Rain and cold...but now in Romania

Oradea, Romania, 8 November 2000

Hi Ellen,

You were lucky to have left before the rain. I spent Sat in the apartment in Budapest before leaving by train for Debrecen where it rained all day Tuesday, again keeping me in most of the day, except in the late afternoon when I went to talk to an English class. The receptionist at the hotel where I was staying is also an English teacher and she was teaching the Railroad Management folks, which allowed me to tell them all about our experience taking our bikes to Prague. It was fun talking with them for about an hour.

Other than the class, my most social contacts have been with a group of Romanians staying in the same hotel. The hotel has HBO on 24 hrs a day in the lobby, so it provided a good setting for meeting folks. Most of the movies are American films in Hungarian, but every now and then they use Hungarian sub-titles instead. (But odds are it may be a French movie).

Tuesday night, while it was raining, I caught a electric trolley to the end of its line, than took a different one back, ending up on the opposite side of town next to all the high rise apartments and one of the largest stores I have ever been in: TEPCA - like combining Lowes, Kroger, K-Mart and Sears. Quite a place. I bought my usual: juice, yogurt, cheese, crackers, and nuts.

Today I biked across the border to Oradea, Romania where I am now spending a late night cleaning out my bikepacker files since I received a notice saying my incoming mail was being returned because I have exceeded my allowed storage space. I guess I am just not able to save all the stuff I get and send. So, good-bye archives. Some kids are here playing Age of Empires at this 24 hour a day "Infomaniac Club" with really cheap rates (about $.33/hour) after 11pm. Just my kind of place!

Neither Ned or Ellen would like my current hotel, a simple room with a sink and a shared bath and toilet down the hall. It was getting dark when I biked into town and the choices I could find were the one star and the four star. After checking in I walked around until I found an ATM and could withdraw some Romanian money: 25,000 Lei/dollar so it gave me pleasure to withdraw a couple of million!

Trying to find some election results on the Web, but not very successful yet. I understand that Texas has now taken over the Union. So I can moan alone in Romania. I would be happier if we gave Texas back to Mexico, including the current leading residents.

The weather has turned colder, and the combination of alone, damp and cold is not my favorite biking or traveling weather. Makes me wonder why I am here rather than at home. But if I were home I would just be dreaming about adventures on the road. Perhaps the dreams are better than the real thing.

The non-virtual traveler, reconsidering virtual traveling,

Ron

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Students in Oradea

Oradea, Romania, 12 November 2000

Hi Ellen,

On Thursday I went to the ATM to withdraw some more money for my trip to Satu Mare in the NW corner of Romania, probably by train. The ATM gave me a correct receipt for the amount of money I requested. However, it only gave me one bill, about 5% of the amount I requested. The receipt showed the amount I requested, not the amount I received.

I always wondered when something like this would happen. Now, many people would think this would be a problem, but I knew that it was opportunity to meet people, find out how the bank ATM system works and have fun exploring how Romanians deal with problems.

My first contact at the bank couldn't really help me at all but she called someone else. After a wait of a few minutes, another gentleman appeared, and after listening to my story, which I don't think he really believed, told me he couldn't do anything and that I should report it to my bank. I then asked him to call my bank, but he said that they couldn't make international calls from his bank. No resolution. I asked for a report from him, saying that I reported the problem and what he answer was. He said he could not give me a report, nor give me a card with his name, title, and the name of the bank. After I explained I would like to appeal his decision and speak to his boss he took me upstairs to the manager, who couldn't speak English, but I think could understand some.

After going around and around and getting nowhere, finally a phone was offered and after several attempts I was told the collect number at USAA was busy, but the operator would try again and call back. In the meantime someone finally went down and checked the ATM machine, and sure enough the other 95% of my money was still in the machine. They then explained that if the money was not taken within 7 seconds it was taken back by the machine and dropped in a special compartment. The one bill (of the 20 it should have given me) had a tear on it, and I suspect this caused the rest to not be offered to me, somehow jamming the feeding mechanism because I took everything offered to me quickly. (A long time ago I learned if you didn't take your card back quickly when offered by the ATM, the ATM will take it back and keep it). The end result was I got an official report with seal and signature in an official envelope to give to my bank if the credit is not made automatically. However, I was not offered tea like in the police station in Turkey.

