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Day 5


 
 
 
Saturday, 11 August 2012
 
Start: Hajdúszoboszló 11:00
Arrival: Sighetu Marmatiei (RO) 19:00
Total: 280 km
 
 
 

 
The next morning, we got up rather late. We wouldn't have to drive far (or so we thought) and after all, we were on holiday. As we still didn't have any Hungarian money, we made a first stop at a shopping center and headed for the ATM. Card into slot - pin number punched in - desired amount of cash typed in and ... nothing happened. Luckily the machine spit out our credit card, but we still didn't have any money. The same thing happened with the next ATM. Maybe the machines didn't accept our cards? If so, that was bad news because we hadn't brought a lot of cash. And what if the money had been debited from our account after all? Staring at the machine in desperation, we soon attracted some commiseration from the locals. They suggested calling the help number on the ATM machine. Hm, we'd rather not. What if the person at the other end of the phone spoke only Hungarian?
 
We decided to brave the next few hours without money and try our luck with the teller machines in Romania. But first, we had to find the border. Which was easier said than done. Our road maps were not too detailed. One wrong turn and we ended up on a rather small country road leading, eventually, to a tiny border post in northern Hungary. Luckily, there didn't seem to be any border controls to speak of between Hungary and Romania, so before we knew it, we were in another European country. From now on, my sister would need to be even more creative to guide me around. Our map of Romania, Moldova and Ukraine was very basic indeed. But getting lost is half the fun of travelling, so we were not too worried. ... Writing this three years later, I'm simply amazed how we even managed to find our way without proper maps and without a navigation device that seems so indispensable nowadays. Looking back, I think it was a lot of fun. Our navi broke down in Russia this summer, so maybe we shouldn't even bother to buy a new one? ... Re-reading all of this 10 years later, I'm even more amazed. Pre-GoogleMaps times were such an adventure. The road less travelled by. Of course, if one tries hard enough, one can still get deliciously lost, even in our über-organised life. I'm all for trying.
 

 

In rural Romania

 
Shortly after the border, we arrived in the small town of Carei. I spotted a bank, parked the car at the sidewalk and hopped up to the ATM. This time, I had no problems getting money. Yay, not broke anymore! We felt better, being able to pay for a can of soda or a tank full of gas, if need be. We crossed the town and soon after, found ourselves in the rural countryside of Northern Romania. Which meant: no highways, not even any large roads. From time to time, there were even locals with horse carriages popping up around the next corner. I drove carefully, and the kilometres crept by very slowly.
 
After a while, we noticed that many of the cars we encountered did not have Romanian licence plates at all, but were mostly Italian or French. This reminded us of Albania, where people bought foreign second-hand cars and never bothered to get them properly registered. Or maybe these cars belonged to Romanian expats who lived and worked in Western Europe and had come home for the summer holidays. We were now passing through tiny mountain villages and noted another curiosity: this far-off, desolate countryside was dotted with large new houses, villas even, nay some of them were positively lavish mansions. With elaborate stucco decorations, balconies and oversized porch ornaments. Mostly, the big French cars from before were parked in front of the houses. We came to the only logical conclusion: those Romanians worked in France and spend their money to build villas in their small villages back home. Some of them could only be described as Las Vegas Kitsch. They might have been props for a low-budget Roman movie. And there were dozens, if not hundreds of them.
 

 

The "Merry Cemetery"

 
As we had turned our watches forward one hour when crossing into Romania, it was getting late when we arrived at our first sightseeing attraction for the day: the "Merry Cemetery" in the little village of Sapanta. In the 1930s, a local artist had started painting colourful and often humourous gravestones for each village member who was buried there. Most gravestones cartoonishly depict the person when he or she had been alive, with a witty, endearing or funny episode of their lives retold. Thus the characters of the dead stay alive for their descendants, and they are fondly remembered. The whole cemetery is kept in blue and red colours, which makes it very happy, vibrantly celebrating life in all its facets, instead of mourningly deplore death. We loved the spirit of the place. Even though this was a far-off little village deep in the Maramures region of Northern Romania, there were some tourist groups and also individual people walking around the cemetery. An elderly man, presumably a local guide, described the meaning of the tombstones to a group of visitors. Unfortunately we didn't understand him, because he was talking in Romanian. But we could make out the general meaning on some of the headstones, comparing the Romanian words to other Romance languages that we knew. The pictures on the stones helped too.
 

 

Sighetu Marmatiei

 
Around 7 o'clock in the evening, we arrived at our hotel in Sighetu Marmatiei, a little town on the border to the Ukraine. To our dismay, we learned that three weddings were being celebrated at the hotel this evening. Splendid for the bridespeople, but not so great for us. The concierge was good enough to put us up in a remote part of the hotel, where we wouldn't hear the boisterous festivities. But unfortunately, the hotel would cater exclusively for the wedding guests tonight. So we had to find food elsewhere.
 
Before heading into town, we nosed around the hotel. After all, we had never been at a Romanian wedding. The music was deafening, and the female guests looked all really done up. Tons of makeup and the most elaborate hairdos. We left them to their joyful celebrations and set out to explore the town on foot.
 
We strolled toward the main street. There we found a beautiful church behind a pretty little park. There was barely any traffic, it was quiet and peaceful. We also found a nice pizzeria. As it was still warm outside, we sat down on the sidewalk to have a bite to eat. The waitress brought us the menu card which was, obviously, in Romanian. We leafed through the numerous dishes on offer. Sonia quickly settled on a pizza. But I wanted to try a local dish. Sadly, I didn't understand any of the words, I couldn't even make out where the meat, fish and vegetarian dishes were on the menu. The waitress couldn't help us, she didn't seem to speak a single word of English, French, Italian, German or whatever else language we threw at her. So I decided to be adventurous and pointed at the very first dish on the menu: "I'll take that, please." The girl didn't look convinced. Worried, she shook her head and said: "No meat." No meat? Meaning, they had run out of meat? Or meaning that this particular dish did not contain any meat? Hmmm, odd. She seemed determined not to serve me this. Looking at the price, I noticed that it was very cheap, much cheaper even than the other dishes on the page. She thinks it's not a good idea, so let's not risk it. My finger wandered on and settled on a dish further down, square in the middle of the page. "How about that?" She seemed satisfied and left with our order. A while later, she came back with a yummy-looking pizza for Sonia and a huge plate full of meat and cucumber salad for me. The food was delicious. Good choice! Back home, we looked my first choice up in the dictionary: it would have been tripes! I had never eaten offal, and I wasn't particularly sad that the waitress had prevented me from doing so now.
 
When we had finished our meal, it was already dark and the lights had come on. And with them, the mosquitoes. When we became the centre of attention for a swarm of the blood-sucking little buggers, we decided that it was time to call it a night.
 
There were not many street lights on the way to our hotel. The pavement was quite uneven, so we slowly walked down the tree-lined streets. But it was still warm and summerly, and we encountered a few people on the way. Taking a midnight stroll like this always gives me a wonderful feeling of belonging, of being one of the locals. And yes, we felt completely safe. I always wonder when people back home tell me that they would never walk around the streets after dark. I've done so on three continents, in many big cities and tiny villages, and nothing has ever happened to me. I always feel tempted to tell them: "Nobody wants to go to the trouble of standing around in the dark, just to jump on you. People have better things to do." Bad things do happen, of course, but rarely where you would most expect it.
 
Back at our hotel, the weddings were still in full swing, but in our secluded corner of the hotel, it was nice and quiet and cosy.
 

 

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