Visit date: July 20, 2018, overnight
Sighişoara is the most famous and most beautiful city in Transylvania. It’s probably a must-see for Romanian beginners.
It takes about 2 hours to get to Sighişoara from Braşov, where we stayed the night before. Since we stayed only three nights in Romania, we did a lot of sightseeing. The spots we visited on the way were so wonderful that I’ll report in detail next time, but this time we’ll start from Sighişoara.
This city started in the 12th century when the King of Hungary settled Saxon people, and it developed into a wealthy city with guilds around the 15th century. In other words, it’s like a city made by people of German descent. In the old town, there is a clock tower built in the 14th century, and it is a very beautiful town that still retains a strong medieval atmosphere.
You can enter the old town by car, but there is no parking lot, so you have to use the parking lot outside the old town. Because it is a World Heritage Site and a very popular tourist spot, I thought that the parking lot is full, but unexpectedly there are few, I had a hard time at first. By the way, the place where I parked is in the map below.
There is no gate at the entrance etc. It is completely manual, and a person who seems to be an attendant comes from nowhere when I park it in a space appropriately, and it is necessary to pay it to the person. But there is a point to note. The attendant of such a parking lot, basically feel like having a permit or something like an ID card. Be sure to ask for it. (In fact, I was almost cheated by a person like a strange vagrant in another place. ) I was honestly worried about the type of people who do this, but in any case, it is valid until around 10:00 the next day.
But the location is really convenient. You can access the old town from the stairs nearby, passing under the clock tower. However, it’s an uphill staircase, so it can be difficult to navigate with large luggage.
This day’s accommodation was an apartment in the old town. We didn’t have any particular contact, so we went there directly. The caretaker came out immediately and check-in was smooth. The next morning he didn’t seem to be there, so I paid the fee on the spot. It may have been cash only. I forgot.
After leaving my luggage at my apartment, I started to visit the city. It is a very small city, so the only thing to see is the clock tower and the church on the hill. The clock tower is an observatory and a museum. The view from the observatory was fantastic.
The museum was fairly normal. For some reason, there was an exhibition about rockets, but I heard that it was because people from Sighişoara were involved in the Apollo program in the US.
Other than that, the next day, we went up these wooden stairs from the Old Town Square to the high ground of the city. Here, there is a church on the mountain and a German language school.
Speaking of tourist attractions, Sighişoara is home to the house where Vlad Drakul, the model for Count Dracula, was imprisoned by the Hungarian king.
It is now a restaurant, but on the top floor of the building, there is a room called Dracula’s Room, which is said to be a petit haunted house. I didn’t go there because it was too goofy and I wasn’t interested, so I don’t know the details.
As for sightseeing, this was about it.
Regarding the food. There are a few restaurants in the old town, but not many. We could have gone outside the old town, but we decided to go here because we wanted to be close to our apartment.
お世話になったレストラン：Casa Georgius Krauss
The food was as Romanian as ever, I guess. Stylish restaurant, and a bit expensive, but I think the taste was normal, not surprisingly.
Of course, I ordered wine.
It was a small but very beautiful and pleasant city. It’s definitely a world heritage site that you really want to visit.
