Fortified churches were common around Romania since the 12th C. These fortresses, surrounding a church, were built by villagers to protect themselves from the Ottoman army raids. This particular fortification was originally built as a private residence, a small castle with a moat, a wall walk and a tower gate. In the 1400’s it was sold to the villagers who improved the fortifications and raised the height of the walls. Each family had a little alcove in the walls to store their possessions when they came here to hide from attacks. It is truly one of the most amazing things we have seen so far – at least in my opinion. I’m just captivated by the whole little compound – from the alcoves to the watch tower to the little church and of course the Bacon tower. Oh yeah, the bacon tower! It’s where the villagers would store their bacon. Then when they came to church on Sunday, they would go up the tower and cut a piece off to last them for the whole week. They tagged the bacon to identify it as their own, and made marks to signify how much they cut off each week to ensure no one was filching from their stock pile.
We climb the bacon tower, with its rickety wooden ladders and get a fantastic view of the surrounding countryside – which visually demonstrates what a great place this is for a fortification. We also get a close up look at the church bells – which we all hope fervently won’t be in use while we are up here. Back down on ground level, we visit the church which is very plain and austere – not at all like the churches we have seen so far – but maybe that’s just the way the peasant churches looked (Cristina probably told us, but I wasn’t really listening too much at this point, I was wandering around out on the grounds so I could take pictures while everyone else was inside).
It’s simply fascinating. Plain, yet sturdy. Simple, yet slyly crafty. And it’s small, which I think is what captures my imagination the most. I don’t know, but I just love that fortification. It’s too totally awesome!
And that’s it for the touring! We are back on the bus, and heading back to Sibiu for the evening. Once back in our room – surprise!!!! Our bag!!! It does exist! And it made it here to Sibiu! We could have made it the entire trip with what we had – it wouldn’t have been fun, but it was doable – but now we don’t have to worry! How exciting! And, oh, what a wonderful trip our bag has had! There are at least 5 different luggage tags on it with different routes and destinations. We are definitely keeping that for posterity!
So, all is well in the Stevens world (at least with luggage – not so much with A/C).Tonight we are on our own once again, so we strike out into the city once again. We’ve made an executive decision not to go to the Octoberfest. The pricing seems a bit much, and we’re not all that hungry, so we decide to go with our original plan and find the Kombinat Gastro Brewery – which is more gastro pub than brewery. It looks like an easy walk from the hotel, and we get there, but then get confused because we see the sign, but it looks like an industrial sort of back entrance which is adjacent to a big food stall park. The GPS map is sending us around the back, so we walk through the food stalls, hitting dead ends, then into the parking lot, where we could get into the restaurant via the back door and kitchen (the chefs are outside smoking), but that’s obviously not optimal.So, back around we go, finally entering into the door we first saw about 5 minutes of wandering ago. This is why we’d NEVER make it on Amazing Race.
Wandering in, the place is virtually empty. We’ve think we’ve got the M.O. down now, you just come in and sit, the waiter will find you (weird, but it somehow works…well…sometimes). But in this case, it does seem to work and we get the menu. We don’t see too much we want, so we decide on beer and wine first, then re-look at the menu. I’m not hungry in the least, so I’m ok with a Goat cheese and Beet salad (oh, yes, you know I’m more than ok with that!!!) and Ed gets a sausage thing called Virsli from Gura Raului. Turns out to be a nice portion of sausage with marinated squash and mustard seeds on top. Lovely! And light. And perfect.
After dinner, and taking some pictures of the great artwork they have in there, we wander through town to the grocery store, stock up for our travels, then head back to the hotel to celebrate our luggage arrival!
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