Hi Everyone,

I've made it to Romania... specifically Transylvania. I took a night train from Budapest to Brasov. Luckily there were only 3 of us in the 6 person couchette - 6 would have been impossibly uncomfortable I think. 3 was just fine. It wasn't the best sleep but it was fun as a first time experience.

I got into Brasov at 9:00 in the morning and my hostel check-in wasn't until 3:00 PM so I decided to hop right onto the bus taking me to Castle Bran, the former home of Vlad the Impaler and the inspiration for Bram Stoker's book about Count Dracula. One thing I learned quickly, vampires are very small if you are going to judge it by the hallways and roof heights within the castle. Anna, the host of my hostel, said of course they were small - everyone back then was small. Not enough good food to go around and times were very tough. Makes sense. My 6'4"/193cm frame - I would have been a giant to them I think.

The castle is right on a ridge line protecting a large valley from the low lands and, while spectacular, is also quite a wind funnel which unfortunately meant it was way too windy for my little drone.

Back in the town of Brasov, it was neat to see all the old mixed in with the new. The Old Town Square and the Black Church were of particular note. I decided to climb all the way up to the top of the mountain with the big Brasov sign on it - it was worth it. Was able to get some really good drone shots from way up there.

Overall, Brasov was a very cute and quaint place. Good food. Good people.

Onward now to Bucharest. My extremely generous friend Cristian has offered me a place to stay in Bucharest and I am going to be using it as a home base now for about 4 days. Obviously planning to do some exploring of the city, but I'm also going to have a little down time and catch up on life. Have some electronic paperwork to get sorted etc.

Highlights maybe not captured in the video:

• Got in to the very small train station and there was an obvious bus station out front (Auto Gara 1). The trip to Castelul Bran required first getting to the other bus station closer to the edge of town (Auto Gara 2). I found it, but it was pretty desolate. Started to feel like... where the hell am I going right now?!? Lol. It was 95% fun and only about 5% alarming.

• I misspelled several words in the labelling in the bottom right hand corner and I thought I fixed them all but apparently Castel still go in there instead of Castle - it was a long day.

• Anyone every doing the hike up that same mountain, Blue triangle means easy mode, yellow means medium, red means damn this isn't really even a path in places more of a rocky cliff edge. Yes, I found this out the hard way. It was doable but it kicked my butt.

• Lots of Italians in Brasov. Italian restaurants and locals who speak Romanian and Italian.

• Romania is one of the few places left in Europe were you could easily run into a bear in the woods - bear signs all along my walk.

• My good buddy Jon asked me not to skimp on the castle footage so if you think it was too much rambling through the castle in this one - just thank Jon.

Hope y'all enjoy the video.

Eric