Satu Mare, Satu Mare

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When we last left you I had been pulled over and fined for passing a horse drawn wagon. The official explanation went like this, "speeding - 63 - points to 50 he has written - shows the fine he has written 67 lei (sounds like lay) thrusts the ticket in the window and walks away after telling me to pay at posta.

The car is equipped with cruise but, it is different than in cars for the North American market. I learned to use it very quickly after this experience as we found that labour is cheap and police are a dime a dozen. The national road shown on the map is a two lane road that has been undergoing resurfacing for the last 3 years through this region. The speed limit changes within 50 to 100 metres and we encountered many people pulled over in these areas. The speed on the national road is 90 kph and 50 in a developed area. The national road travels through developed areas all along to Satu Mare. There are no fewer than 5 village/towns/cities with this name hence the reason I use the name twice - this region is also Satu Mare.

In the Transylvania area of Romania most names are in Romanian and Hungarian due to the majority ethnicity and language of the latter in this region. With all the stops we arrived in the city of Satu Mare only 30 - 45 minutes late.
Our GPS got us to the Poesis Hotel without difficulty in this very old city. Normally we like to take our meals in restaurants outside the hotel to experience local culture. At the Poesis I wanted to just stay in the hotel as there are very few options in this city. I wanted to just have a cold beer after such a difficult day.

Our server Ervin was very attentive and professional, however; we discovered that his service to us would be the last at this hotel as he was headed back to engineering school. It didn't take any effort to get Ervin to be our tour guide and translator for the next day of discovery. We stayed three hours and had a couple bottles of wine and a drink each with our meal. The entire bill with tip was less than $70. The day ended with great success so we felt relieved by our renewed good fortune.

We will try and catch up tomorrow,
Jackie and Tony

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Photos

Poesis Hotel - Satu Mare
Jackie in the Dining Room

Cousin in Nisipeni
Gizzela, Julia and Tony

Comments

[Joe Phillip]

Police
Sounds like you're having a great time but we need some photo's. I thought for sure since you're so tight with the local police now we would have some photo's with them at the very least. (ha ha)