Travel: Romania

I slept better the second night. It rained all through the night and didn’t stop for most of the next day. I read, and we ended up playing a card game a bit like Last Card but with a Hungarian deck which made the whole thing more confusing. “But you said I could play a seven at literally any time. And now it’s the only card I have left. So doesn’t that mean I win?” “Ah, literally any time except the situation you find yourself in now. I should have specified that. Now pick up four.” “Cheers.” If you failed to say “last card”, you had to draw five; that seemed excessively harsh, but then again I was playing with people who had grown up having to queue for four hours just to get a loaf of bread. After our games, of which I didn’t win very many, Florin pointed out a large yellow mushroom that had grown on the side of a tree. He called it a iască galbenă. “You can eat that,” he said. No, you can eat that, I thought. A YouTube video convinced him that it was safe. He chopped it up and cooked it with onion and garlic and other bits and pieces, and we had it as part of our dinner. It tasted fine. Mushroomy, in fact. And none of us suffered convulsions or hallucinations. In between times I had a tour of their extensive garden and all the fruit trees. Florin even described and demonstrated a traditional Romanian outdoor game involving wooden sticks that were pointed at both ends, to be launched as far as possible.

In the evening we were joined by metallic blue fireflies – licurici – and other flying insects. Călin and I then watched the start of the semi-final between Casper Ruud and Karen Khachanov. It didn’t start until 10:15, and by this point the crickets – greieri – were chirruping away. We only watched the first set which finished in most extraordinary fashion. At 6-5 in the tie-break, they played out a 55-shot rally which Ruud eventually won to give him the set. That exchange even outdid – by a single stroke – the one that Djokovic and Nadal produced in the final of the same tournament nine years ago. Ruud went on to win the match in four sets, and will play Carlos Alcaraz in tonight’s final.

After another decent sleep, it was my last morning there. I gathered some peaches that had fallen from the trees near the house, and also picked some apples, then we had a late breakfast. Florin made mămăligă, which we ate topped with smântână and crumbled cheese, along with eggs. Soon it was time to go. Călin and I carried our bags down to his car, stopping once again and Neluțu and Mariana’s place where we had coffee and more cakes. We left at around 12:30. It rained heavily during the first half of our trip back, but then it cleared. We got back to Timișoara at 3pm, and in the evening I played tennis. I hope I get the chance to escape from the city and return there one day, because it is a lovely spot. I managed fine with having to speak Romanian all that time, but listening to it became quite tiring. Florin is both talkative and softly spoken; that makes for an exhausting combination. I learned several new words that I will probably soon forget, such as izmă, a type of mint, and zămătișă, a regional name for that crumbly cheese we ate on the last morning.

I now need to recover from eating all that rich food. This morning I spoke to my parents, then went to Dumbrăvița to give Matei a maths lesson. He’d only just received the results of a so-called checkpoint test that he sat back in May; he’d done rather well. This morning I showed him that a parallelogram really doesn’t have any lines of symmetry. I’ll give my brother a call tonight. My sister-in-law is just about ready to pop, though it’s now highly unlikely the baby will be born on September 11th. Both my brother and his wife are more royally inclined than me, so if it’s a girl I wouldn’t be too surprised if they call her Elizabeth. It’s a nice name after all, and it’s versatile: Liz, Lizzie, Libby, Beth, Betty, Bessie – the possibilities are almost endless.

I’ll put up some photos of my trip in my next post.

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.