Revolutionary Timişoara and travel back to Sofia

Finally I arrived in my (nearly) last stop of my travel – Timişoara. It’s the second largest city of Romania and – at least Geographically seen – the most western city of Romania. It has a large city centre with several pedestrian zones and squares, orbited by parks and on some parts by the river Bega. Around the city centre you have the typical suburban settlements of Communist era.

Again I spoke most of the time German, my CouchSurfer there is working as translator for German to Romanian language. And we even visited a performance in the German National Theater Timişoara (Deutsches Staatstheater Temeswar): „Alles zu seiner Zeit“ by David Ives.

The most interesting and touching thing I’ve seen in Timişoara was the Archive about the Revolution in 1989. Timişoara was the first city to protest against their leader Ceausescu and it was also the first city were the first people died. The director – who was veterinary before the revolution and got badly wounded – loves to talk and show you around. During a movie about the revolution and in the gallery showing the works of children after the revolution, I nearly started crying. Don’t miss it, if you ever come to Timişoara. I couldn’t find a homepage, but if you want to learn more about the revolution, I can recommend you this page.

After Timişoara I had to find a way back to Sofia. It was not so easy, there’s only one bridge between Romania and Bulgaria, in the East of the country, options would have been to go over Belgrade (with a break of 12 hours) or with a ferry between Calafat and Vidin. I finally decided to go over Bucharest, which took me 18 hours and additionally 5 hours in Bucharest which I used to visit the Museum of Peasants, which was really nice (although more English or German descriptions would be nice). The even have some old wooden houses and an old wooden church on display.

(I also made a map like this for our travel through Macedonia)

Being back in Sofia, I got a message from my friend who should visit me on Monday (which was my reason to come back to Sofia), that he has to cancel his visit. So I have to go traveling again! Next stops will be Kosovo and Albania. First I thought about leaving Monday morning, but my new flat-mates told me they can’t afford the rent and will move out at the end of February. As my other flat-mate is not in Sofia for most of the month, I have to search for flat-mates now. But the new Erasmus students are arriving, so it will be easy to find people.