dan puric halvita | Travel experience

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Slatina is the capital city of Olt county, Romania, on the river Olt.

Population (2002): 79,171

The town of Slatina was first mentioned on January 20, 1368 in an official document issued by Vladislav I Vlaicu, Prince of Wallachia. The document stated that merchants from the Transylvanian city of Braşov would not pay customs when passing through Slatina. The word Slatina is of Slavic origin, stemming from Slam-tina, „salted land” or „salty water”; a small minority promotes the theory that the term originates in the Latin „Salatina”.

One of the oldest private businesses in Romania is the Slatina-based pastry shop La atletul albanez („The Albanian Athlete”).

Notable natives

Eugen Ionescu – playwright
Ion Minulescu– poet, writer and journalist
Nicolae Titulescu – diplomat, Foreign Affairs minister and President of League of Nations
Spiru Vergulescu – painter
Ionut Lutu, Claudiu Niculescu, Rãzvan Rat, Gheorghe Craioveanu, Ion Danciulescu – soccer players
Monica Niculescu – tennis player

Source: Wikipedia

Travel journal

Ok… We must recognize… We can’t stay without traveling somewhere… 😀 It passed a couple of days and again, another location… We are definitely addicted of knowing new places…

As usually before this type of escape we had council, we took into consideration many locations. We have always a list with places to visit. We checked the weather news because it comes the autumn and the time is not appropriate to go, for example, to a mountain zone. So, we decided to choose an urban destination, where it doesn’t matter if it rains or if the weather is capricious. We went to Slatina, Olt’s county capital city.

Maybe you are asking yourself what we are going to visit in a place like this, apparently uninteresting. Find out that in this city it is the oldest confectionary from country, owned by an Albanian family stabilized in Romania for 300 years. It said that they have been making to more tasty ice-cream in our country and we went to check out 😀

Following the Romanian saying “who wake up early in the morning arrives far”, we get up around half past six and at 7:55 we had the personal train that left us in Piteşti. As usually we arrived lately at Basarab station this time, but as we are lucky, we catch the train. The ticket’s price was 12 lei. We arrived in Piteşti after two hours. Here we changed the train. After we bought tickets (from Piteşti to Slatina 10 lei at personal train), we went in the back of the station to have a tea because it was pretty cold. At 11:20 we were in the second train running. After other two hours we were there.

Firstly we decided about the train that would get us back to Bucharest. We bought tickets; this time for the whole distance, in this way was cheaper: 20 lei from Slatina to Bucharest. After solving the return’s details we went to the center part of the city trying to find the famous confectionary. It took us some time to found it, but asking some inhabitants we arrived. There is an old small building having inside some fridges to keep the sweets. At the beginning we bought only bragă (boza) and Romanian halviţă (halva) that were really tasty.

We wanted to try all house’s specialties, so we bought citronade and ice-cream too. In deed the ice-cream was really delicious… The building’s walls was covered with pieces from the newspaper about the confectionary, photos with famous people that visited the place, images with cakes, visitor’s impressions. After finishing eating and drinking we started to visit the old center. Walking down the streets we fortuitously arrived to the regional history museum. Unfortunately we hadn’t enough time to see all the collections because the time runs and we needed to hurry up to the station to catch the train. (At 16:45)

On the road we slept being tired and didn’t have the enthusiasm that we had in the morning. We arrived in Piteşti (18.50), we changed the train and at 21:50 we were back.

Inside the train P9023 from Bucureşti to Piteşti (Romanian car made by Astra)

Inside train P9015 (second floor) from Piteşti to Slatina. Romanian car made by Astra in Arad

The train P9015 in Slatina Railway Station

Railway Station

Slatina, my love 😛

Old t-shirts :)))))

Forbiden for big trucks and carts 😀

Watermill

Small waterfall

A.I.Cuza Boulevard near the Railway Station

OLTtv 🙂

Monument for the glory of soldiers from Slatina who fight in WWII between 1941 and 1945

Intersection on A.I.Cuza Boulevard

Reconditioned blocks

The Headquarter of the Prefecture Olt offices in administration of the County Council Olt

County Library "Ion Minulescu"

The Center

This park on the valley split New Town constructed by communists from the Old Town which is down, near Olt River

"Hope Fountain" in the Center

The old shopwindow from "Atletul Albanez"

The Albanian family Memish has been in Slatina for 300 years and they sell Ottoman products since more than 100 years in the city

Old and nice

Photos and articles from newspapers with famous people who ate and drank here

The price of ice-cream is 2, 3 and 4 LEI...

Cold Boza and Citronade with just 1 LEU per glass (0.23 EURO) 🙂

Bottles with Bragă (Boza, also Bosa) and Citronade. The price for one bottle of 2L was 8 LEI (almost 2 euro)

Dan Puric was one of the customers

The famous confectionery "La atletul albanez" (The Albanian Athlete)

Nice old street

Council of the Olt County

A little shop in left...

Renewed building

Street

Sad blue...

Lipscani Street 🙂

The majority of the buildings from the Old Town are historical monuments

The City Council wants to get funds to remake the Old Town

Street in the Old Town

In this block (before was house) was born Eugen Ionesco (November 26, 1909 – March 28, 1994) was a Romanian playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd.