Romanian Trip 1998.

In 1998 I took a trip to Romania on my SZR660 to visit Andrada, a young woman I met on a theray training course the year before. The total journey was around 3,500 miles of which 2,300 were riding miles. The bike didn’t miss a beat but 400 miles in torrential rain left the chain completely oil free and the bike sounding like a bag of nails. Sunday afternoon ride from Sheffield to Hull to catch the night ferry to Rotterdam. 200 miles in driving rain to Cologne and camp Monday night.

6am Moto-rail to Munich then 200 miles in torrential rain. The motorway is covered in a sheet of water and waves are coming over the centre reservation from lorries going the other way. Camp on banks of Danube west of Vienna Tuesday night, and find my bank has given me Australian money not Austrian so I arrive in Hungary the following day-- hungry. Missing out lots of stuff, meetings, conversations you have as a single traveller. Wednesday off to Budapest again in torrential rain but the weather turns fine there and the rest is in sunshine. Out of Budapest see beautiful tanned young girls in white bikinis hitching at the side of road. Hallucinating? Heaven? No just the Hungarian variant on a very old profession. If they exported that to Sheffield they’d be on a winner :) The road is now one track in each direction but the surface is OK. Camped Wednesday night just inside Hungary near the border. Evening walk in village and every house came with one cow, one or two pigs, chickens and ducks and veg plots. A whole different meaning for convenience foods. Thursday morning ahead of schedule I cross the Romanian border. God knows what they’re checking for but they take a half hour to do it. A guard is a motorcyclist and waves me to the head of the queue. (Warning; Ignore anyone trying to change money at the roadside. It's a scam. They'll snatch your wallet and run off fast into a silver Mercedes.) Then I hit Romanian roads!! Tarmac moto-cross. This is the main road?! like connecting London and Birmingham with the B1975 and it’s diabolical. Little things that need to be taken into account- wavy lumps and bumps, bits missing, unmarked deep holes, lines of 45* bricks across the road, Romanian for speed bumps, plus you’re sharing the road with big articulated lorries, cars whose wheels fall off frequently (I saw 3), horse and carts with massive loads of hay, herds of cows, goats etc. Romanian road marking for a very deep hole is they put a bush in it. I get to Cluj-Napoca and hail a taxi (to follow it) to Andrada’s address. Andrada is so pleased to see me.

I am brain swiped. The place is all communist concrete bunker flats like a mini New York after Mad Max but I am transformed from a fearful tourist into completely at home as I walk in her door. It is so English. In fact the whole place has an odd English feel to it. The weather is changeable one day to the next and the landscape is very similar and the people (OK I’m biased) have a similar ambience of understatement and minimalism. We walk in a botanical garden. I meet Mihai, Andrada’s boyfriend of 3/4 years and we like each other. He has to study so the two of us spend the next 3 days together. We spend around an hour changing a travellers cheque and can only get US dollars because 'the bank has no Romanian money!!' The economy is very shaky which makes things cheap but difficult for ordinary people. There are about 27,000 Lae to the £. so you instantly feel wealthy. There are many gypsy beggars. They are amazingly different to ordinary Romanians. They have no conception of achieving anything for themselves. They are either given something or go without it. Their 'commerce' is dependant purely on their ability to induce pity, which is why Romania has so many orphanages. ( baby pitiable, toddler not so much) We go for ride to a lake, then to a restaurant in a village. It rains while we’re inside and when we leave it is dry but the road outside is a river. The rest is eating, talking and Coca-colas in cafes. I take her on my motorcycle 70 miles to Tigr-Mures where her parents live.

She says her sister Maria is so keen to meet me. I have serious trouble accepting this. Why would an 18yr old younger sister want to meet a middle aged acquaintance of her sisters?? Nothing could prepare me for the ambience of her family. So much love and acceptance flowing back and forth without the slightest restriction. It was wonderful to see and be a part of. No wonder Andrada is like she is. She and her sister, Maria, play like kittens. Laugh, disagree, scowl, pout, look, kiss and laugh again, all in an instant with nothing remaining. Her mum and dad speak no English but there’s instant warmth and understanding of each other. No judgement, distancing or reservation. It was blissful. I think, or at least I hope, that I am like that. We go for walk and Coca-Cola. Despite all our differences of circumstance somehow an old soul knows an old soul and the knowledge of our long existences seems to pass between us. We meet up with Mihai for a drink, drop him off, go home and talk. I feel ageless and everyone accepts me as how I feel, only the mirror reminds me. I seem to be in the land of who you are is how you feel. None of the condemning imagery that we are so used to, that we think is not damaging us. Later she sees me looking pensive. ‘Is it the mirror?’ I nod. We start off on a 3 day trip to the mountains.

