Romania is famous for Dracula,Transylvania, and Nadia Comaneci scoring 10.0 at the 1976 Olympics.
87% of the population is Eastern Orthodox Christian and they are forever crossing themselves as they pass by crosses or churches and chapels.
Romania was granted European Union membership in 2007.
We crossed into Timisoara by train from Belgrade and it was the first time that we had sniffer dogs come through the train. We wanted to change our Serbian money (dinar) to Romanian lei in Serbia but it was impossible. We later met a Romanian lady on the train who told us that Serbia is not happy with Romania because Romania allowed the NATO troops to base themselves in the country when Belgrade was bombed.
While we were in Timisoara there was a festival and we saw the opening act which was the Border Police Department big band. It would have been a good day to cross the border as they were all in town!
On the train we also met a young woman, her mum, and the physiotherapist from the Spanish Tae Kwon Do team. the young woman lived in a High Performance Complex and was Spain's national champ for under 75 kilos. They had been to the University World G in Serbia but she didn't finish in the top 3 as they had expected.
We arrived at Timisoara quite late at night and had to take a taxi to the pension that we had booked. Romania is well-known for its rip-off taxi drivers and so we had to do battle with a few of them before we felt we had a legitimate one. The taxi had a light that was attached to the roof and was lit up and not removable. It also had an official looking licence plate, showed the rate per kilometres and he had a meter that he was happy to use as well as a radio telephone that he used to contact his office. It worked out well and we paid less than the pension owner told us it would cost.
Beside the taxi queues were many homelesss children begging from the train travelers in the pouring rain.
The pension we stayed in was like a New Zealand motel in a two storied block of about 12 units. It was a real treat after loads of hostels, and it was a short walk from a huge brand new shopping mall with lots of places to eat.
There is a lot of construction going on all over Romania and it was very noticeable in Timisoara. There were Chinese workers on the second stage of the shopping mall and many cranes at building sites around the town centre. The European Union has given Romania a lot of development money since joining the EU.
Timisoara has many old buildings from the Habsburg rule in the late 1600s and lots have not been renovated and they were wonderful.
Romanias refer to Timisoara as "First Free Town" because a priest at his Hungarian Church publicly condemned their dictator Ceausescu. Following this thousands of protesters gathered in the main square beginning the December 1989 revolution on the 15th. On 21 December in Bucharest, Caeausescu was booed and had to escape by helicopter from the roof of the building.
