Hora, in blog format

Baba Ghanoush

Will, Shawn and I decided to go to a fancy Lebanese restaurant today (all of the very many Middle Eastern food places I've seen in Montreal have been Lebanese), and we were not disappointed. First off we were the only people in a really nice place which made us feel baller, but I also tried an eggplant dish which turned out to be the same thing as 'Salata de Vinete' in Romania. It was delicious, and I realized today how much I miss my mom's cooking!

Romanians can crank out some pretty good trance tunes

The People's Republic of Socialist Romanistan

Romania

This post is long overdue. At the moment I've been back in Vancouver for over a month, in fact I've even started school. However, I need to finish blogging about my adventures in Europe and there's no better time than now. After leaving Greece and hanging out in Italy for two days, I flew from Rome to Timisoara in Romania. The trip to Timisoara was a bit long (since I left from Bisceglie on my way to Fiumincino airport in Rome), but I had some delicious home-made panzerotti to keep me company. Upon arrival in Timisoara I was greeted by Christine and Nelu (family friends), whom I spent a few days with. They showed me around the city and even their country cottage, and we had a good time; they're great people. Timisoara itself was surprisingly beautiful - compared to many cities in Europe it's very green, and compared to the many eastern European cities it's very clean. The city's architecture is reminiscent of a more affluent past under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but being well-maintained makes the city one of the most beautiful I've explored on my travels.

The clocks on Timisoara's Catholic cathedral froze at different moments in their history
After a few awesome days in Timisoara, I took a train across to the other side of Transylvania to Sibiu, where I still have a lot of family. The train was definitely the worst I'd taken in Europe: first class was worse than second class in other countries, I had to hop across train tracks to get to my platform, the train is easily a meter above the platform so you have to climb way up into it, and the scariest part about the whole ride was the fact that there was no lighting on the train. This made me clutch all my belongings and my heart beat faster while the train passed through pitch-black tunnels. Creepy Romanian train rides aside, Sibiu was awesome. I spent the first few days just outside the city in Talmaciu with my cousin Fane, which was fun but a little shocking. I never experienced any form of serious cultural shock in the first five months of being in Europe, but I definitely experienced some here. The first shock I experienced was when I had to flush the toilet by filling up a big bucket full of water then dumping it in the toilet. Second was the fact that if I wanted hot water, I had to turn on a furnace and wait about half an hour. Other reasons were the way people in Talmaciu treated pets, the unpaved streets and the fact that not much had changed in the town since I was a child.
Sporting a shepherd's uniform, with my cousin, in Talmaciu
While I was there, my aunt and uncle were busy with work but mostly with the wedding preparations for my oldest cousin, George, so I only stayed with them for a few nights. After Talmaciu I stayed in Sibiu a couple nights before leaving for Danes to visit my godmother. I met up with Shawn in Cluj after he flew in from Venice, after which we headed to Sibiu for the remainder of our stay in Romania. The majority of the time I was in Romania I spent with family, catching up and hanging out. It was a nice change to just chill and not really do anything but chat with my family. I did however do a few more exciting things while in Romania. One was that I met up with my 1st grade teacher, who organized a little meet-up with a few old classmates! It was crazy seeing everyone again, most of them I wouldn't have recognized on the street, and it was interesting seeing how their lives were all taking shape. Shawn and I also went drinking with them, once at a karaoke bar which was fun. The nightlife in Sibiu is just as great as other cities in Europe: the beer is cheap and you can stay out until dawn. My uncle, Dorin, is also super cool and was totally fine with us getting home to the apartment just as he would be waking up to go to work.
Shawn and I givin'er at karaoke at Oldies in Sibiu
As a city, Sibiu is gorgeous. In the last few years the mayor of the city has put in a lot of effort to clean up and modernize the city and it's really showing. It's charmingly small, dotted by cozy cafes where citizens spend their day, and the mostly intact medieval structures of the city create a unique atmosphere. Even though I was born in Transylvania, I never realized how mixed a heritage it boasts. This area of Romania has had very diverse populations in the past, being home to not just Romanians but also many Germans and Hungarians, and even some Serbians in certain areas. This diversity is still evident in the culture of the cities - many different languages are spoken, different religions are practiced and the traditional food enjoyed in the area is very eclectic. The area is so diverse, in fact, that most big Transylvanian cities have Romanian, German and Hungarian names, including my birth place of Sibiu, a.k.a. Hermannstadt in German, a.k.a. Nagyszeben in Hungarian. Besides hanging out in Sibiu, Shawn and I had a great time at my cousin's wedding in Talmaciu, where we witnessed my grandpa and his brother down 'tuica' (strong Romanian liquor) like it was water, and where we learned some fun-when-intoxicated-otherwise-repetitive traditional Romanian folk dances. We also spent a day in Sebesul de Jos, the tiny village where my mother was born and raised, where life is very, very far away from what we are used to in Vancouver. My uncle took us for a tractor ride around the village to show us their crops and orchards, and also taught us a bit about country life in Romania.
My uncle, his tractor and I, and all his kids minus one
After a great three weeks in Romania, we began to feel somewhat homesick and we started on our journey back towards Prague, the start and end location of our amazing overseas adventure. We took a ridiculously long train ride from Sibiu to Medias (where Shawn almost kicked a gypsy in the face, that's how annoying they were), to Budapest during which we were a little worried about our visas. We got across the border OK, although the train was stopped for three unscheduled hours in No-man's-land between Romania and Hungary. We barely caught our Student Agency bus to Prague on time because of this, but our streak of never missing a bus, train or plane is still alive. Being back in Prague was an experience, there were so many memories and we got very nostalgic walking its streets. We only had two more days to buy a few more souvenirs and live in the city we both love so much before our long flight back home to Vancouver.