Episode 14

We travelled across southern Austria following a valley then climbed up a pass that although not high it did offer great view, however the cloud hovered below and somewhat hid the view. The car didn't like going up the pass either and not far from the top made quite a loud noise. We pulled to the side of the road, narrow but not busy fortunately, and my humans inspected the car from all angles but failed to find anything amiss. Starting it again sounded OK but as soon as we moved it made an odd noise, so another inspection was made, the torch got out and a closer look revealed that the turbo hose had blown off. D heaved a massive sigh of relief at that because it proved to be quite easily fixed so long as we waited a little for the engine to cool. We had another hose clamp that would fit and within an hour we were again on our way.

We came into an area where there were many vineyards on the southerly facing slopes. The grapes are beginning to ripen and just as some of the trees are beginning to colour for Autumn. Soon we crossed into Slovenia but only for about 100k. The road wasn’t quite as good and nor the houses though they continue to be well cared for. Slovenia was part of the former Yugoslavia, the most prosperous region. It’s a member of the EU and part of the Euro zone.

Next we crossed into Hungary, also part of the EU but not yet the Euro zone, they still use the Hungarian Florin. We headed for the large lake Balaton but my humans were disappointed when they saw it. For the most part it’s not possible to get near the shore as it’s very marshy and full of tall reeds. There are a few little beaches that were quite crowded late on a Sunday afternoon. Of the very few high hills offering a view over the lake all were covered by modern houses struggling to get a better view than their neighbour. We did get a view from an arboretum but it was quite disappointing after quite an effort. Sandflies and midges were about in force.

Away from the lake the countryside is drier and the sunshine more intense. Large fields of ripening maize and big silos to store it can be seen in most villages. Also large areas of drying sunflowers with massive seed heads: In other fields the crops have been harvested, probably cereal crops and large round bales of straw dot the empty fields awaiting collection and stacking.

Atop a hill that dominates the view in the small town of Sumeg we visited the castle. It is mostly re-constructed to resemble how it looked in 1569 because there was an etching of it from that time. Just when it was originally built L doesn’t know but says that was probably about 13th cent. The reconstruction gives one a reasonable idea of what the lay out was and how it may have functioned. Many rooms had a display representing there use in the 16th cent. There is a guards room with straw on the floor and a straw bed, a quite good dining room for the bishop and his associates with a lovely big heating stove, a smart bedroom probably for the bishop. Some of the signage had an English translation however the signs to do with the history were in Hungarian only. L thinks that it was mainly the seat of the Bishop in the castle as it was in many Irish Castles.

There had been a festival at the weekend and the place still had everything out that had been used. There were some replica war machines including 2 large very modern looking catapults. Plenty of cannons and cannon balls too. Quite entertaining was the digital version of a 16th century battle, the horses feet didn’t seem to touch the ground and there was definitely no blood when someone had their head lopped off.

We passed around the north end of the lake with only catching a slight glimpse of it, then headed south in very flat country with long straight roads to the town of Bataszek. Turning east we crossed about 15k’s of low swampy land that still produced some good sized trees that were being logged in places then onto a large high bridge to cross the Danube and into the town of Baja. There were quite a lot of large freight boats moving up and down the river.

Continuing on our way across Hungary we stayed on the more southern route into Romania. It did seem to be very popular with trucks though and there was an endless stream of them as we got nearer to the Romanian border. The country remained very flat though we passed through an endless stream of pretty towns and villages all very much like each other.

Then we came to the Romanian border and here we did have to stop and L’s passport was stamped. The thing is that although Romania is still a part of the European Union, probably the poorest country within the Union, it is not party to the Shenegan agreement that restricts foreign nationals such as L from spending more than three months out of any six with the agreement countries. Travelling by car and using land borders it’s possible tocircumnavigate this agreement, however, for those who travel from country to county by air and possibly train it’s not easy unless you have a passport with so many stamps in it the officials can’t be bothered checking them all. That happens often.

