This is a little late, but I wanted to put a quick note up about my trip with Cosmin and his fiance Paula to visit his familiy in Brasov and to see the infamous castle Dracula in Bran.

In short, it kicked ass. Here I am next to the freaky vampire sign at the entrance:

The castle Bran was inhabited by 'Vlad the Impaler' in the 1500's who was known for skewering his enemies on wooden stakes on the nearby hill. He was a cold-hearted leader, but he was loved by the folks here. He was somehow attached to the Dracula fiction, mostly by the fact that his last name was also Dracula.

The inside of the castle was remade into a home by some Queen in the 1700's, and looks quite nice.

Of the things I saw here, the creepiest was this old cross with some ancient lettering that looks straight out of an Anne Rice novel or something. Though it was really touristy, it was totally worth the visit to dispel the last of the vampire myths of Romania...

I wanted to definitely say a few things about Romanian culture on this blog. First off, driving is freakin' crazy here. Everyone's in a rush and they drive fast and pass close with these tiny cars. We're not talking Cairo level of craziness, but we're in the same ballpark. 50% of the cars on the road are 'Dacia' brand cars. This was the car that was made during the communist era here, where they continued to make the same make and model of Dacia for 25 years. So there are plenty of them. Some number of years ago, they updated the model. Here's a picture of how someone personalized it even further.

I couldn't help throwing in a funny picture of a guy trying to pretend to be carpooling, or trying to pretend he had a hot chick in his car. If you look closely at the picture on the right, you'll notice that the girl is definitely an airhead.

Dracula is a word here that is synonomous with good luck. Fitting then that you'd have a dracula casino nearby.

There is a lot of social strife in this country with regard to Romanians versus the Gypsies. The gypsies here are a group of folks that have set up sort of a parallel (but weaker) government and social system but still live in Romania. They have a King, and en emperor, and these crazy gypsy castles all over the place. Money is highly valued in this culture it seems, as the building are topped with Euro and Dollar signs. They walk around wearing black hats on the street. And they are totally maligned in this culture. Everyone thinks the gypsies are a pain in the ass and wants them the hell out of this country.

More randomness, check out the assortment of fur hats! I'd buy one as a souvenier, but I generally don't agree with the wearing of dead animals for glamour's sake. Besides, I don't see much practical usage for a fur hat in Austin.

While we were visting these old castles and museums, we saw some seriously medevil shit.

These suits of armor worn by the ancient knights were really cool. And really heavy. It also looked like they were about a foot shorter than most folks nowadays. I cannot believe these nasty weapons they used -- ball'n chain, katanas, heavy broadswoards; you name it, they kicked someone's ass with it. Imagine bringing something like this back through US customs...

Another hour car ride away we journeyed to the town of Hunedoara. The city itself was not much to look at -- mostly old former communist factories that have been shut down. It really sounds cooler than it really was. The real gem in Hunedoara is the Corvinesti Castle. I will remember it as Hogwart's School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.

This castle was built in a very strategic location over the years, with each civilization building up a more impressive fortress on the same location. Originally, the Dacians had set up shop here back in the thousands of years ago time frame. Sometime in the 1500's, this Baron started building up this castle which has been restored to its former glory. It even has a moat w/ a really cool bridge up to the front door (no drawbridge, but pretty damn close).

The inside was pretty cool, though I think its funny that the baron had a stained glass picture of himself in the castle's chapel. The dining room was straight out of the Lord of the Rings movie I swear, big wooden chair with long wood table with no side chairs.

On the outside of the castle, there were some bizarre things to see. The picture on the left shows the giant 'beast pit' where the Baron would throw down his unwelcomed guests. Supposedly he had some bloodthirsty pet animal that lived down there. And to finish off the movie themes, there was a 4-5 story well that looked like the well from the Ring. 3 Hungarian dudes were thrown down there a long time ago, and stayed alive for a long time by digging and living off of the well water. Definitely didn't look like a good way to end your days.

