The story starts in a wonderful morning in the middle of July. Because of the heavy working schedule of the previous day I fell asleep at 2am in the morning working on my project about Safer Internet.

I was about to skip breakfast if it wasn’t for Ovidiu’s well thought advice who asked Joanna (Portugal) and Adam (Germany) to “kindly” wake us up (me and Mihai) using the megaphone, which sounds like a thousand police sirens.

After taking our sweet revenge, by pouring cold water on Joanna and Adam we finally got to the table, where we found out that we only have about 5 minutes to eat our breakfast before the bus to Bran will leave.

We almost forgot about the trip to Bran that the coordinators organized for the volunteers to have a better look on what Romania has to offer. The trip was described by our coordinator Ovidiu as “legendary”, which also turned out to be true.

Firstly, we went to Bran to discover more about count Dracula, the famous vampire. Despite my initial belief, it turns out that Dracula wasn’t even a vampire. It’s only a legend that came along with Bram Stoker’s novel and now brings lots of tourists to Bran’s castle.  I was even more amazed when I found out that Dracula was actually a very cruel ruler, which went by the name of Vlad Tepes. His well known “thirst for blood” comes from the way he used to punish those who betrayed him.

After this very enlightening experience we continued with our adventure to another place. We went to Brasov, one of the most beautiful mountain cities from Romania.

After arriving at Brasov we visited the Black Church, one of the oldest churches in Europe. Although I have to admit that it was pretty interesting, dear reader, you have to agree with me that a church is still a church.

Hours passed by without me even noticing. We shopped, then we shopped some more and then we went shopping a bit more. After feeling a bit tired, we stopped at a traditional coffee shop to “recharge our batteries”. These are the moments that make life worthwhile.

Like all good things in life have an end, our little trip did also. When we arrived at the Mama Cozonacilor’s camp we were tired, sleepy and hungry. After we ate our dinner like a pack of wolves which were devouring their prey, we costumed ourselves in something which was related to Internet and technology. So, we had many interesting costumes like laptops, viruses, smiley faces, spam, blog etc. We had to present our costumes in front of the others and we also had to create a theatre play, in which we had to involve all the persons who were costumed which actually turned out to be a very fun and creative way to interact with one another. As a prize for our plays, we received safer internet t-shirts, from Save the Children Romania.

Sebi Patulea (Romanian volunteer) and Ancuta Coman (Romanian volunteer)