Sibiu was the first Transylvanian city that we hit and, whilst it doesn't have any well known historical links to Dracula, it did provide us one of the great experiences of our travels and lives so far.
We arrived at our hostel mid afternoon and as is the norm in Romania it was palinca time. Padre, the hunting man, said he'd give us an hour while he had something to eat and he'd come back and get us.
An hour later he came back and brought us into his kitchen where we started off with his cherry liqueur that had none of the normal, fake cherry flavour that you come to expect from drinks like this and was extremely drinkable. The cherry liqueur is "for the woman" though and next we were onto his plum palinca. This is so packed full of genuine plummy goodness it's not funny but this was only the beginning of the show.
Before we knew it we were down in his "cave" drinking, among other things, his second last bottle bottle of six year old plum palinca. You can't get your hands on this stuff in the shops and it was a serious honour to share this with Padre.
Down in Padre's cave, which exists underneath the house that he was born in and was the house of his grandparents, not only is he fermenting various palincas, but he also has a range of wines on the go, pickled veggies, pickled cabbages in huge vats, the world's tastiest tomato juice, etc. etc. etc. Padre is a man of refined taste and exceptional ability.
So the night continued on and as we worked our way through the bottle we all proceeded to get merrier and merrier, us in particular given our entire day's food intake was two bread rolls and a couple of mandarins. Padre even told me at one point that he felt like I was "a man of the wild" (hence me with the hunting hat below). I think the palinca had hold of him too at that point.
And I think the palinca had hold of us all by this point. Nix has no idea what she was doing here.
Everything we consumed that night was made by Padre and he only uses natural ingredients. This man hasn't been to the doctor in more than thirty years and believes palinca is the only medicine that he needs.
Hopefully this isn't the last we see of Padre as he's invited us back to go hunting and camping with him once summer hits.
The following day in Sibiu we checked out the old town and had a pretty good meal but everything pales in comparison to that previous night in Padre's cave.
Timişoara
This is actually where we started our Romanian journey and we mainly just took it easy for a couple of days seeing as Nix wasn't feeling too flash. Women hey, it's always something.
Highlights of Timişoara were beers at the Bierhaus, an OK meal at Casa Bunecii, Catedrala Mitropolitană and a nutty sort of coffee cake from a local bakery.
Pug Sightings - 22
