by 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.
