Discovering Romania: Our 1615 km (Eliise & Carles)

As it’s warm now and we still don’t have that much work, we all took a week off to enjoy the summer and travel a bit. Me and Carles decided to go to Belgrade and also visit Arad and Timisoara on the way.

After seven cars, nine hours, one car accident and countless small-talks with the drivers in our poor Romanian we finally arrived in Arad. The little town is famous because of the many volunteers living there. We stayed in a dormitory with other EVS people for four days. We saw their the busy everyday life, the best party places, took part in the city game for new volunteers, had a picnic in a forest nearby, a guitar concert on the roof of the dormitiry, celebrated Carles’ birthday and much more. Arad is a nice little place full of great people, but those four days made us appreciate our life in Bucharest more and more, starting from our apartment and finishing with the project.

During the days in Arad we also had a day-trip to Timisoara. We had heard a lot about the city and it’s beauty, our expectations were very high. But when we got there we found an empty city, it looked very nice, indeed, but the next time we’re going to visit Timisoara with a local to tell us more about it, and a few more days to feel the atmosphere wouldn’t be bad, aswell.

This time we didn’t have much time because our next destination was Belgrade, Serbia. Right after crossing the border of Serbia we noticed, that hitch-hiking there is much more difficult than in Romania. Anyway, we didn’t mind, because the first town had a chocolate factory and the whole place smelled like chocolate! Village by village we moved on until the ninth (!) car took us to our destination. Although we could only be there for two days the city impressed us so much, that we’d definately like to go back someday. On the one hand it’s very similar to Bucharest: it has many buildings from the communist times, it’s a bit rusty and out of date at times, but on the other hand it’s somehow much friendlier and cosier than our home town in Romania. Also, you can see the difficult history of the city: bombed buildings and ruins combined with modern parts and parks form an interesting combination. This time we had great local guides and they played a huge part in making us fall in love with the city. Hopefully the two days in Belgrade won’t be the last ones!

Our trip home was difficult: only 3 cars but 20 hours. We met a film crew from Serbia, family going to the sea with their caravan and drug dealers. Very different people, very different stories but the most important was, that we got home, finally.