While we advance the clock one hour, we gave our first steps in this city near the Hungarian border, Oradea. With Silvana of HC, we saw the entire city at night; the centre was specially nice with very colorful and illuminated buildings; contrasting with the rest of the city that was quite dirty.
Quickly we adapt to the Romanian way of life, especially in the hitchhiking. Here there are places to do hitchhiking, and in them crowd of people with cartels or moving the hand, are always seen; and fighting to get in the car that stops, because there is not queue…
We also know that it is habit in Romania to pay for this type of transport, because of that, we usually move away a little of the crowd to “differentiate” us; and like this, usually stop another type of people, which do not need a tip, and want to practice English.
Distances that before were insignificant, are now converted in long distances of hours of journey for the bad state of the roads; so, up to Cluj Napoca were more than two hours of journey squeezed in a car full of things, with two Hungarians. On the way we saw many houses in construction with metallic roofs imitating to palaces, afterwards we discover that they are the houses of the gypsies, but they don’t live in them, the houses are just to show off, they live behind in the shacks.
In Cluj Napoca, we start to realize the infinite hospitality of the Romanian people; with Raluca and Alex, not only we share great moments, we also share a goal, for them their next destination is Australia, where they aspire to a better quality of life.
The majority of Romanians are orthodox and very devout in general, we have seen some church, and they are very different to the Catholics. In them there is not altar, the priest prays standing, beside all, as there are not benches. There are many differences, but the one that catches our attention is that, to be orthodox priest, you must be married.
The orthodox cemeteries are very nice and well taken care; and very old, because this religion forbids to take the bodies out. Something curious, is that there are tombs without dead persons, here the people buy their stones and everything, and place it in the cemetery with the name and date of birth, and an empty place to put in future the date of death. For what is seen, if it is made like this, it is cheaper.
We went to the north of the country to the Maramures, to the city of Baia Mare, at the base of the Carpathian Mountains that coming down from Ukraine, and for whether we had not had enough in Cluj, Ramona and her family gave us two beautiful and warm days in family. To start, a party of end of university, and the day after with her family, they brought us to see the famous wooden churches, the highest of Europe built with this material and not even a piece of metal!, the one in the picture reaches the 54 meters, just the tower.
In our way to Medias, we face a long tour which we covered in 10 hours. On the way the old cars Dacia, are on the road with the carriage of horses, registered, normally driven by gypsies.
As we keep approaching ourselves to Medias, the roads are smaller, and we need more time to move, anyway, car that passes, car that pick us up. And after the cute comment of the last car: “What are doing two Spanish in Romania, when the normal is that the Romanians go to Spain??” we arrived to this expected destination, the city of our friend Ioana, where we spend great days with her family, and who made us to feel like this, in family…
Nicolae was taking care of us continuously, and he brought us to meet a lot of people, those who are in the section of “Friends of Travel”. A very special visit was the grandparents of our friend, who live traditionally in a small town. They showed us, and put on us their traditional clothes, and showed us where they make the wine, the cheese, where they keep the animals... An authentic museum, which many people would pay for see it, and we had that opportunity, not only to see it, also to meet these great persons. About Medias, Adela and Calin, showed us all the centre, the most important thing is the church with its inclined tower, the second most inclined in Europe after Pisa, and we approached a nice lake at the outskirts.
One day we went to Sighisoara, where Earl Vlad Tepes, most known by the legend of Dracula, lived 2 years. Again we went with friends of the family, by the Dacia of Nicolae.
If until now we had had hospitality, now we don’t have words to describe this; with a deep pain we leave Medias to follow route to Brasov, our last destination in Transylvania, placed in the centre of the country, at the foot of the curve that the Carpathian Mountains do. The enclave of this city is very nice, and its small centre has a lot of life and charm.
Always by hitchhiking we went one day to visit the Castle of Bran, more known as Castle of Dracula, although this man has almost nothing to see in the castle, he was here just for three days and prisoner. The legend rose up for the scary form of the castle, which makes this place to be full of tourists. The castle is ok, although much smaller of how painting it to us, but inside objects of great value, secret passages, are seen...
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