Solo Backpacking Romania: Vampire Castles, Mountain Trekking, and Shitty Hostels

Standing outside of Peles Castle, Romania

PREPARATION

 Pre-departure preparation consisted of:

1. Researching Romanian cheeses

2. Researching hiking, via ferratas, mountain biking, etc. that's accessible by public transit

3. Realizing there's almost nothing accessible by public transit outside of Bucharest so contacting outdoor tour companies instead

4. Booking tours and planning daily itineraries for all 2.5 days in Romania

5. Finding and booking a hostel

6. Mapping out how to get everywhere

The "adventure company" I booked with was lovely. Since I'm only one person and this kind of tour often takes quite a bit of work from the guides, I decided to email ahead of time to ask which already-booked tours they had going that I could tag onto. 

No response. 

For several days.

Finally, I called instead and the slowest, sweetest, quietest man's voice answered the phone. Something about how he spoke gave the clear impression that this is someone who doesn't "internet" very much; this is someone who exists 100% in the physical here and now. Turns out the only other booked tour they had this weekend was Saturday, which couldn't really work for me because I was arriving around 1:30am Saturday morning so leaving 4-5 hours later for a day of physical activity probably wasn't the best idea. Also, what I was interested in seeing didn't completely fit the tours. I'd been expecting to skip some of the things but this man, in the middle of a phone conversation, crafted a completely new tour covering all of it for just 30chf more than the other tours. Also, the only payment accepted was either cash or a Romanian bank transfer (honestly I'm not surprised?).

Now. Ready for a recount of the worst hostel EVER?! 

WORST HOSTEL EVER PART 1

I typically arrange all the essentials before arriving. The booking site I use gives the option for late check-in after midnight, which I select. Flight arrives after midnight. On arrival, I find an email sent *while I was in the air* that they're closing at midnight. I show up anyway because it's now after midnight and everything else is closed. It's completely dead and locked. I start Googling hostels and searching the streets of Bucharest for anything open. Everything is closed, full, or >200chf/night (way outside my price range - only fancy hotels have 24h reception). 

By 3am, I start looking for grass patches and benches. 

By 4am, I'm laying on a park bench trying to fall asleep with one eye open. 

By 4:30am, a group of young men comes to investigate but runs away as soon as I sit up. 

By 5am, it is FUCKING COLD and I root around my bag for anything that will cover me. 

By 5:30am, a group of cats get in a small fight nearby. 

By 6am, pigeons start to show up and form groups. 

By 6:30am, I get up in search of coffee to warm up. 

By 7am, I am at the meeting point for my tour leaving at 8am. 

The tour van arrives 20 minutes late. At least the seats are soft and it isn't freezing anymore.

DAY 1: Peles, Brasov, Vampyres, and More

The tour guide is so excited about his job, I feel guilty for falling asleep in the van seats regularly. This man is truly the ideal person for a tour guide: happy, energetic, loves where he is, wants to get us excited about it, full of stories with plenty to say.

Peles Castle

Bulz, a traditional Romanian meal featuring local cheese and bacon cooked into polenta with an egg on top

Brasov

Bran Castle, the inspiration for Dracula's castle

A priest's box of tools for fighting the demons of Transylvanian folklore, including a wooden stake to drive into the hearts of vampires.

It's a full day tour, which is great. We also covered quite a lot of ground:

WORST HOSTEL EVER PART 2

I'd been emailing the hostel during the day to assure them I'd arrive much earlier tonight but hadn't heard anything back. I show up around 9, they are open, the woman working invites me in, and she assures me it will only take a few minutes. After a while, she tells me they cancelled my booking because I "didn't show" last night. I say I haven't heard anything from them and ask if they were ever planning to tell me that they cancelled my booking. She apologizes and offers the couch in the common area. I accept (it's now 10pm and where else can I go?), but she needs to confirm with her boss. 

I wait half an hour while she deals with someone else. I inquire about the confirmation, explaining I had no place to sleep last night either because of them and am not keen to repeat that. She then contacts her boss, who tells her I cannot stay on the couch because they can't charge for that, but they have beds available tomorrow night if I want to pay some extra. 

Is this a joke?!

