This Wednesday Marion and I hitch-hiked to Arad and Timisoara. We started a bit outside Targu Jiu and four cars, 7 hours and about 300 km later we were in Arad, a city close to the Hungarian border. Even thougt we had some problems in the beginging and it snowed quite alot in the south the hitch-hiking went even better than expected, Romania sure is the right country to do this. I also have to add that it is much easier for girls, for example it only took us ten minutes to ge a ride in Deva while some guys had been standing for an hour... But I strongly recommend you all to givve this a try!
In Arad we went her to visit Silvia, a volunteer from Spain who we met during trainings in Predal.
She is staying together with ten other volunteers in a student corridor and we slept over.
Silvia brought us to her favorite bar, a real cool place which's name I forgott... But it had cheap wine, and every room had it's own caracter, nothing matched which made everything match. There was neonlight and wind-vinyl, posters of bands you want to listen to and old carpets from the countryside.
After this we went to a volunteer party, a welcoming to some Asian volunteers (China and Taiwan). It was hold in a real cool underground bar named nerv, which was hidden in a forgotten street behind McDonald's. It was real nice, more wine and some karaoke. This was the first time I heard Chinese hip hop, and hopefully the last. There was both local and foreign volunteers, different projects about al kind of stuff. We were the only one from the south I think.
I Arad the arcetecture was very nice, at least in the city center. And as always we walked a lot; the best way to see a city, but occasionally we enjoyed the tramps. We had great luck with the weather, the snow hadn't reach here jet.
Thuseday afternoon, after a nice lunch by the river, we hitch-hiked to Timisoara. Here we stayed with a Romanian girl named Teodora, who we found on couchsurfing. (Pretty great with free transport and accomondation when you travel!) Timisoara was really great. Beautiful sorroundings, long night discussions with open-minded people, great lajv conserts in the bars, fantastisc vegetarian ecological food, new friends and a lot of surprices.
The city center in Timisoara
Piata Unirii - It was here the revolution of -89 begun
Notice the roof windows that looks like eyes, so beautiful
There were many outdoor book markets, with book like Goethe, Karl Marx, the Koran and Eminescu.
Afternoon tea on top of one of the best book shops I've visited, just one of many amazing placess we found by coincidence.
Since two weeks there are ongoing protests in many of the big cities of Romania. In Timioara there was about two thousand (we guess) people who gathered at Piata Unirii to protest against the government, and we decided to passivily participate in this. It was interesting to see so many different ages on the streets, from young men with placards to old ladies with umbrellas.
The minimum wage in Romania is according to this sign 500 Euro per month, but I know people who only earn 200. It is not strange that the street was crowded.
We finished our trip with a jazz concert. The wine was great, the music even better and we just enyojed our time. The only bad thing was that we had decided that we needed a break from the Romanian food and went out to eat some Chinease, it was not a succes... Sunday morning we hitch-hiked back to Craiova (we had the great luck to get a ride all the way) and then we took the bus home to Dabuleni.
