emilyonearth

After an overnight in transit in Istanbul airport, I arrived in Cluj on Monday morning, suddenly very aware that I hadn’t done much research about Romania. The arrivals hall at the airport was reasonably sparse, with no info about public transport, nowhere to exchange euros into lei, and, well, not much else, either. After a wee wander trying to find my bearings, I managed to get some money out of an ATM, and I started down the road in search of a bus stop. Buying the bus ticket from the machine was another adventure – apparently they don’t sell single tickets – but finally I managed to get on a bus. 

Looking out the window on the way into town, I realised that Romania looked exactly as I expected it to, even though I arrived without really considering what I was expecting. Somehow the shapes of the buildings just screamed “Romania”. A lovely woman sat beside me on the bus, she insisted on holding my bag upright for me, and she helped me with it when it was time to get off. It was also at this stage that I realised I know no Romanian at all – not “hello”, and definitely not “thank you”. Oops. 

I arrived to town and sat in the main square for a coffee while waiting to be able to get into my hostel. Once I did check in, I took a nap to make up for my night in the airport, then emerged for a first wander around town. Later in the day, I met people at the hostel from Germany (Johannes), France (Max), and the UK (Noa and Jamie), and they invited me to join them for dinner at a traditional Romanian restaurant.

The next morning I had a decent sleep in, then spent some time trying to figure out my plans for the next two weeks. In the afternoon, Jamie and I went for an explore and spent a few hours roaming through the park, the city streets, and the cemetery! In the evening we met up again with Johannes and Max (Noa had left Cluj during the day) for dinner again, which again was lovely. 

For my final day in Cluj, Johannes, Jamie and I caught a minivan-bus to the town of Turda to go and explore the old salt mine there. Salt was mined there since at least 800 years ago, and while the actual mining ceased in the 1930s, the mine has now been opened as a sort of museum/playground. You enter through a tunnel, go through several rooms that tell you about the mine and the mining process, and then before you know if you’re in the main part of the mine, which not contains a playground, table tennis and pool tables, and a Ferris wheel. Go down another level and you’re on a little lake where you can rent a boat for a wee paddle. According to the mine’s website, the mine is also a natural source of heath and good luck, which is… nice?

After the mine, we attempted to find the town’s Roman ruins, and along the way we befriended a young local boy who was riding his bike in the same direction. We had no shared language, but with the help of translation apps we discovered he was very concerned that we were going to get lost, so he insisted on accompanying us, even though he thought we were going the wrong way. We did make it to the site of the ruins, but it was closed, so we decided to just head to the bus station to make our way back to Cluj. The boy was also very sceptical that we were headed the right way to the bus station, or indeed even that there was a bus to Cluj, but he let us go, and continued off to wherever he was originally headed, probably thinking we were slightly crazy. 

On Thursday it was time to move on, with Sighișoara as my destination. It turns out Jamie was booked on the same bus as me, so we headed to the bus station together. It was a bit dramatic, actually: First, we missed the bus we needed by one minute, then once we caught it we got off a stop too early for our connecting bus, so we walked to the next stop, but the bus we needed wasn’t on the departures board, and we not only had 15 minutes to get to the bus station. We considered walking but it was still a 26 minute walk away (plus we had our bags slowing us down). It wasn’t looking good, to be honest! I decided to order a Bolt (like uber), but then the driver called me and he didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Romanian and then he hung up on me. Luckily he sent a message through text which I could then translate, as he was asking us to meet up the road a bit where it was easier for him to stop. Once we figured that out everything went much more smoothly, and we even made it to the bus station with a few minutes to spare!

Sighișoara is a very pretty wee town. It’s also the birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, aka Vlad Dracula, who went on to be considered the inspiration for Dracula (as well as, supposedly, impaling people). The old town is a UNESCO site, and it is surrounded by town walls and a number of watch towers. It’s small, and I only stayed one night, so you can have a few photos of it in this post too :)