On Saturday, at 5 a.m., everyone who wanted to hike on the trail we had decided on (Vacarea summit - Vacarea sheepfold - Atheneum Cross monument - Rosu peak - Iezer peak) woke up, to leave in about an hour on the trail marked with a red line, hiking on Vacarea summit in a drizzle which later turned to snow. The trail starts on a hill and crosses a gravel road several times. Not long after we began climbing, at about 1100 m altitude, it started snowing with large flakes and the snow settled on the trees and the recently-rained on dried leaves.

After about 40 minutes of hiking through the wood, my physical condition didn’t allow me to continue, so I had to go back to the cabin. The others continued on, aiming to get the Atheneum Cross and Iezer peak, but they had to turn back too, because of the weather.
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While standing in line in the Vienna airport I was deep in thought while looking at a young Buddhist monk wearing a traditional garment, accompanied by a very beautiful woman. The dream state was broken by the charming approach of a group of noisy women. They were restless, flurried and pleasant, and when they started to ask questions in broken English I burst into laughter.

I like colorful people and, since I met most of them in Romania, I like it here.

I like cultures that overrate themselves and, since Romania is the most familiar to me, I like it here.
Any culture establishes itself as a center, a pole of interest for a certain community. Thus, any worthwhile display is inflated to glorious size and not justified in an objective manner. We have a good movie, we squeeze it as much as possible and it was successful all over the place and it’s a rebirth of Romanian cinama and etc. When we use the exceptions to fuel our desire that they become the rule, you can recognize a culture that overrates itself. It’s just a phase (sometimes to be blamed), but it pushes things forward.

I like blazing, confident and beautiful women, and since most of them are Romanian, I like it here.

I like the noise, the bustle, the turmoil and, since you can find them all here, I like Romania.
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I had only been to Craiova once, years ago, for a few hours. Things I remembered:
- the University was white and pretty
- the park was large and beautiful
- the locals could not give street directions.
I was to be proven correct on all three.

So, on Saturday morning, along with a sizeable section of the team at Bookblog, I got on a (remarkably new and clean) train. A couple of hours later, we got off in the middle of the Apocalypse, apparently: some sort of construction work was going on and the train station was surrounded by metal sheet.

We had 2 hours until another member was arriving, so we figured we’d just go to the hotel, leave our stuff and come back for her. We had a map and the city wasn’t large, what’s the worse that could happen?
(That question never has a happy answer.)
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I met M. in the station and we went to the campus. It was an interesting experience staying there for 2 days, but now I’m 100% sure I couldn’t have lived in a campus, I couldn’t have shared a small room with another person, I couldn’t have got used to the idea of common showers/toilets. The room wasn’t bad and the bathroom was more than OK, but I don’t know… yes, there are a lot students there, it’s the perfect place to make friends and get to know all kinds of people, but honestly, I prefer my big, empty room :)

After we slept for, I don’t know, 1-1.5 hours, M. showed me around town. What can I say… Timisoara is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. I’d been there only once before, when I was little, so I didn’t remember much of it. And then there were all these people telling me how nice the city is, how civilised, how Occidental. And it’s not that I didn’t believe them, but I had my Bucharest and it was enough for me.

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The Romanian Costel Busuioc is a simple man. A country man who left his home to win some money. He became a national hero overnight. Everyone is in a hurry to praise him, to praise the country he’s from. But no one is saying that Romania has no merit in what Costel Busuioc has become.
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