74th day - Sept 20th: Craiova - Big city with a tiny community

In the morning, I picked up my transferred money from Transilva Bank. Unfortunately, I had to wait for a long time because there were internet issues throughout Europe. Shortly before 11 am, the money was finally paid out and I was able to start my visit to 'my' last Evangelical community in Romania in Craiova. Although I only had 60 km to travel through Wallachia, half of the route was quite hilly. The beautiful weather made up for it a little bit. Along the way, I spoke with the curator. She already knew about my visit. The small community with its own church is located in the center. The last 8 km from the outskirts to the church were on a four-lane highway, and the traffic was accordingly loud.

I arrived shortly before 4 pm and the curator was already waiting in the kitchen of the former rectory. Craiova used to have its own pastor. Like in the whole of Romania after the revolution, many Protestant Saxons moved away.

Today, the community has dwindled to about 20 registered souls. However, only 5-6 members still live locally. The others live in Spain, Portugal, or a Romanian big city, but they still maintain their connection to their home community. Although the community is so small, the responsible pastor from Hermannstadt comes once a month to celebrate a service with the small community. In her words, too, there was a lot of nostalgia and sadness about the development of the Evangelical community in Craiova. She said, 'That's the course of history, and we will all die someday.' But she was happy about my visit, because there haven't been any overnight guests in the rectory for years.

I spent an hour walking around the city center. At one point, the children were feeding the city pigeons, and I admired the exterior of the Baroque Art Nouveau restaurant. Apart from the art museum and some Orthodox churches, the big city has hardly any sights. After dinner, the curator left and I was alone in the rectory. I wrote something for my blog and researched my route through 'my' last country - Bulgaria. It gave me some headaches when looking at the topographic map.