First days

After the introductory seminar the first nine days of September, where I laughed, learned and met a lot of interesting and amazing new friends, I left for Sighisoara on the 10th of September.

We took a night train from Munich to Sighisoara straight and apart from a quite unfriendly ticket inspector and a one hour delay, my brother and I arrived well in the medieval town of Schäßburg/Sighisoara.

The town of Sighisoara consists of an upper part, the Castle, where even now people live – e.g. me – and a lower part in the valley. The whole of the upper part is stunningly beautiful and it is therefore not surprising that all of it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. My room is right located right next to the main tower of the castle, the clock tower, which is the town’s landmark.

After buying neccessities like water (as we were advised not to drink the tap water here) in the PENNY market, me and my brother went for a walk up the hills on Sunday. Halfway up one of the parallel hills is a Restaurant from where you have a stunning view upon the town of Sighisoara. To get there however, you have to walk up the roads on which the poorer people live – mainly Romas. I for myself found it disturbing to actually walk through a “suburb” like this and see the tiny huts and sheds in which people live in together with their dogs and pigs and horses. Even though I knew from documentations etc that Romania is a relatively poor country, seeing the poverty these people live in made me sad. I felt uneasy walking through there, even though there was no special reason why I should have done so  apart from a few wild dogs of which one started following us, but soon gave up – luckily.

Right opposite the boarding school is a church, which has a German congregation and I’m thinking about joining their choir. We went to the service there on Sunday and it almost felt like home.
Today  was my first day at school, but there wasn’t much to do yet. We were only shown round the beautiful school, which is located on top of the castle hill. There probably won’t be much going on for me the whole of this week as the timetables and everything aren’t set yet. One of my main working places however will be the library, where there is lots to do and sort out.

After having finished this post, I will go outside and enjoy the sun. We have 24°C here and a gorgeous blue sky.