Blog of Romania

The first time I visited Sibiu was a long time ago, so I don’t remember much. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the way the town made me feel,when I came back to Sibiu in November. I was on a mini-trip after a real team-building with my then-co-workers.

Here are some photos that speak for themselves:

Being from Sibiu, Ciprian knew where to take us. I left with one thought: that I want to see Hermannstadt again as soon as possible.

The return

The opportunity would come sooner than I’d wished, honestly. After conversations that lasted from August til’ mid-December and after B&B owners and friends changed their minds, my gang kind of “split up” and we were forced to find alternate locations for spending New Year’s. Of course, I thought of Sibiu, and after trying to find easier alternatives (read: closer to Bucharest), I tried to find accomodation in Sibiu. After repeated failures, I got lucky after a friend gave me a helpful tip.

And here I was, on Demcember 29, in Sibiu.

Decorated with Christmas lights and a bit of snow, the town lay still and waited for the new year. I was used to the crowd of the capital city, so I thought at first that the locals felt it was simply too cold to go out. I heard too many words with a Bucharest accent, so I concluded that only tourists from Bucharest were walking across the beautiful pavement downtown. Which wasn’t that far from the truth, as you’ll see.

I noticed a couple of really cool things in this town, beside the atmosphere. These people have a lot of respect for the brand. However weird this sounds, it must define the people in Sibiu since it impressed me so much. The town itself benefited from an ad-hoc large-scale branding campaing that was pretty effective, and people who own a restaurant, a product or a service which is active on the local market and has competition have very good promotional materials. The marketing industry is also helped by the high-quality print shops in Sibiu. To quote the tagline of the most preeminent such print shop: “We print you on anything!”…

And speaking of restaurants…

The restaurants

We were received - with warmth you very rarely find in a restaurant in Bucharest, be it fancy or not - in several interesting places.

By far, the best food in Sibiu was, to me, the one in Crama “Sibiul Vechi”, a restaurant I’d known from November and which proved to be a paradise for the food lover (category in which I definitely fit in).

We found an interesting atmosphere and an excellent Irish Coffee in Kulturcafe Sigi, we found pretty good food at Bufniţa Restaurent, but the pleasant surprise came from the only real chocolaterie in Sibiu, Bur Chocolat. Belgian chocolate of the highest quality and an intimate space to savour it in, in case you want to try the pralines on the spot or taste some hot chocolate (100 mg was enough for me, it was that sweet!). The owner received us in the dining room with a glass of mulled wine on the house a couple of hours before the passage between the years, as he saw we were all frozen from the cold. We got to talking, and he told us how much he liked it in Sibiu. He had moved there a few months ago, from Bucharest. For good. An initiative I only now understand perfectly, after my friend Aurelian has decided to try the same thing this year.

I’m sure there are a lot of other good restaurants I didn’t get the opportunity to see, so please give me some tips!

Original post: here (RO).
Viorel is a web developer, has been coding for 8 years and making a living out of it for two. He’s been playing around with a D80 for a year and with cameras in general for 4. He is interested in marketing, branding and image.