Sibiu Nights

Sibiu is a lovely town. I slept pretty well, except that my body clock seems set to wake up at 7:00 no matter what, but I can at least fall asleep again after that.

We snagged a quick breakfast of tea and bread that was offered by another lodger. Then we stepped out into a bright Romanian morning and made our way up to the town for sightseeing and shopping. (Especially shopping, this is the first time we've seen proper and appealing clothing stores, namely Kenvelo and Outlet.)

There was this bakery that sells something called covrigi, which looked like a twisted bagel, though I think covrigi is the word for pretzel, but I'll have to get that confirmed that another time. You could get it with sesame or poppy seeds, so... I'm thinking this is the closest you can ever get to a bagel in Romania. They were pretty popular too, people were walking around with small strings of them.

We wandered around the three squares, Piata Mare, Piata Mica and Piata Huet. We checked out the Pharmacy Museum, which was a necessary visit because my mother's a pharmacist; it was pretty interesting to see machines of old apothecary, pharmacological and homeopathic methods; there were various mortars & pestles, antique inhalers, surgeon's kits, pill-making devices and so on. (Unfortunately, Dad, I've yet to see a Lawyer's Museum; I can't imagine why.)

The other museum we visited was the World Ethnographic Museum, which would have examples of items from various places around the world. For example, they would have a selection of clay pots from Africa, Saudi Arabia and Romania, so you could kind of compare designs. There was also an Egyptian mummy, which was unexpected. One of my favourite items was this pearl oyster shell that had tiny inscriptions written all over it.

We visited the Evangelical Church which apparently houses the body of Vlad Dracul's son (also not a very nice guy), but we couldn't find out where it was, and there was nobody around to ask. In any case, the church was under heavy construction but it still seemed nice. We went up 192 steps of its tower and got to see all of Sibiu from its four corners.

Rob, a friend of ours from Porolissum (he's been there four years in a row) was flying out of Sibiu, so we got to see him for a little bit before he left. We all picked up some ice cream and chatted about the last days at Porolissum - apparently there was a radio interview done while we were away, which was kind of sad. In any case, I think we would've needed to speak Romanian to participate, so I don't feel too bad.

After a quick rest at the hostel, we headed back out to the city centre in the evening for gogosi and ice cream. I got a large, vanilla-cream-filled gogosi, and it was delicious. We walked to Piata Mare and caught the last two minutes of a cool fire tricks display. The rest of the evening was spent checking out the city at dark, and taking last-minute photographs. We walked back home with ice cream in hands; a woman at our hostel had suggested the Redal Cafe for ice cream, so we went there. I decided to be adventurous and try kiwi ice cream; it was so delicious, tasted exactly like kiwis and very refreshing.

So now we're settling in for the night. I may take a shower before bed. We'll wake up early tomorrow to check out and catch a bus back to Cluj.

Noapte buna.