After a very full saturday of being in the car, and toursting in Sibiu; we were ready to get out of the city for a bit. Dan lined up this pimped out little guesthouse in the nearby town of Salişte. The owners of the place were quite friendly and our stay there included a full dinner and breakfast. They cooked a ridiculous amount of food, it is safe to say.

With full stomachs, we attacked the 'drinking problem' we needed to solve. We had purchase lots of beer and plenty of wine. The problem was furthered along by our hosts giving us all shots of Suica upon entry to the guesthouse. The solution was to start some drinking chess. We started off w/ some beers, and then cooked up some 'boiled wine' which was very tasty. It's just cheap red wine w/ various spices added to add some flavor -- great on a cold day.

Of course that's never good enough for me, I gotta push everyone to their limits :P I introduced them to the few drinking games I know, including Golf (yes Tob, I still play your 4 card drinking game) and King's Cup. The King's cup was what finished just about everyone off. And it was fitting that me, an innocent bystander, drew the 4th king and was forced to down the most nasty cup of beer.

It was a very fun night, with all sorts of funny, hourly pictures taken along the way that are not suitable for posting online. And the best part was, we woke up somewhat functional the next day.

The first stop we made before heading to the Sibiu city center was actually a quick hour visit to a Romanian Road Rally. I certainly didn't see that coming -- as someone who has personally never seen a Nascar race or anything like it back home.

Rares, Emilia, and Razvan and I joined the masses of folks watching a little one on one dirt track racing. It was just like those old video games where there are two parallel tracks that criss cross here and there; and each car must do one lap on each track before finishing. Here was a cool spot where there was a bridge that one car flew over while another car was looping underneath.

I was amazed at the number of people that came out early on a Saturday to watch this business. There were no grandstands, just a bunch of people standing on the mud rim surrounding the course. We did get sprayed w/ some dirt once, but that was as close as we got to the action. I'll be sure to post some cool videos that have some audio so you can hear how loud these cars were when they went shooting by.

We took a great weekend overnight trip outside of Cluj to the Romanian countryside last weekend. Woke up early on Saturday and jumped in the cars to head to a famous town 2-3 hours south of Cluj. The city is named Sibiu, and is known as the european 'Capital of Culture'.

They have a magnificent set of big plazas in the city center, with really cool stonework on the ground in this grid pattern. In town, there are all sorts of great museums and plenty of neat sculptures nearby. We couldn't figre out exactly what that statue represented, perhaps some ancient snail or some ancient snail turd... The architecture was really cool and like nothing I'd ever seen before. Check out the picture below of the red roof -- there are little eyelets sticking out of the roof for the attic windows. It literally looks like a bunch of eyes following you around.

We took a quick soup first, and then met the other carload of people for an eight person real lunch in a neat underground cafe. After filling our stomachs, we wandered the streets for awhile. For instance, we puzzled at this large tooth like statue that we called a 'medusa' or jellyfish in english. It was a talking statue that said to keep coming back after dark. We came back and it still did nothing special. I'm still scratching my head on this one.

At dusk, we climbed up to the top of this sweet old clock tower, that has been there since the 1500's or something. After seeing the stairs on the way up to the top, I'm inclined to agree that it's really really old. A scary walk, sometimes in complete darkness, to say the least. But we were rewarded with some great pictures of the sunset over the city of Sibiu.

It was a great day and a really neat town. It would be fun to spend some time at night there sometime and check out what the nightlife has to offer. Seems like the capital of culture to me :P

Some people thinking working at NI-Romania would imply a few things. First off, you'll probably have coworkers like the guy on the left there; and you'll have an office desk and computer like the one on the right there.

Not true! These guys really have their act together out here. The office building is in a really nice part of town outside of downtown. We have the whole 2nd floor of this building, which is enough for all the folks working here right now. And enough room for a ping-pong table, of course.

The little virtual tour I can offer is right here. First, you make your way to the front door (shown) and then up the stairs to the newly installed badge reader.

