I've finally left Romania, after having holed up to avoid more bad weather, and am now in Serbia with sunshine!I ended up staying in Romania longer than intended because of - you've guessed it! - rain. After leaving Deva I headed to Sibiu, which is a very pleasant town, more Austrian than Romanian in style. Their art museum also houses some real masterpieces, so I felt very cultured as I wandered round. Just outside the town is an open-air museum with examples of all the traditional styles of Romanian house. Most are wooden, and some of the mills are very elaborate, but as all the explanations are in Romanian I couldn't help feel that I'd gained more from actually riding round the countryside and seeing the real thing!

It was only 5.30 when I left the museum, so I ignored the nearby campsite and headed for one further south, which turned out not to exist. So an hour later I was back at the first one. There I met my companions for the next few days, as we all sat through the bad weather. Felix and Nina are a young German couple on a similar trip to mine, though, like everyone it would seem, in the opposite direction. They were however able to provide some very useful information about Albania. One road was so bad it took them a day and a half to cover 60km! Needless to say I will be avoiding that one!Also at the campsite were Esther and Markus, a Swiss couple riding to Australia on a pair of XTs. They had already ridden the length of the Americas, and we spent many hours swapping travel stories about various parts of the world.

After the weather improved I visited some fortified Saxon churches, then headed south towards Serbia.