July 16 - The back (and not that bad) roads
It was still drizzling by the time I woke up, but there were signs of blue sky towards the east, where I was heading. My rain coat did not stay all too long on me, as it quickly cleared up and became an outright warm day - at least for a while.
No complaints about the scenery - it was yet again Tuscany-like, I was enjoying the beauty of nature. I went through the village of Corund, where I found a wooden church - and after devouring a couple of sandwiches I was still carrying from Vienna, some friendly locals were keen on finding the person with the key. I first climbed up to the top through the steep ladder, to enjoy the panorama, then clicked my camera at the beautifully painted walls of the church. At the back of my head a voice did say, these churches do look alike, on my trip some three years ago I had visited a dozen or so. It was only later that I realized that I had actually been to this village and this church earlier - but it was coming from the other direction. It was not until a few villages later that I realized, there was a town with the unmistakable name of 'Kriegsdorf/Hadad' - oh yes, I then knew that this was a real deja vu.
Wooden church - been there, seen it earlier...
Some steep inclines (and declines, if that is the right word) followed, when I found the signs of some horses - and soon after that I was up for quite a surprise - there were about six horse carriages full of Korean tourists, them waving widely at me. They wanted to enjoy the medieval Europe before it disappears - guess theirs is a motive common to mine. The interesting thing was the ethnic mixture of towns - (close to) fully Romanian villages were followed by (close to) fully Hungarian ones - similar to Hungary, I found it a bit hard to communicate in the Romanian towns, foreign languages are more the exception than the norm.
What are the Korean tourists doing on a horse cart in Romania?
I then got to Horoatu Ceheului (Szilagycseh), a town which can only exist in the Balkan - but by no means in degrading terms. Well, the architecture is not really nice - the otherwise beautiful scenery has a wild array of buildings, block houses, cars parked all kinds of ways, children crossing the road diagonally - as you might feel, there was still a lot of energy and liveliness around. Still, I wanted to push ahead, when I got to the river Somes/Szamos, where a kind storekeeper explained my only chance was to back-track somewhat. Oh well, not the end of the world. Here I met an exception - a lady who spoke Hungarian, she showed me a hanging bridge over the river, it was fun crossing it. It was by then real hot, so I decided to take a plunge - which was great, the only downside is that you spend an hour and swim for maybe ten minutes. You have to get there, find your bathing stuff, change, secure the bike - then swim - and then follows the exact opposite, coupled with trying to get dry.
Crossing River Szamos
I did hit a major road and (as usual) spent about 20 minutes contemplating whether to take that road (nice surface, shoulder, but lot of traffic) or to ride into the unknown (small road, pretty bumpy, though no traffic) and decided on the latter. I found a wooden church in Remetea Chioarului, where a young pretty lady turned up with a key - she was preparing for a big exam in just four days.
It yet again got rather cloudy and gloomy, signs of a thunderstorm, dammit. It was just in time that I got to a small bar, where they invited me to sit in a covered shed. I ordered some coffee and ice-cream, which was delicious - and suddenly a lady brings up a plate full of Romanian cold cuts - pieces of meat filled with sausage, cheese balls, some bread and butter - and this was just a present of the house. I would have enjoyed this unexpected treat immensely had this completely drunk guy not sat across me and talking my head full in Romanian, or maybe it was Portuguese? He did ramble something about Portugal and found it extremely funny when I said 'si senor'. Boy, I was really quite relieved when he finally left (he then came back three times to fetch me). The storm died, at least I thought it did, so I set off, and found the fourth (?) fifth (?) wooden church in Coas, but this one I only visited from the outside. There was quite a steep road up in the direction of Targu Lapus, which I hoped to reach - well, I didn't. It yet again started pouring cats and dogs (and Gypsy kids, says a Hungarian saying) and was really glad to have found a nice pension, where I am writing this story from. It is still raining away as we speak (write), and the prospects do not look quite swell from tomorrow, but I am hopeful.
Actually, this was the next day - my yummy breakfast at the pension
According to my GPS, we are some 200 km away from Debrecen, which is somewhat behind my schedule. Guess this is the price of stopping early both days due to the rain (next to swimming in rivers, visiting churches for the second time) - but heck, so far I've really enjoyed my trip so far. Tomorrow is supposed to be the last wet day, I hope to make up for the time lost trying to stay dry. Now it's time to retire - good night!