Austria was a little boring. At least via the route I took. Flat, only a few hillmountains. Hungary looked to me like the area around Cambridge and York, full of open fields. The lilac flowers, lavender I suppose, did smell very tastefull. I intended to place it near Kijárat, but that would sound very daft, as Kijárat is the word for what the Germans call Ausfaert, a word I would associate with something we come to by the end of our lives. Why not call it Exit 17, or something, li!kle we do. At least everybody would understand.
A few minutes after five I arrive at the Romanian border, or should I say a little over six. Another roadticcket is needed for the Romanian roads. It sets me back ten euro. In return for my fifty euro, I get 168 Lei. Let us hope they gave me a decent conversion rate.
My flexible e-id friend, works like wonders, and the borderepolice man smiles and greets me with a warm welcome. A Romanian with or without papers has to pull over to the side. I can imagine that the borderpolice see something coming from time to time, like the van I saw on the highway carrying several pieces of old western bycicles stacked in a heep on a wired carriage at the back behind the van. It looked to me like some sort of old chicken shack. I am quite sure there might still be labels on those pieces attached of Dutch or Belgian byclicleshops. I suppose he visted our containerparcs where we dump old still usable material. As not everyone knows there are several repairshops, even workshops that do repairs at cafes etc.
Of those kind several were driving thru Hungary on the highways. Romanians drive cars that are either old, very old, the generation that came out after the Trabants, old Dacia’s, or either very big new modern cars like Audi, Merc’s or BMW’s quite often the suv type of car. Nothing inbetween. Does this mean there is no middle class of people living in this country? Let uis hope we can find that out. Around here it is a small world. As you get closer to the border of Romania, cars with signs like D or H are dissapearing. On the roads the kijárat leads to SLO (Slovenia), SRB (Serbia), SK (Slovakia) and some more countries.
Hurray I spot an ATM just over the border, alas with the screen turned towards the still very bright sunlight. That associated with the foreign languages on the screen, is not helping very much, but I manage to get a probably too big amount of Lei. Later on driving back on the road, I calculate that one Lei must be roughly a quarter of one euro. At the ATM my car was parked, just around the corner, where some old lady had come out of the tin air, to rinse my windows. A typical woman we sometimes see on television, and alas, also on our streets beggin at roadcrossings. “Pleas sir, for Mariia, and also for old Pappa.” Everything that followed was Romanian speak. We do not see many of them anymore in our streets.
In our country we have a comedian, Urbanus, who once told a story about how dogs comunicate. One barks, telling something, another one in a street further east listens, takes over, and so on. By the ebnd of the day solme dog is barking in Romania or even Siberia. And believe it or not he is right: at the campsite I heard several dogs barking, for a great deal of the night. Although it could also have been stray dogs as you see a lot of them along the streets, as I wil experience over the next couple of days. By the way on this little campsite there are more Dutch people than local people. The site is on a trackroad followed by someone from Holland, who explored the regions of Hungary, Tchechie and Romania. He build a website around it, and even wrote a book about great campsites and nice areatours.
Incidently I did book this trip within a timeframe of five minutes. Thanks to google. I figured out how far I could drive in one day, without getting too tired, searched for campsites in the area, mad a print of it, and went for a coffee.
Romania is a country you must have seen to believe it. A country that you have to cross by car, to learn about the deterirorated roads complete with holes in. It is like Blackpool in the sixties when the Beatles sang: “Do you know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.” Mind you but in 1967, John Lennon still smokked grass from time to time.
I have my first coffee at Fehat for just three Lei, which is amazing. Also my stay at the campsite I settled for fifty Lei, which to me is real value fopr money.
I hve to arrive before seven tonight. Time is on my side. I “enjoy” the roiads. A give moment, a horse is standing in the middle of the road. A few men are sitting on a bench, talking amongst themselves, some two hundred meters before the place where the horse is standing. The only thing I could think of is, that situations like this are normal in this part of the world. And believe me, they are. Families ploughing small pieces of land, driving very old wooden wagons pulled by an even older horse.
In a village a littkle further more horses are grazing alongside the one road that rans thruouh theire village. Ducks and chickens are used to cross roads. Most of the houses have a piece of green in front of their houses, covered with vegetables or worn out cars. Will these pieces of green dissapear, when modern times arrives, and the roads will be modernized?
Some villages, remind me of Doel near Antwerp, the doomed village that has to dissapear because of the new harbourdocks that will be build. What I mean is that you see in one street, derelict and empty houses. Here and there somebody is still living in a house. Not a nice impression.
But on the contrary, the little town where I have my coffee is very beautiful. Lots of statues, flowers on gthe village green, nice painted buildings. A terrace in front of a pub has some parasols against the heat: yellow ones with big signs and labels of Bergenbier. Can this be the same Bergenbier as we knew it in the sixties from the Zeeberg brewery at Aalst? I think we have to ask our local history beer specialists about the history of Zeeberg. I know it was sold toi the British, who closed it down after a couple years. Did they sell the name to Romania, or did Romanians come over and “buy” some of these parasols? I have to clear out this one over the next couple of days.
Tilme to take some more photos, and get back on the road again. It will takie me three miore hours to get to Sibiu. Local time is, noon, twelve o’clock. The radio plays some not understandable music, although it sounds very much like a Rihannan R&B song. A few hours ago, whil crossing the woods, who by gthe way loook veru much as those in Wales, or Wallonia, the radio was playing, Rem’s Shiny Happy People. Maybe people do not have much assetts, work their lands, the old fashioned ways, and are shiny and happy? Radio Romania One, can be compared to Belgian Radio One. Some music and lots of information. Some words look familiar as Romanian is a Romanic language: strada, muzeul, etc.
At three thirty, I arrive at Sibiu. The Astra Muzeul is situated along a road with several musea. A few kilomters along the road there are cars everywhere. It looks like all the people of Sibiu have come out to the museum area. Later on I will find out that they did because of the free holliday this Monday, regarding the Pencote weekend, which is held by the Orthodox Church one week laterr than the catholic version in Western Europe. This also explains while nobody was working on the roads.
I checked into the hotel smoothly, although the deskclerck looked a little amazed at my flexible e-id card. I could see he did notn believe this was a real pasport. But as my name was on his list, a few minutes later I could take a shower. The first in a row in this sweaty country. It is hot here, even in June. Time to organize a few things, walk to the museumcafe, for another cup of coffee, and greet the ofher arriving attendents from the USA, Britain, Holland, France, Germany, Estonia, Hungary, etc….
Even the eveningmeal was vegetarian, prepared especially for me, and it tasted far better than ordinary rabbit food. Afterwards everybody gets his touringguide, and a nice bottle of homemade palenka.
It all starts really tommorrow when we set off for our first mill visits.
