Herren Schmid von Fellbach waren hier!

Today is 5 April, and I am today committing to catching up this journal. My psyche is suffering from too many unrecorded memories!

With Ferdi and Klaus at CLJ (D. Schmid Photos)

Our German friends Dietmar (aka "Gig") and Ferdi Schmid visited us last weekend (27-29 March). They arrived Friday afternoon via Malev at Cluj International (CLJ), and after a brief tour of the city, came to the apartment to meet Shirl. After that, Klaus took our visitors to the Hotel Confort, where they checked in and took a ten minute power nap, while I sprinted home to get out of the "UBB Conference on the Financial and Economic Crisis" keynote speaker's suit in which I'd met them, for such had been my early afternoon duty.

That evening we invited my colleague (and Shirl's friend), newly promoted Assistant Professor Melinda Pleşcan, to join us at the Iulius Mall's nice restaurant Hanul Dacilor for supper. Melinda is a brilliant young woman who wears great shoes, so I thought that she might one day make a good Romanian rep for nico, the Schmids' brand of shoe care products. Besides, their visit to the Il Passo shoe store at the Iulius Mall made Gig's trip to Cluj 100% business.

On Saturday we took a leisurely course via GPS "shortest route" to Ocna Sugatag via Mara, both in Maramureş County. Of course, "You haven't been lost till you've been GPS lost," so we were guided to a mountain road still covered with snow, and marked "not maintained for winter travel." We had to backtrack some 20 Km, but eventually found our way to Maria's little store in Mara, where we met again the family of Maria, her son Ioan, and her granddaughter, Denisa. We confirmed for Pat Hayes that his October family photos had arrived, and Gig snapped a new one of Shirl and me with Maria and Denisa, to record our visit.
Having traversed the mountans, we checked into the new pensiune that the Sherman-Hayes family and I had dined at in Ocna Sugatag, Popasul din Deal, where we later had a great dinner and a fine rest.



But before dinner, we drove to the famous wooden monastery at Barsana. There Ferdi met deer, and we both befriended the local dogs, who were sweet creatures badly overdue for a bath. Here are several Barsana snapshots:

On Sunday, we ate a good breakfast at the pensiune, then headed back by a more easterly route (no seasonal pun intended) to the airport in Cluj, having had a short but most enjoyable visit. Gig, who races BMW 3-series cars as a hobby, did a superb job of driving us there with time to spare. I wanted to let him bond with his foundling Klaus, as I hope to leave Klaus with Gig as my future Eurocar, once I return to the States.

Until we meet again in Fellbach in June, dear friends, Tschüss!