Continental Oradea

... shaped rock/hill with wine cellars carved out of them. Each cellar has a little bar area where people can come in and taste the wine. This would be an unbelievable place for a pub crawl for anyone interested. All the cellars are centred around a park the size of half a football field and there must be around 40 different ones there (plus a few restaurants). Everything is sold by the dl (decilitre = 100ml). A 1 dl ...

It is Sunday at everything except the churches are closed. CLuj has several large churches, one of which is broadcasting its sermon into the plaza. 20 people are standing outside, listening to the service while facing the church. Not sure why they don't go in.

I hike to the top of a hill for a great view. Two of the museums ...

... under same conditions.

Arriving in Oreada we enter into this nice city and are surprised about the beauty of the streets along the river and the modern infrastructure. We find the hotel and ask for the rooms (the reservations are not always arriving correctly)

When we inquired about a parking possibility we are very surprised. The receptionist is offering to park the ...

Tuesday 14th we left Budapest and drove across the flat planes of Eastern Hungary into Romania. There was no trouble at the Romanian border and we were all amused to find that we needed to look out for a "good lei" (the currency) as forgeries are quite common. We eventually reached the foothills of some ...

Citesc in Ziua de Cluj despre suspendarea procesului lui Marius Leontiuc, cel care este acuzat de inselarea a peste o suta de persoane intr-o frauda imobiliara si imi amintesc de prietena mea Maria care a lucrat pentru omul asta cu mai mult timp in urma.

Odata mi-a povestit:

"Marius al meu era complet dus cu pluta. Stai sa iti zic o faza.
Vine intr-o zi la birou, jubiland cu o ...

... was too long, and we opted for a nice alongside walk from the outside. After lunch in trattoria del Calicio restaurant, our favourite place in the Capital (?) Lorenzo the Great (our driver), together with Camelia took us to the Airport. Bucarest-Otopeni to Oradea 1 hour on time. At the arrival, Calin and Oscar (Rotary Marghita President) were waiting for us. Fantastic and warm ...

... buy all sorts of traditionnal snacks - fat saussages or thin ones rolled up in a disk shape, meatballs and such or roasted cakes in the shape of big cylinders coated with sugar or chocolate or cruched nuts- and brightly couloured drinks. At 4 p.m. I was back at the city hall for the rehersal. Comedians tried their costumes, rehersed figures on the machines and I checked the video equipment.

... so small! A commotion warned us the the Romanian president was approching. A young couple, dressed in traditional costumes hurried to take off the big modern coats (it was so cold!) and stuff them out of sight and went to greet the president with dishes and presents. Nous avons pris place ŕ table presque les premiers et avons eu tout le temps de nous plaindre que nous n'avions pas faim puisque nous étions sortis de table ŕ peine deux heures ...

I did a really stupid thing in Cluj. I got off at the wrong place, just a little over-anxious I guess, but that's what happens when you don’t speak the language well. I wouldn’t speak it at all if it didn’t have significant similarities to the other Romance languages ...

... train you are allocated a seat, but as their isn't any computer network each train station is allocated so many carriages per train and any unused seats are phoned thru to the next station. By all accounts it's absolute chao's when the phone lines don't work. You receive cardboard tickets and a train inspector comes along and validates your ticket with a holepunch. So you can see that their countries infrastructure is really in need of a complete overall to reach ...