Leaving the hostel around 11pm, once again with nowhere to stay, I receive a new email informing me of the cancelled booking. So they overbooked but didn't cancel my booking until after I showed up.

Is. This. A. Joke.?!

A PLEASANT END TO SHITTY HOSTEL PART 2

After 45min of wandering into, calling, and being turned away from numerous fully-booked hostels and hotels, it is nearing midnight and I stop into a 24h shop to find water. 

The cheerful old security guard in the shop discovers my Romanian is limited to about 4 words. I hear him talking to the two younger cashiers, who are giggling awkwardly and offering him helpful English phrases like "nice to meet you." I hope they don't start talking to me; I'm sure they are lovely but I am so stressed out right now and can't handle new social interactions that don't move me closer to having a place to sleep tonight, however well-intentioned they may be.

On my way to the cash register with water in hand, the old security guard steps confidently into my path with a huge grin wide across his face. 

"NIGH TO EAT YOU!" He shouts loudly and proudly. The two cashiers immediately burst out laughing, covering their faces and looking away in embarrassment. Briefly frozen in surprise, I can feel a smile start to work its way onto my face.

"Nice to meet you, too," I respond, and feeling a bit lighter.

"WHAT OH NAY?" He continues.

"Sorry?" I ask, confused, and glancing at the cashiers.

"What's your name," one of them clarifies, still embarassed.

"Ahh, my name's Anneke," I answer the security guard while handing the waterbottle and cash to the cashier.

"NICOLA?" he tries to repeat my name, "MAN NAME. NICOLA MAN NAME."

Everyone's laughing now but before I can say anything, the cashier starts scolding him in Romanian. I start to leave, thanking them for the water. They smile, wave, and I continue the quest for a bed while feeling much better.

The cheapest hotel I can find that still has room is a bit outside my budget (200 Romanian lei/night = 50 CHF = 75ish CAD) but I need a shower and a bed. By 1am, I am in a clean bed with an alarm set for 6 to get to my 6:30 tour on time.

DAY 2: Mountains and Cheeses and Communism Oh My!

The best way to depict this day is through photos because it was so darn lovely. To start, Nicu picked me up at 6:30 and we drove several hours to get into the mountains. Driving through tiny Romanian villages, Nicu told me about how the communities changed dramatically before, during, and after foreign occupation, communism, and the following onslaught of capitalism. 

Once arriving in the Fagaras mountains, we paid much more attention to the scenery. The Transfaragasan highway is supposedly "the most beautiful highway in the world." On our way up, we also came across some sort of marathon, a local cheese and meat market, and some fucking fantastic views.

On the long drive back, Nicu tells me more about his family, his life, and Romania's extremely difficult relationship with communism and capitalism. On the one hand, entire villages were destroyed when communism came in. Yes, the people were evacuated and given homes elsewhere, but their real homes were gone. People felt a sense of peace and security in that they were guaranteed work and food, but it wasn't always the specific work they wanted, or the quality wasn't as high. Then the revolution against communism was extremely violent in the cities (the countryside hardly noticed a difference). The years immediately following communism were even more difficult than the communist years for many people because suddenly they were left entirely on their own to navigate not only work and livelihood, but also the sudden and tremendous onslaught of foreign Western media that essentially "took over" society. Many older people now are the ones who look back fondly on communism because they are the ones who lived through both the cruel stability of communism and tumultuous instability of its fall to capitalism and Western media.

Nicu also recommended the best place to find cheese in Bucharest and probably all of Romania: Otpor Market. Apparently, this market used to be downtown but was pushed out because city planners didn't like the mess of having the livestock bought and sold in the middle of the city. Sadly, there is no longer livestock for sale at the market but you still have to make your way to the very edge of the city to find it.

DAY 3: Bucharest

Since I'm actually based out of Bucharest for this entire weekend, you'd think I should spend at least one day here, right? That was Monday.

Waking up, I decided to find and explore Otpor Market before my walking tour at 10. Navigating the confusing city transit, I finally found the massive building and endless stands outside... only to discover it opens at 9.

Are. You. Kidding. Me.?

I wandered around drinking coffee until 9, scrambled through to find the cheeses, bought them, then booked it back to the tram to make it to the National Theatre (tour meeting point) by 10.

