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.