July 20 - Moonshine

My hosts treated me with some schmaps the night before, so I slept really well - in addition to writing my blog till late in the night. The next morning the weather was fine and after a quick omlette, I started the day in pleasant weather, on a(n at least partially) nicely paved road with little traffic and an impressive landscape. I was surrounded by rolling wheat fields and the horizon was dotted with hills. This is one of the things I enjoy about Romania, the scenery was truly enjoyable on each of my three trips so far.

I got to a city called Roman, hosting a beautiful orthodox monestery, with a ceremony going on in full swing. The caretaker had me pull on my trousers when I wanted to enter with the bike shorts, he was quite stunned at the mess as I started unpacking all my stuff looking for those jeans. When I wanted to have a snack (that omlette in the morning did not last all too long), he asked me to leave, at least that is what I think he must have meant. But before that, in a separate section of the church complex, I was shown a room filled with food - as I understood, these were gatherered in the memory of the dead and would have been consumed later. With a big growl in my belly, I found another church, without the harassing caretaker, where i had a delicious yoghurt with some muesli I purchased not long ago. This church also had a ceremony going on, and after the singing, the priest started talking, I understood the words 'Brussels', 'European Union' and 'politics'. A lady with some English knowledge explained that this was about a divorce proceeding which wasn't recognized by Romanian law and was brought to the EU court. According to her, the priest also uttered some not so nice words about the Union.

Monastery in Roman (with a ray of the sun)

Just on the outskirts of Roman, I saw a fence with the David star on it, it turned out to be a Jewish cemetary. A car suddenly stopped and a lady expained in French what it was and that I was allowed to visit. There was a friendly young guy who was the person in charge, he showed me around the cemetary with 8000 tomb stones. Roman had had a strong Jewish community, which by now has only a dozen Jewish inhabitants or two.

The road after this was really quiet, well, the quality of the pavement wasn't the best, still, I made good distance heading eastwards. There were quite a lot of vehicles in the villages, not cars, but carts, pulled by one or two horses, they were overtaking each other and I was overtaking them - so much for horsepower.

In a village I heard some loud music and stopped to see what it was.Within seconds I was dragged inside by a group of merry men, who were grilling misi, the Romanian kebab, and I was treated with all kinds of goodies, schnaps, here we go again. They showed me all their animals and crops they had in the backyard, They were so nice to me that it was hard to leave, but then I was on this mission - which mission exactly? Usually, I do not know, but it was this adventure to continue on.

Food, drinks & music

A little later, I heard some heartbreaking meowing, this time from five black kitten on the side of the road, I treated them with some bread and yoghurt, which they eagerly consumed, licking the fluid on top of each other.

..meow...

I was only about 40 kilometers from the Moldavian border, when the paved road suddenly turned southwards and then back northwards, each for about the missing distance to the border - you can guess why, there were a few steep hills ahead of me. Not wanting to do a huge detour, I decided to cross these hills on a road that was marked on my map, but for sure was not a paved one. While I definately did not regret my decision to head that way, what followed was quite a torture. Even on a paved road these inclines would have been quite grueling, but often I had no option but to shove the bike, while often sinking in the sand. At the same time, I was compenstated by really beautiful views, changing each minute as the sun was setting, flocks of geese running away from me for the sake of their lives (which was definately funny for me, less for them).

Pretty nice, eh?

Then, after some tortorous passages, came one of the highlights. So I was heading up this straight road, flanked by wheat and corn fields, the crops being higher than me, so I could only see straight ahead, as far as the summit, which was still ways away. Suddenly there was a bright light shining at me from right in the middle of the summit - was it a car coming towards me? No, it was the moon, just having risen, in its full glory. It was one of the the most stunning views I had ever seen.

Yeah, that thing in the middle is the full moon

This was also a sign for me to stop - and yes, there I found a large field already cleared of the wheat and it was there that I pulled up my tent. There was a canyon to my left, mountains to my right and the full moon above, I could almost read it was so bright. Having read about three lines, I fell asleep and had an undisturbed night (unlike my first trip in Romania, with the wild horses, the elks that almost stumbled on my tent in Colorado, the boar (I think) in Itsaly, the whatever-it-was-but-it-was-sure-screaming-loud in Sweden - so my track record of getting a good night's sleep while camping is rather poor - but not this time, it was a great night).

Hotel Moonshine (roughly 1 billion stars)