This tour guide was much less politically nuanced than Nicu. She was very direct in her bold statements about Romanian culture and identity dying under communism, the ugly buildings built by the communist leader Ceausescu that overshadowed the true Romanian architecture, lamentations about the deliberate communist neglect of the beautiful old buildings, etc.

A communist-era building and a quote from the tour guide.

But many old buildings did manage to survive; this one is the French consulate.

Oldest graffiti on the street: "Vote for the Sun" from the pre-communist 1940s. A sun was the symbol of the communist party at the time.

After the tour, I finally found mici and papanasi :)

Mici: Romanian grilled skinless sausages made with ground meat and spices

Papanasi: a fried dough ball covered in a yogurt-like cream (sour cream?) and blackberry jelly

WORST HOSTEL EVER PART 3

You would think the story of the goddamn hostel would be done by now, right? Right??

After flying back to Geneva and checking into my bank account, I discover the goddamn hostel had the AUDACITY to actually CHARGE ME for all three nights they didn't let me stay. IS THIS A JOKE?!?! Seriously. I love hostels but these are the types of places that give them a bad name. Go fuck yourself, Paris Hostel.

What Does it Mean to be Brave?

New hobbies might be one kind of bravery, but also an escape from it

My first love told me I was “brave” when I moved a bunch of my clothes into his trailer to make getting up for work quicker, rather than having to run all the way back to my tent every morning (we were living in bush camp at the time). This wasn’t a compliment – I hadn’t talked to him about this and was intruding on his space. It was the opposite of brave; I was terrified of talking to him about something that could be interpreted even mildly negative, and of scaring him away, so I pretended it wasn’t a big deal.

My best friend told me I was “brave” when I wrote a letter to the landlord I lived with about the serious ethical issues I had with the way he ran his house and controlled the people around him, how I couldn’t live in his environment. It was the opposite of brave; I had lived for 10 months in fear of him and in guilt over not speaking up, then finally wrote a letter because I was terrified of feeling myself crumble under his ego upon actually talking to him.

Family members call me “brave” because of the high adrenaline or high-risk activities I tend to love, chasing death to feel alive. Again, it’s the opposite of brave; I jump off cliffs and hitchhike with strangers because I haven't figured out how to feel alive with just normal life.

A stranger I met called me “brave” because I’m not afraid to travel alone. It’s the opposite of brave; traveling is stressful and traveling alone removes the risk of developing deep, intimate connections with other people and allowing them to see how screwed up you actually are.

My parents were convinced I’d have my license by 16 because I’m so free and brave. And yet the opposite was true; I still don’t have my license, in large part because I’m absolutely terrified of losing control and accidentally killing other people in the process.

And then… every once in a while… there’s someone who can see straight through. Someone who just looks directly at you, almost sadly, and says “All I have to say is… be brave. That’s it. Just be brave.” And then you leave their office, go home, and sob on your bed for the next hours in anger and self-hatred because they saw straight through to the cowardly broken shell you are underneath.

Of course there is some bravery in a few of the above things and, sure, there are some types of bravery I'm better at, and some types of fear that it's easier to conquer (legs shaking as I stand on a rock high above the water? Well they better suck it up because WE’RE JUMPING OFF NOW).

But the bravery required to risk disappointing someone who has high hopes for you?

The bravery to risk your words shattering something that someone you care about has spent so long building?

The bravery to risk your words revealing how broken and stupid you are?

The bravery required to risk losing someone who’s come to depend on you?

The bravery to risk losing someone who you’ve come to depend on?

The bravery to admit you are lost, alone, and have no idea what you’re going?

The bravery to enforce boundaries on people when you know they are only so intrusive because they themselves are broken and lost?

The bravery to risk your words causing harm to people who have never intended to cause harm?

 

Yeah, I’m not so good at those ones. And those first types of bravery are really good at blocking out the second ones. But the latter ones are equally, if not more, important. And I do manage to walk through those ones from time to time, even if I dance and tiptoe around it.

BUT I also think it’s this exact fear of these things that makes the bravery in overcoming them more meaningful. Yes, I wish I had the courage to talk about certain things head on, but the terror of doing so means they are important. It gives them value. Precisely because they cause fear, they have an impact. 