When they audit their ATM machines, any money not taken by the customer in the special drop compartment is tracked back to a transaction and electronically corrected with debits and credits between the banks. We will see if the transactions are really reported correctly on my bank statement when I get home.

The lady who was sort of the Administrative Assistant to the Manager could speak fairly good English and she was leaving the bank at the same time I was, and watched to be sure my next withdrawal at the ATM went correctly, which it did. As she walked to her bus near my hotel she told me a few things about the city, including pointing out the moon clock on the church and mentioning that the city has a wonderful philharmonic on Tuesdays in the large building near the bank, but tonight was just the opening of a play.

After checking out the church I went to the theater to figure out what the play was, and decided to get a ticket. The ladies selling the tickets told me I could eat across the street at a nice Italian restaurant (at which I have now eaten at several times). The play was a comedy and I could sort of figure out some of the content, but at the intermission I talked to the gentleman next to me, who could speak English, and he said his friend, who was seating on the other side of his wife, could explain some of the play to me. The couple did not return from the break, as I understand it, his very attractive wife was not feeling well.

Most of the people attending were special invited guests for the opening night, and after the play there were some special awards given to the people involved.

The "friend" Ioana was helpful and explained the relationship of the actors to each other, such as who was married to who, family relationships, and some of the humor, which was quite helpful to me. She also appeared to know about the actors personally because she pointed out that in real life the husband in the play was really married to his mistress in the play. I found that to be very interesting.

As we were leaving the lobby after the end of the play, a young lady came up and speaking English asked us what the activity was all about, as she had come in just at the end when the awards were being given out. Ioana and the young lady did not react well to each other, and I suspect that I would not have been invited to come with Ioana to meet her friends at the Irish Pub if she had not felt that I was somehow endangered by the other young lady, who I think she felt might want to rob me.

In any case, this opened up a whole new world of college students to me. Ioana is in her last year of law school, and her friends are studying dentistry, law, economics, and art. Some have finished law school and are working as legal advisors or looking for a job. A very interesting group of students and I have stayed in Oradea to enjoy their company over the last couple of days. Tonight I went to one of their apartments to meet with several of them to make a tape recording for Ned and his students to study.

Ned had the idea for me to record some of my interviews of the interesting people I meet so they could be used by his students. It would have been fascinating to have a tape of my conversation with the commander of the volunteer forces in Dubrovnik as well as our conversation with the Orthodox Church official who presented the Serbian side so well. In this case I thought the quality of the decisions the students here in Romania are having to make about their lives are very different from the decisions students back home must make, so I tried to get the essence of the difference on the tape. Here they must decide if they are going to stay in their country. And they feel their choices are constantly blocked if they stay. Most, especially the men, are pessimistic about the future. Ioana is the most optimistic.

A group interview is quite different from a one-on-one discussion, and I am not sure I succeeded, but it was a wonderful evening and a first experience of trying to tape and moderate such a discussion.

As the evening went on more and more people arrived and it turned into quite a party. Roxana, a law student finishing this year, told me that they could never get that many people together for a party, so it was my fault. Her boy friend Cookie had lots to say during the interview. Robert, who arrived after the taping had the most questions and arranged the taxi home. They were all bright, interesting, and full of fun.

I liked the group very much and told them I couldn't imagine a group of students back home having any interest in listening to me, which I feel is very true. They seem to have a far more complicated life to figure out here and when they talk about the problems they face I really feel sad for them. In spite of the problems in Romania, many of them deeply love their country. They just want the same chance to make a life for themselves as others have in other countries.

