Romania Revisited

One of our favourite places we have been to so far is Romania and since we are so close we decided to see the other side, the western side of Romania.
First cab of the rank was Timisoara (pronounced Timishwahra) since it was so close to the Serbian border. We had a nice hotel booked just on the outskirts. At least I thought it was nice, and maybe it would have been, but after 2 hours of going up and down back roads in country Romania, asking for directions twice, we gave up and called the hotel. To our surprise another hotel answered the call and they told me that the one we had booked is closed until next year (and yet they still took our money and booking). They told us of another of their hotels we could use, for the same rate, next to the train station. It turned out to be one of those hotels you stay at if you are STUCK at the train station and have nowhere to sleep. It was the bottom of the barrel so we stayed one night and went somewhere else. That night we walked into the old town which was actually quite nice. We had dinner at a restaurant on the town square and the food was ok, but the entertainment was, well entertaining but not in the way they imagined I think. There was some kind of party going on inside as we ate outside and the restaurant must have been short staffed because there was a boy waiter who could not have been older than 13 and a girl about the same age or younger. Clearly they start work young here. There was also a woman singing and to this day I am not sure if she was a paid singer or someone from the party who hijacked the microphone. She wasn’t a great singer but to see her go round to people at tables and personally sing to them (and their reaction) was entertaining for us at least. She was left to sing to a small audience though, as most of the party goers gravitated to the TV since the local football team was playing. Unfortunately for the restaurant, the local team lost and most of the people left.
The next day, after changing hotels, we wandered about the streets in the daylight. It is a quaint town with some charming architecture, but not a huge amount to keep you interested for the whole day. So we went on a mission to find a bookshop selling books in English and a decent haircut. The haircut was easily fixed and luckily there was a guy who spoke English (I had visions of ending up with a Mohawk, or worse a bowlcut). He was curious and confused as to why we were in Romania since he didn’t like it and wouldn’t think it would be a good holiday destination. It really is a beautiful country with good food and friendly people, whats not to like? Haircut done, we went to four bookshops and a tourist information place before we found what we wanted, but we did find it. Our last adventure for Timisoara before we moved on was to find a decent place to have dinner. Not too far from our new hotel there was a medieval restaurant which turned out to be excellent. The wait staff were all dressed in period costume, the walls were decorated with swords, armour and banners and the food was served on wooden boards. Our waitress suggested something which looked good, so we ordered that. A complimentary appetizer came first, some bread and large pickles to go with three different types of lard. That’s right, you get a good variety of fat here and apparently that’s traditional. When the main came out, it was served on a board about the size of a small body board. It had 6 different types of meat including a huge piece of roast pork, 3 different types of potato and some other veggies. We ate our full and it really didn’t look like we had even started. The rest we took home and proceeded to eat over the next two days. All this, with two beers only cost $30. Whats not to like?
We ventured further in to Romania to a small town called Sibiu. It is another of the abundant old small towns that you see in this country. That is not such a bad thing though and this town had definite charm and appeal. It had a large, open square at the centre of the old town which was apparently good enough to film at. I don’t know what they were shooting but in the afternoon there were a number of vans in the square and at least one said BBC. My bet was Dr. Who but I have absolutely no basis for this deduction, although I will defend it to the death (I could be a cricket selector). The town gave us a spectacular sunset, especially over the large church that was supposedly the place where Vlad Tepes son, aka Dracula, was killed. Like I said, charming. It was a pleasant place to spend a few days but nothing exciting happened here. Just outside Sibiu was a well recommended village museum. We drove out to this place, which was on a large piece of land complete with lake and river, and it displayed old buildings used by villagers in times gone by. Lots of thatch and it seemed every second building was a watermill, or some other kind of mill. For something that was dubbed as a ‘must see’, it was a little underwhelming. The first five minutes were interesting but it became very much the same. The lake was spectacular though, and it would have been better if you could venture in to some of the buildings but that was not allowed, and for once I actually didn’t go in anyway.

It is a shame to turn our backs on Romania. It has given us some wonderful memories and is a place I would recommend to anyone and will for sure visit again. For now, it is on to Hungary and we get closer to the end of our journey by car.