I remember the year before starting university, a close friend was spending the night at my house and, late in the evening, she asked about something she had done over a year ago that bothered me. Her voice was quiet and shaking as she spoke, and she was having a difficult time maintaining eye contact with me. The thing she was talking about had bothered me and I had been genuinely upset about it, but more than anything else I was absolutely amazed at her talking straight through the fear that was so obvious in her body language and voice.

Had she casually brought up “hey, you remember last year…,” I probably would have met that same energy, laughed the situation off, and she and I would have eventually grown apart. But she came to me vulnerably. She made it important. That bravery and vulnerability enshrined a friendship that I never want to let down.

That’s the kind of bravery I aspire to.

Solo Hiking Hardergrat

This intensive full-day hike was the "initiation hike" that kind of the kick-off to several more months of adrenaline.

Honestly, I was pretty nervous for this one. There are a million blog posts and hike logs about the Hardergrat and it is semi-notorious for how dangerous it is; while popular, it is not an "official" trail due to the high risk of serious injury and death. While it's not a very technical or confusing trail, it's dangerous because of the extremely steep dropoff on almost either side. The consequences for errors aren't just serious injury - it's death. I have little experience with dangerous hikes and certainly none by myself.

Standing on the ridge above Lake Brienz

(A tiny German lesson for the name. "Grat" is a mountain ridge and "kulm" is the top of a mountain... but just a small mountain. The taller and pointier mountains are called horns, like Matterhorn, Schilthorn, Augsmathorn, etc. So this hike is the 24km ridge/"grat" connecting Harder Kulm to Rothorn Kum, but on the way you cross over Augstmatthorn and a couple other peaks.)

1. The Planning

Up until the morning of, I'm still going back and forth on which direction to start from, what time to start, what all to bring along, whether to start at the top or hike the ascents/descents from the base, etc. 

Option 1: Start extremely early (like 4am) in the morning to start the hike from Interlaken and hike "the typical" direction from Harder Kulm to Rothorn Kulm, then take the train down to Brienz and back to Interlaken.

Option 2: Same as #1 but take the first funicular at 9am from Interlaken to Rothorn Kulm. Risk of missing the last train from Rothorn Kulm to Brienz or, even worse, still be hiking after it starts to get dark.

Option 3: Take the train from Interlaken to Brienz to catch the first steam train at 8.30am from Brienz to Brienzer Rothorn and the "reverse" direction from Rothorn Kulm to Harder Kulm. This cover the most dangerous/unofficial part of the trail at the beginning of the day before my legs are tired and, if I do end up getting stranded on the mountain at night or miss the last funicular down, I'd at least be walked in the direction of my hostel in Interlaken on an actual marked trail.

I go with Option 3. Why the hell is this supposedly the unusual option??

There are also one or two "exit points" along the trail if, worst case scenario, I'm not able to finish the whole thing. These are extremely steep downhill routes though, so let's hope it's not too difficult to just finish the thing.

At one point, the weather forecast looks like thunderstorms and I'm frustrated because of all the anticipation already built up. I determine to just bring an umbrella with me and barricade myself beside a rock if need be. My logic: "If I die, I die. I am NOT coming all the way here just to not even do the hike!"

(Luckily, there will be no rain so I won't have to test this excellent idea of standing atop an open mountain ridge in a thunderstorm desperately clutching what's basically a lightning rod.)

2. The Hike

In the morning, I take the regular train to Brienz in order to catch the 8:30 steam train up to Brienzer Rothorn. Reaching the top of Rothorn Kulm, I start to wander in the general direction of the trail. As it's not an "official" trail, there are no marked signs for it, resulting in many side trails as people have wandered around until they find it. Eventually, however, one solid trail begins to appear, and I realize there are several other small groups of hikers heading in the same direction. They'd (understandably) caught the same first train up to Brienzer Rothorn. This is reassuring; while it's not recommended to hike the Hardergrat alone, people hike the Hardergrat every day so it's unlikely you'll actually be alone.

View of the steam train at Rothorn Kulm.

