Well, after a brief period of system stability, the recent Diana patch is unfortunately already starting to degrade, with the Alex-RO as a result increasingly defaulting back to factory settings – complete with legacy bugs, unremediated inflexibility, and communication settings reverting to outbound only.

Today’s itinerary started with a meandering drive through a string of impossibly pretty Saxon villages – think pastel walls, geranium-stuffed window boxes, and the occasional horse and cart en route for good measure.

Along the way we visited five fortified churches – namely (and in no particular order that I’m aware of): Prejmer, Hărman, Viscri White Church, Saschiz Keisd, and Biertan. A fortified church, for those who don’t know, is basically a church encircled by defensive walls, inside which the Saxon community (or then Volksdeutsche) lived, worked, and went to school – in some cases right up to World War II.

The first church was genuinely absorbing. The second much the same. The third was interesting-adjacent. By the fourth, it was starting to feel like ecclesiastical Groundhog Day. By the fifth, I was contemplating throwing myself off the steeple.* I was also – not for the first time – abso-bloody-lutely starving, as the Alex-RO had once again made no allowance for coffee, snacks, or basic biological needs along the way.

By the time we reached the lovely town of Sibiu, a full five hours into the day’s activities, I was desperately clinging to the hope of food, rest, or maybe just thirty blessed minutes of silence. But no – instead, the Alex-RO proposed launching directly into another two-hour guided tour around the town (no lunch breaks factored into The Schedule) – a prospect which quite literally filled me with hanger-induced rage. It genuinely took all the self-restraint I could muster (and believe me, it was in seriously short supply at this point) to say – as politely as possible – that I’d actually prefer to just drop my bag at the hotel and explore solo for the rest of the afternoon.

As it turned out, I was very glad I’d held on to the tattered remnants of my rag, as to my surprise, the guy suddenly looked… crestfallen. Genuinely hurt. In fact, the most human I’ve seen him yet. “But it’s my duty,” he uncomprehendingly replied, as if I’d just asked him to abandon a sacred oath, rather than skip a walking tour.

I didn’t have the heart to say what I was actually thinking – that perhaps his real duty was to ensure that his guest (singular, mind you) was actually having a halfway decent time, rather than being dragged through an increasingly joyless itinerary with military precision and accompanying barrage of historical monologue.

Still, if the Alex-RO is more machine than man, I by contrast am decidedly not – stupid bloody human empathy and all that. And so it was that I ended up reassuring him that this wasn’t a reflection on him, I just needed some space – in short, adopting the “it’s not you it’s me” defence. A massive face-saving lie, of course. Because it absolutely was all about him. His unbending rigidity. His complete and utter inability to read the room. The fact he ignores every gently raised suggestion about loos, snacks and a touch less data download. And quite frankly, if your bloody software can’t process basic user feedback, you can’t exactly act all surprised when your users force quit the app and seek to re-boot in manual mode.

Suffice to say, I felt infinitely happier exploring picture-postcard Sibiu solo for the rest of the day – a genuinely lovely town with cheerful facades, cobbles underfoot and just enough breathing space to feel human again.

Still, somehow I found myself plagued by unrelenting pangs of conscience throughout the afternoon. Misplaced guilt, I know, given all I’d done was politely assert a boundary and request some much-needed alone time, in as diplomatic a way as possible at that.

But ultimately, this is my trip, not his. I didn’t fork out this much money to feel frustrated, patronised, and semi-starved along the way – and if asserting myself on this front scrambled his operating logic, then so be it. At least this way I get some bloody lunch!

Anyhoo, that’s it for this entry – it’s nearing six and aperol spritz on the sunny town square now beckons… Unscheduled, unaccompanied, and now officially top of my own personal itinerary – and blissfully guide-free to boot! 🙂

* I really do hope it’s clear from the above that I am not knocking Romania or its many sites of interest in any way at all here – I am and remain genuinely interested! I’m simply knocking the one particular guy who will relentlessly insist on downloading the entire history of any given site ever to (or rather “at”) you, regardless of how hungry, thirsty, bored, frustrated and desperate for the toilet his intended audience might be...