Day 31 – July 13th – Sucevita to Urziceni
We must confess that we were not looking forward to the day ahead. We had some 430k to drive from the northern pocket of Romania to the south, to put us into relatively close proximity to the Bucharest Airport for our flight to Moldova tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps 430k doesn’t sound like a long way in Australia, my home country, but in this country it can be quite an ordeal. Our GPS was suggesting at least 10 hours, but we were hoping for a lot less.
We enjoyed our final breakfast at the lovely Pensiunea Figola, with the 3 young female staff who seemed to have been on duty morning, noon and night. They were always so gracious to us, with little English between them. Our car was packed, and at about 9:15am we drove away from the tiny northern frontier village of Sucevita in the Bucovina Province. We headed for Suceava, where there was another good example of the painted Monastery Churches from the 15th century, but by the time we had negotiated the rural roads with frequent, busy villages and then discovered that Suceava was actually quite a large town with busy, slow traffic, we realized that we really didn’t have the time to stop if we were going to make our destination at these speeds.
The trip was rather uneventful. It just felt long, and the need for total concentration on the traffic and the many faster vehicles than ours wanting to push us or get around us – it was all quite exhausting. The countryside, however, at times was beautiful. Gone were the mountains – now we had magnificent open fields for miles, with crops especially sunflowers which were fully out in bloom. The contrast between the lush greens of the vast meadows with the acres of yellow sunflower made a very pretty picture of patchwork stretching almost to the horizons..
Despite the need for solid concentration, it was good to gain some confidence in ‘driving like a Romanian’. The roads were basically one decent lane each way, with each having what we would describe as a decent ‘break-down lane’. However, the break-down lane was intended for regular driving with your wheels straddling the line. This could possibly allow vehicles to be four wide, with vehicles passing in each direction while overtaking vehicles straddling the break-down lanes. It was quite unnerving, but if you didn’t drive with wheels straddling the break-down lane, you were soon given the message by the faster cars coming from behind and intending to pass (at very high speed).
I could sit on 100kph in my toy of a car (I still haven’t worked out what brand it is!), with cars flashing past at estimated speeds of 130/140kph at least, while squeezing between us and on-coming traffic. Try this all day, and it is no wonder that the nerves are frayed a little by day’s end. Trucks are just as bad – I would pass them in the face of on-coming traffic, only to have them pass me, ignoring the 50kph speed limits through the frequent villages. We did well though, with Julie doing splendidly with the iPad GPS sitting on her lap, calling the corners, bends, round-a-bouts and correct lanes.
We eventually arrived at our town of Urziceni, about 60k north of Bucharest. The time was about 4:30pm – the trip taking about 7 hours. Our ‘Vila Royale’ was very hard to find in a narrow back lane of a street, with all gates closed making it look like a rear lane entrance. However, once I went inside to meet the hosts, it turned out to be something that resembled a Greek mansion, with lots of marble, a large central winding staircase and lavish grounds which included a swimming pool. We were the only guests, from what I could deduce. The room was rather plush, with views from a balcony across the town.
On the way we passed through the town of ‘Roman’ which started me thinking all over again about the Roman history of Romania. The Dacian Kingdom (basically modern Romania, Moldova and northern Bulgaria) under King Burebista in the century before Christ was a powerful state which threatened the regional interests of Rome. Eventually under Emperor Trajan in about 106AD conquered Dacia, turning it into the state of Roman Dacia and heavily colonized it with an intentional program of Romanisation, with Vulgar Latin giving birth to the proto-Romanian language.
Once the Romans withdrew during the 4th century AD, there was quite a mix of other tribes such as the Huns and the Goths, until eventually from about the 14th century when the three dominant Kingdoms emerged – Wallacia, Moldavia and Transylvania. Modern Romania is a mergence of all three. The history is fascinating (and complex) but suffice to say that while trekking our way through Romania, we covered roads of the former Roman Empire in Wallacia, Transylvania and also Moldavia.
We will really miss Romania – the early morning ‘clip-clop, clip-clop’ of passing horse drawn carts, the common sight of horse drawn slow vehicles even on the highways competing with cars and trucks, the ‘coo’ of the doves who seem to remain out of sight, and the humble lives of the average Romanian especially in the northern rural communities. We stayed in places where the houses next door still depended on well water, and where the hand held hoe is still in use in the vast fields. Most of all we will long remember the humble and gracious Romanian people, who have served us so well despite most of them not able to speak our language, or we theirs.
From our almost opulent 3rd level room at the Vila Royale, on the eve of our departure to Moldova, we send our love.
KRA
No comments:
Post a Comment