Travel: Romania

It was beautiful up in the hills, breathing pristine air, though it is nice to be back too. I find it hard to relax in somebody else’s world, even one as magical as that.

Călin picked me up at 1pm on Wednesday, and after spending some time on the motorway, we ventured into more remote territory. Brad, which I’d been to before, was the last place of any real size, and before long we were wending our way through villages like Zdrapți, a blast of consonants which sounds more like something an angry farmer would say than any sort of place name. We reached the village of Blăjeni, then stopped at our final destination of Sălătruc which is barely a hamlet. It wasn’t quite our destination because we then had to haul our bags up a hill. Florin (from tennis) met us at the bottom, and half-way up we stopped at some “neighbours” – Neluțu (the local handyman) and Mariana – who plied us with coffee, țuică, and beer. Florin and his wife Magda bought their traditional Romanian house as a holiday home in 2009. It sits on more than three acres (so they don’t have neighbours exactly), with views of the surrounding hills, and is endowed with all manner of fruit trees. It’s very basic, but it does have a fully functioning loo and cooking facilities.

For dinner we mainly had crenvurști which a type of sausage, in this case containing goat meat, and plenty of beer. Then it was ping-pong time. They had a table just above the house, and Florin rigged up some lighting because it would soon be getting dark. Table tennis is popular in Romania, and I thought I might get thrashed, but I didn’t do too badly. Neluțu joined us, and the four of us men were all of a similar standard. I started with a 22-20 win against Neluțu, then I had a 21-19 loss, then a 21-19 win – the close games kept coming. After the final ping had been ponged, Călin managed to get enough of a connection on his phone so we could watch the start of the US Open match between Francis Tiafoe and Andrey Rublev. Only the start though – it was getting pretty late. Bedtime. Călin and I shared a double bed, though we each had our own sleeping bags. Magda supplied us both with earplugs and I certainly needed them because Călin’s snoring was an eight-hour-long seismic event. With the noise and not being able to pee without waking everyone up and the occasional visit by the resident King Charles spaniel, I didn’t sleep too well.

Not knowing what breakfast options there were, if any, I’d brought along some cereal, which I ate with yoghurt. Shortly afterwards, plates of meat came out. I should have known. I’ve been in Romania long enough. We had blue sky, and after breakfast Călin, Florin and I went in the car part-way up the mountain, then headed off for a walk in the sunshine. The views were breathtaking – everything was crystal clear and reminded me of those long-ago trips around the South Island. Every minute or so, Florin pointed out a plant, giving its name, and saying how it could be used in a tea or as a remedy. There was plenty of oregano, which he called sovârv. It’s commonly used in tea here. There was also a lot of sunătoare, or St John’s wort, which is also used in tea here but could be bad news if I ever have it because of its reaction with the antidepressant I take. The plants were buzzing with flying insects of all sorts. Magda didn’t come with us – she preferred to stay inside and read or paint. She’s been learning to paint, and at some point she stumbled across one of my father’s books. She was surprised to find out that he was my dad. On the way back, we stopped again at their neighbours’ place. This time Mariana had prepared a plate of cakes and filled eggs.

Back at the house, Florin showed me the scythe and other traditional farming tools that they had inherited. Then it was barbecue time. Mici, pork chops, and more of those sausages. The pièce de résistance was the gadget that Florin called a disc that sat on top of the barbecue and was used to fry chips. Neluțu and Mariana joined us, and all in all it was a tasty meal. I was pleased that everyone happily tucked into my plum crumble afterwards. We also had țuică, then more beer than I could face. I had to say no at times. More ping-pong, and by this point I’d heard that the Queen was in a critical condition. By the end of our games, someone had messaged me to say that she had died. The end of an era. I’m a long way from being a royalist (I’m basically agnostic on the whole issue), but she had been such a constant – dare I say comforting – presence, that it felt very weird that she had suddenly gone, even at her great age. And on the new prime minister’s third day in office. Our resident dog’s breed had been thrust into the limelight all of a sudden. (It was named after Charles II, who was a major dog fan.) Royalist or not, I’ll certainly always remember where I was when the news broke.

