Well we were always going to be leaving Ethiopia at the end of the school year in June 2020 as Emma would have been there for 3 years, and that is enough of a spell in Addis. However, we didn’t expect to be moving to Romania in August 2020. Back when the world was normal in late 2019, Emma had applied for several jobs back in Asia and she did brilliantly being offered a few of them. After a lot of debate we decided on Yangon, Myanmar as out next adventure. We were happy to be heading back to Asia, to the sunshine and spicy food. Then the covid pandemic put a spanner in the works and we left Ethiopia earlier than planned and spent lock down in the UK ( see the story ‘Covid Lock Down in the Peak District). Lots of countries were closing borders but we were hopeful that the world would open up by August and we would be off to Myanmar. As the months went on it was clear that Myanmar was not opening it’s borders anytime soon so we had to look for plan B.
This whole pandemic has made us rethink our lives as I’m sure it has a lot of people and we thought being closer to home for a while might be a good idea. So Emma focused her new job search on Europe which had an added bonus of being open when the rest of the world was shut. She spotted a job being advertised in Timisoara, Romania. Now I must confess, I didn’t know a great deal about Romania, I’d heard that it had beautiful scenery and some good hiking so definitely worth a punt. While Emma researched the school which looked very promising I googled Timisoara. The images showed beautiful buildings and picturesque squares with numerous café bars – very promising. Within a week of applying Emma had the job in the bag ( good lass).
The location seemed ideal too, in the west of Romania close to the Serbian and Hungarian borders ( Belgrade is a a couple of hours away and Budapest is 3 or 4), so the travel opportunities once Covid has gone would be immense. I bought a travel guide to Eastern Europe and it covered 21 countries that we had not been to together. I had been to Hungary when it was behind the iron curtain and Croatia and Slovenia when they were in Yugoslavia – so a while ago. It was a part of the world that we didn’t know at all so this seemed like a fantastic opportunity, too good to miss, so Emma accepted the position and we would be leaving in a couple of weeks. It happened really quickly but we were excited about going to a new country and a part of the world that we didn’t know. In fact it is the first time we have moved to a country having never previously visited. 2020 really has been a strange year but we have high hopes for our new adventure.
