Travel Tips

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part 1

"Iasi, Sighet, Oradea? Nice, very nice Romanian cities... Yet I've never been there." It is very weird how people just talk alot about places and things they've never experienced. So it happened to me when an American that had never been in Romania asked me about those places. I took a dusty book from the shelf and I looked for information about them. However it felt very strange to read and to write from books. So, what the hell, hoping that they speak either Romanian or English there I headed to the CFR (Romanian Railways) office.
"Please, I would like to buy a pre-paid ticket for this itinerary, it covers more than 2000 km., and I want to pay in advance, so that I don't have to buy tickets every time I have to take a train."
"Yes, son, it is... 400.000 lei and you have to stick to the itinerary we establish here!"
"Excuse me, but if I buy ordinary tickets it is far cheaper."
"Well, take it or leave it, I have no time for undecided people here, can't you see that I'm working?!"
And there it goes again, from the "Welcome to beautiful Romania" series: neither trust, nor rely on the public clerks, they're born to live in Dickens' "Bleak House" and they feel damn good about it.
So, why should one consider ten times before heading somewhere, when life can be ten times simpler?! A small backpack with some dried food and tins, a camping stove, a sweater and a jacket and a note on the table: "gone wanderin' around for a few days". So I just got off Bucharest on a Saturday night, it was so funny, all morons in the underground train were dressed ‘properly’, wearing flowers and bottles of God knows what in their hands, going to some moronish Saturday night gathering or party or something, except me, with my beloved backpack and an ironic gazing look on them. Anyway, I took a train to Pascani (a railway crossing in the middle of nowhere, thanx God that I had to stay there only for a few minutes until my connection to Iasi. So, I got to Pascani at 04.40 (my usual bed time while being in Bucharest, after the regular internet hours) and at 04.53 I got into a local, so slow train to Iasi. But, as I always say, a slow train means the cheapest train, and the cheapest is the best option ever (of course, if there is no better option, like "free trip")... Actually all that I remember is going into the empty train, falling asleep and waking up in Iasi in the middle of a crowded one, with people talking and laughing out loudly. Anyway, contrary to my previous opinion - that Iasi was a dirty city (people from southern Romania always make jokes about the ones in north-eastern Romania and vice versa) - it proved to be so nice, with extremely clean streets, great monasteries and buildings, anyway, it impressed me quite a lot when I visited it, between 06.00 and 14.00. Unirii Square, with some very interesting architectural values, Three Hierarchs Church, dating from 1639, Golia Tower and Monastery, Galata Monastery, the National Theatre building (1896, set up like an antique temple), the University building, they all accomplish the image of a diverse and evolutive city.

