The weather here in Romania has been terrible for the last week. We went out this afternoon with the hope of seeing some of Sibiu, but the depressing drizzle overhead soon sapped any desire we had to see the city. We halfheartedly snapped a few photos, and began heading home.

These creepy window-eyes are found on many of the roofs in Transylvania.

Like Braşov, Sibiu reminds us of Italy.

…and like everywhere else in Romania, there are sad stray dogs aplenty. We stopped to say hello to these two. They perked right up after we scratched behind their ears a bit.

They followed us all the way through town to our hotel, even waiting outside the grocery store for us while we picked up snacks. We fed them a bit on the way back. The pair seemed really lonely, but at least they have each other!

Our hotel, like many here in Romania, is located behind a large gate. We'd parked and locked our bicycles behind the gate, around a corner, and right by the entrance. They were not visible from the road, and we felt entirely safe about it.

As we rounded the corner to head inside, I quickly noticed something was amiss. Tara's panniers were open and our fuel bottle was standing on the ground next to her bike. A quick check revealed that thieves had run off with our cookset and the stove within. Bastards.

While Tara cleaned up the mess, I went for a walk around the area, hoping against hope I'd see someone with our stolen gear. My search was futile. When I returned, we moved the bicycles into the entryway of the hotel, almost completely blocking the doors.

Back in our room, I began to worry the thieves might return, bikes inside or no (the entrance is always unlocked). So, not wanting to feel as though I hadn't done everything I could to prevent another theft, I lugged all of our panniers into the room.

A few minutes later, I realized that without our panniers, our bikes weren't very heavy. Even though they were locked together, they weren't locked to anything. So, feeling a bit gun-shy, Tara and I went down to carry our bicycles up to our room, too. The stuffy woman working at the front desk was none-too-pleased, but we didn't care.

Now we're in our room, surrounded on all sides by our belongings, settling in to watch some movies. We're going to pretend for the moment that none of this happened. We're also consoling ourselves with the fact that it could have been much worse: our tent and sleeping bags were bungeed to the back of our bikes, and my satellite internet receiver was just a few feet away, buried under some dirty rags in my tool pannier.

Though the situation is less than ideal, we can live without cooking for the time being. We'll be in Munich in a few days, and I'm sure finding replacement gear will be no problem.

UPDATE: Over the next few days we noticed two more missing items: the spice bag and my frame pump. Grrr.