Now we have really gone back in standards, Romania is very like Russia, but don’t say that to the locals. My humans hadn’t travelled on the back roads previously here only along the main routes and it’s not as noticeable there apparently. This time we entered via a minor road despite the truck traffic, and noticed the similarity immediately. The small rendered concrete houses are identical to those found in the southern part of Russia where they use such material rather than wood as in most of the country. The next thing that stands out are the Gypsy houses, often referred to as Gypsy palaces because of their size. They have to be the ugliest building about and the workmanship in their construction is diabolical. Noting is square or fits properly.

We had got rather spoiled by having a wide choice of western supermarkets in every town of any size but they don’t seem to have made it to this part of Romania at least. Perhaps they are in the bigger cities, L can’t remember, but certainly not in the ones we have so far passed through. Just little shops that are sometimes difficult to recognize just as in Russia.

Taking some back roads we drove up into the mountains and saw some very pretty scenery. Following a swift flowing stream we climbed higher and higher through pine forest clad hill sides on a road that wasn’t in our sat-nav maps despite being a good sealed two land road, one of the better ones in this country. When that gave out we were travelled on rough dirt roads frequented by logging trucks and Romanians in small cars that would just about disappear into some of the water filled potholes. Along the way we saw some campers all set up with generators and canvas chairs in nice grassy spots beside streams. It is still summer after all.

The logging around here seems mostly small time, just a couple of men working together often using horses to get the logs off the mountain side. In a few villages we saw small family run sawmills too, outside each one a stack of sawn timber ready to be transported out of the area. Each of these villages seems to have a fairly new church with a shinny tin roof and spire. Many of the houses were quite new too, and much larger than the older ones.

One afternoon we had one hell of a hail storm. We were in a small village just when it started and pulled in beside a building to get a bit of protection but it didn’t really help. Fortunately the hail stones were mostly quite small, though the odd one was the size of a ten cent piece and hit the car with a resounding thump. This kept up for a good half hour and the road, pavement and grass was a couple of inches deep in hail before it stopped, then the torrential rain came down and melted most of it within a few minutes. As we drove off D noticed that some of the building had lost roof tiles, he was decidedly thankful that none had come off the building we’d sheltered beside. That would have left a nasty dent, whereas we had been lucky with the hail and don’t seem to have suffered any damage.

This particular village has an old fortified church dating from 1414, although an early wooden church once stood on the site. It’s a world heritage site along with several other similar fortified churches in reasonably close proximity. This one has had a lot of repair work done to keep it standing but it’s not possible to go up in the tower or onto the walls. There really isn’t much to see.

In Praid we visited a salt mine, my humans had visited one in Turda three years ago so chose a different one to see on this trip. Supposed not to be as touristy as Turda, then boy, we wouldn’t like to be there at this time of year. 2500 to 3000 visitors a day so the sign said, L thinks there was that many already and it wasn’t yet lunch time.

There are several large caverns where the salt has been excavated mostly since the 1500’s though the Romans mined salt from this hill in an open cut method from about the 1st century AD. To get to the caverns we first went on a bus for about 2k’s into the mountain side, then walked down 200 odd steps into the first of the caverns. It is massive, maybe 100m long, 40m high and same wide. It was probably the longest we entered but not the highest, one was much higher.

These caverns are popular for the treatment of respiratory problems, especially asthma. The place was full of families and there was a vast number of activities for kids to keep them active and breathing in as much of this healthy pollutant free air as possible. Treatments of 4 hours duration are recommended. There was rock climbing and high rope activities for bigger kids, lots of playground stuff for small ones, table tennis and badminton was popular with families. To keep the tech minded entertained there was internet access and mobile phone coverage. L wishes she’d known about the internet access before we went down because then she would have taken the laptop and caught up with things. A restaurant, several snack bars, souvenir shops, a church and a museum should just about cover most people needs for a good while. The temperature is 15.6 to 15.8 year round, and because there is almost no air current it doesn’t feel cold.

It was about 3 hours later when we emerged again into the hot sunshine and continued on our way. It wasn’t long before we climbed up a pass, L has no idea it’s name, it isn’t marked on the map and there wasn’t any sign at the top, only a few stalls selling mostly honey. It was the next stage that was spectacular as we headed down towards the small town of Bicaz. We passed through a series of hairpin bends with stark mountains looming above then through a very narrow defile, the road having been carved out beside the stream. L put on the car video so perhaps she had some reasonable footage on that that she can share with you sometime. It will be a while probably before that can be attended to.

Most of the area we have travelled through in Romania is the Transylvanian region: one sign we saw said that somehow the name has been derived from the salt mines in the region. It is also mostly populated by ethnic Hungarians who are Catholic, whilst the remainder of Romania is mainly Orthodox. The ethnic Hungarian population is something to do with changed borders since the time of the Austro- Hungarian empire, or so L has seen or heard at some point.

We made our way across to Iasi and then south to Husi from which point we crossed into Moldova without any problems. Had to pay €4 road tax as we entered: L had read that she could only get a 3 day transit visa at the border, a full visa would cost €160 and for such a small country it seems hardly worth it: However, maybe it is because she entered with D using his British EU passport, she got the same stamp as it David which looks as if it’s valid for 30 days, although the young fellow said three months. Not that it obviously states any time, it just has a '30’ in a corner. Of course there is still the possibility that she is only meant to stay 3 days, no longer, and she may get arrested when we come to leave, we will just have to wait and see what happens. It’s such a little country and doesn’t seem to have a great deal to offer the tourist that we may not be here longer than the 3 days.

It started raining just as we were leaving the border post and soon it was tumbling down and continued like that all the way to Chisinau, the capital. We drove around the city, being a Sunday it wasn’t as hectic as it could be during the week, however the city was fairly busy with most shops open and people rushing hither and thither. There wasn’t anywhere vacant to park except illegally as the locals are apt to do. This really isn’t recommended for foreign tourists because any official would see the foreign car as the source of an early Christmas bonus for sure. Besides it was really just too wet for a comfortable walk around. The only thing of any interest that we saw was a tiny wooden church, fairly new, probably Orthodox.

Otherwise the city was typically Russian, we could have been anywhere in Russia, except for the fact that most signage is in Latin script, whereas in Russia it would be in Cyrillic. There are a few old signs in Cyrillic that has got L wondering if they have changed from one script to the other since independence. They are still fairly well aligned with Moscow.

With the rain still tumbling down we headed off east thinking to visit the town of Dubasari. As soon as we crossed the very large Nistru river we found ourselves on yet another international border. Quite perplexed at this my humans were, nothing on the map showed that we were near a border, still a good way to the Ukrainian border. The sat-nav was a bit useless, only had the very main roads and no real detail and D didn’t have Moldova on any of the SD cards that would fit the sat-nav. After a few questions we found out that it is the border to Transnistria.

Never heard of it, nor had my humans, but D spoke to someone who told us we could enter if we filled out the paperwork and paid some more road tax. At this point my humans decided that they wouldn’t enter until they could find out some more about the place. The easiest way to do that was send a text to Dawn and Heather back in England and ask them to research it; thank goodness for mobile phones:

We crossed the Nistru again back into Moldova, we hadn’t officially left so just continued on our way: following the river north we came to a large dam wall where the road ended and where some people, despite the chilly weather and the still drizzling rain were swimming in the dam beside the wall. After trying several deadend road we found one that lead somewhere and came to the little down of Oxentea on the shore of the lake formed by the dam.

D had a rest here and we had a bit of drama as he’d accidently left the lights on. In many European countries you must have your lights on while driving at any time of day. While he wasn’t sure about that rule in this country he had needed the lights because of the rainy conditions. Leaving them on isn’t a problem with more modern cars here as the lights are connected to the ignition, but not for us with an older car.

First D had to find someone to give him a jump start but the car refused to start. Now L doesn’t really know why but it took about an hour, a lot of tinkering with this and that, and a good bit of bad language before it was going again. He didn’t use the light any more that day.

