Reception weekend in Sibiu!

For the past few days I was in Sibiu, the cultural capital of Europe 2007. For the reception event, of course. This was their second annual, and last year they managed to host 35 trainees from all over Romania. Amazing! So I was on my way to Sibiu thinking that I'll see at least 15-20 trainees just like me. Well, this year I guess stars weren't in the perfect arrangement or something, and we only had 5 trainees, including myself and two trainees in Sibiu. That's ok, we still had some good times.

So my weekend started by waking up at 4:15 AM Friday morning (yes I took a day off from work) and going to Autogara of Galati at 5:00 AM. From there we (Catalin and I) took a bus to Sibiu, originally planned for driving duration of 8 hours. But on the way we were blocked by a few scenes of car accidents, and it ended up taking more than 13 hours. Nice. I was on that bus the entire day. And we had to switch buses at Brasov, which was very confusing because we all thought that it was a direct bus.

Then I arrived at Sibiu Autogara around 7:00 PM. From there with Catalin's help I safely arrived at the dorm that I stayed for the weekend. There I met Silvio from Italy and Cornelli from Iasi, Romania. We chilled until 9:30, and then we went out to the city for "Tour by Night." AIESEC Sibiu people gave us a short tour of Sibiu. The city was very nice, and very different from any other cities that I visited in Romania. After the tour we went to a cafe/bar called Melange and had some drinks. There was an old piano so I tried to play, only to realize how much I have forgotten. Even after considering that the piano was seriously out of tune, I still think that it'll take a while to get my skills back when I return to the US. So I stopped playing and started to mingle with others, we somehow ended up doing a pepper sniffing contest, my beer was knocked down by Ili at one point, and so on...we had some good time.

Then as we were on our way to our dorm room, Olga (trainee in Sibiu from Ukraine) came up with a wonderful idea to run through the fountain in Piata Mare. And we did. You can imagine what happened easily...we got very wet.

Then the next day started the Adventure. First we, the trainees, were given an envelope with a picture of a landmark inside. We had to find that landmark, and there we were supposed to meet our teammate, @er from Sibiu. My landmark was very easy to find, and there I found my teammate, Jacko. Together we went around the city to complete many activities, competing against the other 4 teams. The most memorable of those were "movie-guessing" and "miming."

Movie-guessing - One of us were given the title of a movie, and the other had to guess what the movie is by only asking yes-no questions. We struggled so much with this one. What I had to guess was Harry Potter, and I have not seen ANY of the Harry Potter series yet. I ended up asking questions like "does the first letter of the title of the movie start with an A?" and went through the entire alphabets. I asked this question until I finally got the word "Harry." Then Jacko had to guess the movie "Terminator," and he ended up using the same strategy. This game is way too hard for people like me who don't watch many movies.

Miming - One of us had to mime a famous phrase, and the other had to guess. So we chose Jacko to mime. The phrase was "Michael Jackson is the King" and Jacko ended up performing some Michael Jackson moves for countless times even after I realized what he was miming. I did not know at the time but this process was recorded, and was played in the slideshow at the end of this day. I wish I can show the video here, it was priceless.

After all events, we watched the movie "War Lords" in the @ office. The movie was ok, but it wasn't the best movie we could watch after a day full of energy-shedding activities. After we finished watching, it was 2:30 AM. My bus back to Galati was supposed to leave at 6:30 AM, so at this point I decided not to sleep. After we returned to the dorm room, I packed my stuffs, and went outside to prevent myself from sleeping. I ended up talking with Cornelli until 5:30 because he was leaving at the same time as I was. I don't remember exactly what we talked about because I was very sleepy and tired, but I'm sure Cornelli was bored to death by talking to me in that state sleepiness. Sorry!

Anyway, at 5:30 we met with Catalin who took us to our respective bus stations. When we got to my bus stop Catalin asked the bus driver if I had to switch the bus or not, and he said it was a direct bus. So I was relieved, because I did not have to go through all that confusion again.

Luckily there were no accidents on the way back and the entire transportation from Sibiu to Galati was carried out exactly as planned...except the part I had to switch buses at Braila. Direct bus my @$$.

Another weekend of traveling around the country. I like traveling, but at the same time it costs money. For transportation alone I spent 114 lei this weekend. With everything else combined I spent well over 200 lei in 3 days, so considering my salary, I think I need to start saving.