Hi people,

I feel that I want to write a bit about Romanian culture...The food portions here have not become smaller, shop assistants in food shops use to give you candies or chewing gums instead of small cash, people still wonder why it could be useful to learn Romanian and toilets usually dont have keys, very annoying especially for women. On 23 of April there was not only the International Book and Authors Rights Day, but also an important event for Oradea took place, they introduced the first new tram here in our city!!! And guess which one it is...pure Austrian Fabrication, reminds me of Vienna...Somehow this new tram doesnt fit into the city and it destroys in a way the atmosphere of the nostalgic old German construction trams...But anyway its good for Oradea, I think. Another Austrian point they have MILKA here, I saw a MILKA car and publicity on TV and in the street tja MILKA cea mai fina placere, oriunde ai merge...Although I have to admit that I prefer POIANA csoki. It seems to me that all Oradea is waking up and being polished, what can that be??? Right ELECTIONS on first of June!!! They built gleamy new tram stops with panouri e.g panels, they dug up the green spaces to renovate them, on historically and culturally important buildings they put a signs, and so I learn about places and palaces of which before I hadnt even been aware of...Its quite interesting though to see how a city changes because they are electing a new major. Anyhow I  better keep my nose out of politics!!! More useful to concentrate on... languages!!!

Monday, the last day up in the North... We had breakfast together with Jens, the Norwegian guy. Then we went to Sighet and visited the Memorial Museum, a shocking experience!!! In the prison, there were various exhibition rooms dedicated to various topics like e.g. communist regimes, Securitate, Ceausescu, minorities persecuted, but also women in prison, poetry in prison, censured writers or arts & culture. What especially touched me was the creativity people develop in really bad situations like during prison: the elaborated double-based etuis for messages, wrote whole dictionaries Englih/French-Romanian, or poems on paper tissues or stitched onto handkerchiefs. After a short stroll through Sighet we had to say goodbye yo Jens who continued his journey and we also started our trip home. We only stopped to eat lunch & play volleyball (by the way, on this occasion we beat our personal record - we did more than 200!). We arrived in Oradea in the evening.