My Backpacking Memoirs

Sibiu - 05/05/2017 - 07/05/2017

I woke up the next morning and had hostel breakfast in the small kitchen, the communist couple were already eating. They had dumped all their bags in the small common room almost blocking the hallway. They were only travelling for one week I still don't know why they needed so much stuff. We headed out early and we needed to get some cash from an ATM machine because I doubt the small coach company would accept payment by card. We also went to a super market to buy food and drink for the journey.

Then we started walking towards the bus stop in a rush because we were running late. I'm never normally late travelling on my own. I realised why people travelling in groups are always far more disorganised than solo travellers. It is because a group never knows everyone's exact plan, people in the group always say I need to buy a drink, or go to the toilet, or they forget something and have to go back. All these small surprises to the group hold everyone up making them late. A solo traveller knows they need to get a drink and plans accordingly, unless everyone in the group communicates everything to everyone at all times it can never be as efficient as a solo traveller.

We eventually get to the small coach station and board the bus, all sweaty and disorganised. No single person in the group was at fault, it was the groups fault. I thought to myself that I'm never travelling in a group again. The coach was tiny, basically a minibus with tiny cramped seats and it was full. The communists also had a kindle, not many people I had met travelling were readers. We both sat and read in silence. The bus eventually stopped at a service station, I got out and went to a nearby McDonalds to buy a drink. I noticed the bus drivers friend, a young fat man eating seeds and spitting out the shells on the ground, he created a mess on the floor. After over an hour of waiting we carried on our journey to Sibiu.

We arrived in Sibiu and made our way from the Autogara 1 - Transmixt bus station to the "Smart Hostel Sibiu". Thankfully it was a short walk. The hostel was strange, the entrance led onto a suspended walkway/ balcony. Almost as if we were walking into what was once a window onto the top floor of the building. We checked in to an empty room and picked our beds. I was too tired to explore the city yet so I went into the common room for a few hours to chill out. The communists were far more tired than me and went to sleep in the same bed. I made small talk to the woman on reception, she had been volunteering all over Europe for years and had no plans to stop.

By the time I had recovered from travelling it had got dark and the communists were still sleeping, I don't think they got up again until the next day. I went back in the room and found two Romanian women from Bucharest, they were studying to be medical doctors and were in Sibiu for a medical conference. I spoke to the one sleeping on the bed above me and invited her out tomorrow but she told me the conference would last all day and night. She was very interested in my travels and had tons of questions for me. She had never left Romania before and I guess I was the first actual backpacker that she had met.

I went out the hostel to a nearby restaurant/ bar to sit outside drink beer but for some reason they did not want to serve me so I went to a super market next door. I then made the short walk back to the hostel and sat outside on the balcony on my own drinking and smoking a cigar. A woman came and sat next to me and she also started smoking, we spoke for a few hours and then I went to bed.

I woke up the next day planning on exploring the city, I did some research the day before and found a place called the ASTRA National Museum Complex that really interested me. It would also give me an excuse to walk across the entire city. I left the hostel and headed south walking for about an hour I found a large cemetery on the edge of the city. I took a detour through the cemetery hoping to be able to come out the other side and continue going south. The cemetery turned out to be larger than I thought, it just kept on going. I started noticing dogs, large looking stray dogs walking around and sleeping on graves. I kept on walking, the ground was still wet from the recent rain and I had to avoid getting my shoes stuck in the mud. I made it to the bottom but I found no way back out. I turned right to see if I could find a way back to the main road in a dark area of the cemetery, it was covered by trees and weeds. I think it was a Jewish section, all of the graves were from before WW2 and were in various states of disrepair. I headed back up to the entrance and back onto the main road.

I carried on walking down the heavily wooded road until I got to the entrance to the museum. It was a type of museum called a living museum, they had de-constructed and moved entire buildings from other parts of the country and placed them into a single area. Lots of old wood buildings, windmills and farm enclosures scattered across the woodland and around a lake. I paid for a ticket and walked around the accompanying small indoor museum, nobody else was here so the security guard decided to just follow me around as I went from room to room. I then exited and went out onto the lake, I spent hours walking around the woods discovering new buildings.

I walked all the way around the woods and decided to have lunch at the restaurant Cârciuma din Bătrâni. I sat outside but I was told they did not accept card but they would accept Euros, so I paid for my meal in some spare Euros I still had in my wallet. I took the advice of the waiter and ordered some "traditional" Romanian food and beer, I had no idea what it was. After the meal I walked back to the lake and smoked the rest of the cigar from last night.

I walked back into the city and by the time I arrived at the hostel I was bust. I spoke to the communists who were still lying in bed, the woman said she was ill, they thought from eating a sandwich that was left in the heat for too long. I had walked to the edge of the city and back and they had barely left the hostel all day. Two very different methods of backpacking. I took a shower and then sat in the common room to try and recover.

The common room was empty and it was now dark outside. I did not want to go to bed so I sat up on my own watching Netflix. After a while the Romanian woman from yesterday came into the common room, she was all dressed up from the conference and also a little drunk. She sat on the chair next to me and started talking. At first the conversation was quite normal, we talked about her conference and my travels. I was not expecting to speak to anyone else that night and I had been fully engrossed in Netflix. Now I had deal with an attractive 22 year old student Doctor in an empty common room.

Unbelievably I did not know it at the time, she was flirting with me. She starts to tell me a story about how she was almost caught having sex in a dormitory before and that she does not mind other people hearing her. She touches my arm, in hindsight expecting me to do something. But I did nothing. It was terrifying for me, I had a smart attractive woman trying so hard to have sex with me. I did not know what to do. Eventually she went to have a shower and left me alone. I could not stop shaking. She came out of the shower and said good night. Was she really asking to have sex with me in our hostel room? I went to bed a few hours later.

By the time I woke up the Romanian woman had already checked out, she had to catch an early train back to Bucharest. I would be travelling to the city of Brasov, another city recommended to me by the communists. They were staying in Sibiu for another day despite them never leaving their bed. We had all booked into the same hostel in Brasov so would probably meet again tomorrow. When I was packing my bags I found a pair of earrings on my bed, I asked around if anyone had lost them but nobody did. I then realised they must have been the Romanian woman's, the one who was trying so desperately to seduce me the previous night, they must have fell onto my bed. I messaged her on Facebook and they were hers, she asked if I could bring them to Bucharest with me, I agreed. I said goodbye to the communists who were still in bed and headed back to the bus station.