Sept. 16-17: Out of the mountains and onto the Banat

Leaving our lovely guest house was a process of goodbyes and farewells.

Me and the puppy. I didn't take this photo, which you can tell because there is some post-processing going on. 

[EK]:

Yesterday (Sept. 16) we rode from Breb up and up to the top of the hills, to a resort town called Cavnic, complete with ski areas. The air was chill and the back side of the hills were shaded by trees. Since it was a Sunday, and probably not the height of tourist season, the traffic was light and once we crested the 9-mile climb, we coasted down for miles to the little town of Surdesti.

In Surdesti, we visited a Greco-Catholic church with a young woman inside collecting the entrance fee. Usually the people at the churches have been older and have spoken no English but she was gracious and patient with our questions. She explained that the Greco-Catholics in Romania shared most beliefs with Roman Catholics, but made the sign of the cross like Orthodox (right shoulder then left shoulder). She also said that most the churches in Maramures were Greco-Catholic before communism (before World War II) but that they had been forced to switch to Orthodoxy. Some had switched back but many remained Orthodox after the fall of communism, in her view because the two were similar enough that the parishioners did not really care or mind. As we left, she went out with us to a walnut tree and explained that the very fresh nuts (that had fallen within the day) had a different taste if you peeled away the skin under the shell. She was right. They were sweeter than other walnuts!

Surdesti's Greco-Roman Church, whose walnut trees were very good.

Inside the church, the vibrant, amazing frescos told vivid but unfamiliar stories.

It seems a bit rude to play your angel horn so close to some dude's ear.

We pedaled on to Baia Mare, where we bought train tickets for the 00:45 overnight train, arriving in Timisoara the next morning. In the meantime, we got a hotel room for the shower and headed into town... like Craiova and Bistrita before it, Baia Mare was a wonderful surprise. It was full of old buildings in various states of disrepair, and people were out walking and talking and sitting in cafes. There was a Hungarian festival happening in the center, with kids in costume singing, Hungarian street food, and booths with folk art.

The Hungarian minority is vibrantly represented in many places in Romania, and there are reminders of Germans (in multi-lingual town name signs and interpretive materials) and memorials and old synagogues for the Jewish population. But one minority group that has been conspicuously absent in terms of cultural or material representation is the Roma (still called “gypsies” here). We have seen distinctively Roma people, generally darker-skinned and wearing traditional clothing (especially the women). I think we are seeing only a fraction of the population as many are undoubtedly integrated with the broader Romanian population. But the Roma we can recognize have been incredibly poor, and when we ask other Romanians about them, many have been openly biased. We have heard them called “thieves” and described as “having 10 or 12 children that they cannot feed.” We haven’t been able to speak with any identifiable Roma, and their lack of representation in any museum, interpretive sign, or memorial, is striking. I would like to read more about them - even the Romanian history I’ve been reading barely mentions them except to say they were killed in concentration camps during WWII.

Our midnight to 7 am train ride to Timisoara was happily uneventful; per usual there was no place for bicycles and also typical of our train rides here, the train consisted of only two cars. But we arrived in Timisoara and were able to check in at 8 am, and we immediately went about doing laundry and passing out on the couch for an hour.

On the train: this arrangement worked most of the night, though in the morning people started filling up the seats and our bikes were moved by a group of chattering men and a train employee, over by an entryway. People on the trains were mostly kind but confused by us.  

Timisoara is a lovely university city with bike lanes and a huge pedestrian center that covers block after block and makes the center feel quiet. We have been wandering the streets, admiring the many early 20th-c. art nouveau buildings that were designed by Austro-Hungarians and make the place feel like Western Europe. The 1989 revolution against Ceausescu started in Timisoara and it has the reputation of being forward thinking. In our time in Romania we have seen not a single portrait of Ceausescu until we went to a kitschy cafe/display of communism called the Communist Consumer museum. There, Ceausescu was displayed in a mocking way, situated behind piggy banks for donations to maintain the un-polished, almost mocking presentation of the absurdity of Romanian communism. In the history I’m reading, it is clear that Romanians showed very little support for communism, even among the peasant parties and left-wing intellectuals. We have seen little evidence that it is missed, other than one young man commenting that things were “better” under Ceausescu.

This bike rack/sculpture reflected Timisoara's generally pro-bicycle culture.

Dreamy art nouveau buildings along Victory Square.

The Romanian National Opera House also housed the German State Theater, a striking display of multiculturalism in Timisoara.

The barely-visible statue perched in front depicts Romulus and Remus being suckled by a she-wolf. A clear reference to the supposedly continuous lineage of Romanians from Romans.

Ceausescu, The Unadmired.

Random note: the roundabouts in Romania are crazy. All the rules we thought we knew have been upended; cars seem to suddenly stop in the roundabout to let in other cars, creating a jerky motion that I thought roundabouts were supposed to prevent. Another random note: we have decided that Audi drivers are the absolute worst. Rude and too fast and often just stupid. Any time we see a bad driver now one of us will shout out “Audi driver” and more often than not we are right!