by It absolutely bucketed down as I walked to the station early on Thursday morning, and by the time I boarded the train I was soaked to the skin. I made a beeline to the toilet so I could change my clothes. We don’t exactly have bullet trains in Romania, and the journey to Aiud, 267 km away, took more than six hours. If I counted correctly, the train made 17 stops. It was a pleasant journey until a gypsy whanau (or whatever the correct term is) got on at Alba Iulia. They were dirty, smelly and loud, and amongst them was a pregnant girl of about 15. They were also ticketless. You’re allowed to buy tickets on the train in Romania, but they cost about 50% more than at the kiosk. We’d gone two or three stops down the line from Alba Iulia when the ticket inspector did his rounds. He quoted the fare to the mother (or boss) of the whanau, but she was having none of it. Things got pretty heated. The inspector must have called the police, who threw the group off the train at Teiuș, the next station.
When I got off the train at Aiud, I was hungry and in need of the loo. Aiud is about the same size as St Ives, the town I grew up in, and in parts it is quite pleasant. I found a bar in a prominent position by the river. It was well patronised. I couldn’t see anybody eating, but I was confident they could rustle me up something simple. Even mici, if need be. As I sat down, I was met by some stares, followed by comments about my bags. Who are you? I felt uncomfortable. Humiliated, even. I did the sensible thing, and I got up and left to a chorus of guffaws. Just when I think I have some I idea how Romania works, I get that, which I might have expected in a dingy basement dive, but not there. I wandered around the town, frustrated at the lack of places that served food, until I came upon a place that supposedly did pizza. I went in, and after banging glasses together to get somebody’s attention, I finally got a beer and a bite to eat.
I wandered back to the train station, and had a conversation of sorts with a bloke on the platform. I was glad when the train arrived. The trip to Sighișoara was uneventful. From the station, I took a taxi to my accommodation, which was further away than I thought. “You almost need a tractor for this,” the driver said as we bumbled along a narrow shingle road. We got there eventually. The ride cost me 40 lei. Poiana Cerbului, “Deer Meadow”, was quite a wild place, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. A woman of about 70 greeted me, and I soon met her older sister. They gave me some meat and noodles, an omelette (the eggs came from their own hens) and a salad, again using their own tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.
I had no trouble sleeping in my double bed, in an otherwise fairly basic room. For breakfast I had scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, a large salad and some bread to mop up all that oil. At this point I was the only person staying there. I had a long chat with the two ladies. The 70-year-old lady talked a lot. The older woman had one good eye, not many teeth, and a crude DIY tattoo on her wrist which looked like the sort of reminder note I sometimes write on my hand. She was much quieter. I didn’t want to take a taxi to Sighișoara and back, because I’d only brought 710 lei with me, half of which went on my accommodation, so a few more taxi rides would have just about wiped me out. So on my first day I explored the wood at the back of the guest house (trying not to get lost), walked along the gravel road for a bit, and mostly read A Moveable Feast, a very readable account of Ernest Hemingway’s time in Paris. I also chatted to the old ladies. This was great for my Romanian.