It is starting to get very cold here in Sibiu, winter has finally caught up to me. Goodbye to my endless fall that I’ve been enjoying for the last 2 1/2 months. The cold weather really takes the motivation away, as my walks have started getting shorter (because the days are much shorter) and the desire to sketch just doesn’t exist... too damn cold.

I honestly didn’t engage with Sibiu like I had with Sighisuoara. It was a bigger, flatter more spread out place, and the immediate character just wasn’t as obvious to me. I am sure it has a much different personality in the summer when all the terraces are filled and people are out in about. There were still people around with the Christmas Market in full swing. I was staying in the main square where the market was, and there were rides for children, an ice skating rink, and stands selling sausages, cakes and hot wine. But I decided to take it easy, and I made a big pot of chili and just relaxed in the communal kitchen at the hostel listening to music.

I managed to get out of the city on one day to check out the little fortress at Cisnadioura. I took the bus 12km south to Cisnadie on a great and snowy morning. I did a quick your of the cathedral and fortifications there, then walked the 4km out to Cisnadioura, where a church sits on a hill, Michaelsberg, high above the village. I walked 15 minutes up the snowy trail to the old stone gate, where the door into the compound was locked. I’d come all that way (not really that far), to come up the hill and not see the church. So a little dejected, but honestly not all that much, I headed back down the path to get some lunch. I was planning on eating at the cathedral, but looking around at the top, there was absolutely nothing. No service roads, no sign of any kind of sales... nothing. So back down in the village I sat in an empty dining room and had a goulash with dumplings and chatted with the girl working there. I relayed my failed attempt to see the church, and she reminded me that there is a local woman who keeps the key, and I could get it from her and go give myself a tour. I keep forgetting about these details... I think it is a kind of American way of thinking. Locked means closed and I am subject to the proprietors hours... but not the case here. It was great. The woman at the restaurant called the key holder, I walked down the block, gave her a couple of lei and was literally given the keys to the castle. So I headed back up the hill, with the sun starting to poke through the clouds. When I arrived at the top the sun was out and I had the church to myself. It was a nice little church. I think I enjoyed because it didn’t have all of the gaudy embellishment that many of the ‘restored’ places I have visited seem to have. The trip out of town for the day was salvaged.

I went back to the hostel, ate some leftover chili, packed up and prepared for my bus ride out to Brasov the next morning.