The actual hike itself is probably the most spectacular hike I've ever done. Not only is it steep, scary, and loooong, but it's also stunning. The cloud cover to the north seems to stop as soon as it hits the ridge, resulting in an almost ethereal divide between the north and south sides of the ridge. There is a clear view of Lake Brienz and the mountains further to the south, such as Schynigge Platte, Eigher, Monc, and Jungfrau. Photos tell a better story of this hike than text though:

The stunning ridge of the Hardergrat blocking the clouds from passing

A hiking companion I found scoots his way down a very steep section.

There are also crosses marking the sites where people fell... (usually in the winter)

Standing on the Harder ridge

It's... steep.

Pretty sure the only reason there were no crosses in this section is because there's nowhere to put them.

I absolutely love the way the clouds just stopped on one side of the ridge.

The final peak to climb on this forever-ridge is Augstmatthorn. Having already trudged up and down multiple peaks along the ridge throughout the day, this final summit isn't pleasant. We grip the trail on all fours as the shale rock slides beneath us and we're too exhausted to catch ourselves. 

At some point during this exhausting sliding mess, someone notices the blue paint nearby. Blue paint! That means we've made it to an official trail! The last portion of the Hardergrat connecting Augstmatthorn to Harder Kulm is safe enough that the Swiss trail authorities (whoever they are) deemed it an official trail. This means it's regularly maintained, painted, and insurance will cover you if you injure yourself.

Reaching the peak of Augstmatthorn, there are suddenly more people around us. Harder Kulm is a major tourist attraction just outside of Interlaken and many people do the short official hike between Harder Kulm and Augstmatthorn. We stop for a while to take photos, before continuing down toward the treeline and finally Harder Kulm before 7pm. After 9 hours on the trail, we are ready to catch the funicular down to Interlaken, and onward to our hostels.

Stats from the final hike.

3. The Aftermath

If there's a God, I'm pretty sure her response to this was basically "OKAY okay wait, here, at least spend more time with a professional adrenaline junkie first." Because the evening after solo hiking (and successfully not dying on) the Hardergrat, I met up with Z for a drink to talk about the paragliding trip I'd asked to book with him for the following day. Z was a canyoning guide Skylar and I met back in March who'd recently gotten his tandem paragliding license as well. I'd messaged him to follow up on the paragliding since that was something I'd also wanted to try.

This was supposed to be the weekend of adrenaline, but then turned into several months of adrenaline. That paragliding flight turned into five, the train turned into Z's ever-moving van, one canyoning tour turned into 10, and a reckless dance with adrenaline addiction slightly brought under control... Slightly.

Solo Swiss Travels: Dead Bodies in Basel

There was one weekend near the end of May where I just needed to get away: escape a stressful living situation, demanding work responsibilities, and psycho-emotionally draining friendships. I just needed out.

FRIDAY

So. At around 5pm Friday afternoon, I booked a hostel in Basel for that same evening and the following two nights (Monday was a holiday). 

Why Basel? It's incredibly old (we're talking ancient Roman times), sits directly on the Rhine River at the crossroads between Switzerland, France, and Germany, and hosts the most museums of any other Swiss city (including your typical/kinda boring art and natural history museums but also more interesting ones, which we'll get to).

Catching the 7pm train from Cornavin, the 5-hour journey brought me to the hostel shortly after midnight. It took a bit of time to figure out the safe-system for late-checkins and the handwritten German instructions on how to find and open the room, but eventually the large 10-bed dorm was entirely my own for the next several hours. 

SATURDAY

My first day in Basel (Saturday) was very slow, calm, and unplanned (Tbh, I just needed to decompress from the week and couldn't be bothered to organize anything). Grabbing coffee from one of the small stands at a Saturday morning market, I wandered through the old city taking photos, watching people, sitting beside the Rhine river to write and nap, and wandering through the cathedral and its crypt.

Elisabethenkirche

Old City gates

Inside the courtyard of the Basel Munster

Jesus lookin' sexy

The Rhine River, where Switzerland meets both Germany and France

Accidentally buying fancy coffee and cakes during a writing break

Reading along the Rhine

There was a large market in central Old Basel, Basel Marktplaz, where people in traditional Swiss German clothing were playing these massive horns that sounded similar to a didgeridoo... but more Swiss. There was also an abundance of hard-pressed cheeses to choose from; I went with 100g of both Napfkäse and Sörenberger-Alpkäse to taste and add to my cheese chart (which is updated far more regularly than this blog - just a heads up). The Napfkäse was a classic good hard cheese but that Sörenberger-Alpkäse somehow managed to taste super-aged and sharp without creating any sort of granules (those tiny cheese crystals that show up inside aged cheeses), resulting in an incredibly smooth cheese with all the rich sharpness of a strong aged cheese.

