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Published: August 3rd 2005
We've made it to Romania.
This was one of the countries I was most looking forward to when I was planning to cycle this route. I had heard of great mountian chains, bears and dracula.
It is so beautiful here and we are here in a heat wave, this part is not so good for cycling so we are rested up in Sighisoara, a beatuful UNESCO recognised medieval citadel and the bitrhplace of Dracula, aka Vlad the Impaler.
We finally managed to leave L'viv after struggling to fit the new local tyre I had bought there. The road out of town was hot and the camp that night in a field was plagued with mosquitoes from hell . The Ukrainian Steppe is infested with the largest mosquitoes I have ever seen! We now understand why the ponies we had been passing all day looked so tetchy. The next day was hot and hard as the road towards the mountains seemed never ending. The bumps and the fumes and the grime and then the head-wind all turned against us. The roads across the steppe are long and straight but very slow due to the poor surfaces, so you never seem to
Funky church
Typical Orthodox church style in the Carpathians, Ukrainemake any progress toward the infinite horizon - very motivation sapping. For the first time on the whole trip we started to envy passing cars and buses, until you took a lungful of the fumes created by russian deisel in an ancient engine! We lunched in Ivano Frankiv'sk, which is a nice city but the hectic cycle in was tiring and the thought of more cities did not appeal. We decided to head towards the mountains in the south. It took forever but eventually we climbed the last 10 miles or so to Yaremcha and the Carpathian National Park. It is lovely- finally the road seemed easier ( even though it was uphill!) - the steppe road was so draining . The air is cooler and cleaner and after a monster 77 miles we find a track over the river towards some houses in the woods. Some girls tell us it is ok to camp by the stream and we thankfully wash off the dirt of the steppe in the river, before the heavens open and wash the rest of our gear for us too! We took a slow morning fixing my punctured front wheel (again!!) and make a slow
cyle through the woods over a 1000 metre pass. We camp by an old shelter picnic area that had been fenced off - we thought to stop cars beause there had been some damage to the shelter, but is was still servicable and it was very nice to sit at the picnic table and cook and read that evening, as we were very tired after the long cycle into the hills.
The next morning as we were eating breakfast a car screeched to a halt and a very angry Ukrainan man came stomping up to us. We explain as best we could we were cyclists and that this looked like a national park picnic camp area. We had seen loads of people camped by the road the day before. This man was not happy at all. He said it was his private land and took out a bundle of US dollars and started waving a 10 dollar bill at us, by way of demanding ten dollars as payment for camping here. We refuse and tell him we are not american and do not have any dollars. He then asks for the same amount in Ukrainan money, we say no and
Moldovita monastery, Romania
Some of the exterior fresco's then decide to ignore him and keep eating our breakfast telling him we will move as soon as we have packed up. He storms off after making soime noises and gestures about how we should leave and take our stuff with us. About ten minutes later he drives back, this time he has brought two policemen with him in his car.
The policemen indicate that it is his land and ask to see our passports. They inspect our passports and declare evrything to be in order and then the angry man asks again (much more pissed off by this point) for his 10 dollars. The police seem embarrassed at this point and back away. We stay polite and smiley, but try to explain that 10 dollars is a lot of money and we have not done anything to his land and we are in what looks like an offical national park shelter picnic area. We have paid much less than this for official campsites in Poland etc. with toilets and showers, so have no intention of paying him this much money. As his demands gat more irate Robin just smiles more and even strats to laugh at him a little
Romanians vs. Barbarians ?
