The last stop in Romania was Timisoara in the Banat region of the country located in the vicinity of Serbo-Hungarian border. Arriving by a train from Arad we were accompanied by Dyslex, with whom we planed to record an interview on the train. This proved to be too noisy (even in spite of the fact that Dyslex’s musical output would go well with such a background ;).

In Cafe Papillon, the local artist’s cafe, we eagerly awaited Felix Petrescu and Valentin Toma from Timisoara’s celebrated electronics project Makunouchi Bento. We spoke about their activities, about the sound of their new record Swimé (coming out just in a couple of days as a webrelease), about Timisoara music scene and their outsider status within the Romanian electronica scene. The evening gradually plunged into night and glasses of wine and bottles of beer were incessantly clinking on the tables around and then everything went blurry.

Another one of Romania’s two electronics festivals that dare to enter new and cutting-edge territories is Simultan an “annual festival for video, media art, experimental electronic music and a/v projects”. In the case of Simultan (as compared to Rokolectiv), a strong emphasis is put on innovative video-artworks, whilst it also showcases composers, musicians and dj’s. In Papillon the next morning, we interview the festival’s director and curator Levente Kozma.

This year’s edition of the festival takes place from 30th September up to 2nd October bearing the motto “Future perfect. Past Continuos”. The call for this year’s submissions is still open. Check out the promo video made for the 2008 Simultan DVD.

It seemed as if we grew together with this amazing country and she didn’t want to see us go. We missed our train to Arad, delaying our departure from Romania by several hours. After seeing and visiting the more “composed” Cluj and Arad, Timisoara left us with an impression as if we would again be in the south with its chaotic, Balkanic influences that we have become so fond of…