Sheep Guarding Llama

And thus begins our last week in Romania.  Today the hard core packing begins.  We leave Transylvania in two days to stage ourselves in the capital to get ready for our flight to Istanbul and on to New York.  There is always so much to do right at the end.  So many things that we wish that we could have done while we were still in a place.  And so much not wanting to leave, yet.

I worked most of the day.  I want to get as much writing and posting done today and tomorrow before we begin our travelling so that I am not getting behind.

Dominica got a lot of packing done today, but there is still plenty to do tomorrow.  Packing to leave is actually much easier than packing to go because we have to collect absolutely everything.  But there is much cleaning to be done, as well.

We ate the marshmallow sandwiches that we got from Turda today.

We had to get up and get moving this morning.  Dominica wanted to do some shoe shopping in Targu Mures before we went to Nikoli and Maria’s home for lunch.  Targu Mures is about an hour drive from Baita and the kids take forever to get ready to leave the house so it takes rather a bit of effort to get out the door in time for just about anything.

We had to be on the road by not much after ten.  The weather was nice and we had a fine drive down south to the county seat.  In Targu Mures we had been told that there was a shopping mall called the Promenade that would have plenty of shoe stores and stuff for us to the west of town.  It ended up being easy to find and we thought that it was very funny that this fancy American style shopping mall was located across the road from a coal power plant.  But in reality, malls are completely inward facing and have no views and shut you off from the outside world and are surrounded by ugly parking lots and so putting one next to the huge eye soar of a coal power plant is actually an excellent use of the space.  Save the nice stuff for places where people will look at it.  So quite smart, I think.

The mall was not huge by any stretch, but it had a fair amount of stuff including even a grocery store.  Lots of great looking restaurants in there, too.  Most with posted vegetarian menus even.

Dominica ended up being able to find a pair of sneakers from an outlet store at the mall.  She now has shiny gold sneakers that definitely scream “Romania.”

The shopping trip took us until around one o’clock and it was time to find our way to Nikoli and Maria’s house which is up on the hill overlooking the city near the zoo.  We did pretty well finding out way there.  Their house is new construction high on the hill over the city with amazing, commanding views over nearly the entire Targu Mures region.

We got a tour of the new house.  The house started buying built in 2012 and is mostly done but has some work left to go.  The views were just crazy so I grabbed the GoPro and got some shots as well as some panoramic shots from the iPhone.

Maria made lunch, which was cheese, caprese and grilled veggies for starters.  Then we had Romanian salad soup with cheesy polenta which is very good.  Then we had potatoes and corn breaded, fried trout which was awesome.  Mihai and Tudor taught us how Europeans eat fish by ripping off the tail and the head, then splitting the fish open and ripping out the bones to make eating it easier.  Although I am not convinced that my way still isn’t easier.

Lunch was great.  Then we sat for a little while waiting for the rain to lessen before we all set out for a walk, except for Tudor who had to go back to work, through the municipal park to the Targu Mures Zoo.

Targu Mures has one of the better zoos in Romania and they have an excellent city park system leading to it which is in just the most beautiful spot, is fed by public transportation, has loads of activities for the kids and lot of food including restaurants and what we would consider carnival style food in the States like fried dough, popcorn and cotton candy.  There is even a mojito stand!

We had a nice time at the zoo.  It was raining but we had brought umbrellas with us so that was not too bad and it did not rain very hard.  We got a pull behind cart to put the girls in so Nikoli and I took turns hauling the girls through the zoo.  They enjoyed getting to ride in the little cart.  It made for a lot of exercise for us, though.

We saw monkeys (I even got to pet one) and a lot of stuff. It is a decent zoo for such a small city.  By the time that we were done, though, the rain had picked up a lot and we were getting very wet.  Tudor ended up running up to pick us up and drive us back (as he had a van) so we did not have to walk the exposed final half kilometre back to the house in the rain.

We went back to the house and just hung out for the evening.  Mostly just standing out on the balcony looking out over the city.  The girls had a great time playing with everyone in the big, empty house.  They did not want to leave at all when it came time to be getting ready to go.  They wanted to spend the night, which we were invited to do, but without my CPAP and with so much to do this week to get ready to go back to the States we need time at the house.

It was ten when we left Targu Mures.  We drove Mihai down to his apartment downtown and then drove back to Baita getting in around eleven.  We were all really tired.  Pretty much everyone was off to bed as soon as they got home.  I stayed up working on getting videos uploaded to YouTube as there was a lot of stuff to get uploaded and we have a dedicated Don’t Forget to Pack the Kids TV page now.

We slept in a bit this morning.  Not long after waking up, Nikoli came over and grabbed me and I went over to his and Maria’s house next door to visit for the morning.  It was probably around ten when I went over.  His son, Mihai, who speaks English was there was we were able to do a lot more communicating than normal.

