25 May 2018
Having had a mouthful of my porridge the other day, Cornelia decided she now liked it (after two years of refusing it!), and has been asking for it every day since. We had run out of the Golden Syrup ready-made sachets, and Ian had picked up a bag of oats the other day in the supermarket, so finally, I was able to make some porridge in our apartment. Golden Syrup doesn’t seem to exist around here (not even in the Hungarian Tesco we visited yesterday!) so we turned breakfast into a game of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and she tried three different bowls: one with honey; one with chocolate & coconut sauce; and one with brown sugar. Brown sugar won the day for her! She wolfed it down, then asked for more. Result!
While she was making breakfast last for two hours, Ian went off for a sweltering run, and I managed to get three loads of much-needed laundry done. The apartment we are staying in is spacious, but it is missing useful items like a clothes rack, so we hung the clothes up on our camping washing line strung up from a window to the door in our bedroom, which worked perfectly. It is really hot outside, and the warm air streaming in dried everything very quickly, which made a nice change from the usual three/four days it’s been taking.
We’ve all been enjoying each other’s company, but I have to say, it was so nice to finally spend some quality time with Steve together with his Team GB colleagues, and I have the opportunity to write about some really exciting stuff, rather than tell you about how long it takes my laundry to dry…
Steve had had some team admin to deal with in the morning, but we had been invited to join him and some of the crew for lunch at Massimo, a nice Italian in one of the central squares. Cornelia was beside herself with happiness at seeing Uncle Steve. As it happened, we didn’t really get a chance to chat with anyone other than Steve, as we were on a separate table and had our backs to everyone, but we enjoyed a good catch up with him, before it was time for him and the others to head back to their hotel for the afternoon team meeting.
This gave us an opportunity to wander aimlessly through the various squares of Timisoara. It is a really beautiful city, with lovely “faded baroque” architecture, manicured gardens with brightly-coloured flower beds, and lots of fountains for Cornelia to run around, and pigeons for her to chase! It was also full of students, particularly today, as it was graduation day, and the whole atmosphere of a bustling city was just raised up a notch. We did a recce of the park in which the race would take place (and were overjoyed to find the track went around a massive kids’ playground!) before heading back to Victory Square (the site of the beginning of Romanian Revolution in 1989) for the IAU European 24hr Championships opening ceremony. Each full team (including crew and runners) paraded up on stage, and Team GB was hilarious – full of energy, dancing and jumping around, and clearly having the greatest fun! This was followed by some introductions and messages from the acting president of the IAU and the local federation who are hosting the event, then some traditional Romanian music with dancers in costume. Cornelia completely embraced this, dancing along, even making it onto the red carpet in the aisle to bust some moves, which she clearly gets from her father….!
We hooked up with Steve immediately after he’d finished his photo call, and wandered around looking for somewhere that grabbed his fancy, before ending up at Massimo again. We said an early-ish goodnight to Steve, but it was late for Cornelia, and on the way back to our apartment, she had an epic tired meltdown, before eventually making it up the stairs to be put straight to bed with NO stories! I was ready for bed too, as I knew tomorrow was going to be a very long day!
Cornelia's adventures around the world 