In 2015 from April 18th to 30th, I was lucky to be chosen among the twelve Rotarians to participate in Romania Friendship Exchange program with Rotary.  Romania Rotarians hosted us and treated us with exceptional hospitality during the twelve days we were there.  We stayed at Rotarian's homes, ate with their families and at local restaurants, and they drove us for sightseeing from west Timisoara to middle Sibiu and Targu to east Iasi, all at their cost.  We only needed to buy our flights to and from Bucharest.  It was such a memorable and unique experience that I like to share with you even after seven years.  Looking at my pictures, I organized them in six parts including people, food, cities, castles & citadel, culture, churches and other to show you how lovely Romania is.

(1) People

I met many wonderful people on this trip.  I like this photo showing a lovely 3-generation, they looked so happy.  Our first host had his own business and loved motorcycle.  A couple of years later I saw his Facebook showing him riding motorcycle vacationing in Japan, how cool was that!  Our second host was a lawyer.  She was very nice to us and lived in a nice apartment in downtown.  Our third host she and her husband had their consulting business and they had a fancy big house up the hill. They had two lovely children and their parents lived with them too, it’s a big and warm family.  I also got to know another couple and we still sent greetings to each other at Christmas.  When we visited an elementary and middle school there, I am amazed how popular and well-run the girls’ gymnastic program was.  The girls were so good at the performance, no wonder Romania produces famous Olympic gold medal gymnastics.

On a sad note, I lost my roommate years later from unexpected heart problem.  I’m writing this in memory of her as well.

(2) Food

Look at all these delicious foods I have eaten!  Nowadays when I think of Romania foods, these three came to my mind: goulash, polenta and chimney cake.  At a backyard picnic, the Romanians cooked goulash a dish like American beef stew in a kettle on a wooden fire for us.  It was delicious.  Polenta a corn meal dish was served almost at every meal, it tasted good and I liked the texture.  Chimney cake gets its name from its shape, on a roadside we watched how it was made, interesting!  It comes with different flavors such as honey or cinnamon sugar for sweet or salty flavors.  Sweet flavor is most popular.

I absolutely loved their bread, yogurt and coffee, the best I have eaten.  Especially their coffee, it’s so fragrant and creamy, it made me couldn’t drink American coffee for a couple of weeks after I returned from Romania.  We ate breakfast at our host family.  To my surprise, the breakfast was so big that it had fruits, bread, yogurt, meat, cheese, vegetable, mashed potato and coffee, so many choices.  Lunch and Supper we usually ate at a restaurant.  I remembered this place’s lunch very well, a 3-course meal with 2 yummy donuts and sauce as dessert.  It was so so delicious, and cost less than $3, nothing can beat this.  I liked their sausage, meat, fish and duck.  In order to try all kinds of foods at dinner time, I liked to choose a little bit from each dish and playfully placed my food in a circle on the plate.  Dinner could take hours because sometimes we danced during the meal, it was fun.  We had wine tasting at winery and at 400-year-old basement wine cellar.  I remembered the wine cellar time, it was so late into the night by the time we came out, nobody was on the street except for the moon shining bright on the sky.

(3) Cities

I really like Romania’s cities, they are pretty, clean and colorful.  Usually city center has a plaza where people gather, stroll, shopping, enjoy a cup of coffee and meet with friends.  Romanians are proud of their cities because WWII destroyed many cities and what we see today was re-built after the war.  In Timisoara, we rode a nice long bus to tour the city, it was a nice treat.  In 1991 Romania toppled socialist regime and became capitalist regime.  The people I met are hardworking; either have their own business or have good jobs.  They live good lives.  A doctor told me in the old regime doctor’s pay was not good, therefore doctors preferred to go to West Europe to be a doctor.  But now they got better pay and they would stay at Romania.  Not too far out from the city, I saw farm lands.  Unlike in the city, people there used horse drawn wagon to haul goods or people.  It’s their transportation instead of cars.

(4) Castles and Citadel

On this trip, we visited a few castles.  I liked them all.  Among them Dracula Castle (Bran Castle) is the most famous.  It is located in Romania central mountain region Transylvania area.  I was expecting the castle to be scary or haunted, but to my surprise except for a chair full of nails and a few dark hallways, the rest of the castle was not scary at all.  I really enjoyed walking around, it’s a must-see castle.  Another medieval castle we visited, I was amazed that it still stood tall today even after so many years.

Neamt Citadel is located at northern Romania near the border at Moldova, the location is geographically significant.  The gate to the citadel was so high that a graduate ascending bridge miles long was built to allow access.  Strolling on the bridge, I had a good view of the surrounding area, it’s a nice walk.  This also reminded me we visited a horse farm on the trip.  I had not visited any horse farm before; it was a wonderful experience seeing different types of Romania horses.  Then we had the opportunity to ride a horse or ride horse drawn wagon.  I chose ride a horse, it was very fun.  What a first time experience!

To read more about Culture, Churches and Other, click here.

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