Typical torture scene fresco from inside Sucevita monastery. Note that someone has added their own style of graffiti to this work of art! (especially as this only makes him angrier), trying to explain there are no toilets or showers here, what is 10 dollars for? The police are murmuring behind his back that yes, there are no toilets erc. and I think they kind of agree with us to a point. We realise we will have to give him something to make him go away, Robin shows him that he only has 40 UAH when he wants 50 UAH, intending to offer him only 20. He grabs the 40UAH - Robin then starts to mimic his earlier protests and shows, in front of the police, that he had just taken all the money from our wallet and that he has left us with no money! He then growls (literally) and stuffs back one of the 20 UAH notes and storms off, while Robin politely thanks him in Ukrainian. The policeman gives us a wry smile which we interpret as 'well done' and they leave. We feel happy - we have payed him less than half what he wanted, made a bit of a fool of him in front of the police and he has left 10 times more pissed off then when he
Romanian mountain road
Erika on the Panaci to Bilbor pass - probably the slowest road of the trip so far! first arrived, so we feel we got our money's worth from him! This man was obviously a rich business man who controlled the police, had more money than us and yet still was not as happy as us. He was the only nasty person we meant in Ukraine and we look back on the experience with laughter at his expense! Probably it cost him more in fuel, time and possibly paying the police to come with him - and he will have no doubt shortened his life by being so angry about such a trivial matter. Elsewhere in Ukraine we camped in fields farmed by poor peasants/country people who have no cars but walk for miles to their land - they never asked us for anything but only wished us well.
We had a lovely cycle out of the hills and bought some plums from a woman at the side of the road. We stop at a lovely cool water spring at the road side and gorge on about 1 kilo of plums and watch as lada after lada comes steaming up the hill and stops for more water too!! The road builders in Ukraine were obviously aware of
Sighisoara citadel
The view up towards the ancient citadel, birthplace of Dracula, from the newer town below. the poor state of the cars here as they have put such watering points on every hill, and at the tops you find purpose built inspection ramps so people can get undere their cars to carry out repairs, or drain and re-fill radiators etc.!
We carry on uphill and arrive, surprisingly, on the flat steppe again. We are heading towards the border at Siret and are going east again. The steppe was cooler today and there was a breeze; we found a great camp by the River Siret, again lovely swimming before tea! That night the moon was full and the place wonderful.
On the cycle out to the border we stop at our last Ukrainain market and buy cherries, cheese, great dark bread, and poppy seed sweet pastries. We are a bit nervous about the border -how long will this one take? Just before the border we ask some children at the side of the road for water and a boy runs off and plugs in his well, motioning me to put my bottles near the hose-pipe. This was amazing - I am not sure I totally agree with an electric well since the boy was too
Sighisoara citadel
Robin and the famous clock tower in the citadel small to turn it off quickly and a lot of water was wasted spilling every where but it was lovely and cool water.
The road to the border was empty! No queues of traffic and we were waved through easily. We had been approached by illegal money changers on the Ukranain side but not knowing what the exchange rate is for Romaniain Leu we refuse, especially as the offical counters were closed and they were not displaying any rate to Romainain currency only for US dollar and Euro. We figure we will change on the other side.
The border was fine; the Ukranain Guards all very serious and loads of seemingly stray dogs hanging about, but we were waved on to the Romainain check point to be greeted by a very smiley woman who was more interested in welcoming us and asking about our travels than of doing any customs checks. Eventually she remembered herself and asked " I don't suppose you have any drugs or guns do you?"
We enter Romania and cycle into Siret. Hoorah it feels like we are home again definetley a more EU feel to than the Ukraine. The lanugauge is in
Festival friends
Iulian, Sorin & Alina in Sighisoara Latin and very understandable - it is very similar to French and Spanish. However our joy of everthing being easy since we can now read the signs again soon vanishes when we relaise that there are no markets that sell everthing and that the price has shot up to Slovak - Czech prices again and that Ukraine, once you got used to it, was a really easy place to be a very cheap traveller. In Ukraine we were struggling to spend about 3GBP a day and in Romania it is more like 7-8GBP.
