by The death toll from the nightclub fire in Bucharest reached 48, and many more suffered severe burns. But the response to this national tragedy has been encouraging and frankly remarkable. Many thousands of Romanians took to the streets in anti-corruption protests and affected political change. That’s quite something. It will interesting to see where Romania goes from here under their new prime minister.
I’ve almost made up my mind to go to Romania next September. Exciting? Yes. Scary? Yes, but the alternative is even scarier. In trying to map out my future, there are no unscary roads to go down. September still seems an eternity away – I’d rather go sooner – but I’d like to teach English voluntarily for six months before I go. It should be a good month to arrive – it’s the start of the academic year and it will (hopefully) be neither too hot nor too cold. The big question – well, one of the big questions – is where do I base myself.
The city of Sibiu is in the Transylvania region in the centre of Romania, made famous by Dracula (it wasn’t long ago that I thought Transylvania was a made-up country). It’s about half the size of Wellington, population-wise. The word Sibiu is pronounced how you’d imagine it is, except that when two vowels clash heads in Romanian at least one of them gets mangled, and in this case the final ‘u’ becomes more of a ‘w’ sound. I find the combination of letters and sounds in Sibiu to be quite pleasing.
Sibiu is beautiful, clearly. The medieval part of town looks incredible, and I understand it got a major facelift about ten years ago. It is just me or is every town and city in Romania chock-full of stunningly beautiful buildings that get even more beautiful the closer you look at them? Many of the buildings have large attic spaces with small eyelid-shaped windows; the eyes are quite a noticeable architectural feature. This blog has some brilliant photos of Sibiu, showing the cobbled streets and one of the amazing Orthodox churches. The central square looks pristine, but like the blog writer, I’m a big fan of less-than-perfect. Cracked paintwork, decaying concrete, yep I love that stuff too. Sibiu is surrounded by mountains and offers a fantastic backdrop. You can traverse one of the mountain ranges via the famous Transfăgărășan road (definitely not an unscary road) which is understandably a Top Gear favourite.
Part of the attraction of Romania for me is that it’s mostly off the tourist trail. But for how long? Sibiu’s Wikitravel page talks about “tons of great souvenir shops” and give it the best part of another year and I might have already left it too late. I’ve had a look at apartments for rent in Sibiu; they’re even cheaper than in Timișoara, so from a purely financial perspective it’s definitely on my radar.
Wherever in Romania I end up, there’s the sense that yeah baby, this is happening. And man that feels good.
