The Soare keeps losing his hat...

So as you'll have guessed, soare means sun in Romanian. I know this as I stayed in Case Soare in Sighisoara; ironic really as I experienced some of the heaviest downpours so far of my trip! In the last week, whilst the temperature hasn't fallen too far, there has been a lot more rain. I say this as the sun streams in through my window (it's currently meant to be raining according to the very poorly named website: accuweather). Unfortunately the rain properly started as I arrived in Sighisoara on Monday. I arrived around 1pm and so decided to brave the weather to have a wander round and get my bearings. I don't tend to take photos on these recce trips and so all I have to share is the pumpkin pie that was the only redeeming feature of that outing!!

The next morning, after an evening of constant heavy rain that had settled into heavy drizzle I made my way out again to properly check out Sighisoara. This town is beautiful; it has the dubious honour of being the birthplace of Vlad Tepes (the Impaler) and should you so choose, you can go to see the room he was born in, somehow despite the fact that the building has been completely rebuilt since he was born... (needless to say I gave this a miss!). However, there is much more on offer than just this delight. The old town is built on a hill with the medieval buildings being enclosed within its citadel; it's a unesco-protected area and lovely to mooch round - more so when it's dry and sunny (which fortunately it was the next day) but it was still splendid in the rain! As such, for this post I'm going to give you the best pictures from both days combined - you'll be able to tell the difference from the colours, mainly because I pretty much repeated my visit the second day, I'll explain why later...

My trip started with the  Holy Trinity Church on the other side of the river to the main town. I have two photos of this so you can see the difference the weather makes!

Some of the decoration from the church...

I then headed up into the old town...

Where I checked out the medieval buildings!

The following tower is the Tinsmith's Tower, the easiest to recognise due to its octagonal upper level.

The Church on the Hill

Another tower (could be the Bootmaker's, Tailor's or Blacksmith's)

And from up there, the view was amazing!

The Church on the Hill had a cemetary attached to it; this tombstone caught my eye because of the red lettering.

Like in most places here, there were a lot of busts, but this one really impressed me - I'd thought it was going to be of Elvis as I approached it from the back...

Was a bit disappointed when I found out it was Petofi Sandor, a Hungarian Poet! 

Having seen all the sights on offer in the town on the Tuesday, on Wednesday I decided that I was going to go to the oak tree reserve that was covered in my guidebook. As with all guidebooks, I take the distances with a pinch of salt; I think they do them as the crow flies and so they're rarely accurate. This one was apparently 2km away, but when I google mapped it, it was actually closer to 7km! However, as the day had dawned bright and sunny, I decided that a 14km round trip walk would actually be quite nice. What I didn't take into account is that there aren't any pavements for most of the roads once you get out of the town. For about 2 minutes I decided to risk it, it couldn't be that bad surely? Well, let me assure you, I was the first person to jump into the ditch at the side of the road when I saw that lorry heading toward me! Thankfully there were only leaves and about an inch of water in the bottom, miraculous really when you consider the weather the previous day! Unfortunately, when leaping for my life, I hadn't had the forethought to figure out how I would get back out of the ditch... Thank heavens for the good grips on the bottom of my walking shoes is all I can say! Anyway, determined not be thwarted by this, I retreated to safety, reconsidered my route and set off again. This way added on another couple of kilometres on but I didn't seem to be going along such major routes so I'd just suck it up and walk a bit further. Well, no I wasn't on major routes, quite the opposite actually. This route took me along narrow country lanes with hairpin bends and kamikaze drivers. So, I decided to abandon my visit to the trees, and hence, why I repeated the visit of the previous day, this time followed by a caffe frappe which looks amazing but was actually somewhat disappointing...

This raised an issue that I've faced quite a bit in Romania. The towns you can get to on public transport are often surrounded by what look like really interesting places that without personal transport, you can't reach. It's a real shame, I like Romania a lot but I really feel like I'm missing a lot too. The trains aren't great here (Romanians say this to me, I'm not just being hypercritical) and whilst there is a really extensive bus system, only a very small minority of companies offer online booking, instead, you either turn up and hope for the best or phone to make your reservation. So for those with minimal Romanian and often a necessity to travel certain routes, it makes it a little precarious (trust me I've tried calling and I'm well versed in the sound of the Romanian dialtone as a result!). And so as relaxed as I may be at the moment, relying on a system where I have to just hope there'll be a seat available when I need to do a specific trip doesn't sit easily with me. But then, pushing myself out of my comfort zone was part of the point of this trip wasn't it?!

Sadly, the weather on my last morning totally closed in again - the view from my balcony Wednesday vs Thursday...

So it was a very wet journey up to Targu Mures...