Cool Swiss didgeridoo. They're flying the flag for Obwalden canton, which is... not where Basel is?

Cheese cheese cheese!

A classic, good hard alpine cheese.

One of the smoothest hard, aged cheeses I've tried! I have no idea how they managed to avoid the cheese crystals

That night, I brought the most delicious garlic fries (which were easily ordered and handed to me but weirdly complicated to find someone to pay for them?) to eat at my hostel while planning tomorrow's Sunday Adventure, which I'd already determined to be much more organized than today. After hours sifting through brochures (thank you, Basel Backpackers), this was the final itinerary:

10am - free walking tour of Basel Old Town

12:30 - walk to the Anatomical Museum (Anatomischesmuseum), grabbing something to eat on the way

1pm - explore the Anatomical Museum

3pm - walk quickly to the Pharmacy Museum (Pharmaziemuseum) before it closes

4pm - walk quickly to the Toy Museum (Spielzeug Welten Museum) before it closes next

5pm - find sausage to eat at a restaurant somewhere. Gotta enjoy classic wurst from the German part.

SUNDAY

Somehow (almost) everything went smoothly! Our tour guide was a sweetheart who adored Basel and I wish we'd had more questions for him. 

Tinguely Fountain: facing the new opera house, it is designed in the space and using the materials of the old opera house. The statue's face is shooting tears at the new opera house. Architect was not a fan of change...

Basel Town Hall. Such vibrant red!

Brains in the anatomy museum!

Tattoos last a long time...

Pickled sniffer

Bodily consent is obviously an important topic here with some weird gray areas in relation to its history. The legal requirement for medical consent to use/display someone's dead body for scientific purposes isn't that old; common practices used by average respectable doctors 200 years ago would now be completely illegal. Yet many of the body parts on display were significantly older than body consent laws. Apparently (according to the student running the ticket counter), universities are able to keep displaying bodies obtained before these consent laws - it is only new bodies that are required to meet the current standards. As a result, there are certain specimens on display right now that will only be possible to see until they disintegrate because current consent laws would not allow new ones. The most significant example of this was the fetuses: the museum had an entire wall depicting every stage of fetal development (no photos of this one - obvious reasons). Since a fetus cannot consent, this display will only be around until they naturally disintegrate.I ended up staying at the Anatomical Museum until it closed and had to skip the Pharmacy Museum but it was definitely worth it. The entire museum is just one room with several rows of specimens, but almost every specimen is utterly fascinating.

The Toy Museum was spectacular and I wish there were more than an hour to spend it in.

Mouse home

A monastery basement

Wildly intricate dollhouse!

Risqué artist's nook of the 1800s?

Tutus! So detailed

By a happy coincidence, the Toy Museum is right beside the street with all the outdoor restaurants and food stalls. It took a surprisingly long time to find a restaurant selling sausage (a common response: "you need a festival or sporting event for sausage - it's not a restaurant food." Oh well - I still want sausage). Eventually, I did find a restaurant selling sausage and enjoyed happily eating that sausage on a busy Basel restaurant patio.

I also met a fellow traveler on this restaurant patio - a young German man escaping the German COVID restrictions. We ended up exploring Kleinebasel, finding random paintings of Naked Jesus, trying Croatian ćevapčići, and wandering along the Rhine.

MONDAY HIKING

On Sunday, I went hiking in a more rural area outside of Basel (which took a while to get to - Basel is quite large).

I found...

Pfeffingen Castle, an abandoned medieval fortress

With a beautifully placed tree

One of the largest castle ruins in Basel canton

From multiple angles

A rock that was apparently a tactical Swiss location during WW1

A sign looking like it was from LotR

That evening, I boarded the long train back toward Geneva. Arriving around 2am, I snuck back into my house to avoid waking up the small children, tucked into bed, and fell fast asleep to recharge for the workday tomorrow.