We also badly mis-calculated the money changing situation. There are no changers, official or otherwise, on the road inside the Romanian check-point, so we go on into Siret to find only one schimb/bureau-de-change and this will change only dollars or euro's. The lady here directs us to the only bank in town, but we find this locked despite it being only 3.30pm and it should be open til 5pm. The security guard arrives and laughs when we point to the opening hours sign, and directs us back to the schimb office. We explain we have Ukrainian money and he erupts in laughter and makes throws his
Festival camp
The camp in Sighisoara, with over 200 tents in a 'space for 100 people' and with only 1 toilet and shower for each sex, which promptly broke as the place got even busier! arms in the air as if to say 'god help you then' before disappearing back into the bank! We debate what to do as it is late and the banks in the next town may also be shut, or not want to change Ukrainian notes, especially as it is further from the border. We decide to go back to the border and try to go through on foot to the money changers on the Ukrainain side. The Romanian guards will have none of this however, but do point us to a cafe where the lady may change it for us - she does but a much worse rate than we were initially offered inside Ukraine! Lesson learned - dont take crap currency outside of the country it comes from!
Apart for this mishap we are glad to be in Romania, even if the landscape near Siret is the same as the Ukrainian steppe, we head south for a few km before turning towards the hills and the village of Sucevita, where we find a great campsite by the river. Next day we have a restful morning fixing Erika's tyre again and relaxing by the river, before going to check out the painted monastery that the village is famous for. The northern mountains of Romania are called Bucovina - or southern Bucovina as northen Bucovina is inside Ukraine. Southern Bucovina has many old orthodox monasteries that hyave been painted with amazing fresco's of bible scenes and such like on pretty much every available surface, both inside and outside. Sucevita is one of the best, with an enormous fresco of the ladder to heaven with people being pulled off it and down into hell on the exterior wall. They also seem to have a bit of a morbid fascination with death and torture, with lots of scenes of holy people being fed to lions, decapitated, flayed, impaled, crucified, being stretched on racks, burnt alive, barbecued or spit-roasted! The moanstery is amazing and we easily spend a couple fo hours here, we even buy a brilliant raod-map of Romania from the nuns and sit deciding our route, before cycling up and up through the forests to the top of the pass to the next valley at 1160-odd metres. We camp at the top of the pass and enjoy great views over the forested hills of Bucovina.
Next day we have an easy ride downhill to Moldovita and another monastery. Despite dire warnings of the state of Romanian roads thay are like heaven after the Ukraine, - fast smooth tarmac. The monastery at Moldovita is also very impressive but the northern exterior wall has been worn away by the weather over the centuries. As it is sunday there is a full service going on inside so we are hesitant about going in, but follow a german tour group being led by a nun, who barges through the congregation and stands in front of the 'papa' (priest) pointing her stick at the paintings on the ceiling and loudly talking over him in german! Later she spots Robin's dreads and he becomes part of the tour as she singles him out for denunciation for his hair and declares that if he stayed for 2 days she would cut them off (I think she means it would take her this long to cut through them). We later learned from one of the german ladies she is an ex-school teacher, which probably explains a lot!
From Moldovita our road was over another high pass and down to the edge of Campalung Moldovenesc, on the Moldova river. We go into town looking for a shop for food but find a free folk festival in full swing and a huge street party. While debating whether to stay or not the lady who owns the shop we are parked putside comes out waving keys and urges us to follow her down the alley to where there is another shop under construction/renovation where we can lock our bikes if we want to enjoy ther festival. She returns as we are putting them in and asks if we are staying in town; we ask if there is somewhere cheap and she invites us to 'camp' in the flat upstairs which is also under renovation, but has 2 sofa beds, water, electricity and a view of the festival square! For free! We ask her why she offers this and she explains her eldest son has long hair and a motorbike, and that Robin reminds her of him and she would like to help us! We have a great night at the festival - the music is kind of odd and all sounds the same but there are lots of cool costumes and strange dances going on, cheap beer and lots of strange new street food to try.
In the morning we meet Corrina's (the shop/flat owner) son Gheorghe who speaks good english and he advises us of good routes through the mountains. As we leave and return the keys to Corrina she brings us food and water! And to think lots of people were warning us to be careful and cycle fast in Romania as it is full of theives etc.!
