19 Jun 2014 Brasov to Sibiu

19 Jun 2014 Brasov to Sibiu
Checkout is 11:30.  Our train is at 13:00, so we plan to check out at 11:25 to get the bus to the train.
Breakfast is in the room, since we are carrying a lot of food, including bread and 3 of the "sheep" sausages from the night before.  At 8, we are already packed and out the hotel doors.  As we walk down the hotel stairs, we take a picture of the beautiful stained glass windows.  In its prime, this must have been a great hotel.
This time we walk to just outside the gates.  As we are walking along, we are met by 40 or so Polish teenagers, walking uphill to outside the gate where their tour bus is waiting.  Where are they going today?  The two or three kids we talked to didn't know. 
We walk along the gate, then down to the Schei Gate.  We get back to the Schei Synagogue at 9 am just as a woman showed up to open it. We pay 5 lei each, and stay for 10 mins.  The woman tells us whose doorbell to ring at 64 Str. Castelului in order to see the Orthodox synagogue.  And we are off.  Just as we were leave, a Spanish Jewish tour enters.  The tour guide paid for 40 or so tickets, which justified opening the synagogue for that day.
There is a very attractive kosher restaurant on the property, but no one is serving just now.
This time we are buzzed in at Str. Castelului 64. We head along the internal alleyway to the synagogue, which is on an upper level waaaaay at the back.  It is locked and in bad repair, but we finally can see the once-glorious exterior.  (This all sounds confusing, so here goes:  In the old towns in this part of the world, an address is an entrance to a compound.  Within each compound can be almost anything: a house and its back buildings; a number of houses; an apartment complex; a park; almost ... anything.  To find a synagogue at the back on an upper level is not unexpected at all.  Perhaps in 1890, this whole compound was owned by Jews and the whole thing made sense then.)
After viewing, we walk by the Pharmacy Café, just next to the Internet Café, and stop to get a fancy cappuccino, admire the inside (a recreated olde tyme drug store), and get access to a bathroom.  The place is a coffee house, but the theme is an old pharmacy, and it is expertly executed.
Back to the market, where we find lobeda: red leaves used to impart sour to the traditional Romanian ciorba (soup).  We have seen ciorba recipes in Romanian cookbooks and have never seen this leaf or any western substitute, but here it is for sale.  We fill another bottle with crama wine for our journey, go elsewhere for 15 min of internet, pick up our bags, checkout.  Goodbye Brasov, a likeable city.
We walk 150-200 m to our bus stop (that we had ascertained the night before), take the 51 bus to the train station, and in due time, get on the 13:00 train to Sibiu.
Our seatmates in a set of 5 seats are a couple deeply intertwined in each other.
Fruit trees, potential Gypsy dwellings, and countryside to view otherwise. Iffy weather.
We get to Sibiu on time, and take a taxi to Casa Romana 2.  The walk would have been less than 10 minutes, but it was raining, and the maps were somewhat confusing.  Because of the one way streets, the taxi drive had to go nearly 2 km to go 3/4 km to the room.
Casa Romana has been a Lonely Planet favorite.  However, booking.com showed it to it as Sold Out, but showed Casa Romana 2 a few blocks away.  It was only 27 euros, or 118 lei.  Breakfast was 15 lei apiece at Casa Romana [1], so we signed up for morning eats.  Our room was spacious, the TV worked (with lots of channels), the beds were comfy, and the hot water (after suitable time to warm up) was hot.  Altogether, quite a deal.
We got directions to walk to the center of town.  Out on the street with the do-not-enter one-way sign, to the end, take a left, and climb the hill.  As we are climbing the hill, we see a meter and a gate.  The gate has a number on it - the number of additional cars allowed into the center to park.  Once that number hits zero, presumably no cars are allowed in until other cars leave.  Simple & efficient.
We emerge at the Liar's Bridge, so named because if you lied while on the bridge it would creak (or so they say).
The intensely touristy area of Sibiu consists of three squares, Piata Mica (small), Piata Huet, and Piata Mare (great).  We start at Piata Mica.  Carol carefully examines the postings and determines that there is a free choral concert at one of the University buildings just SW of the center, and that there is a clothing festival at the Astra Museum beginning at 10 am tomorrow - the Romanian blouse.
The Astra Museum is a little hard to get to (being a number of km out of town, and requiring a couple of bus/trams, or some extended walking), but we plan on the choral concert.
Along our walk we come to the Council Tower, which has a very old clock with exposed mechanism near the top.  For 2 lei each we get to climb the 7 sets of very narrow steep steps and are rewarded by a fine view of the whole city.  It is now 5:20 pm.
We emerge into the Piata Mare. Disney could not design a better open plaza for tourists in groups or pairs to see and be seen. Selfie heaven in front of picturesque buildings. We head to the tourist info.  Among other things, we ask if there is a map of the Sibiu transit system.  We show him a copy we had photographed at the train station, which showed that it was accurate, eff. 23 Jun 2014.  He said that we didn't need public transit (taxis or walking was fine), and that the info was false. On reflection this could have been true, because it was to go into effect in four days.  Still the guy's attitude rankled Mike, who expects the tourist office folks to not actively discourage people wanting to take public transit. Sheesh, you should have to have transit, bathroom and Internet info at your fingertips to work at a tourist office.
Anyway, we head down the broad pedestrian promenade toward the SW. We pass a number of restaurants, the first of which is Crama Sibiu Vechi, highly recommended by a number of sources, including Lonely Planet.  Faux Olde Rumania, and menus in too many languages. We pass.  The next two restaurants are even pricier.
We are still hungry at the end of Str. Nicolas Balceasca, the tourist street (closed to traffic) that leaves Piata Mare to the SW. We grab a piece of pizza and two savory flaky pastries from a busy storefront vendor (12 lei), go into the park next to it, and finish them off.  This is real street food, and just outside the tourist "boundary." No Gypsy violinists or costuming here.
It is now 6:15 pm.  Someone has told us that an internet café exists about 3 blocks away.  We walk over and find it.  It is now 6:35 pm and so there is no time for internet now. We store the info, walk 1 1/2 blocks back, and find the hall where the concert will be.  We walk in as the chorus is finishing their rehearsal. 
The concert hall, empty when we walked in, is now almost full, and we are treated to slightly more than 1 hour of wonderful choral singing, mostly unaccompanied.  There is little by major European composers; the program is almost entirely by Romanian composers, none of whom are familiar to us.
About 8:15 pm we are through.  We walk back Balceasca St. and order a clatite with nutella from a store with a single woman cooking away.  A clatite is basically a crepe with filling, cooked right in front of you.  Not as good as the one at Romaneasca in Brasov, but still quite good.
On the way back through Piata Mare, we find another internet café, and store this info for future use.  As we leave Piata Mare, we pass St. Ursuline Church.  The choral concert will be repeated here tomorrow night, but now it is (drumroll) Closed.
We are almost at the pensuine, and we are back by 9:15 pm, at sunset.  To bed.