Days Off

Sambata at the Salt Mine

Saturday morning the 6 of us woke early and began our adventure with taking 2 taxis up to "Autogara"bus rank - one of which took 10minutes and one which took about 2! Not sure what happened there. After a rush to find the right bus at the last minute before travel time we found ourselves waiting for 20 min anyway. About 1km from the village of "Praid", our destination we stopped for a 30min break - turned out to be just a smoko for the driver but as we couldn't understand the Romanian we spent those 30 minutes umming and ahhing whether it was safe to get off the bus and find a snack without it leaving on us!
At Praid a shuttle took us through a tunnel to the salt mine entrance: We found ourselves in a huge underground enclosure complete with an adventure playground, swingsets and a cafe! As we walked through more tunnels we could see that a lot of  holes remained in the walls from the history of mining. I learned that Praid is one of the towns that runs along a tectonic plate line which is called the "Salt Way" because that's where all the salt gathered. There was a decent historical display that showed us Chinese, Canadian and all other kinds of mining methods employed to gather salt - one of them involved descending at least 30 sets of parallel stairs to reach the bottom where horses were loaded with salt and stuck on an elevator. In the past this resource was called the 'bread of the people'. Other resources I've learned Romania has are sunflower seeds and potato and grapes (nearly everyone has grapevines in their front yard!) One fun aspect of adventuring in a foreign country is the uncertainty with public transport. 4pm found the group of us at a bus stop where we spent 2 hrs: with the first bus it quickly became evident it was too full, and then we almost gave up waiting for the second bus because it was after 6pm and the part of the timetable on the bus stop that we needed was ripped off. We also couldn't help noticing that there was not another soul on the street, save the two fighting stray dogs, and it was  quite dark. At the exact moment we gave up and decided on a taxi our saviour bus came and so thankfully we got back to Bod Peter for the night instead of spending it in a deserted remote village.

Interior of the salt mine

Descending into the salt mine

"Barbara" - about whom there is a famous Romania legend

Entrance to the salt mine

Cultural Sunday

Since we have weekends off we made it our mission to find a good brunch spot in town and were well satisfied at Dolce de Vita. Brekkie was Italian (which basically means Romanian) which meant ham and cheese platters, bruschetta and the like - incredibly good after our very average weekday dinners where we sometimes can't tell what's what amongst soups of strange odours and fried packages. The best part though was having a welcoming host who not only spoke English but translated the majority of the menu and put together a great selection that even included tasty vegetarian dishes for Tori! If anyone reading this visits Turgu Mures, please pay this cafe a visit!
We gained some more cultural perspective in our tour of the "Palace of Culture" that sits in the heart of Turgu Mures and is a very elaborate building where intricate designs cover the ceiling and every wall that sits between huge stain glass windows. These windows tell legendary stories of the past and one in particular showed the 'difference in rhythm between the country and city as industry and population grew'.


Monday

Famous building in the centre of  TM

I got lucky with an extended weekend due to our rotating roster and so Jason and I walked to the other end of the city and rewarded ourselves to a movie. Interstellar in a huge cinema which you have to yourself for the cost of about $1.50 per hr was simply awesome! James had his first day on the ambulance and over our 'dinner debrief' as we've come to call it, he told us how he'd taken
his turn at CPR with a patient who miraculously 'came back' and helped the SMURD ambulance crew to rescue two other very sick patients. Despite the language barrier, James even managed
to console patients and family members and build an excellent rapport!


Tuesday
Jason had his second day with the ambulance crew and was much more successful than last week in being included on the Dr callouts. The two cases were dispatched as cardiac arrest, but not unlike
Australia people assume the worst and one turned out to be syncope, the other pt in rigor mortis. Nevertheless Jason still enjoyed the day!
In the Emergency Department itself there were few confident English speakers and we white-shirted volunteers didn't seem to attract much attention so we convened and took the day off, reasoning it's difficult to contribute without any supervision.