MORE MEMORIES FROM ROMANIA Previous Page HOME                                                      Next Pag

Above is my GPS which I found incredibly useful for navigating in strange places! Now, driving along the road in the Maramures region, I picked up the three you see in the photo on the right - they were hitchhiking.  Already pretty drunk, they absolutely insisted that I come back to Papilliou's home for a drink .. or two .. of Tuica.  We even toasted the rabbit!

Well, after I extricated myself from their hospitality, I found that my GPS was missing; I had noticed Papilliou's strong interest in it - the strange thing is they could have taken a lot more from me! I still picked up hitchhikers after that - but I was more careful.

Romania had a large German population for many hundreds of years and these people built fortified churches,  provisioned to protect the local inhabitants  and withstand seige from the many raiders, including Hungarians, Turks and Wallachians. The words above the arch say: "Behold, I am with you all the days until the World's end"

Now, since the fall of Communism, most of the younger Germans have returned to Germany and the few that are left are of an older crowd. To the right you see a party of German ladies who came to my hotel for a celebration and, accompanied by an accordion, sang German traditional songs very well indeed. They allowed me to video their party.

Below are a couple of scenes from the lovely Saxon town of Sighisoara, birthplace of Vlad Tepes (The Impailer). The clock tower that you see now houses a museum.

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