Monday, May 26
We spent the morning on the road between Sibiu and Timisoara, which is in western Romania, near its borders with Hungary and Serbia. The ride was lovely, lots of small villages, each with a pointy-turreted church tower and a cluster of homes with red tile roofs.
We had high hopes for Timisoara, which not only has an important role in the country's recent history, but is known for its large and lovely squares and green spaces. It was quiet difficult to get around the city center, as so much it is torn up for extensive infrastructure repair. Entire squares and many streets were just a mess; evidently the concept of approaching such major work in a piecemeal fashion didn't occur to the powers that be. The project at the important and probably very impressive Union Square has evidently been under way since 2011 and the end doesn't appear to be in sight. In Liberty Square, where ruins of a prior settlement have been unearthed, there's no telling what timeline might apply.
We were headed to the museum dedicated to the uprising of 1989, but when we managed to pick our way through multiple construction sites to its address, we found that it had moved. Luckily for us, it was just a few blocks away in an old army barracks, and we were able to visit it. The museum contains memorabilia from the struggle, examples of international press coverage of the events, artistic representations of the uprising, and samples of the regime's propaganda.
Also displayed were several flags that the rebels waved during their protests; the tricolor flags have circular holes in the center, where the symbol of the Communist regime had been cut out. The popular revolt that toppled Ceausescu in 1989 began here in the streets of Timisoara, spread through small towns and cities to Bucharest and, in a matter of just ten days, resulted in the trial and execution of the dictator and his wife. While at the museum, we were able to meet Dr. Traian Orban, who oversees the collection. He is a survivor of the uprising here and was shot twice in the leg when the army turned its guns on the protesting citizens. After 45 years of deprivation under Communist rule, Dr. Orban told us that 1989 was a rebirth for him, so he'll be 25 in December!
One important public space that has not been jackhammered away is the large Victory Square, which runs from the Orthodox Cathedral to the National Theater and is lined with cafes and graced with fountains and flowers.
We found that one of the restaurants most highly ranked by both Trip Advisor and Lonely Planet was just a stroll across the park from our small hotel and we had a fine dinner of local specialties in its lovely garden.
As this is our last day in Romania, I'm going to toss in some observations that I either forgot to include in previous posts, or just didn't fit in with them. Along country roads, farmers set up small stands to sell not just the usual produce, but also homemade cheese and honey. There are lots of beehives around, some of them stacked in rows and columns on trucks. Another common rural sight were haystacks unlike those we've seen elsewhere: they're conical and centered around a vertical pole or branch which protrudes from the top of the stack. In pretty much every country we've visited on this trip, a favored police activity seems to be parking along a road and, with one or two officers standing on the side and/or in the middle of the road, stopping randomly chosen drivers to examine their papers. And, there are LOTS of casinos and betting parlors in Romania. In Bucharest, we were told that this was due to its proximity to Turkey and Greece, whose citizens travel there to gamble, but at this distance from traveling Turks and Greeks, one starts to wonder about the Romanians!
That's it from Romania; tomorrow we'll be back in Serbia to visit Belgrade for a couple of days.
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