Me, Andrada, Maria, Mihai and Anka, Mihai’s 13 yr old sister. Parents fuss to see everything is safe. Oh I change money with Andrada’s father. He gets out calculator but I already have implicit trust in this man whose eyes seem to wrap around you in a smile. Andrada drives confidently but a little fast and bottoms the car on some bumps. Sunny. Lunch. Mihai drives. We visit 2 churches and find a hotel for the night. There is one price for Romanians and one for tourists so they book the room and I have to act dumb. I’m beginning to feel like Mihai and Andrada are the parents and the other three of us as the children. It feels so nice to not be responsible. I have one room and the other four all sleep in one big bed. This is the only sense of age difference I have. At dusk Andrada and I find ourselves outside waiting for the others. Some boys are playing football with a hedgehog. I take it off them and put it under a car for safety. One fishes it out and it dies. I was upset I didn’t do more. Some young men appear and tell them off with a few cuffs round the head to make the point. The hotel is also like a Marriot after Mad Max. Next morning we arrive at Draculas castle

(all this is happening in Transilvania) and aquire a 13yr old guide who sets them all off giggling with his factual presentation of very dubious facts. As we walk round he casually tests the relics for their rigidity. The castle is a delight. Architecture that seems to conform to the human spirit in form and proportion. I buy 4 big pullovers that smell of sheep oil for about £5 each and a white fur hat for Anne. I so want to buy them presents for looking after me but they totally refuse. Back in the car I notice Alex the guide is still with us. He’s taking us to a house he knows for the nights stay. A typical Romanian farm house full of pretty things where, if Alex arrives with some guests the family moves out and we have the beds. The evening is set back by getting a puncture then finding the spare wheel does not fit the car?! 2 or 3 men gather as we decide what to do. They take over, remove both tyres, fit the good one on the wheel that fits the car and then rush off in their car after a bus that had gone by 5 minutes ago because it would have a compressor to fill the tyre. Maria and I, on the basis ‘anything you can do’, wrestle the punctured tyre on the errant wheel. We go for a pizza. Next day is raining so after visiting the castle of the ex king and queen we decide to go home. Palesh castle left me speechless. Full of the most excellently tasteful craftsmanship. I could spend an hour in each room drinking the wonder of it. Then there was another castle 100 yards away built because they thought the first was to grand. The interior designed by the queen, Russian but born and brought up in England, is grand simple elegance. Andrada tells me they had 'many wars with the Turkeys'. Next day Mihai had to go to college and Andrada and I go for walk and the day after we hire a boat on the broad river Mures and swim off it then picnic in Mihais fathers orchard. We look at the house he is building. (oh on the way back from the mountains we get lost. Andrada leans out the window to the next car. ‘I have a question’ ‘bla, bla’- she gets an answer- ‘how far is that?’- reply ‘that’s another question’) Lovely picnic. Anka who I haven’t mentioned is also lovely. Again that lack of external consciousness allows her to be both mature and innocent at the same time, utterly charming. Interesting to note they are building churches in Romania because of overcrowding. That’s different! On the last day I watch cable with Andadas dad. The German motorcycle grand prix. This is serious heaven. Andrada watches for a while. In the thick of the action Max Biaggi slides off unhurt. The testosterone levels rise with the speeds and the commentator talks on and on in Romanian, technical information, lap times, positions, strategies etc. . Andrada turns to me to translate something she’s found important. ‘Biaggi is upset’. Perfect Andrada! It’s time to leave. I first say goodbye to Mihai and I think I see his eyes a little full. We had grown to like each other. Andrada’s mum and dad the same. She and Maria drove out to a petrol station to see me off. She says ‘I think I want a cuddle’. She was crying a little. I held her and her poor little heart was pumping like a sledgehammer, I can still feel it. Maria smiles and says ‘I’ve come to look after her.’ I ride back through Cluj where I first arrived, and had to stop to write her a note just to re-connect with the happy memories of only a few days before. Peter, who I met very briefly and was using Andrada’s apartment while she was away insisted I come in for soup and ice-cream. They’re all so bloody nice. I drive into a wonderful red sunset until my visor is so covered in insects I have to camp behind a petrol station.

I was really finding it difficult to leave. The ground was grass over rocks and my tent was outside the radius of the guard dog’s chain. The journey went fine but by the time I got to Germany I was beginning to miss those Romanian roads after miles of bland, lifeless motorways. Drank and talked of life with a 6foot6 Arnold Schwarzenegger on the Rotterdam ferry and home. On the Sunday Andrada’s mum came back from church and gave me a little piece of bread from the service and said she had prayed for my safe trip. My main relief when I got home was that I hadn’t let her prayers down, funny that. So my trip to that magic land is over. It was literally out of this world. It made me see the price we’ve had to pay for our complicated prosperity.

Trip round the Alps.

