pressure, we drove off on the Romanian roadtrip in the Dacia Logan. We headed in the direction of Hunedoara, to see the castle. As we did not want to bite off more than we could chew on the first day, the drive was not too long, and we thought we would check in, drop our bags, and proceed to view the castle. The entrance to the Villa was located directly off the main road, via a 90 degree turn over a speed hump into a gravel pit. Cars proceeding behind us screeched to a rubber burning halt and applied the car horn with vigour. The resident terrier bared its teeth. The hostess did as well. We headed out to Corvin Castle…. as I frantically tried to locate it on google mistakenly calling it Colvin Castle.

It is, no doubt a spectacular castle, built in 1446 but probably rebuilt several times since. It holds a Knights Hall, used for feasting along with a Diet Hall, where medieval biggest loser weigh-in ceremonies took place and various towers.

There is also a torture museum, but having arrived there shortly after three school groups and a Spanish bus tour, these displays were rendered redundant. It started to rain as we made our way back to the car, and we sadly did not browse the stunning displays of chinese merchandise temptingly displayed by vendors…..

On the way back to our digs we admired some feats of modern engineering,

Want to read how it all began? Here’s the link to Part 1…. and here’s Part 3