I'm a little bit in love...

My home from Tuesday to Friday this week was Timișoara. When I originally planned where to go in Romania, it wasn't on the itinerary, but in order for me to see the Southern Trnasylvanian Alps I decided to include it and so therein began what was a fairly major detour in an otherwise seemingly sensible route. To get to Timișoara I had a 6.5 hour bus journey which I was a little excited about in terms of the scenery I would see, until I got stuck in the corner of the back seat of the minibus that was to be my carriage from Cluj! Not being the world's best traveller in this type of vehicle, still nursing one helluva cough and cold and wedged in for potentially a quarter of a day, the journey suddenly loomed large. 

We left at 10.30am and as we headed into the hills they were somewhat hidden behind a veil of what I thought was white cloud and figured would burn off fairly quickly as the sun was getting stronger by the minute. However, it seems it wasn't cloud, as it stayed there and I now think it was actually smoke from where they were burning the fields, and from wood burning stoves in people's homes. All was not lost though because at times the smoke cleared a little and below are a few photos which again do no justice whatsoever to the achingly beautiful countryside that I saw. 

Also, fortunately, half way into the journey, people got off and I actually ended up being one of the lucky people who had a free seat next to them.

Anyway, I arrived at my hostel, Freeborn Hostel, in Timișoara and managed to get my washing straight into the machine. The hostel is unusual in that it had a dryer (seems sensible to have one and all hostels I encountered on my RTW trip did but they seem to be something of a rarity on this adventure). Having not done any since Bratislava, I was pretty much out of wearable clothes, and wore the oddest outfit whilst everything else was in the wash! (Needless to say, no photos of that!).

That night I had one of the best night's sleep I've had in ages and so woke up feeling somewhat better. I'd spotted a Starbucks on my way to the hostel and decided that on that morning, Starbucks was what I needed. I had nothing planned or booked after Timișoara and quick checks had told me that a lot of hostels were booking up fast so I figured a bit of trip planning was needed and I spent a couple of hours there working out my itinerary, which also needed some adjustment, as routes I'd thought were possible, I discovered when I got here, weren't. One thing I did know though was that the train I was due to take to Sibiu involved me having a reservation for one leg of it so I headed to the train station to book my ticket. With my route written down, my small amount of Romanian and the assistant's small amount of English, we managed to identify the trains I'd planned to take, but when I went to pay, all 3 cards I had with me were declined. Logic told me that it was probably the machine, I'd used my Barclaycard that morning in Starbucks. My Monzo card is Mastercard and my Lloyds a visa debit so I figured unless something had wiped all of them, it was unlikely all the cards had been stopped. After being reassured it would be absolutely fine for me to get the ticket on Friday morning, I headed back into town to get reassurance that the cards were working. Unfortunately, all the trip planning had killed my phone's battery so I couldn't check on that so I headed to the first bank machine I could find as I figured if they worked in that, they hadn't been stopped. You can imagine the fear when the bank machine threw all 3 back at me saying they weren't accepted! 😱 Fortunately, the next bank I tried (OTP - which I'd used in Hungary) accepted them all so my blood pressure finally came back to normal.

From there I went and had some lunch, accompanied by an Efes draft (which at 9 LEI - about £1.95 I hear is somewhat cheaper than they're selling them in Turkey at the moment!). 

At this point, I was a little disappointed with my detour; the journey hadn't been quite what I'd hoped for because of the smoke and other than the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitan cathedral, which admittedly was beautiful...

...there didn't seem much to Timișoara. Unfortunately my hostel had run out of maps and so having not checked my own guidebook, which I eventually did, I hadn't realised I was missing the best bit, and boy was it good! There were two large squares, Piata Unirii (Union Square) which has the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral and Romano-Catholic cathedrals at each end, and Piata Libertatii (Freedom Square) with its secessionist architecture plus numerous little streets full of bars and restaurants and beautiful architecture that I'd been completely missing!!

In addition, the university has a music faculty so as you walk through some of streets you hear the students practising, which is just amazing. All round there are cool statues which I just loved...

And so I fell just a little bit in love with Timișoara ❤️❤️❤️ This is the first place I have visited so far on my trip that I could quite happily move to. 

From there, I spent a good while just meandering (I'm a very good meanderer) and then headed up to the mall, which was a mistake in that they had shops with clothes in I would wear in my regular life and I had to walk away from them, but a success in that they had an amazing food court and so I had my eye on a massive salad and juice for the next day's lunch! After wandering back to the Unirii Square, I had a couple of glasses of wine and watched the world go by before heading back to the hostel.

On my meanderings I had discovered Timișoara has a Tucano coffee shop. This is a mainly Eastern European chain I'd found in Cluj Napoca which to me rivals Caribou Coffee (this is my all-time favourite chain that we had in Minnesota) and so I headed there for breakfast. From there I went to the Austrian Fortress...

which has somewhat coolly been turned into an art gallery and bars/restaurants, before spending a couple of hours in the botanic gardens (more of just a park really) before getting my salad and juice I'd promised myself the day before and from which the nutrients were badly needed as I seemed to have taken a step backwards in my cold recovery programme...

That afternoon, I spent some time back at the hostel writing up my journal and reading my book, not feeling up to much else and then just went out for dinner in the evening preceded by another mini meander to soak up the atmosphere, which was just lovely.

The following morning marked the half way point for my European Adventure - yes, I'm 6 and a half weeks through the 13 already! How crazy is that! So in honour of this, I decided to have breakfast at Tucano but to have cheesecake for breakfast to mark the occasion!

After my breakfast treat, I left Timișoara early that afternoon to head to Sibiu. The ups and downs of that journey await you in my next post!