 

A leisurely tour for a change, not a there and back AFAP. 2/3 weeks with Antony, an old friend on a newish Kawasaki Versys and me on my trusty SZR round the Alps and back camping and rooming. I did prep the bike honest but in retrospect I didn’t do a very good job so it’s no thanks to me that she didn’t miss a beat again.
So Friday evening, July 17th we set off for Hull in shite weather and stationary traffic getting into the M18.
The ‘all you can eat’ buffet on the boat was welcome, especially for a very large guy who had 3 mains, 2 slabs of chocolate cakes and god knows what else besides.
Rotterdam and south. Same shite weather which made the 300 miles to the first stop a slog. Antony got a wet crutch and my boots were, if anything, leaking- outwards. A lonely hotel deep in the woods run by a rather choice grandmother. It’s my age. Good food, which will later become a theme for this trip. We dry. We set out again in the rain then dry. In the middle of a plain, having taken our wet gear off, we get caught in a downpour, the only protection being a field of 6’ corn. I suggest it’s better the second row in and we pretend the corn is sheltering us for half an hour then head out in the 60mph hair drier to get dry again. We’re well short of our second night stop so cast around for rooms in Ellingen, apparently a famous baroque town. A far too posh for us place has rooms so we give in to paying the extra. The young chef gets two 8” heavy iron keys circa 1800 and leads us up a grand carved wooden staircase to equally grand pairs of double doors. It was like being on a stately home tour and being ushered to stay in the king’s bedroom. Far better than the Ritz. Assuming an interest in motorcycles and ceilings don’t go together I won’t dwell on the magnificent plasterwork, an amazing piece of restoration. The more my mouth drops open the more the chef shows us. The attic with an amazing bathroom in a cupboard, the banqueting hall with ornate painted ceiling, even down to a hole in the floor through to the cellar where Jewish women would ceremoniously cleanse themselves. (and I suspect have a good time without the men)

Then off to a camp site in Austria for a couple of days. The weather is now hot and my SZR even hotter, it didn’t feel happy. It had steamed a bit in miles of traffic just outside Sheffield so maybe the coolant’s low, especially as the fan wasn’t cutting in. Plus the oil level was very confusing being a dry sump. So changed coolant and topped up oil. Plus the footrest hanger had cracked from the tie down on the ferry. Antony’s reference to her being a ‘nail’ didn’t go down well. Got a heavy duty jubilee clip and fashioned a support which, as time went on, seems to have caused the back brake master cylinder to pull in air which then required periodic bleeding for the rest of the trip.

Antony is convinced we are now in the region of very nice people who are also secret Nazi sympathisers. Lederhosen and Mercedes seemed to be the give away. 

Yet another enjoyable meal. 

Now into the Alps and a late evening search for a guest ‘hof’. Luck found us one half way up a mountain side overlooking the valley. 20 euros and lovely clean rooms.

And three delightful girls 2, 8 and 10 who would entertain us with German lessons for the next two days. Kids make great teachers. They found our lack of their language huge fun and just carried on regardless until we understood.

Sandra showed me round the barn. 8 cows, 2 pigs, 1 goat, one rabbit with pups and a cat with kittens. Which did I like best? I said the pigs. She was aghast, “nine nine, de shwine da shtinken!” In some curious way I found I could understand what she was saying.

The hillside opposite was a bit like the Lake District except for the houses being ridiculously small.

Humanity was dwarfed and I found it strangely relaxing to look at it time and time again. I wasn’t too well so Antony did daily trips to the valley for rolls and cigs. After a thunderous evening storm we bled my brake and were off again for the high passes into Italy. First the Brenner, then the Jauafen and then the Stelvio. Antony insisted on the Stelvio as it’s the highest in the Alps, 1.7 miles high. I thought nah, that was just about bragging rights. Well I was wrong; riding over it is something to brag about. It had me scared with its hairpins and drops.
It took all the little skill I have to negotiate it.

You have to go right to the opposite edge of the road to come out anywhere near on your side of the road, so oncoming traffic is problematic. Do I hit it going in or coming out? Half way up we chat to a German couple. The man says “We come 6 times. Each time we see dead biker in road.” Thanks for that. And at the top, Buxton on a Sunday afternoon or Douglas prom during TT week. God knows how they get all the sausages up there, probably helicopter. For sure nothing bigger than a small campervan could make it. 

By the end of coming back down my back brake is only effective by the pedal dragging on the ground. Into Italy and a campsite somewhere with a disco playing till 3 in the morning.
In the midst of some Italian traffic jam my fan kicks in! Jubilation.

And I thought it wasn’t working.

