retiredmartin

May 2026. Sibiu. Central Romania.

Sadly for my readers keen to read about Wetherspoons breakfasts and suburban Bass houses, the law of the diary-based blog requires I get to the end of this Romanian week, so come back, ooh, next Monday if you’re bored of nasty foreign bars.

Sibiu doesn’t have any cask beer, so there’s evangelical work for CAMRA to do yet, but it does have a few decent craft outlets, all visible from the church tower.

The more noticable feature of the town was the division between upper and lower levels,

so perhaps this isn’t one for folk who prefer the flat to the steps.

Just outside the cathedral grounds you get an unexceptional 19th century bridge over the path to the lower town.

The Bridge of Lies attracts tourists on the basis of some nonsense about liars falling to their untimely end about here;

“Another legend about the bridge talks about how there may have been a large lake underneath the bridge, in which freshwater mermaids lived. They would lie to their merman husbands to meet their mortal lovers on the bridge above. Then, they would jump off into the lake when finished.“

It was about this point, having managed to avoid a lie myself on the crossing, that I noted the similarities with a certain Greater Manchester Cheshire town.

I mean, there’s not quite as many pubs as in the Underbanks, but like Stockport there’s burgeoning coffee scene and a great market place.

And some very juvenile graffiti.