Timișoara is a flat, orderly city in the western plain of Romania, the capital of the Banat, a region that has been Ottoman, Habsburg, Hungarian, Romanian and has a mixed memory to show for it. Romanians, Hungarians, Germans and Serbs have lived side by side here for centuries, and the city has the look of a small Vienna, with baroque squares, Secession façades, a big Orthodox cathedral and a handsome opera house with a flight of steps where people gather. It was the first city in continental Europe to light its streets with electricity, in the 1880s, and it also had one of the first horse-drawn trams.
The city is best known to Romanians for December 1989. A protest in support of a Hungarian pastor who was about to be evicted grew into a demonstration against the regime, and the army fired on the crowd in the streets. Within days the uprising had spread, and the dictator fled Bucharest and was dead by Christmas. The Revolution began here, and in the squares you can find memorials and photos. In recent years the city has restored its façades and parks, and it was a European Capital of Culture, with a lively student life and a good coffee scene on the main squares.
The riding starts flat and ends in a different world. East of the city the Banat plain gives way to low hills, and the roads toward Vărădia and the southern Banat run through farmland, sunflower fields and villages of Swabian houses, with the occasional Roman remnant, since the Romans held this country and built forts here. Further south, the land rises into the Banat mountains and the gorges of the Danube. On the plain, wind and long straight roads can be monotonous, and the surface can be patchy in the villages, so watch for potholes and for horse carts, which still use the lanes. Summers are hot and winters can be bitterly cold.
Fuel is easy around Timișoara, with stations on the ring road and every main road. Try the local sour cream-and-pork dishes, and the pastries influenced by Vienna. The Bega canal, with its walkway and its swans, is a good place for a quiet walk before or after a ride.