At this point, its good to get cozy with your coworkers. If you thought low cube walls were outrageously open, well you're not going to like working in the offices here. I'm in a room about 4 feet from each person here. But really, it lends to a pretty laid back work environment where everyone is approachable for questions at anytime.

These guys have done a great job trying to use English all of the time in the office, and if they get excited and start spouting out 10 minutes of Romanian; they will kindly explain to you what was being talked about. Unless it was some sort of political joke. Or unless it was a joke aimed at you, at which point they will tell you that they were in fact discussing a political joke :P

Part of this trip of mine has revolved around sports. I've been doing sports in the evenings on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday, its the sport of the world - futbol, aka. soccer - a sport that I have no experience playing. Now I have 4 games under my belt, in these sweet artificial turf, caged fields that are all over Cluj. we were playing 6-on-6 with all of the guys from work, and they have been great sports about my terribly clumsy soccer playing. I'll have to look into playing more of this w/ the latin guys when I get back to Austin!

On Wednesdays, Johnny and I have been hitting this sweet basketball court at a high-school near Cluj's UT.

This is the sweetest blue basketball court I've ever seen. European style lanes, really short distance to the cieling; perfect for those folks that don't shoot outside. There are some interesting rule variations in 'Romanian street basketball', most of which have to do with the flow of the game. For instance, if the ball goes out of bounds (hits a wall), the other team does not have to wait for everyone to get set -- you just tap the ball on the wall and play on. There is no stoppage of the game. It's a fun way to play, but you end up w/ a lot of cheap baskets sometimes. Johnny's new nickname is Dirk Nowitzki for his sweet drives the hoop. I held my own and had a good time as well.

Of course no trip with Darin is complete without a little weekend geocaching side-adventure. There's only one geocache in cluj, and I found it.

The scenery around the botanical gardens of Cluj was great, with some neat old bridges and pleny of foreign flora and fauna. A great place to spend your days hiking around. And the best part, no Romanian required for entry :P There are also rumored to be many great forests around here for hiking and camping; but the reality is that it's a little too cold for that this time of the year.

No summary of Cluj is complete without talking about the ridiculous nightlife in this city. The big thing here is that bars stay open until... well whenever. So unlike in the states where there's this 2am cutoff where you are forced home, you have to exercise some sort of self-control with regard to leaving the bar. If you're 'not tuned' for this, well then you'll do what I did and accidentally stay out well past 4am. That's bad on the weekdays :P

Here are some pics of the cool cats I've been hanging out with. On the left is a group of Rares's friends that went out one Sunday with me to play some pool. They have slightly different billiards rules here (gee imagine that :P I've played about 10 variants of 8-ball on my travels) but it's actually pretty close to US rules. You don't really get penalized for scratching, which is very strange. They also had one of those 'snooker' tables there; I had never seen such a big pool table. On the right, is the work crew of folks - Dan, Cosmin, Razvan and Liviu out one night at a funny place named "Insomnia". It was a pretty wild coffee shop with pictures of sheep humping pigs on the walls. Never quite figured out what that was all about. But, as they say it's probably better than 5 guys 1 beer and some feminine products (such an inside joke).

As far as bizarre bar sightings, it's hard to top this place. Diesel bar, which would be the trendy multilevel club sorta place, looked straight out of Dracula's dungeon or something. Red velvet curtains, mirrors, weird lights. Prefect Transylvania club really :) I only went there the first night, as the clubbing crew really isn't my brand of people to hang out with.

I spent most of my bar time in the shadier brand of bar. Here are some pics from my Halloween night out on the town with Dan and Vlad. Place called the Hard Rock Cafe. You certainly won't find one of those cheesy t-shirts here - they have Pantera or Metallica playing on the projector screen 24-7 in this place. It's very smoky (as all bars in Romania are), but other than that it's a pretty cool place. I can't find a picture to really do it justice. And on the right is one of the poorer decisions I've made on this trip -- a drink called the 'passport to hell'. It certainly led me to a stiff hangover on a Thursday morning. Much thanks to Dan for being my drinking buddy over this 2 week span after the Austin crew left me in Cluj -- good times for sure!