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It was a fairly long bus ride into Baia Mare. We were both dying for the loo for most of the journey, but it was still a fairly pleasant drive. Romania is a beautiful country. The few towns that we drove through on the bus never spread out much further than the side of the road itself. And that's not to say that these are new towns built onto the main road, but that the road is very old. I guess the towns were built onto the road and then the roads were upgraded. This upgrade presumably took place a good while ago too as they're really falling apart. What was a two-way road no longer has any edges and has become a one-way track. The locals don't seem to have noticed that though. They speed down the lane and make room at the last minute. A bit scary that. Then where the road is decent everybody attempts to over-take everybody else. Whether their car can make it or not; some people spent a good few minutes in their clapped out old Dacias driving in the wrong lane next to our bus. We went round corners together and eventually somebody had to go that bit faster. I'm shocked we didn't see anybody crash! We did hear that the government spent a lot of money on those roads recently. I'm guessing it all went on traffic cones and temporary traffic lights. There were a lot of those blocking off some fairly dodgy looking edges. The lights didn't even work very well. I think they went green on both sides at times. We saw some angry faces as our bus tried to get through gaps at the same time as the oncoming traffic.
That was all very exciting. So were the views though. Its mainly farmland between Cluj and Baia Mare, broken up with a few small towns and the farming is very old-school by British standards. So many people still use horses with carriages to get around and they all use the main roads. While this slows traffic and, according to the government here, causes many road accidents it's certainly a nice sight to see. So are the huge hay stacks. They don't bail their hay like we do, they stack it around big poles as you'll see in my pics when I get them up. These stacks are all over the place and they've been used for hundreds of years. It really is reminiscent of the old Dracula movies where the main character is seen making his way through the Transylvanian countryside. Before the night falls anyway. It's all lovely in those films til then.
Eventually we come into the outskirts of a city. Similar to Cluj nothing seems very new here. The roads are bad, the buildings are quite shabby, and there are feral dogs laying all over the place. Not the rabid kind of dogs that you might get in South American towns but when you see a huge pack of street dogs chilling on the road-side you kind of automatically cross to the other side anyway. Its pretty cool to see so many different types of dogs together like this, but a bit sad that they've obviously all been abandoned. They apparently aren't treated too well either.
Anyway, we pull up in what we guess is a bus station. The bus stopped there, there are other buses there and there's a few kiosks on the end. So if it's a bus station perhaps there's an office. It's aroud 8 O'clock at this point. We're hoping we'll find somebody to give us info because if not we're a bit stuffed. There's nothing to help tourists here. We're in the back of beyond. And we don't want to be wandering around all night looking for a place to sleep. Luckily there's an open door in an end building and there's an office just inside. And there's a guy sitting in the office! He can't speak English, but we quickly learn that there are no more buses to Breb today. 7:00 tomorrow morning he tells us. OK we need a hotel. He understands that but we have no map and we can't understand his directions. This was much easier in Germany. The guy's real nice though. A huge contrast to any of the officials we met in Cluj. He really wants to help us and tells us if we wait there'll be a taxi coming shortly to get us to a hotel.
I learned my first real Romanian word in that taxi. Scump. That means expensive, and we wanted "Nu scump". Our driver knew exactly what we needed and took us to a nice little place with a Romanian family sitting outside. They gave us a room for just 80 Lei for the night. That's a little less than a tenner and that's a great price for a room with a comfy bed and a toilet. We would have paid that much just for the toilet by then! No food, but the girl at reception told us we'd find a restaurant just to the left. I'm glad we changed all our money to Romanian because we were needing it.
It occurred to me to try and give our Breb hosts a call before going for dinner. We were starving, having only eaten breakfast in Luton, but we hadn't talked to Duncan (our host) at all on the phone and we didn't even know if he'd expect us so soon. He never replied to my last E-mail. So I got through to his phone, he picked up and yes he did sound surprised. He never did receive my last E-mail telling him when we were coming today. And we're in the country now?! They'd have to sort us somewhere to stay but we were more than welcome. They did still need our help. Now that was a huge relief. I did have my fears.
We arranged to meet in Breb the next day. Dinner was great. Katie had a pizza and I had a Carbonara. It's interesting to see how the same dish can be very different in different countries. This Carbonara was garnished with a couple of bits of dry spaghetti, but it was awesome.
We got up early next morning to be picked up by yesterday's taxi driver. He seemed like a decent enough guy the day before. He liked to show us his books with nice places to see and he even offered to drive us all the way to Breb for a good price. We declined at the time but it turned out that we wouldn't be able to fit on the bus so we let him drive us anyway. I'm kind of glad we did. The bus would've been fine, but this guy took us on a couple of detours. We saw one of the oldest wooden churches in the country. He stopped the car and let us have a walk around. Then we were off again.
There's an amazing thing on the road to Breb. Our taxi driver told us about it the night before but once we understood what it was he was saying we just laughed at him. I'd seen it in Father Ted which made it that much funnier. I guess we couldn't be in such an old-school bit of country such as this without hearing a bit of silly folklore. Today we'd get to see it first hand. The driver stopped at the bottom of a hill. He turned off his engine, took out his keys, and pushed in the clutch. All of a sudden the car started rolling up the hill. Up the hill. We were lost for words. Your brain tells you it must be some sort of illusion. Maybe something to do with all the mountains making down look like up. Is that possible either? I dunno. But there was a hill, it was going up and we were rolling from the bottom. He showed us again. I've got no idea how to explain what it felt like. Our driver was beaming. He'd shown us magic, and that alone was worth the cost of a taxi.
Eventually we came to the Breb turn-off. The village as seen from above is quite impressive. Its different from all the other villages that we've driven through because it's not on the main road. A side track splits off and goes down into a valley. So from the main road you get a great view of all the farmland with the houses of Breb spread all the way through it for a good distance. There is a larger concentration of houses in the centre but they continue for miles outside of that centre. Several in some places or just a lone house in others. The church dominates the view though. Its far bigger than any of the other buildings. Its white and it has two big steeples. We'd soon learn that these new impressive churches are being thrown up all over Romania. It seems the church here are trying to make a statement and somehow they're getting the money to do it. It's a shame though because the old wooden church here is far prettier. It's a lot smaller and you can't see it from miles around, but its nicer to look at.
My phone didn't get any signal down in the centre of Breb so I couldn't call Duncan for a lift. Luckily for us his wife penny was driving somebody else down to the bus stop and noticed us on her way. We piled in our bags and prepared to meet our hosts.
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