Back in Budapest

I think I left off Friday night, which was the girls' night out with Ioana. It was a lot of fun. We started with a nice dinner at Il Padrino, with wine and conversation. And as it was also the beginnings of Zalau Days, there were events beginning that night. We ate this amazing kurtoskalacs dessert, a sort of pastry wrapped around a long circle of wood and slowly baked, then covered with sugar or coconut or whatnot, and removed from the wood. We also wandered and watched some events on stage - we saw a small amount of awful Karaoke, a really strange vampire play, and DJ Old Man, who had two girls dancing awkwardly onstage with him, so we were making fun of them the whole night. We made a couple of trips to Diesel as well, where we each had a Screwdriver and a shot of tequila; we kept making silly faces for our cameras, a great memento of the night! A couple times during the evening, we passed by the same English-speaking group; we tried to find them a third time, but were unsuccessful.

Saturday was supposed to be a work day, but we all opted out of that and went to the museum with Eric and Mark so we could pick up our completed togas. Then we got to march in the Roman parade, the advertisement for Sunday's Roman Day event at Porolissum. There were centurions, chariots, many soldiers, senators and civilians. We got a pretty good turn-out, with lots of people taking pictures of us!

After changing out of our togas, we had lunch and returned to Porolissum for a little break. In the evening we returned and met up with everyone else for dinner. We spent the rest of the night in Zalau, watching the concerts. There were several bands, a couple of them were pretty good, and a couple of them were just okay. Before the last band went on, there were fireworks and it was actually a really good display. Plus, they occurred exactly one month after Canada Day, which was nice, in a strange way.

Sunday, we woke bright and early at 8:00 so we could prepare for Roman Day. After the quick, usual breakfast of bread and jam, Alexandru called us down for a special project, along with two other women (Corina, museum-Cristi's girlfriend, and Andrea, who is Corina's friend). There was a documentary-film crew in camp, making a film on ancient Romanian history, and they needed some people to pretend to do archaeological fieldwork in the forum, so the four of us were called down for it.
We went down with a bucket of tools and were filmed for a while just doing small cleaning work in the bath and column trenches. We were each filmed together and separately, and there was also some big-time Romanian documentary host present, and he spoke in front of us for awhile. We spent an hour and a half down there, a very interesting way to begin the day! I'll have to try and find out when it'll air and if I can have any way of seeing it online.

Roman Day began at 11:00, so we dressed in our togas and walked around for the next few hours. Some people took pictures of us as we wandered around, and some took pictures with us. It's fun thinking I'll be a part of someone's photographic album for the years to come.

Mark, Eric, Val and I engaged in a friendly archery contest. Canadians vs. Americans. I was the only one to get all five of my arrows into the hay bales - everyone else's was either too high or hit the ground, though Mark did manage to get a good shot in.

I changed out of my toga at about 6:00 and spent the rest of the evening at Porolissum, just hanging out with Val, Mark, Cristi, Adi, Zsolt, Eric, Anna, Corina, Andrea and Raoul. We did see Gladiator on a projection screen (English speaking, Romanian subtitled) - I love that movie, and it was a great way to finish off Roman Day.

The night ended around the campfire, a great last night at Porolissum.

Now I am in Budapest. Eric was nice enough to drive us up. We'll spend the rest of the day walking around and we fly out tomorrow.

See you soon'

A fabulously nerdy end to a wonderfull trip

What a weekend!!! One of the coolest I've ever experienced in my life....yeah, thats right. There is alot to write and a lot of details, so I will just give you the just of our final weekend in Romania.

Friday. GIRLS NIGHT OUT with Ioana ...and Zalau days.

-Live and weird entertainement on stage, involving vampires, karaoke and Romanian music, Hungarian pastries and tequila :P It was too much fun.


Saturday.

-Dressed up in togas and was IN a Roman themed parade to I guess advertise Roman days at Porolissum. People dressed up as soliders, girls were in togas.Had to dodge horse poop. Crazy and oh so Romanian.
-Rest of the day spent chilling with Eric, Mark and some museum friends.
-Cool Roman and barbarian reenactors from Hungary, they shot this small ballista thing and played around with scary pointy weapons. Guys dressed up in Roman legionnary armour. I love a man in uniform...swoooon.
-Concerts in the evening....Romanian boy band,a band that sounded like a romanian ''Doughtry', but that were named '' bere gratis'' which translates into 'free beer'...needless to say I was cheering for "free beer" all night haha...oh and there was some old guy band too.

Sunday. ROMAN DAYS AT POROLISSUM.

-Early in the morning Alexandru sent us down to be in a Romanian documentary. We had to do some "acting". Basically pretend to be archaeologists, conveniently positionned to be near the host, who I guess was moderately famous in Romania...I dunno, he wanted a photo with us..kind of weird. It was so crazy..but I can now say I am a Romanian movie star.
-Got toga-fied...spent the day in costume, watching various Roman themed events. Porolissum came to life. I can hardly express how cool it was.
-Evening. Watched Gladiator projected on a screen outside over looking the Romanian hills..then had a bonfire...the perfect end to a Romanian vacation

Monday: Was sooo sad to leave Romania....Eric gave us a ride to Budapest...crazy adventure at the border...more on that when I get home

Today: Relaxing, going to the baths and getting ready to leave this amazing part of the world

I will write a final entry when I get home,


See some of you tomorrow, the rest..see you soon

As always, much love from the land of Buda and Pest,


Val



So thats that, I will have