Timișoara was grey and damp, warmed for us by the welcome and generosity of local friends, who we came to visit.
Woke up to a soft flurry of snow outside, settling on the orange-brown rooftops. Cobblestone streets, three squares connected by small grids, diverse architecture and so much color. Still, the streets are physically marked by recent history, by what happened there barely thirty years earlier.
An ever-present, constant balance of past and present, old and new. A place in the midst of change.
We stumbled upon a public art exhibit, a collection of posters about “tolerance” on our first day. Seeing the collection together, surrounded by the silence and emptiness of the square; a simple moment, but like most moments in Timișoara, a moment that made me think.
I may not have seen that much of Romania, but I could definitely feel it.
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Timișoara, Romania, January
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