So because the ATM did not give me my money, I found out about the theater which led me to meet Ioana and all the students as well as finding the Italian Restaurant. I also went back the next night to another play.

While I was planning on leaving tomorrow (my second time I planned to leave), tonight I also received an email message from Lia and Leo, a couple living in Oredea who are on my eList for these reports. Leo had sent me some wonderful maps for my trip last year and I had not gotten in touch with him. He knew I was here from the reports and invited me to go with him to the mountains today, Sunday, but because I couldn't get a terminal last night I didn't receive the message until this afternoon, too late, so I missed a wonderful opportunity. Perhaps I will meet them tomorrow.

So when will I continue my travels? Stay tuned. It is wonderful to have the time to just linger in one place where I am meeting such interesting people. But I do want to get to Baia Mare in the north and back to Constanta to visit my friends there. And the weather is getting much colder, and not very encouraging for bicycling. They say I might find snow in the north.

Ron

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Baia Mare - biking tomorrow - at last

Baia Mare, Romania, 17 November 2000

Hi Ellen,

Sometimes I am just a lucky guy and people take me places and show me things that I would otherwise never see. There is a good clickable map of the counties of Romania (which also shows the terrain).

Ioana knows a lot of history and she took me through the Museum in Oradea and could tell me about the people, places and events. She is optimistic, intelligent, attractive, and dedicated to doing something with her life and plans on going to Bucharest to study diplomacy after finishing law school this year. I know she will succeed.

Cookie, a law graduate, but not yet an official lawyer, works as a legal advisor to an Italian Company which receives tax breaks for doing some work in depressed areas of Romania. Because he had to take some papers to be signed in Cluj, about 100K away, he called me in the morning and invited me to go with him (company car and driver). We visited an office set up by a European Commission for economic development (I think), the Law School (he needed a phone number), the main square where we looked at the Catholic Cathedral (both Catholic and Orthodox, as well as Baptist and Jewish churches here), the Theater Building, and other things around the main square which was quite beautiful. Cluj is a much larger city than Oradea and had a lot more people on the streets and a higher level of energy. However, the size of Oradea is better for me to get to know. We returned in the dark, a new experience on the Romanian roads.

Cookie was quite an interesting young man, good sense of humor, articulate, self assured, tall and good looking. He told me the story about his friend, (an excellent clothing designer) who invited him along to an European event (contest), where his friend won honors for his designs and Cookie, who went along free and modeled his friends clothes, won honors for his modeling, and as a result received a contract with a modeling firm in Bucharest to make advertising commercials.

Cookie, with his winning ways, intelligence, and talent, (and having a beautiful and smart girlfriend, Roxana), is still pessimistic about Romania and would like to go somewhere else in the world to work and live (at least long enough to save the capital needed before returning). I enjoyed my day with him and I know he will succeed wherever he is.

Wednesday, Leo and Lea picked me up early in the morning to go to the Pades (little squiggle under the s) Mountains 100K southeast of Oradea. I met Leo and Lea on the Internet last year when I was looking for information and he gave me some good advice which I did not follow. Only after my friends in Constanta also suggested I go to the Moldavia area did I get to the areas he was telling me about. This year we exchanged some emails and he sent me some maps.

Somewhere we left the paved road and started climbing up and up on some rough roads in his small Tico (Korean Daewoo) made in Romania. When we reached the Pades Plateau, about 1200 meters, where there were mostly spruce and pine, we descended a little into a small valley in the plateau and left the car to walk to the entrance of the cave. There was still frost on the northern slopes of grass and some of the ruts in the road were still filled with ice. Then we climbed up and around the top of the cave's three openings. It was an impressive site and I am sure my photos will not do it justice. While I was sweating from the climb my hands were freezing, so I put on gloves.

It was quite fitting that their car worked like a horse because both of them climbed like mountain goats.

