Romanian Sports
Part of this trip of mine has revolved around sports. I've been doing sports in the evenings on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday, its the sport of the world - futbol, aka. soccer - a sport that I have no experience playing. Now I have 4 games under my belt, in these sweet artificial turf, caged fields that are all over Cluj. we were playing 6-on-6 with all of the guys from work, and they have been great sports about my terribly clumsy soccer playing. I'll have to look into playing more of this w/ the latin guys when I get back to Austin!
On Wednesdays, Johnny and I have been hitting this sweet basketball court at a high-school near Cluj's UT.
This is the sweetest blue basketball court I've ever seen. European style lanes, really short distance to the cieling; perfect for those folks that don't shoot outside. There are some interesting rule variations in 'Romanian street basketball', most of which have to do with the flow of the game. For instance, if the ball goes out of bounds (hits a wall), the other team does not have to wait for everyone to get set -- you just tap the ball on the wall and play on. There is no stoppage of the game. It's a fun way to play, but you end up w/ a lot of cheap baskets sometimes. Johnny's new nickname is Dirk Nowitzki for his sweet drives the hoop. I held my own and had a good time as well.
Of course no trip with Darin is complete without a little weekend geocaching side-adventure. There's only one geocache in cluj, and I found it.
The scenery around the botanical gardens of Cluj was great, with some neat old bridges and pleny of foreign flora and fauna. A great place to spend your days hiking around. And the best part, no Romanian required for entry :P There are also rumored to be many great forests around here for hiking and camping; but the reality is that it's a little too cold for that this time of the year.