is a small town near the border with around 100,000 inhabitants. The city center is very beautiful with a cozy, relaxed atmosphere.
Satu Mare is quite old, with origins dating back to the 10th century. As the town belonged to Hungary for most of its long history, Hungarian is still the predominant language today. However, this made no difference to us as we speak neither Hungarian nor Romanian. Communication in English or German is therefore the only option for us here and it works really well.
We visited three churches!
the Orthodox Cathedral:
the Greek Catholic Church of St. Michael the Archangel and St. Gabriel the Archangel:
and the Roman Catholic Cathedral, which rises quite impressively right next to the Pati Libertatii in the center.
As we didn’t feel much like sightseeing after the many days of driving, we limited ourselves to a tour of the city.
After our city tour, we drove on to Turt. The plan was to explore the abandoned mining site there. Gold has even been found there….
The first thing after the plan is, as you know, a change of plan: a sign with the amount of the fine for continuing our journey (3,000 LEI/ 600 EUR) prevented us from continuing.
So we continued on to Lacul Călinești, where we parked on the shore and enjoyed the afternoon and night.
