I went to Dracula’s castle and it was awesome. I wish I had bought the Vlad the Impaler cocktail sticks – but sometimes we all miss opportunities that we later regret.

They have salad for breakfast there.

Someone gave me their uncle’s homemade wine that I took back to England – it gave me the trots.

You can buy an orphan for around 40,000 euros. I don’t know if that’s a good deal or not.

Have fun!

I think I’m going to be on the other side of the country from Vlad’s castle. However, if they have those sno-globes that have little impaled Turks inside. I am so getting you one!

* One of the six meats on your buffet, perhaps the only one available, will be a lamb sausage called mititei (pron. MEAT-EAT-EH, as though inquiring in pidgin Canadian). It is normally served after only the slightest kiss of flame on the grill, just enough to piss off the microbes festering within the essentially raw interior of the sausage. The term for “very well done” is: “foarte bine facuti” (FWART-EH BEAN-EH FA-KUTS; the “ti” ending comes out as “ts” in Romanian). Locals will say you’re ruining the mititei experience that way, but I viewed that as an acceptable tradeoff for avoiding the experience of hugging a Romanian loo overnight. The sausage is generally not bad, basically the same as a Bulgarian kebabche (which is normally cooked through) and akin to the kofte kebab available at your neighborhood gyro joint.

* Schnitzel is a universal word, but only in Romania can they find a way to screw it up. Order it only in sit-down places. At the train station buffet and such, you’re apt to end up with a tough, dry chunk of alleged pork that tastes like it was fried in motor oil.

* When you do have to resort to street food or fast food of any variety, even if is something you cannot imagine anyone putting mayonnaise on, request it “fara maioneza” (FAH-RAH MY-OHN-EH-ZA), without mayo, or what frighteningly passes for mayo over there, squirted in profusion over chips and much else.

In Bucharest, a couple of dining options that I presume still exist are the Carul cu Bere, a rather ornate old beer hall, and a restaurant downtown that used to be open only to military officers. Both of these places were pretty good when I was there, and of course ridiculously cheap. Your waiter knows how cheap it is to you and will devise ways to inflate the bill accordingly, but I always felt it would not be cricket to complain.

If you have a chance to get out of town, the Saxon cities of Sighisoara and Sibiu are fairly charming. A little closer by train, up past Brasov, are several ski resorts such as Predeal that appeared good candidates, ten years ago, to attract a bit of foreign investment and become little Lauterbrunnens.

Oh, and back to food. You’ll see this crap on the menus. No metaphor there. They serve a food called crap. Poor Romania, having suffered so much else, is evidently afflicted with dyslexia as well. It means carp.

You have got to live-blog Romania. No slacking…because if I don’t get my Cranky fix I get…well…CRANKY.

I am sure you can blog about Romanian toads.

And if you run across any Romanian ex-Olympic gymnasts who need a green card…

Have a wonderful time!!!! A little Romanian wooden doll from Cranky would make my entire experience on the internet worth it all.