
Last weekend we went across the border to Timisoara, Romania to do some school shopping. It is only about a 1 and 1/2 hour or 2 hour drive away and has much better shopping than Belgrade. They have more products and many more deals. We went to the big Ilius Mall and we found many clothes for the kids and I also bought some work pants and shirts. I even found Moleskin® notebooks at a really cool book store. I think we liked the shopping so much because we dropped the kids off at the playland in the mall and had a relaxed time. We also did some grocery shopping at the Real supermarket and stocked up on high processed sugary breakfast cereals for the kids. The city is the fourth-largest city Romania with a population around 300,000 people. The 1989 revolution against the communist regime started in the city and it has more of an Austrian-Hungarian feel than the rest of Romania.
I strongly recommend Timisoara for Belgraders looking for a weekend get-away. Besides the shopping, we made a stop at the Banat Village Museum. The “Banat” is the region covering eastern Romania, western Hungary and northern Serbia. The museum is located in a park setting with examples of old homesteads from the different ethnic groups and time periods. It is nothing flashy, but is a nice spot for kids to run around. They had a great little pond, where the kids threw rocks and chased dragonflies.