We cycle over another pass to Vatra Dornei and then take the back roads advised by Gheorghe towards Panaci. Here we do find some dodgy Romanian tarmac but the countryside and views make up for it. We camp in Panaci on the side of the road by the river. In the morning a man comes out of the nearest house and walks straight towards us, we fear a repeat of the Ukrainian incident but he wants only to give us 2 litres of milk fresh from the cow and some home-made cheese! The road from Panaci to Bilbor gets very steep and the tarmac soon ends before it deteriorates into a rough forest track. It is beautiful though but very hot. We have a long lunch and have to push our bikes up the hill, stopping to harvest wild strawberries and blaeberries from the side of the track when it gets too hard. A couple of cars and several gypsy carts pass us but they are all coming downhill- we wonder how they ever managed to get up, until we reach the top and see the much nicer gradient track on the other side and realise we have definetly crossed this pass the hard way! We camp for another night in the forest before descending to more smooth tarmac in the Mures valley and following this road down out if the woods, past gypsy/roma camps and travelling Romanians camped at the roadside in trucks which have beehives built into the walls. These guys camp here all summer with the bees and sell their very tasty honey at the roadside.
We follow the Mures river for miles and miles down out of the hills and onto the Transylvanian plateau. The day is very hot and we pass loads of people swimming in the river and it is hard to resist the urge to stop and dive in. We stock up with supplies in Reghin and head to the riverside a few km south of town for our swim at the end of the day. The next day we follow another great road across the scorching, rolling plateau through Targu Mures to Sighisoara. It is a beautiful town but we are back on the proper backpacker and tourist route here for sure, which is strange at first after being well and truly off it for so long. We have arrived to find another festival about to start, so decide to stay for this and find a very busy campsite with a very busy, but very nice, swimming pool.
The festival is kind of wierd - it is a 'medieval festival' but there is no focus, hardly any music or entertainement, despite the 3 stages in the citadel, just lots of people dressed up and selling arts and crafts in the street. The campsite has a separate mini-festival of its own going on with most people (young Romanians) here staying in or around the pool, drinking and partying. We meet some really cool Romanians camped beside us and hang around with them, learning all about Romainian history, geography and such like. Iulain is drinking for Romania and we learn much from him about the ethnic tensions within Romania, especially towards Hungarians and Jewish BMW drivers. Sorin and Alina are a lovely couple and much more mellow, they are touring on a motorbike and leave to go to a 'bikers festival in Sibiu and from there to the Fagaras mountains to climb Romania's highest peak. We plan to head towards Brasov and from there to the Fagaras. We spend our last morning in town trying to quickly download our camera - this turns into another nightmare as the lady running the place is very nice but knows less then we do about computers! After nearly 2 hours we manage to burn a CD but then cannot see the pictures on it - fortunately another guy we recognise from the campsite appears, he is a computer expert, sorts his own camera out very quickly then sorts ours out and re-burns another CD for us. When he learns we are from Scotland he asks if we can speak Gaelic, I say no but actually I am welsh and speak welsh, and amazingly he replies to me in Cymraeg/welsh!! It turns out he has a friend in Wales who has been teaching him the language over the net but he has no-one to practice with so we spend 5-10 minutes chatting in cymraeg - bizarre!
Everything in Sighisoara and half of Tranyslvania is named after Vlad or Dracula or claims some dubious connection to him, a bit like the 'Robert Burns trail' in Scotland. Bran castle is the official tourist destination and 'Dracula's castle' but we have learnt from Romanians that he only spent about 20 minutes here in reality, his real castle is now a ruin and so tourists are sent to Bran instead, a full disney-cartoon-style scary castle on a big rock! Maybe we will go to both anyway given our planned route. We are now going to head south towards Brasov - the city that has urban bears on the fringes, and from there to do some hiking in the Bucegi and/or Piatra Craiului mountains - also reputedly full of bears
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Iulian
non-member comment
Nice to see u remembered me!
Hi and good luck on your trip. I almost died from laughter after I read the part about "jewish BMW drivers" I'll write again... after I finish reading the whole diary.