Breakfast was at the usual restaurant of Select, where we had sausages with mustard. This particular dish gave me sausage burps for the rest of the day!

After breakfast, Laszlo drove us to a forest which wasn't too far out of town. On the way, we saw the city mayor who was doing his rounds for election this year. Naturally he had a big grin on his face for everybody he met! As we entered the forest, I noticed that most of it consisted of beech trees with silver birch interspersed. This is very typical of the Transylvanian forests, which look like they've been left alone to strike a natural environmental balance. As we walked around, Laszlo proceeded to pick wild garlic from the forest floor, which tasted delicious! We were to eat it ourselves as part of a dipping sauce later today.

While Laszlo garlic hunted, the four of us immersed ourselves in the nature surrounding us. There was a babbling brook which gently flowed downhill, through the thick layer of leaf litter. We noticed a couple of bird boxes nearby, where a pine tit had actually inhabited. We watched the bird fly back and forth for a while, collecting material to line the nest. The pine tit was way too fast to take a decent photo though - it was frustrating nature photography at its best!

After a little more exploration of the forest, we headed up the road to the hill plateau. Here, the landscape was sparse and dotted with dwarfed silver birches and scrub. There was a lot of deadwood lying around, perfect for beetles and various other detritivores! I looked for reptiles in the hope of finding them basking in the sun but to no success. What we did find though were some old animal bones - there was even an entire skull in tact!

Soon after we headed back down through the forest and back onto the open main road. Laszlo kindly took us for an ice cream at an ice cream factory that was randomly located on the highway in the middle of nowhere! I had the chocolate flavour which was delicious.

We drove back to town for lunch at Select. Today's dish was some tasty mash and slapped pork with cheese oozing away inside. We quickly realised that melted cheese/ grated cheese was a favourite of Select, since it appeared on most of our meals of the day! Of course the schnapps was offered to us but Kate and I politely declined as we thought the clear stuff tasted of paint stripper.

When we got back to the apartment, Laszlo left us to our own devices. We took the opportunity to have a lazy afternoon, sunning ourselves on the grass in the garden. After a bit of reading, napping and chatting, we decided to play Kate's card game 'Where in the World'. It became very competitive and went on for a good couple of hours!

The game could have gone on all evening had it not been for Laszlo's arrival with FOOD. He had kindly brought over a hamper full of homemade bread, cheese, homemade jam, salami, freshly picked radishes and aubergine spread. The radishes were incredible: so red, juicy and large, like golf balls!

The evening ended with a brief visit to the local bar for a beer, then we crashed to bed.