A Day of Much Walking!

The best way to sum up today is that I walked for a long time, went to church, walked for an even longer time, had lunch and coffee, kept walking, walked a little more, had some ice cream, then walked a little more.

But since that would be a pretty boring blog, here are a few details:

I went to Dawn's church this morning, and immediately met sweet people who spoke English with me.  I keep having to swallow my pride because I want so badly to speak Romanian with people, but their English is always better than my Romanian.  Anyway, an older woman named Cornelia (Neli) was sitting behind me and took me under her wing.  After the sermon, there was a breakout session to discuss what we'd heard, and she found me two English-speaking friends, which was also sweet of her.  The good news is, I mostly understood the sermon, and, as always, loved singing the songs.  Today we did In Christ Alone in Romanian, which was especially special because that song always reminds me of my home church, and I was feeling just a little homesick.  The truths in that song are so sweet, and I'd never gotten to sing them in Romanian, and it was wonderful.  The sermon was great, too, about the reliability and authenticity of God's word, which seems to fit the theme of these last few days.  I'm hoping to let my host know about the sermon series there and see if it's helpful for him.

The walk to church was very long, but the walk back felt a bit shorter.  I was determined to find a coffee shop called Garage Café that Ioan had recommended to me, and was way sadder than I should have been when I couldn't find it.  Then I tried several other cafes that I walked past, but they were so packed with people that I literally couldn't find an open table at any of them.  I finally walked back to Piata Unirii, close to where I'm staying, and finally got my coffee and a late lunch.  The waitress there also spoke to me in English, after a failed attempt in Romanian.

Then what...just a lot more walking.  I wanted to visit the Museum of the Revolution, but it is closed on Sundays.  The cool part about that story though, is that the gates were open, so I walked in and tried to open the door, like I'm brave or something (when I'd been feeling pretty timid all day).  A confused man opened the door, and I asked if the museum was open, and he said it was closed because it's Sunday but to come back tomorrow.  We had this very normal conversation in Romanian without him once having to slow down or switch to English, and it may seem like a small thing but it was a huge blessing to my heart.  I was just a little less discouraged about my language ability, and was given renewed energy (ok, I'm sure the coffee helped) to find more cool things to look at.

Then some more walking, lots of really old buildings and historic sites and beautiful parks.  My favorite was the children's park, which was huge and amazing and I'd like to bring my nephews to it.  It had so many creative things for kids to play on and with, and my VERY favorite part was a collection of public hammocks, one of which I was happy to take advantage of after so much walking.  I also walked to the Reformed Church of Timisoara, which was  significant not only because of my doctrinal connections to it but because events concerning its pastor in 1989 are said to have sparked the rebellion that ended communism in Romania.

Last but not least, I stopped for ice cream at a cute little sit down place, where I also interacted with the waitress only in Romanian, and was also very satisfied.

A few random observations from today:

- I am glad that even when almost everything else seems so foreign, green still means go and red still means stop.  This little piece of consistency was tremendously helpful as I crossed probably at least 50 different intersections today.

- It's strange to be so surrounded by the Romanian language.  I keep expecting to hear a little bit of English as I pass crowds, or German or French or Hungarian... but  really I only hear Romanian!  I think I overheard 2 English sentences today, total.  So just about all of the English I heard was just in music that was playing in various places.

- My discouragement about language makes sense, because what happened at the tower of Babel was actually a curse.  I think languages are so beautiful that sometimes it's hard to think of them as a result of the pride of mankind, but all of those connections are very clear to me after just one week of experiencing language barriers firsthand.

- Today was actually pretty frustrating at times - my feet were tired and my brain was tired and I couldn't find several of the things I wanted to find when I wanted to find them.  But despite all that, I think Timisoara ranks among my favorite cities in the world.  It has such fascinating history, beautiful buildings, and so many wonderful parks.  Everywhere I went there were memorials, most of them in memory of the revolution here in 1989.  I could spend weeks here and not really wrap my mind around all that has happened in this special place.

Ok, so here are some of the pictures (I think I took 90 today, but I feel like I couldn't quite capture things.  4 pictures will have to do for now).  Tomorrow, I head to the village of Criscior - no idea if I'll have wifi or not, so I may not be in touch until Wednesday.  Thanks for reading!




Piata Victoriei - Victory Square.  On the left is the beautiful Orthodox Cathedral

Piata Unirii, a 3-minute walk from my building.  Breathtakingly beautiful and hard to capture in one shot.  I took several panoramics and videos too.  The building on the left contains the restaurant where I had coffee and lunch

Decebal Bridge over the Bega Canal.  This was a very innovative bridge for its time when it was built in 1909.  And of course I always loving seeing any body of water!

Seriously, why don't our parks have public hammocks?  This was definitely a highlight of my day!