Blog of Romania

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[Read part 1: Sighisoara]

Although the distance between Sighisoara and Sibiu is only around 100 km, there is no direct train between the two. I was a bit wary of taking the Personal (the worst type of train around here) and changing trains once on the way, but we couldn’t find any bus at a reasonable hour. We got at the train station in time… and we waited for 10 minutes for the train to appear. Now, I don’t mind waiting a bit, but we only had 15 minutes to make the connection.

Despite my worries, the train was pretty empty, it wasn’t dirty, and a couple of nice people helped us get off at the right stop - where the first thing we saw was the next train. Perfect timing.

In Sibiu, I was very proud to see I still knew the way to Piata Mare (Large Square), so we managed to find our hostel (situated in Piata Mica - Small Square) very easily. It was my first time in a hostel and I didn’t know what to expect. It was awesome. The staff was friendly, our roommates (two girls and one guy, all Romanian) were nice, and the other room was filled with foreigners apparently having a lot of fun. I was tempted to extend my stay for an extra day just to get to talk to all the people, but we had previous plans so we couldn’t.

The first night in Sibiu was very mellow - we just ate and came back to the hostel, where we just played cards and rummy until we went to sleep.

We woke up to snow in air and on the ground. We were almost the first people up, so we got peace and quiet (and no que to shower). We got into tourist mode again and started off.

First stop: the Evangelical Church and its tower. I’d visited the place a year before and I was eager to see it again. You climb a looot of stairs… then you get to the church bells… then you climb a looot more stairs.

We stopped to study the bells closer and Lerri was wondering what happens if you’re under them when they ring. So, of course, the second she finished saying that, the bells rung. We shrieked like little girls. That was one hell of a coincidence.

The view from the top is amazing, so I’ll let the pictures speak. The only downside of the snow was that we couldn’t see the beautiful colorful tiles on the church roof (which you can see in this picture I took in summer 2006).

Next up, we had a bit of fun in the snow (butt sledging rocks… until you hit the bottom of the slope), looked at the old walls of the city plus towers (impressive) and visited the Museum of Natural History (small, but nice). We hadn’t had enough stairs-climbing for a day, so we went up another tower - the Town Council tower this time. The inside is not the interesting, but from the top you get a great view of the center of Sibiu.

And that was it. A trek through a couple of bookstores in the search of the elusive map of the Saxon fortresses (which we managed to find in the end), a visit to a Belgian chocolaterie with a chocolate fountain the thought of which makes me drool (also seen in this entry) and an unplanned round of fun at the tackiest wedding ever (we didn’t take pictures, but the bride’s dress looked exactly like a wedding cake; I hope she didn’t see us laugh our asses off when she came out of the church). Afterwards, on the train and home… Tired but happy. And ready for the next trip.

Jen takes care of BlogofRomania and wants to travel as much as possible. Feel free to invite her to visit.
Post written for BlogofRomania.

How does a promising trip start? Not by waking up at 6 a.m. and still missing your train. But we nonetheless managed it.

‘We’ means a Romanian (i.e. me) and an American (i.e. Lerri [say it like Marie with an L; NOT Larry], freshly arrived from Ukraine), who had known each other for about 4 years but had only met face-to-face 4 days before. The Romanian should’ve known better than to assume that 7 a.m. traffic is much better than at 9 a.m., or she could’ve at least thought about the construction works on the way. She didn’t, so they both arrived at the train station in time to see the empty tracks where their train had been 5 minutes before. Change ticket, pay the difference, go back home and sleep until the next one.

As it turns out, it wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Switching from an Accelerat to an Intercity meant we got a table. So, we spent the next ~4 hours playing Spite & Malice (cool American card game). I won at first (beginner’s luck), then started losing; then the guy sitting in the chair across us (who I swear I knew from somewhere… maybe last year’s Artmania fest) joined in and proceeded to kick our ass repeatedly. Luckily we got to Sighisoara before being humiliated too much…

There, my lovely friend Silviu was waiting for us and he gave us (amazing) shelter, then took us to a place which had food (mmm. pasta.) Because it was dark, and sightseeing is difficult if you can’t actually see anything, we proceeded to a bar (then another, then another - they close way too early), where we and his friends got involved in intercultural drinking, jokes, sex tales, swearing, police stories and anything in between.

The next morning, tired and slightly hungover, we got into tourist mode and started a walk around the city. I had only seen it during the medieval festival (read: overcrowded), so it was very weird seeing empty places which last summer were teeming with people. But my conclusion after comparing the two: deserted city is muuch better for tourists than drunken rockers all over the place.