On Thursday 29th July I talked to my parents on FaceTime. They were watching the Olympics. They told me that Romania had just won a gold in rowing. I couldn’t have cared less about the Olympics; it all seemed an irrelevance. I set off from Vatra Dornei at about 3:30 pm. I was sorry to say goodbye to the place. I would miss the hourly town hall bells that were audible from anywhere in town, and even the nearby hills. As I waited for my train, I thought how relaxing train stations can be, as long as they’re not something huge like King’s Cross. I was reminded of Aulla Lunigiana, an underused station that I wound up in when I was in Italy in 2010, on my way from Lucca to Parma. Romanian stations are much the same – quiet and peaceful places.

To get to Vișeu de Jos, I needed to take two trains. First I took the main-line train, then at Salva I changed to the regional train. There’s something wonderful about regional trains in Romania. The carriages have compartments which each seat six. Compartments were phased out on British trains in the seventies, so not for the first time on my trip I was transported back to a time before I was born. Most of the time I didn’t sit in a compartment; I just stood in the corridor and stared out the window. The countryside, baked in the early evening sun, was breathtaking. We clattered along, climbing a hill, and I doubt we ever broke 50 km/h. I was alarmed when I saw that an engine and a freight carriage had careened over an embankment, years ago by the looks of things, and had never been cleared. A little further along we passed an enormous timber processing plant. Romania still has virgin forests, one of the few places on the planet to do so, and they’re vanishing as I type this. Half the logging that takes place in Romania is illegal. It’s an environmental disaster, and it’s happening just so people can buy their shitty Ikea cabinets. Toward the end of the trip, we went through a 2.4 km-long tunnel, the third-longest in the country.

My train pulled in at Vișeu de Jos (“bottom”) and I hung around awhile at the blissfully quiet station before getting a taxi to Vișeu de Sus (“top”). (There’s also a Vișeu de Mijloc – “middle”). Now that I was in Maramureș, there was a strong whiff of Romanian tradition. The female taxi driver dropped me off outside the alleyway that led to the guest house. The owner wasn’t there – she was in Italy – so a neighbour let me in. I couldn’t pay by card, and this neighbour had no change. I eventually dug out the right change, but this kind of awkwardness is pretty common in Romania. I find the whole business of accommodation pretty stressful at times.

I slept well, and in the morning it was time for my trip on the Mocăniță, which was clearly a big attraction. I boarded the first of six trains; we set off at nine. I sat in an open carriage at the back of the train. (As Dad later explained, the carriages at the front were closed so that passengers didn’t get soot, or smut, in their faces.) We were off, and suddenly we had all the sounds and smells that you’d expect from all old steam train. The long peep of the whistle got people in the mood. With the forest on one side and a river on the other, it was all very picturesque. It took two hours to reach our destination at Paltin, 20 km down the line, although the track goes much further, almost to the border with Ukraine. At Paltin I had an early barbecue lunch, which (of course) included mici. A group of Romanian traditional dancers and musicians greeted us. The railway was built for logging in the 1930s. It has a narrow gauge, only two foot six. After an hour at Paltin, we were on our way back. There was some confusion as they’d rejigged the back carriages for some reason, and one old man was very angry about this and caused a scene.

I got back at about 2pm and promptly fell asleep. When I woke up I had the job of sorting out my return journey the next day, which was Saturday. Trains were out of the question. What buses even ran at the weekend? I found timetables, both online and attached to a wall, but could I trust them? I had no luck calling the various phone numbers. I figured I’d chance my arm on the local bus that went to Sighet early the next morning, and then hopefully hop on the bus from there to Timișoara. I cursed my lack of planning, but really it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d got back a day later, or heck, five days later. On Friday evening I wandered around the town, and explored one of the wooden churches with a kind of thatched spire which is typical of Maramureș, then got a soup for dinner.

On Saturday morning the local bus did indeed show up. It was run by a company called Dracard. Perhaps the drivers’ names were Hannah, Otto, Bob and Ada. That bus took me on a 90-minute journey through rural Maramureș to Sighet, next to the Ukrainian border, where I’d last been four years earlier. I was more confident about my next bus, which would take nearly eight hours to reach Timișoara, but because I hadn’t booked it was touch-and-go as to whether I’d be let on. Luckily there was a space for me. We skirted another border, the one with Hungary, on the way home. It was a stinking hot day. We stopped for a coffee break at a café; there was a fresh produce market across the road, where I bought some bits and pieces. I could hear all the ös and üs and sz‘s and zs‘s of the Hungarian language. Then at about seven, after eating some sandwiches on the banks of a sun-drenched Bega, I was home.

