Hello! Sunday started off bright and early with some last minute appreciation of Sibiu. I got a “long black” at what appeared to be a pretty trendy cafe called Amor Perfecto. This was when I was starting to remember that Europe doesn’t do “coffee” like we do in the U.S., but my fancy Romanian espresso was enough to breathe life into me, lol. I’m laughing right now as I skim my vacation journal because after this, I wrote, “I drank it because caffeine is caffeine but I need to figure out how to get just a cup of coffee.”

Yeah, that didn’t happen. Imagine how easy it could have been to just google that but I kept putting it off until I just eventually quit caring.

Anyway, the first item on the agenda for Sunday was a very small commune in Alba County called Rimetea. Approx. 1,000 people live there and it’s about a 90 minutes slightly northwest of Sibiu, below Cluj-Napoca which would be the ultimate destination of the day. The reason I added Rimetea to the itinerary is because I stumbled upon a video about it claiming that the “sun rises twice”  there, thanks to the Piatra Secuiului mountains blocking the sun as it rises, forcing it to “re-rise” a second time as it makes it over the peak. I probably explained that super jankily but hopefully you get it.

As usual, the scenery was so interesting during the drive. I don’t think I ever stopped looking out the window except to scribble thoughts in my vacation journal. I was obsessed with all of the roadside Jesus memorials and cemeteries!

The Aiud Citadel. I’m telling you, if we didn’t have a finite number of days for this roadtrip, we’d have been making all kinds of impromptu stops along the way. As it were, we only had a small window and couldn’t really afford, timewise, to veer off schedule. So there was a lot of, “Ooooh, what’s that???“s shouted dreamily from the car.

But I guess sometimes it’s better to see things in person from a car window than not at all. Sigh.

Eventually, there were less and less towns and mostly just lush mountain views and tiny villages. Plus, stray dogs.

Literally, it was view after view. Every time I would put my phone down, we’d round a bend and I’d be like, “OOoooh gotta get a video of that!” So many of my Romania videos are just me filming out of an open window and I don’t care.

And then suddenly, we drove straight into Rimetea. Google was actually telling us to keep going, but it was very clear that we had reached the part of the village where visitors park, so we don’t know where exactly Google was taking us.

Rimetea is known for it’s white-washed houses and green shutters. I don’t know about Henry but I was charmed immediately. Let’s enjoy some pictures.

A working well! I stuck my head in there and of course thought of “Ringu” and quickly backed away.

It seemed like the other people visiting were Romanian. It was not crowded at all, but there are people who come here to hike the mountain so we did see several groups preparing for that later.

Ew.

The Unitarian Church. It was Sunday and there was a service going on (it honestly felt like the bells were gonging the entire time we were there) so we didn’t go inside.

We saw a bunch of stray dogs and cats while here. I learned pretty quickly in Romania that the stray cats are taken very good care of by the locals (especially the restaurants, who must reward them for being natural rat-repellant) but I’m sadly not  too sure about the dogs. However, here in Rimetea there were quite a few that were chilling comfortably along the main drag where several food stands and shops were located.

THAT GLARE! Channeling my beloved Marcy, I think lol. I could see Marcy being reincarnated and living her best new life in Transylvania.

I was truly so in love with this commune. Quiet. Serene. Beautiful. It really felt like going back to another time.

Can you imagine those mountain peaks looming so Captain Caj in your backyard? Like, oh, that mountain? Yeah, we just deal with it.

Some other facts about Rimetea:

• it was an old mining town
• it’s been around since the 13th century!
• we would learn at the very end of our day there, through conversation with a kurtos vendor, that Rimetea is a Hungarian commune. It’s a plot of land originally owned by Hungary, and the residents are predominately Hungarian who work hard to preserve their culture. I was really confused why the shops were selling things that said Rimetea AND Torocko, and it turns out that Torocko is the Hungarian name
• the Székelys make up another portion of the population, and they are a subgroup of Hungarians living in the Székely Land. I don’t know much about Romanian history but what we learned from the kurtos man is that Transylvania was originally NOT a part of Romania. When it became part of Romanian in 1920 due to some treaty (I’m not a scholar), there was a group of Hungarians who were like, “NO, WE ARE STAYING HUNGARIAN” and I guess designated areas were allocated to them?? You are free to google because my paraphrasing is a mess.

I have more to say about Rimetea but I took some pictures with the DSLR that I need to upload here to go along with that and Photoshop is cooked right now. So, I will be back with a part 2, ugh.

 

 

 

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