God, I hated those huge crowds of people surrounding the monasteries and churches to listen to the Sunday mass and not letting me have a image of the nice old buildings. After a desperate cross all over the city, after fighting to make way through the dead leaves in Copou Park - a very famous one, where two of the main characters of the Romanian literature, Eminescu and Creanga, had used to walk and talk for hours - , and after getting pretty tired, I lay down in front of the Cultural Palace, built in 1907, a flamboyant gothic structure, to have a peaceful snack. Yet what is this, who are these people? What do they want? "Hoooo, hoooo, they stole our money, the bastards! In prison with them!" This reminds one of Robin Hood, yet it is a bit different... These people invested alot in a bankrupt savings fund and now expect the Romanian government to give their money back. But hey, people, I have nothing to do with that, can't you make this useless fuss in some other place? The city is big and I seem to be the only tourist here, so please, show some respect for your guest and leave me enjoy this sandwich, will ya!? So, after trying to find some decent postcards (which took me longer than the whole city tour, as on Sundays everyone should stay at home and watch TV, not visit places!), I left Iasi with a nice impression and got to my second target - Suceava - at 17.10 in the same day. Suceava used to be the capital of Moldavia during middle ages under Stephen the Great, and it depicts a very nice ol'n cute fortress, a bunch of monateries, towers and churches (like all over Moldavia) and a nice old town. Coming back from the history book straight to the ruthless reality, they were working to rebuild the major train station in Suceava, so the train did not stop there, but in Suceava West, which lies 10 km from the city centre (there were buses to it, but I had neither the will, nor the possibility to pay for a ride), so I had basically no time for visiting the city, I just lay in the middle of the platform and started to cook some soup on the camping stove, with everyone staring at me like I was Satan himself boiling the pitch. But, as always, I like to turn from a tourist into a tourist attraction, and the soup was great, as it was bloody freezing and I hate to stay in waiting rooms in train stations (which - ironically - seem to be colder than the outside air). So, my connection for Ilva Mica arrived at 21.04 and a 5 hours trip began, in a crowded train, with people singing traditional songs and loudly loughing, with children screaming, in a word, with people enjoying life and making the best of it. The western so-called "respect" has a totally different meaning here, as these people say that they respect someone, when they offer him a drink and they start to argue about politics with him. He who refuses that, is taken for an outcast and treated in consequence (meaning he is neglected). These people like to have fun no matter what and this desire can easily be misunderstood for lack of common sense, yet it is far from being so...
Anyway, I got off the train and waited for my connection between 02.22 and 04.08, in a train station that lies in the middle of nowhere, at the bottom of some remote mountains. I just sat on the ground and looked at the people there, waiting for their train to go to work. Sad people, happy people, most of them very poor, as Maramures area is not a rich one. They were used to sleep on the station benches, to share food, to make jokes about the stupid politicians that had never showed their face in such places, and however to be thankful to God for what they have, for this life, as it is; the ancestral religion is so well preserved here, as god is the only thing that can provide these people with the reason to live, with the reason to wake up at 4 in the morning and get into a senseless train to nowhere.

I eventually got some sleep for 1 hour or so in that extremely slow train (it makes 5 hours on 119 km. of track, because of the fact that the railway crosses some mountain passes and they put severe speed limits there, but actually this is better, as one can enjoy the extreme pleasure the landscape offers, with wooden houses spread across the meadows and hills, with mountains covered up by forests and people raising the cattle in front of their modest, yet lovely yards, people which are well-known for their welcoming and cheering spirit). I was so damn sorry that I had not brought my passport with me, as I crossed at a certain moment the customs station between Romania and Ukraine, and I would have loved to go to Rahov or Teresva, to see how life is there. Anyway, I got to Sighetu Marmatiei at 09.45 (45 minutes late from the schedule, meaning 45 extra minutes of an impossible to describe pleasant trip) and visited this so nice remote town established somewhere in the 9th century, where time seemed to have stopped some 400-500 years ago, with people still wearing traditional outfits and speaking with a funny and delightful accent I could hardly understand (not to mention that they use some regional words that only God may understand). So, after a brief running on the old alleys, I went off the town and hitch-hiked to Baia Mare very weirdly (can you imagine that, after two nights in poor and cheap trains, after seeing those poor and traditional people working in that area, after visiting one of the poorest and original areas in Romania, I got a ride in a luxurious Mercedes?!)... But that is what Balkans are made of: contradictory issues. Here there is a man begging for a piece of rotten and smelly bread, and the next thing you see, there is a guy watching his 3 floors fancy house with a swimming pool in the back yard being built by some score workers.
I had about 1 hour to visit the city before my local train to Satu Mare departed, and that was quite enough, as Baia Mare had no big old centre. Only a big tower - the Stephen Tower - where everyone was shooting pictures, the typical medieval fortress, like in almost all Transylvanian cities, and the plates in Hungarian (as there are many Hungarian natives in this reagion) drew my attention. I got in Satu Mare in the evening, when the sunset was coming, so I had to visit this incredibly clean and nice city, where - apart from Deva - it was my first experience with a city with nicely mixed old and new buildings. Then I went to the station and waited for my 01.53 train, being asked one million times by the taxi drivers if I need a ride. "Yes, I need a ride to Sydney! Can you help me with it?". Eventually the train arrived and it got to Oradea at 04.24, with another piece of bad news: "The 08.12 local train to Arad? It is not working, man, don’t you know?! They are working on the track, to open a new border crossing line to Hungary... Yet you have a train...at 14.40". Well, you damn bastards, if I take that stupid 14.40 train, then I miss all connections and eventually I have to either take a good for nothing, fancy, expensive-like-hell, mincing and full of rich bastards train or to spend a night God knows where, in a dull city or so (and my option would have been the second, of course). So, go Alex and visit Oradea from 05.00 to 07.20 (meaning the second city seen at night time lol, but yet an extremely interesting city, with old an so different buildings, built in different styles - with German, Italian, or Hungarian influences). The episcopal palace, dating from the eighteenth century, the roman-catholic cathedral, the cute theatre neoclassical building, the beautiful central square, as well as lots of old private houses, they all kept on bumping into my eyes very fastly.