After returning to the car we continued on dirt logging roads (with some significant mud in places) through small villages until finally coming to the road to Cluj where I had been the day before. However, this time there was a wonderful sunset. I believe we were sort of in the area where the word BIHOR appears in red on the map.

Leo is an Engineer for a power company and with the current privatization movements he is not sure the company will be open next year. Daewoo is in bankruptcy and has not been bought yet, so they may not make Titos in the future and this might mean the loss of service and parts for his car. Just examples of the difficulties here. Leo and Lea have traveled all over Romania and know more about this country than anyone I have met. They spend every weekend exploring nature somewhere, and last year went to the mountains of northern Italy for their vacation. They would love to visit the Andes in South America and I hope that some day they get the opportunity to do so. They have a wonderful web site.

Leo, Lea, Ioana and her friends all agree on where I should go visit and Leo and Lea provided the details to make a plan. There is a good map on the Web.

I will be biking east and north from Baia Mara to Sapinta (along the border with the Ukraine) then back a ways and taking the more southern valley road along the river to Borsa. The weather is now beautiful and I hope it holds for a few more days. But I opted for a break here in Baia Mare to do some email, read, watch TV, drink fluids and condition my stomach for a couple of nights in a room much better than the one I lived in for a week in Oradea.

Outside my hotel I had a long conversation with a group of taxi drivers. The waitress in the restaurant and one of the taxi drivers both told me they hope to go to the US next year under a student summer work exchange program. So while I am in a new town where I know no one, I still spend a lot of time talking to people rather than riding my bike. But I miss my friends from Oradea.

But tomorrow I will start...or why else am I carrying my Bike Friday around. On the way here by train I had a layover for three and a half hours in Suta Mare and I explored the city until returning to the train station to continue my trip. I must say that that was a nice way to see a place (without worring about storing luggage or carrying it around on my back) and I saw a lot more of it than I would have by foot. So it is nice to have a bike for layovers and crossing borders.

Stay tuned and pray for good weather. I miss everyone at home and look forward to returning for Christmas.

Love,

Ron

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Fantastic bike trip in Romania

Written from Budapest, 24 November 2000

Hi Ellen,

The weather held off long enough for me to complete the bike trip to Maramures in NW Romania. The first leg was by the main road to Stghetu which involved a 26 K uphill climb over a mountain. Much of it was very gradual but my leg muscles were like mush and hurt when I reached the top.

Between the two nights I spend in Stghetu I visited the "Happy Cemetery" in Sapinta, to the NW and close to the Ukraine border, and as a matter of fact, I can say I have "seen" a village in the Ukraine. The cemetery was most unusual. There was a poet who started the tradition of interviewing people about the deceased and then writing a poem about the life which was painted on the wooden monuments that he carved for each grave site. Some of them were funny, some were quite candid, but generally upbeat. The home of the original poet has been saved as a museum.

Before I finished the tour of the cemetery (I had to pay an entrance fee) there was a service in the church, which ended before I left, so I also got to visit the church (Orthodox). People were quite dressed up in new editions of their old style clothes. Afterwards they gathered at the cemetery entrance along the road in front of the church to listen to political speeches (the election is this Sunday, I think).

The bike ride to Borsa the next day was much longer but the mountain to cross (to get out of the valley and to the main road) was smaller than the one the day before. However the entire trip was generally gradually up with the exception of the downside of the mountain. I took the more southern route along the Iza River rather than the busier Route 18 to the north. There were many wonderful small villages with wooden houses, and opportunities to talk to people working along the way. It was a real pleasure to be passing the dominant traffic: horse drawn carts.

After two nights in Borsa, I biked back to Baia Mare, and I must admit that was quite a ride. An electrician working for the local power company was staying in the same hotel in Borsa and after watching me struggle with a dictionary for a while trying to figure out the menu (the wait staff didn't speak much English) came over and offered to help me order dinner. After joining his table I learned he was supervising the sub-contractor who was painting the power poles: four coats of paint, each a different color so each coat can be inspected. Zoli was most helpful, including checking the weather reports and making very detailed suggestions of my return route which I follow to the "t" and was glad I did. There were some beautiful views from the ridge he suggested I use, and there was one view looking down into a valley like a bowl surrounded by mountains all around which reminded me of a view at the edge of a city on the Columbian and Ecuadorian border which I have never forgotten.

