MY FIRST RIDE IN ROMANIA
Day 0 - Thursday, May 30, 2013
The adventure begins
This is all about my first bike trip to Romania. When I initially wrote this blog, it was the very first one I had written, as Peter, a buddy of mine, told me how to create a site - initially posted Wordpress, since then I have my own website.
Having taken a full month off work, the month of June in 2013, I decided to head towards Romania. Well, "decided" is good, a day before the trip I still wasn't sure where I was heading - then I looked at the weather forecast for Europe - which was quite bleak - -and it was definitely the easter side of the continent that looked nicer.
On the morning of Thursday, May 30th, my father drove me Budapest, as he was heading for a business trip, so I threw in the bike into his trunk. It was in pouring rain that we drove and it took quite a bit longer than usual to arrive in the Hungarian capital. After arrival, we said our goodbyes and I went to the train station, still not knowing where I would end up. I started asking around for trains that would carry a bike to Romania - this proved to be quite a challenge, not a lot of options. Either they would leave a day or so later - or they would not carry bikes. Finally, I decided to catch a train to Debrecen.
Hence I was a guest of MAV, the Hungarian National Railways, and we covered the less than 200 kilometers in over 3 hours. The funny thing is that this is a so-called "speed" train, they even charged a supplementary fee for this. The Hungarian conductor, when he saw the Romania map in my hand that I had purchased just a few minutes before departure, got so excited seeing me going there, that he set down next to me and talked for the entire journey about "his" country. Well, for those that don't know, Hungary had to cede huge territories to other countries after World War I (the Treaty of Trianon was signed on June 4th 1920), with large number of ethnic Hungarians finding themselves living away from their motherland. Anyhow, he was super friendly - somewhat of a precursor about the attitude of the people I was to encounter later on this trip
We reached Debrecen in the late afternoon - and while it was sunny during the trip - it started raining. I took a small tour of the town - it is indeed pretty and almost decided on sleeping there (ah, all these decisions to make), when the weather cleared and I used the break to start riding - it was around 7 pm. After quarter of an hour of riding, two things happened: first, it started raining yet again and worse, I discovered I was heading in the wrong direction. I took care of the latter issue by making a short cut though the so-called Great Forest of Debrecen - and decided to ignore I was getting wet. The road was - in contrast to my expectations - really smooth, renovated just a few years ago; there was even a bike path. However, there was no need of using that, as the traffic was pretty much me, I and myself.
The border crossing of Létavértes was a breeze, the Hungarian guy declared the obvious, i.e. that I had gotten wet, yes, thanks for letting me know. His Romanian counterpart decided to completely ignore me and not even looking up, just waved his hand. So, after some 35 years, I was in Romania again...riding on a newly made road.
It got really dark by the time I reached the first town, Sacuieni (Székelyhíd), when I got the first scare: a dog came out of nowhere and started chasing me. Phew. Then I saw two people talking - in Hungarian - and they told me to go to "Lali Bá" (Bá: short for bácsi or uncle) as he has a motel. I found it after some searching, practically the entire town spoke Hungarian. The hotel was reasonable, it cost 60 Lei (less than Eur 15) - the only thing was that you could cut through the cigarette smoke and this was right in front of the "SMOKING STRICTLY PROHIBITED" sign.