Meeting lost Family in Timisoara and Arad, Romania and experiencing the best day of my trip so far!

Yesterday Jim and I drove to Timisoara which is on the Western frontier of Romania. Timisoara is the fourth largest city in Romania and is a melting pot of Romanians, Swabian Germans, Serbians and Hungarians. The downtown Piata Operati or Piata Victoreii has beautiful buildings in a Vienna architectural style reminiscent of the days that this area was part of Austria-Hungary before World War I.

When we arrived in Timisoara traffic was a pain and finding the hotel we had booked was a nightmare with all the small and narrow one-way streets and with heavy Friday rush hour traffic. We must have circled the downtown area 4 or 5 times before we found the Hotel Timisoara by accident.

The drive from Sibiu to Timisoara is about 4.5 to 5 hours with the two-lane highways and nebun (crazy) driving. We thought a hotel would be the best option rather than drive back to Sibiu the same day...It was a good choice because it allowed me to meet even more cousins today!

Electric buses in Timisoara

Fountain in the Piata Operatii

Opera house at the end of the Piata

Large city clock made from flowers within the garden area

Parade and exposition of the Timisoara Fire Department and

there various vehicles past and present

Firefighters in black and ambulance drivers in red

 





1967 Mercedes Benz Fire Truck

 



Timisoara is also where the Romanian Revolution started in December 20th of 1989. Piata Operati also known as Piata Victoreii is where the largest protests started that would lead to the execution of communist leader Ceausescu and his wife and a change in life for the Romanian people.

 

Past communist medals along with post revolutionary medals in the hotel lobby

Street name that recognizes the date that the Timisoara protests began.

 

 

Plaque in front of the Romanian Orthodox church in honor of a man

that gave up his life fighting in the revolution in 1989

 

 

We met Johanna along with their three wonderful children, Roberto, Jonathon and Samuel and walked around the Piata Operati (Opera Square) to view the beautiful architecture and sites.

 

 Johanna is my 2nd cousin. We share the same Great-Grandmother Maria Mai. On my last trip I expanded my knowledge of my family tree and my grandfathers siblings; however, I never in a million years would believe that family was still in Romania!! Thanks to the power of Facebook I was able to reach out to Johanna's father Johann who lived now in Spain and start the process of connecting our families together again. Johann is my 1st cousin, once removed and his mother was the sister my Grandfather never met when he came to the United States in 1926 since she was born later in 1929. My grandfather never returned to Romania and would never know what happened to his other siblings. It is now 87 years later after he left that I have come back and reconnected with my rather large family and it has been such a joy!!!

Johanna was instrumental with her fantastic English skills in bringing our families back together! With my very limited Romanian I don't know how far I would have gotten.

Johanna and the kids ate at a restaurant off of Piata Operati and then headed around the square to view the beautiful old historic buildings and to see this very cool garden-flower clock. We also had a chance to try a Timisoara hamburger which is only about 2 lei (60 cents) and big as a Whopper but tastier too! they sell them at a street cart and cannot be found anywhere else in Romania; they are unique to Timisoara!

Jonathon (Left) - Roberto (Right) and little Samuel

at the restuarant being kids and having fun

 

After spending time with Johanna and her family we decided to call it a night and get settled in at the hotel before walking around the Piata Operati after dusk. If the Alfred Hitchcock movie, "The Birds" scares you you definitely might be freaked out by the millions of pigeons that nightly at dusk swarm the sky over the main square. Very cool, but also very bizarre and almost eerie as you can see from the video below.

 

 

 

The Birds!!!!

 

Breakfast at the hotel. The tomatoes were some of the sweetest I have had in a long time. Most of the food in this area is grown on small farms and most people in Romania have their own large gardens in their back yard. You find roadside vegtable stands everywhere.

 

 

Outdoor patio at the Hotel Timisoara



This morning after breakfast we followed Johanna to Arad about 50 kilometers north of Timisoara to meet my gracious cousins Lily Mai and her husband Ghita Biris on the outskirts of a small village called Zimandu Nou in a agricultural area. Lily is my 1st cousin, once removed and her Grandmother Maria Mai (Fising) is my Great-Grandmother. Lily has 6 children and I was honored to meet Mihai, Ghita, Erika and her husband Cristian Ciobanu today along with some of Lily's grandchildren.

The Road to Lily's home



Erika, me, Ghita and Mihai

Ghita, Lily and me

 



Mihai and Samuel

Lily prepared a wonderfully delicious soup with pork meatballs and bay leaf along with cartof (potatoes), pui (chicken) with spices and a desert. I was again honored to be invited to my families home and served such a wonderful meal and to be able to share family stories and connections will not soon be forgotten! I feel blessed.

I definitely plan to come back again to Romania in the next few years to see my cousins and their families and also next time make a trip to Spain to meet Johanna's father Johann, his wife Ileana and their son Gerhard. It was such a wonderful last two days that I have experienced and proves to me once again that the people of Romania, my family included are some of the most friendly people on earth.

During the trip to Timisoara and Arad and Petresti I have met 15 new cousins, 12 are directly related to me!!! I also have cousins such as Johann in Spain and additional cousins in Germany that I will have to reconnect with in the next few years!