Meanwhile Heather and Dawn had been busy back in England. Dawn sent several texts with what she had found out, and later Heather sent a few too. It seems that the narrow strip of land between the Nistru River and the Ukrainian border declared itself independent in 1990 and calls itself Transnistria, but it isn’t officially a country recognized internationally for whatever reason. D had been told back at the border that they had their own currency the Transnistrian Rouble and it seems that they still use the Cyrillic script too, because we’d seen a couple of signs there in Cyrillic. Dawn did read that we might have trouble getting back in Moldova if we entered Transnistria but L doesn’t think we would have because the Moldovans don’t recognize the place therefore we wouldn’t have left Moldova. Anyway, my humans decided that they weren’t going to put it to the test, doubting that it can be much different to this side the river.

Moldova seems to be more Russian than Russia as we travel around. The same half built abandoned, overgrown buildings, the same soviet style blocks of flats with the same overgrown grass and bush around them, the same unmown parks with flower beds and bench seats, the same type of shops that make it difficult to find anything. The same wide tree lined streets that make it difficult to see what’s behind the trees. Have seen plenty of banks though and ‘Orange" shops (Orange is a mobile phone provider in UK and Europe): Lots of hardware shops too.

There are plenty of new churches and although most we’ve seen are Orthodox there are some Catholic ones too. Perhaps it’s a rebuilding process after the fall of communism as in Russia, because we’ve seen almost no old churches. What we have seen masses off, and this is usually associated only with Catholic countries, is roadside statues of Christ on the Cross. Some are very elaborate affairs. L will try and included a couple of photos if she remembers.

Despite our rain this is generally a drier climate than western Europe. There is still the crops of maize, sunflowers, sugarbeet, grapes, and pasture for hay but now there are a few olive plantations too. There are also orchards of apples and stone fruit. Many herds of dairy cows, we have camped where they came past us at milking time, and lots of mobs of goats, very few sheep. L wants to know what the collective noun is for a group of goats: We had a murder of crows in the trees above us one evening and L dam near murdered them, gosh were they noisy. Storks nest on top of lamp posts and power poles, and sometimes chimneys. Most seem to have vacated by now but sometimes we see one or two still on the nest and even seen some foraging in fields.

We travelled as far north as Soroca where we found a medieval castle that is being restored by a Romanian company (as if they don’t have enough things that need doing there). Everywhere we go the people are friendly and if we are stopped some place for a rest or a cuppa and a horse and cart goes past then we are given a friendly wave, or at one of the many wells all about where they water the horse they will try and chat. This is quite a poor country with a loaf of bread costing about 25c AU and fuel around $1.50 (€! Per litre) yet many items are almost the same price as in the west.

We headed back south along the western edge of the country, sometimes on tarmac roads that were rough and potholed as in Russia and sometimes on very rough gravel tracks driving through one small village after another. At every place where there is a shallow muddy pool or something better there is usually a large gaggle of geese. No idea how ownership of these birds works, perhaps the whole village shares out the eggs and the meat or perhaps they have rings of their legs to identify ownership, whatever way it’s done there are certainly hundreds of them in each village. We have seen this in the not extremely cold parts of Russia and there are some in Romania too, though the numbers are much less.

Often you see someone leading a cow home to milk or tethering her out beside the road to feed. Goats, sheep and horses are tethered out in fields or beside the road, care taken that they cannot stray onto the road.

The further south we got the drier the land seems to be and the crops much poorer, it was very hot so we bought an ice cream in a remarkably well stocked tiny shop always called a ‘mini market’. The villagers too seem to be worse off, almost as if they have been forgotten.

At the very southern tip we drove out of Moldova, crossed a large bridge over a big river that joins the Danube just a short way downstream of this bridge and then flows out into the Black sea forming a huge delta area that has a great deal of low lying marsh land. On the Romanian side of the bridge there are massive ship yards that are actually on the Danube.

What really bugs L is that these people are living on the eastern edge of Europe yet they don’t have running water in most of their homes and only a pit toilet in the back yard in sub zero temperatures in the winter. Even Romania, which have been part of the EU for about 7 years perhaps more, still has many villages like this too. It’s time the EU looked to improving conditions in their own back yard before worrying about places further away.

© Lynette Regan August 29th 2014