Pass the passes

The day had quite a silly start, looking back: while I had no intention, somehow everyone I met convinced me to visit the salt mine in Parajd, the largest one in Europe, I believe. So I took the first bus ride down there (yes, it is a bus that goes down; the bus having been decommissioned by the Wiener Verkehrsbetriebe, even the City Night Line stickers were to be seen). So I enter the salt mine, a gigantic, over 100m high chambers, with cell-phone reception, a church, a couple of restaurants, a climbing park, slides - so not really what I had been expecting. It was more for treatment purposes, the folks with asthma being sent down there. I took the very first possibility to submerge.

My chain was acting a bit strange and when I saw a small bike shop, they sent me to a residential area, telling me someone would show up. Someone did, after a while, he spent about 20 minutes adjusting the derailleur and refused to be accept a paymet...

The next station was a pass with 1300 meters, it was a pretty ride, but nothing out of the ordinary. On the way down, I saw a huge thunderstorm in the valley, somewhere above Gheorgheni and I was really tempted to stop biking and call it a day - it was only around 2 pm. I concinced myself to move on and did not get wet. It did start drizzling a bit, by that time I was in a cake shop in Gheorgheni enjoying yet another Bucaresti cake.

Leaving town I found another bike shop, my brakes, while they had been fixed just before I crossed Transfagaras, needed a new disc, so I went in there and the same thing happened as before: I of course paid for the spare parts, they did not charge anything for labor. Compare that to any other place in other parts of the world...

So I was all set to make another 1300m pass, this one called Bicas. Similar to the earlier one, it was very pretty, but not unlike the passes in Austria. Then I got to Laco Rosu (Gyilkosto), which was a nice lake in the evening sunset, but i was completely unprepared for what followed:it was the gorge of Bicaz (Bikasi szoros), a super-duper dramatic set of cliffs having been cut through the Bicaz river. It was rather dark, had I known about this natural wonder, I would have planned more time there. This is not something one experiences often, and the one nice thing was that it was practically empty, it being close to 8 pm.

The gorge ends in a tunnel and on the other side of it, I was outside the territory of the Szeklers and it was not a pretty sight. It was home of a huge cement factory and it never wanted to end. I was longing back to the nature of the Szekelyfold and was happy to have reached the town of Bicaz, where I found a hotel and feel quickly asleep.