7 hours to Carei

Today, we started off on our first real vacation since the school period ended.  Boy, were we looking forward to it.  After the stress of teaching at the summer camps, and the boredom of not teaching at the summer camps, we were looking forward to doing something that had nothing to do with either teaching or not teaching summer camps.  The plan was to go to Sighsoara, the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, then head off to Castle Bran (one of the castles that he was thought to inhabit - we saw one of the other ones earlier in the year), then head off to Bistrita where Johnathon from Bran Stoker's book stayed on his way to Castle Bran.  Adventure!

It's a 7 hour trip from Máriapócs to Sighsoara so we had grand plans of leaving at 6am and getting here at 1pm.  So after sleeping in we were making good time to leave at 10am, and were well over the border between Hungary and Romania by 11am.  A one hour trip to Carei, not too bad.

On our way through Carei, however, we noticed that our GPS seemed to be taking us north, when we really wanted to go south east.  Besides, we could see the sign that pointed us towards a major town on the way, so we bravely discarded our GPS's advice and struck out south east.  Unfortunately, it seems that it is damn easy to get lost in these small country towns of Romania.  Nothing seems to make sense, and you spend most of your time avoiding the small quarries that everyone politely calls potholes that you can easily miss a rusted signpost that may or may not have had the sign that you were looking for.  So it was that we were quickly lost.

It took us another three hours of driving only to find that we'd somehow weeded our way back to Carei.  Hm... four hours to Carei, not brilliant.  What's more on the way back to Carei, the brakes began to fail.  Well, maybe fail is a bit of an exaggeration but they were definitely spongy.  Screw it, we thought, we're going home.  Mission failed.  All over red rover.

But by the time we got home, had some lunch and organised to see the mechanic, we had our gumption back.  So once the mechanic gave us the all clear (he accused me of having the handbrake on... ghastly accusation if you ask me), we jumped back in the car at 4 pm and made mighty good time back to Carei (a tidy 7 hours from when we originally set off that morning) and have been scooting across the countryside all afternoon and just arrived in Sighsoara around half an hour ago at around half past twelve.

I'm tired, but happy we pushed forward.

- Daniel