Then I had a train to Salonta. And again, damn you, stupid passport, that I'd forgot you at home, as Salonta is a customs town, at only 34 km. from Gyula, Hungary, I could have hitch-hiked to that town, damn it... So, I got to Salonta around 8 in a compartment full with gypsies. If at the first sight they seemed noisy'n nosy, after a few minutes one gets to know these people. They just cannot live in one place, they're born for the road, they like it that way, they take care of each other like no other people do. Maybe they are dirty, maybe they do some things that the society resents (some steal, some beg, some just lie in front of the tourist attractions and do whatever for money), yet they are so picturesque and genuine, like noone can be. It is still weird for foreigners to see a horse-pulled carriage driven by a gipsy and full of junk in the middle of Bucharest, and it is very commercial to shoot pictures and to say "this is Romania", yet it takes some will to try to understand things and to let be.
After getting out of Salonta and a 5-6 km. walk along the road, I eventually lay down for breakfast - not very English, yet extremely delicious, with the salami brought from home and that had started to smell in an interesting manner, zacusca (an original all-vegetables'n oil mixture that a veggy would kill for) and liver paste, all on some old bread. And then, full of some brand new energy, I hitch-hiked to Arad, where the old city rises around the main avenue, a road with an extremely high traffic, split into two by a looooong park where the tram travels. I loved that one too, no need to say that. This city is the perfect heterogenous blend, if there is such a thing, as it features serbian orthodox churches, turkish buildings, an 18th century fortress, next door to neoclassical structures... Then I just headed to another city I had crossed many times, while travelling by train, but I had never visited, so I went to Deva. I went there in a local slow train, that stopped every 10 minutes in every station, and I met some really nice people there, talking normal things, sharing life experiences, and enjoying themselves. Above all I met this woman, that was so straight and honest while telling me with no hesitation about her sick child, that was to die soon because of an accident some years ago. "He is to go, but that is life. One comes, another one goes away, yet nothing is changed." And there was something missing, that trembling voice and humid eyes from the south-american sagas, there was nothing like that with that woman, she was just plain and simple, neither hiding, nor showing off. She bought some refreshments for me and I just could not refuse her, then she started to tell me about her former work, about her husband, about the fact that she could not stand that lousy city where only misfortune had happened to her, about her short stay in Bucharest, some ages ago, when - geez louise - she spent an evening in a restaurant. It is so stunning how things that we take for granted, considering them as "normal" are life-lasting experience for some people. And it is so stunning how a stranger can turn into one's best friend in no time... And again it is so stunning to see someone changing so fast, from crying into laughter...

So, I got to Deva after sunset, at about 18.00, I fastly visited the city and - as my foot started to hurt, due to a light infection, instead of visiting the 13th century fortress on the hill (a 371 m.alt. hill that seemed a mountain for me at that time), I went straight to the train station and bought the last (sadly) ticket: the one for the 19.40 train to Bucharest. Yet the trip was far from being over, as Bucharest was 9 hours away, and during those too short hours I kept on talking to the people in the compartment, from politics and global views, to usual things, tourism or philosophy, slowly coming back to the reality I was heading to...Bucharest North station, with its everlasting 14 platforms, the underground train, the eternal block of flats I live in, my neighbours hanging around in on the halls, and the eternal truth: "Happiness is such an easy thing to get: all it takes is a stranger and a night train", as a Russian film director once said.