That's what ,,sarmale,, with mamaliga and bacon look like.
I'm the stranger, he's the weekend stranger, it doesn't matter, we can handle it
Today I will respond to 
The weekend stranger
- You are asked to accommodate a homeless stranger for a weekend to house, feed and entertain. Would you do it, and if so, what does your weekend look like and why?*
For several days I have been hearing on TV news about the increasingly tense situation in Ukraine, a country neighbouring Romania and quite close to the area where I live, from what I understand from TV the war is about to start, I am very saddened by this news and cannot understand why in the 21st century we are still talking about such acts.
After a week...
The war started in some parts of Ukraine, created chaos, panic among the citizens of that country, so they left everything behind and took a few clothes, pretty much everything they could fit in a hand luggage and left, leaving behind everything they had.
The borders, especially with Europe, become more and more crowded, fatigue, hunger, thirst, stress, agitation, news of war take hold of people, who do not know how long they will resist, they can only pray.
How did I get the idea to host a stranger?
One evening, watching the news again, I saw that the Romanian authorities were ready at all the border points with Ukraine with tents specially set up to receive people fleeing the war (the tents were equipped with food, water and, of course, medical staff).
Automatically I talked to a friend to go to the border to see what happens there, as I said I live about 300km from the Ukrainian border, because I saw on TV many people, even mothers with children who have nowhere to go.
I decided I had to do something.
We load the car with some non-perishable products, especially food but also toys, and we leave towards the Ukrainian border, and after a 4 hours drive we reach the border area where we have a very hard time because of the traffic jam, we leave the car on the side of the road and continue on foot to the border, we still have 300m to the border and the images here have a great emotional impact.
A lot of disoriented, tired people, they all had one desire to get out of there.
I talked to some representatives of the Romanian state who were there, and they were overwhelmed by the situation, the seats prepared for them were full.
Here we came across a person who started to tell us that he has some friends in Austria to stay with for a while, but he hasn't managed to contact them yet, and that he would need to stay somewhere for a weekend.
I got a stranger at my house this weekend.
I help him carry his luggage to my car and leave behind the tense situation there, late in the evening we arrive at my home safely away from conflicts, I quickly prepare his future room which will be his home this weekend, each after a busy day we go to bed but not before eating something.
The next morning we contacted the Romanian authorities to help us to restore the identity card of this person so we could go on to his destination (in the commotion that evening he lost his identity card).
The authorities have promised us that everything will be resolved as soon as possible, and I am confident that it will be.
To loosen things up a bit, I suggested to the stranger this weekend that we visit some of my tourist areas in the country.
So I quickly made a day trip through beautiful Romania with my Ukrainian friend.
For the first time I chose to introduce her to a very old medieval fortress and to show her a bit of our historical past, so we walked along cobbled roads to reach the fortress.
He was very amazed at how well the fortress walls have been preserved to this day.
After a few hours spent in historical places, we got hungry, so we chose to go to a place where we can taste traditional Romanian food, here we opted to eat "sarmale", a traditional Romanian dish made of a minced meat filling, wrapped in sheets of sour cherry, the filling is made of ground pork with spices such as salt, pepper, onion, thyme, bay leaves, sweet or hot paprika, a madness for the taste buds, we served the ,,sarmale,, with some ,,mamaliga,.
After such a busy day of walking in the footsteps of history but also flying through the tastes of traditional foods it was time to retire home.
Even though this weekend was a successful one and we managed to put a smile on his face, in the evening before going to bed he told me that he would like if we could help him get in touch with a sister of his left in Ukraine, because he would very much like to hear from her.
On Sunday we called again to the institutions of the Romanian state to help us somehow to find this person, telephone connections were impossible to make, so they searched through the places specially set up to host refugees, the surprise came after two hours when someone from the border called us by video call and told us that he found more or could see via mobile phone.
My dear followers and visitors, this is how I spent this weekend with a stranger (who became my best friend), we went from one extreme to another, from anger to joy, from helping to make the identity card, to exploring Romanian historical areas, from tasting some traditional Romanian dishes to meeting again some dear people, everyone lived an experience that I think will never be forgotten, so here ends today's story and if you liked what I wrote here you can give me a like, a reblog, a comment that costs you nothing, and until the next post I say goodbye.