Sighisoara is beautiful. You go from the new town to the old citadel (still inhabited) on a long stairway (not exactly to heaven, but close) and end up in a square. On the right, the Clock Tower, almost no one in sight (cue memories of the throng of people waiting to go up during the festival). So, of course, we started climbing. What I didn’t know is that the tower also contains the museum of history, which had awesome stuff like a model of old Sighisoara, objects from each of the craftsmen’s guilds and - my favorites - a couple of old medical kits (amputation, gynecology, surgery) full of creepy metal things (I was very glad I’m living in the modern age). Climbing further up the narrow stairs, we got to the room of the clock, where you can see the mechanism in action and wonder just how the fuck does it work?

Even further up, you get to the top of the tower and you can enjoy a great view of the city and the cool markers showing the direction and distance to several important cities (and the poles). Towers rock and these German towns seem to have a lot of them.

We walked around some more afterwards, saw the Roman-Catholic church, a couple of new hostels and B&Bs, places undergoing some sort of demolishing/repair work and a lot of adorable little streets (plus a souvenir shop with a very nice saleswoman - last on the left as you’re going towards the staircase, it has some mannequins in front).

Next up, climbing the next set of stairs - this time, the covered staircase (which, as the name implies, is a staircase with a roof). A lady was playing folk music on the stairs, so we had a little entertainment while climbing and discovering exactly how out-of-shape we were. The first thing you see on the hill is a high-school. I’d have skipped many more classes if I had to climb for 5 minutes to get to school… these students should get a medal.

Next to the high-school there’s the Biserica din Deal (the Church on the Hill), which we didn’t visit because we’re not so crazy about churches. What we did see was the cemetery, which was very beautiful. Sad, of course, but very beautiful nonetheless.

After this short interlude with the dead, we stopped in a bar for everyone’s (non-alcoholic, this time) drink of choice, then hurried back to Silviu’s home for a great home-cooked meal from his mother and quick packing + leaving for the train station, as we weren’t planning on missing anymore trains.

Of course, the train was late this time, but about that in part two.

[Read part 2: Sibiu.]

Jen takes care of BlogofRomania and wants to travel as much as possible. Feel free to invite her to visit.
Post written for BlogofRomania.

An interesting blog entry from Mike Nork, about the Romanian Revolution in 1989.

On Friday of last week I went to a presentation given by Dorel Jurcovan, a man who had first-hand experience with the events of the Romanian Revolution. He talked a bit about life during the last days of communism and showed a video about the Revolution from 1990.

Read more on the original blog.

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I’ve been meaning to go to Histria for a few months now; still, I only managed to get there last Sunday. I had visited the ancient ruins about 12 years ago and, since the only vivid memories of that trip were of my father chasing a lizard, I thought it might be time to create fresh new ones. Luckily, the weather was not as windy as predicted, nor was it cloudy (at least, not all the time), so I was able to shoot decent photos, which can be admired at the end of the article (do not scroll down yet, interesting information following!).

Moreover, my classmate’s brother, who currently studies History at the “Ovidius” University in Constanta provided me with some ‘expert’ information regarding the construction of the fortress. One thing he told me concerns the color of Roman bricks, which used to be bright orange, brighter than nowadays actually, which explains why they still look so jolly, despite being about two thousand years old. Also, it seems that the Greeks were very smart fellows, as they would build the citadel walls to resist earthquakes – first came a layer of stone, then 3-5 layers of brick, followed by another layer of stone and so on. Apparently, this system had first been used on the walls of Constantinople, because a wall completely made of stone would have been too sensitive to such extreme phenomena.

Unfortunately, dogs aren’t allowed into the museum, so I had to skip that part, but that didn’t make the trip one bit less enjoyable. So, if you ever get the chance, visit Histria!

Original post: here (RO).
Ela is 18 and very talkative. In fact, she is so talkative many people have told her to shut up. So she started blogging. Now she can ban those who tell her to shut up.

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The city always looks dark at sunset. The metal skeletons of the electricity poles try - unsuccessfully - to hide the blood-red disc. The entire horizon is dowsed in the sickly red light and the polluted breath of the city. This doesn’t make me appreciate it any less. It makes me feel powerless in front of a sick man I cannot cure. With each sunset, my city dies a little more. It eats up the dead rays of the sun only to be reborn, even more noisy and full of life, with the next sunrise…

Original post: here.
Dan is a 27 year-old from Bucharest who lives to read, write, take phots and discover the new and the old.

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From Bukresh blog:
“John Squier and his partner went on an Eastern European car journey in 1985. These are pictures of Piata Unirii which was demolished a year later in 1986. They stayed at Hanul lui Manuc and the first picture in these series was taken from the window of room 113.”

Click on the link to get a glimpse of the Bucharest of 23 years ago.