Do you have a spare room to host a Sinaian from Thame’s twin town?

THE Thame-Sinaia Friendship Association will be welcoming four residents from Sinaia, Thame’s twin town in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains, who will be representing their town at TAL Festival between October 17-21, 2019.

Sinaia’s representatives at TAL 2019 pictured in front of Sinaia’s International Conference Centre, 20th Century former casino building (Photo: courtesy of Felicia Mirza)

The Association is appealing to Thame’s residents who have a spare room and are able to host one of the guests to come forward. Marius Ciortan, secretary of the Thame-Sinaia twinning group, said: “This will be a great opportunity to meet people from our twin town and find out about their lives and literary hobbies.

“Most of our Thamensians who hosted Sinaians in the past, have been invited to visit Sinaia and they thoroughly enjoyed their stay there. They have been made to feel so welcome! So much – that they returned to Sinaia to see their Romanian friends a few times after their first trip there.”

The group of Sinaians will be giving  a talk about the former Queen Marie of Romania, grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. Queen Marie was a great art collector, writer of important memoirs, as well as of poems and stories for children. The talk will take place at Thame Town Hall on Sunday, October 20. Tickets are free and places can be booked via TAL’s website: https://talfestival.org/

All four Sinaia guests are members of ASPE, the socio-cultural association which supports the twinning between Thame and Sinaia and is one of the main liaisons in Sinaia of Thame-Sinaia Friendship Association. Octavia Ghiocel-Floricica, is a Romanian language and literature teacher, Chinese culture expert, and contributor to Sinaia Excelsior newspaper.

Felicia Mirza, an English language and literature teacher, ASPE vice-president, contributor to Sinaia Excelsior newspaper, will be representing Sinaia for the second time at TAL, following her participation in 2017 with ‘Sinaia – Land of the Elites’ event lead by Dan Manea, local architect. Cecilia Francu, is one of ASPE vice-presidents, member of the theatre, literary club and choir of ASPE.

Finally, Marius Bratosin, ASPE President, founding member of Sinaia Photo Club, editor of the Excelsior newspaper, will be looking also to forge links with Thame’s Camera Club.

Anyone interested to be a host should get in touch with Marius via telephone: 01844 353 606 or via the Association’s FB page: www.facebook.com/thamesinaia