Around this time Antony and I encounter small differences of opinion. Well nobody’s perfect. I am cheap, Antony likes comfort. I ride slow, Antony is faster. I am a  rudimentary camper, Antony has a hundred little containers of everything you could possibly need. I am mature and all knowing and Antony is a twat. How he can think I am one too is beyond me. In Switzerland we end up with a room for Antony next to a campsite for me and get pissed together, mates again.  The Simplon pass is easy and sweeping, Lusern and a campsite in the Jura south of Dijon for two nights. I’m reminded how the smallest slope can slide one into a heap in a corner of the tent. A fine Nuevo cuisine meal of chicken which for all the world looks like sections of tastefully arranged bull’s todger in the middle of a large square plate. The next night it’s chicken and chips for £35 less. Two nights and 450 miles to Zeebrugge as we set off north again. The next night in Joinville and we’re in what was probably Edith Piaf’s favourite hotel, the one before she got famous.

Around eight men sit outside in the warm evening visited by a series of bikers on a Ducatti and a Harley, each newcomer shaking hands with everyone, including us. A nice custom.

Inside is a delicate arrangement of rooms, plumbing and stairs. I watch euro porn in bed and am reminded of the tastefully arranged chicken on the square plate. We breakfast, set out and stop. We ‘discuss’ filling both Scott oilers and how to ride apart whilst staying together. In our middle class gentile way it becomes a heated conversation. Without the benefit of our considerable education we would have been free to say, “Well fuck you, asshole!” but we didn’t. I did say OK then I’ll see you in Zeebrugge tomorrow, and Antony by way of disagreement said, “Yeh OK right, fine” and we go our separate ways.

Now I haven’t told Antony this but about one in the afternoon I run out of petrol, stranded at the side of a fast French country road in the middle of nowhere. Shit! This is some hole, and the ferry’s booked for tomorrow evening. I wave haphazardly at the passing traffic. Almost immediately a small French guy with no English stops and I point to the tank. After nearly two weeks of struggling with German and Italian I couldn't give a toss about trying French. For a start the boarders are all in the wrong place. They speak German in Austria and Italy, Italian and French in Switzerland and French in Belgium. It all needs a jolly good sort out. Anyway I have a water bottle and we set off for petrol around 3 miles away. Petrol station, pump, bottle, no petrol. They wouldn’t serve it into an old drinks bottle. By now Julian is on my case. We drive around to a garage and ask for a proper container. Fat guy behind the desk says no on account his fat arse is stuck to his fat chair, but a thin guy is off like a whippet. Container, petrol, 3 miles back and I’m left thanking and clapping St Julian as he drives away. I think we both feel very good.

That evening after a lorry driver gives me a map of Ronse the local town with a campsite marked in biro I camp in the grounds of a school come summer school.

There is a serve yourself bar and with two 8.5% Belgian beers and only one sandwich all day I’m as happy as a newt. Next morning I go into town for breakfast. Belgium by the way looks permanently closed. Shops, rather than attracting attention seem to hide hoping no one will notice them. A role and coffee in an amazing bar all big and period blousy; a sort of 1910 Wetherspoons. 

Back to the campsite and another thing I haven’t told Antony. I left the ignition on and flattened the battery. Well he told me earlier that lying was a necessary art. Shit again! A 660cc single is not the easiest thing to bump start. I pack up and ask a young guy to give me a push. We plan our attack on the small slope, I select third and we role. Immediately a group steps out with a pushchair. Shit, but seeing our predicament I now have three big guys pushing. Brum! Yes! And I’m off. What I haven’t said is that maybe something left in the makeshift petrol container was making the engine die at low revs so I couldn’t let them fall below 2-3,000rpm which made the next hours very nervous, Belgium being mostly flat. But after an hour and a half I made it to the small queue waiting for the ferry in Zeebrugge docks.

The engine stopped. I pressed the button and it started. Few! Relieved and hungry there was time to get lunch back in the town. I parked on the sea front and Antony appeared. So all was well and we’d both got there safe and in time. On the boat I had a plate of Lamb Balti and rice followed by another of Vegetable Tanduri and a big slab of Bakewell tart and cream to finish off. Antony tells three different waiters to alert the captain that another boat is overtaking us. They appear to find this hugely funny but I doubt that indicates what they’re actually thinking. On deck for a smoke. One biker tells of his solo trip to Cape Town and another of doing 280kph on his R1 down the motorway. I am daunted. In the bar it is apparent someone has shit themselves and being very low key about it. Two guys have the dance floor to themselves making strange surreal movements to a singer with backing tracks. I’m guessing the singer has seen it all as he manages to adjust his sound system, play guitar, turn his music over, sing and usher drunks off the stage with complete composure.

Breakfast of everything going and 60 miles to Sheffield. We stop for a parting coffee and agree it was a good trip; a good mix of luck, skill, anxiety and angst. A big manly hug and home, where Barbara had opened the back gate for my arrival. A small but heartwarming gesture. The next hug wasn’t manly.