This was the big day . Almost as big as game day in a foreign country :) something I always wanted to do was visit the mystical Transylvania and I've been here for a few days and have yet to see any spooky shadows or and people without reflections . Yeah all the stories are just stories or are they ? The man, the myth , the legend of Count Dracul . Now there is more then just the Castle Dracula to visit when wanting to be mystified by these stories from our past . But first things first .... We have to eat breakfast and say bye to Jimmy and the White Dove Pension :( I know , another good bye that I didn't want to deal with ! Thank you for your great hospitality .... Hope to see you on the ice again someday my friend :)
When we hit the road it was 8 am and our first stop was back at the salt mine in Salida Praid which is up in the mountains and the roads were less then ideal as a snowstorm was just hitting . Yeah this wasn't just a light dusting .... This was snow snow hahaha ! Nebojsa loved driving so I left him to it and settled in as navigator and we battled our way up there arriving later then planned and because of this we had to cancel the second leg of our trip to Sighisoara which is where Vlad grew up so we could make sure we made it to Castle Bran then the MOL Liga game we planned to see . I wish we could have done the castle instead of the salt mine because basically the salt mine was well .... Not as great as we thought it would be , in fact it was far less then expected as its really just an underground cave where old people go to play dominos and children play so it's a good day out for families but really don't bother if you are like me . Don't get me wrong it was nice seeing this giant man made cave and it was nice that I got to say a prayer for my friend Chris Brzezicki but I would have rather seen the other castle .
The snow didn't give up and neither did we ! Nebojsa is a good driver and I'm glad he handled the road with ease as we cruised down the mountains to Castle Bran .... We hadn't eaten but we're on the same page understanding that the castle was to be closed at 4 pm so when we arrived at 2:30 we knew we had to just do the castle which I though was awesome ! For those of you that don't know this .... This castle gets has the monicker of being called Dracula's Castle because of Bram Stokers novel . He didn't really live here for that long but he was here and the town around it has fully embraced it and is making plenty of money off it too muah-ah-ah . I didn't wear my throat guard but I didn't leave my neck uncovered :) it was funny when the Italian tourists were doing the sign of the cross walking in as if that was gonna help right ? I'm sure the count would have laughed too :)
We walked around for an hour and a half and after we went into a haunted house amusement park and we had a good laugh ... Well Nebojsa had a good laugh as I walked in front of him and dealt with the brunt of scary stuff happening in front of us . It was really worth going through this for shits and giggles but now we gotta eat , so we hit the closest restaurant and had a mixed meat grill which was pretty good and quite filling ! That pork neck was yummy :)
Back on the road to Brasov which is about half an hour away . The road was littered with car accidents obviously from the idiots that drive too aggressively even in bad conditions , honestly I can't believe how bad and aggressive the majority of drivers are here ! It's like you have to drive like an ass to get your license or something :0 when we arrived at the arena we bumped into our friends from HK Beograd who were there to scout the game , they are on a tough road swing playing 3 times in 4 days and none of the cities they play in are close. We thought about sneaking into the rink with them but really tickets are only 10 Leu which is like $2.50 each :) gotta love these prices here .
The crowd was fantastic and the game was great too up until the 3rd period when the home club fell apart giving up 2 quick goals in the first minute of play leading to their starting goalie gettin pulled which was the right call but honestly he kept them in the game until this part . I'm sure the coach had hopes of shaking up the lineup with this but really it didn't help . Our new friend Arpad Mihaly had a decent game but seemed to get hurt in the 3rd and missed a few shifts . He did score the lone goal for the home side though but later admitted that playing center is not his forte and it was evident with the defensive play of the club . Not his fault at all if you ask me ... I did notice some bad defensive play and Nebojsa was quite critical of the refereeing , I fully agree as they missed a lot of calls and even messed up an icing only to drop the puck at center ice .... You know it's a huge no no when :( truth be told the Hungarian side DVTK Jegesmedvek was clearly the better team and fully deserved the 4-1 win .... Always
sucks to see the home side lose and unfortunately I was 2 for 2 in that category this weekend in MOL Liga action :(
No time to waste . After the game we got back in the rental and made our way back to Bucharest . Thankfully the roads were clear and the closer we got to Bucharest the less signs there were of snow with eventually dry roads which I'm sure made both of us more comfortable . Some of the winding mountain roads from Brasov to Bucharest were pretty bad and there is no way I would want to skid of one of those roads ! When we got back to Bucharest we dropped off our bags at Nebojsa's then headed to the airport to drop the rental car off which I was supposed to do originally but since I saw the way people drive here I was a bit spooked and I have to apologize to Nebojsa which I did a few times in person for questioning why he wanted to drop the car off before the bags ... I honestly didn't know we would be driving by the airport and next time I should just deal with things the Balkan way which honestly I don't think I can ever get a grasp of . You really have to come to this part of the world to see what I mean when I say the Balkan way lol ! I am hoping to some day return to Transylvania to do more vampire hunting :) thank you everyone ! Bravo :)
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