Enter Romania

Enter Romania

So we decided to spend a couple months in Romania. This decision was made because we had to leave the Schengen zone, a visa-sharing collection of European countries. Being Canadian we only get three months out of every six in most of Europe as a result of this visa agreement. Also, we heard Romania was a spectacular place to check out and overall not expensive. So, we made our rather last-minute decision and booked the bus ticket.

Entering Romania from the west, we began in the beautiful town of Timisoara, near the borders of Hungary and Serbia. We stayed in our own apartment for two weeks, and met the local lady that owned it. She gave us some great tips on what to see and do around the area, and soon we were loving first stop in our country.

Timisoara has a couple different main squares, which are great places to watch life go by and dream the day away. There are a lot of really trendy restaurants, and many more popping up all the time. The city centre is quite small but has a lot of character.

In order to save a bit of money, we actually stayed a short distance from the centre of town, but the tram system connects everything very well. However, the tram can be quite slow going at times. The tracks run parallel to traffic and stop at all the same lights. Also, some of them are very old (the driver has to get out and switch the tracks!) but are super fun to ride, especially if you are not in a hurry.

One evening we walked from our place into town, just to get a different view of the city. We ended up going to an outdoor bar which was having live music that evening. There was an entrance fee at the door, but the door man saw that we were foreigners and just wanted a snack, so he simply waved the fee. Without an English menu, we tried to explain at the bar that we were looking for snacks and beer. Ten minutes later we had a full platter of sausages, cured meats, vegetables, cheese, pickles and two 500ml cans of beer.

The total cost of this meal with the beer was just under 9 Euro!!

Timisoara is undergoing quite a lot of construction at the moment, as the municipality is spending a ton of money refurbishing the beautiful architecture. They realize the incredible potential for tourism and are investing as much as they can do draw in the future waves of visitors.