We hung out for a few hours and talked about house options in town.  Then Nikoli, Mihai and I took a drive and a long walk around the village looking at some houses that are or might be available.  We looked at a lot of stuff.  There were a few that were really interesting.  One is definitely for sale but needs to be torn down and a new house built in its place.  But as land is essentially free that is not the big deal that it might seem like it would be.

Dominica came over for about an hour and visited with everyone as well.  We got invited over for lunch in Targu Mures tomorrow, too.  So we are heading out in the morning to go down south.

In the late afternoon we went up to Reghin to go out to dinner.  Dominica did not feel like cooking today and everyone felt like a dinner out.  We tried going first to the Pensiune Casablanca where we ate our first meal in the area and where we have eaten the most in the area but it turned out to be so full that they could not seat us.  So we drove out east of town and found all of the restaurants packed out there, too.  Looked like weddings or graduations or something like that.

We ended up settling on pizza.  At least they were not very busy.  We sat at our table and looked over and saw Iakob (our priest from across the street) and his family having dinner at the table directly next to us!  Small world.  Not many restaurant choices.

We got three pizzas and two panasi or blueberry covered Romanian donuts.  Delicious.  It was a nice evening, and we were back home before it was too late.

 

Today is our very last day to do some touring of Romania. We got up early and got the car packed up and got on the road for the couple hour drive to the west to the small city of Turda where Romania’s most famous salt mine is located.  It is raved about by everyone that we hear from so we figured that we really have to go see it.  It’s considered one of the things not to be missed when living in Romania.

The drive was not bad; the weather was great and we made very good time.  Getting out to Turda was easy.

Arriving at Salina Turda we discovered a little “village” of shops in the parking lot of the mine.  This is apparently a big thing to do, buy knick knacks and snacks before and/or after going into the mine.  We had not gotten breakfast and it was a bit of a drive so we decided that we would hit one of the little fast food stalls before we ventured into the mine.

We had a nice little lunch and then went into the salt mine.  We had very high hopes for this trip today, we heard so much good stuff about this salt mine.  Going down the long stairs into the mine, it seemed like it would be pretty neat.

Once you get down low, the heat gives way and it is very cool and pleasant under ground.  The mine is carved right out of the salt, it is really neat.  The walls are solid salt and look like ice and snow.  This is where the cool part ended.

The salt cut goes miles under ground between towns.  Along this route there was very little to do.  There was supposed to be all kinds of interesting things in the salt mine, but outside of a few exhibits about a winch and a horse room, there was really nothing.  We spent a huge amount of time trying to explore and see if we had missed something.  We probably put in a full hour just walking back and forth

in the hallway making sure that we had not missed a doorway or something.

Finally when we had given up and went to leave we were looking at the informational pictures along the entrance and definitely saw things that we were unable to find.  So we did more research and eventually found a stairway going down and found that there was a very poorly labeled way to get down fifteen stories to a weird little underground carnival area.  But the stairs were not safe and certainly not something that the girls could do safely and the elevator, that is advertised heavily everywhere, was out of service and there was no way for us to get to the part of the mine that people raved about.  But we could see it and could see that there was nothing to do and that we were not missing anything.

So Salina Turda was a bust.  Not only is it not the big tourist attraction that people think that it is, but it is not even worth going to if you are there.

As we left the mine, we stopped and got some sweet treats from the little stands outside of the mine.  We met some Romanians visiting from Washington State that we talked to for a bit and they said that these weird marshmallow filled sandwiches that we had found were the best that they had ever had.  So I guess that we lucked out there.

From Turda, we drove to Cluj-Napoca, the capital of Transylvania and its largest city.  We have been hoping to get to visit Cluj since arriving here.  Our home sits, more or less, along the main road that turns into Main Street in Cluj, hours away, but we have never even been close to it before.

We parked downtown and started by walking around the open air market in the main square.  We found a little stand selling head bands and bought matching Romanian hair bands for Liesl, Clara and Luciana.  Then we bought some pastries and walked to a playground in the middle park near the National Opera House so that the girls could burn off some energy.

While we were there I went out to do some exploring but it was not too long before Luciana had a bathroom emergency and we had to go looking for a bathroom that she could use.  We found one at an awesome little upscale urban cafe near the park.  Liesl and I ordered coffee and got a table while Dominica took Luciana to the bathroom.  Liesl tried, and liked, her first coffee today!

We returned to the playground and the girls played there for hours.  I explored downtown a little, took some pictures and videos.  But we did not do too much.  Before long it was time to get back home as it was getting late.  It was a long day with the driving and everything.

The drive back home went well.  Time for our final weekend in Romania.

All writing, school and packing today.  Tomorrow we are heading out to the Salina Turda Salt Mine in Turda, Romania and then, we hope, trying to make it to Cluj-Napoca which is the capital and by far the largest city in Transylvania.  So today is heads down, getting things done as this is the last productive day of the week.

The food is nearly gone in the house.  It is slim pickings and everyone is ready for variety and choice again.