It’s a wet old day here. Last night I tried the $11 WCOOP single draw tournament and it was a damp squib, much like it is outside my window. Bad table draw, bad hands, and whenever I got a good one-card draw it pretty much always turned sour. The table draw was the worst of all, though. At 10:45 pm I was still hanging on by my fingernails when I entered the pot-limit badugi, and that went much better. Within minutes of that starting I was bundled out of the WCOOP, and I wished I could have met my fate slightly earlier, in which case I wouldn’t have started another tournament and I could have gone to bed instead. It ended up being another late one – a third-place finish in the badugi, and although I did a terrible job of snagging bounties I finished the night up $19. My bankroll is $919.

I had four lessons yesterday. I was hopeless at the end of my two-hour session with the woman who sees our “lessons” as a form of therapy. She wants to speak Romanian with me when our allotted time is over, but yesterday I found her particularly exhausting, and I made errors in my Romanian one after the other.

Back, finally, to my journey through northern Romania. The next leg of my trip was best. I arrived in Vatra Dornei, by train of course, at around 4pm on Monday 26th July. I had a good chat with the owner of the guest house. She told me I needed to try balmoș, the local dish. (I could never remember the name. Bormaș, bolmaș, every combination except the right one.) I tried balmoș that evening; it’s basically the same as mămăligă, which is made from polenta. Just like at my previous stop, Vatra Dornei sits at confluence of two rivers, this time the Dorna and the Bistrița, and it’s also at the foot of some ski fields. It was a bustling town, without being at all touristy, at least not in the summer. (In winter it gets plenty of skiers.) Young people were taking the flying fox across the river, and the park was popular too.

The next morning – it was my brother’s big birthday – I was up quite early and I went out for some breakfast, which I bought from a patisserie. I got confused with all the keys and locked gates in the front yard of the guest house, and eventually thought, sod it, and clambered over the three-foot fence. When I got back I went to the kitchen and met a family (husband, wife, daughter) who had watched me from their room. The father was very in-your-face, and totally bald, and I found this sudden expectation to interact socially very stressful. He invited me for a barbecue that evening. Very kind of him, but a scary prospect. Later that morning I took a slightly rickety chairlift up the mountain. It was fun to do that. At the top I had a great panoramic view of the town and the hills. I found some wimberry bushes, just like the ones in the Welsh hills from when I was a kid, and set about gathering some berries. They’re tiny, so it was a painstaking process by hand, but they are delicious with ice cream or in a pie, if you can get enough of them. (Some people were properly prepared, and were armed with implements like rakes or combs.) On the way back down the cable stopped moving, leaving me suspended for a tantalising minute or so, at possibly the highest point from land of the whole trip (12 metres or so). There were 120 chairs and 40 pylons. It was a balmy evening but the barbecue didn’t happen and instead I just out in the garden and finished All the Light I Cannot See, before popping into town for a pizza.

The following day I went back to that same patisserie for breakfast. This was a delight: you could see all the beautiful pastries being rolled and glazed and baked. Then I went to the station and booked my train to Vișeu de Jos for the next day, before doing a spot of hiking. There are numerous tracks, clearly marked with varying symbols and primary colours, and I followed the track marked with the red cross. This took me past a graveyard and many small farms that were being busily tended, and up a hillside. When I felt I’d got far enough, I had lunch and started my Stephen King book, Mr Mercedes. (English-language books were three-for-two at Cărturești, and this was the third book I quickly chose.) I then set about picking another load of wimberries. It wasn’t any faster this time around. I climbed back down, and while I was in town I was caught in a storm. Dust from the road works blew into everyone’s faces. When I got back to my accommodation, I met the bald bloke who decided it was time for a barbecue, in spite of the weather. I gladly accepted his invitation, and we had the usual mici and pork chops. The fairly elderly woman next door joined in the conversation from over the fence – Romania is going to hell in a handcart, and what on earth possessed you to live in this terrible country? – and also provided barbecue advice which I’m sure the bald bloke could have done without. They were a nice family, I thoroughly appreciated the offer of food (all I did was buy drinks), and I misjudged him at first.

The next day I’d be off to Vișeu de Jos, and eventually de Sus, for the last leg of my trip and the steam trains.

The Covid numbers are whopping up here now; I’ll provide updates again soon.