The route for any future bicyclists to follow was: down from Borsa to Moisei on Rt 18, left turn for up and over the mountain to Sacel, then a long gradual downhill along the Iza River to Birsana, left and up to Valeni and continuing up to Calinesti, left for a short distance then right and up to Ocna Sugatag (a spa village), left and up some more for some wonderful views before you drop a little to Budesti, then gradually up and up and up until over the top and heading down to Cavnic, down to Surdesti, right to Baia Sprie, left and down to Baia Mare.

I watched the sun set behind the mountain before my major climb. It was dark as I started down to Cavnic, and the down continued, with some short rolling hills as exceptions. Of course by this time, no matter how short and gradual the small hills were, my muscles were mush and I did some walking. My front light worked well, the first time I had really ever used it. I had to tilt my front bag down so the light could shine over the bag, but this worked fine. I don't know if it was because it was dark, but the long long long gradual downhill trip back to Baia Mare through the little villages with very light traffic including some totally dark horse drawn carts, gave me the sense that I was on a motorcycle, just sitting there and not having to peddle (which in my condition I could not have done much of anyway). Maybe I will have to consider trying a real one.

An observation. I was quite amazed at the volume of activity involving wood: wooden house building, lots of small mills making lumber, carts with trees or lumber being hauled, piles of sawdust, the sound of small saws in garages or small building working with wood, the piles of firewood at the sides of the houses, piles of logs along the road, the stumps of freshly cut trees, the sounds of chain saws running in the woods. It seems to me that a high percentage of the jobs must be related to the cutting of the trees, and it is hard for me to believe that they are not exceeding a sustainable level of activity.

The pastures and fields are also beautiful with their distinct hay and corn stacks everywhere. Someone told me, (maybe Leo) that when they traveled outside of Romania they missed the hay piles. I stopped and talked to one group building a haystack and they want me to send copies of the picture I took.

Most of the people in the villages don't have cars, which is true of most of Romania. You must have some inheritance or wealth to have a car. Many of the drivers appear to me to be very arrogant and have little respect for the people in the villages. They drive at excessive speed through the villages, swerving around carts and people walking their farm animals or pedestrians that have no other place to walk, blaring their horns and expecting the obstacles, including me, to get out of their way. The truck drivers are generally better than many of the car drivers. (I will admit that Leo was an exceptional case). I understand that there are lots of accidents but I have not seen one yet.

Back in Baia Mare, as I was walking down the street looking for an ATM and an Internet Cafe (neither Stghetu or Borsa had either), I came upon a small shop grilling whole small chickens so I picked up one along with a salad with pickles. From another store I bought some cheese, fruit juice and seltzer water (bottled natural water without minerals and carbonation has been impossible to find). I took all of this back to my hotel room and had a wonderful picnic watching movies in English on TV. Afterwards I went to the Internet Cafe and realized from your messages that it was Thanksgiving. So I think I did pretty good about providing the appropriate meal.

All in all, thanks to all my friends who have suggested and directed my travels, it was a most rewarding and beautiful bike trip, and I am very glad I did it.

The last weather report that Zoli told me about said I had a few more days before the cold and wet, including snow, moved in on me. I had planned on going back to the west, but received a message from my friends, Dana and Liviu, who want to join me for a few days. So while they are making plans I have returned to Budapest to drop off the bike and large red convertible bike/backpack and resupply my smaller backpack for more conventional travel. I will probably leave Sunday to join them somewhere in Romania on Monday. Stay tuned. This is adventure travel when you don't even know where you are going.

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Love you,

Ron

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