The adventure begins
This is all about my bike trip to Romania. I have never blogged before, but a buddy told me how to create a site, so we will see whether this actually works.
Having taken a full month off work (the month of June, plus a day or two in May), I decided to head towards Romania. Well, "decided" is good, a day before I left I still wasn't sure where I was heading - then I looked at the weather forecast for Europe 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 to the trunk. It was in pouring rain that we drove and it took quite a bit longer than usual to get there. In Budapest, we said our goodbyes and I went to the train station, still not knowing where I would end up. Finally, we settled on 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 collect an supplementary fee for this. The Hungarian conductor, when he saw the Romania map in my hand (I bought it 10 minutes before the train trip), 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 One (the Treaty of Trianon was signed on June 4th 1920, pretty much 93 years ago), with large number of ethnic Hungarians thus found themselves living abroad. Anyhow, he was super friendly - somewhat of a precursor about the attitude of the people I was to encounter.
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 (decisions, decisions...), when the weather cleared and I used the break to start - 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 smart 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 Letavertes was a breeze, the Hungarian guy declared the obvious, i.e. that I had gotten wet; the Romanian fellow decided to completely ignore me and not even look up, just waved his hand. So, after some 35 years, I was in Romania again...still riding on a newly made road.
It got really dark by the time I reached the first town, Sacuieni (Szekelyhid), when I got the first scare: a dog came out of nowhere and started chasing me. Then I saw two people talking - in Hungarian - and they told me to go to "Lali Ba" (Ba: short for bacsi 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.