Three days in Budapest. We did a lot of walk­ing in this city, which has a feels total­ly dif­fer­ent from Prague. Often, we ate in the gigan­tic Cen­tral Mar­ket. This grand struc­ture orig­i­nal­ly incor­po­rat­ed an indoor canal by which goods were deliv­ered to the mar­ket’s traders. It must be four times the size of the St. Lawrence Mar­ket in Toron­to, and hous­es only god knows how many tons of sausages. I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked snack­ing on lán­gos, flat disks of fried dough which came with a vari­ety of ingre­di­ents, sort of like piz­za slices. They would be a big hit in Cana­da if they were intro­duced. Read more »

Back in Braşov, we had a late lunch at the cafe on top of Tâm­pa Hill (995 m), then split up to have a break from each oth­er. I con­tact­ed an acquain­tance in Braşov, Titus Peride, and we met for beers and talk at a sub­ter­ranean stu­dent bistro. A very enjoy­able dis­cus­sion about Roman­ian cul­ture and his­to­ry, eco­nom­ics, and oth­er sub­jects. When this fin­ished, I walked toward the hos­tel, and dropped into a small cafe. But one thing led to anoth­er, and I found myself drink­ing with a group of Roma­ni­ans. Some were actors, one who had played many seri­ous roles, such as the plays of Ioe­nesco and Genet’s Le Bal­con. The con­ver­sa­tion was a chaot­ic mix­ture of Roman­ian, French, Ital­ian, Mag­yar, Russ­ian, Ger­man, Turk­ish and Ara­bic, all jum­bled togeth­er with a back­ground score of Roman­ian doina and clouds of cig­a­rette smoke. I was com­plete­ly unpre­pared for the style of drink­ing in such a con­text: full tum­blers of whiskey fol­lowed by glass­es of sick­ly sweet Red Bull, alter­nat­ing. I stum­bled back to the hos­tel, where Isaac and I shared a sin­gle room. A few hours lat­er, Isaac found me paw­ing con­fus­ed­ly at the door han­dle, try­ing to get to the bath­room to throw up. The world was spin­ning around me, and the only way I could man­age was to crawl on my hands and knees. I was not a pleas­ant sight.

I had not been so shit-faced drunk in many years. I’m not nor­mal­ly a heavy drinker, and this kind of social­iz­ing is not my style. But I sobered up rel­a­tive­ly quick­ly, the next day. We did a bit more sight-see­ing, got tick­ets for an evening train to Budapest, and end­ed up going back to the hos­tel to relax. We watched an Amer­i­can teen com­e­dy called Kids In Amer­i­ca in the hos­tel lounge. The long train ride to Budapest would not involve much sleep. The com­part­ment was full, with some elder­ly women who chat­tered in Roman­ian pret­ty much non-stop. No com­fort­able posi­tion was pos­si­ble. It must have been tor­ture for Isaac, who has very long legs. Final­ly, some­where in Hun­gary, the ladies left the train, and we stretched out, exhaust­ed, for a few hours of snoozing.

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The citadel at Deva was absolute­ly spec­tac­u­lar. It perched on a rugged peak, over­look­ing the city, and could only be reached by a funic­u­lar rail­way. It was pret­ty hard to imag­ine how it had been built. Every block and beam dragged up by ropes? It was in a pic­turesque­ly ruined state. The view, over Deva (pop. 80,000) and the sur­round­ing coun­try­side, was beau­ti­ful. The lit­tle, cone-shaped moun­tain the citadel perch­es upon is pro­tect­ed for its rare flo­ral species and the pres­ence of the horned adder. We did­n’t stay long, as we had booked a train that left for Braşov in a few hours. This would be anoth­er long, overnight haul, which would land us in that city in the wee hours of the morn­ing. Lone­ly Plan­et had rec­om­mend­ed two hos­tels there, so we planned to just emerge from the rail­way sta­tion and try to find them. Read more »

After the detailed tour of Sarmizege­tusa, Dr. Con­stan­tin offered to give a lift to Isaac and myself to Deva. He said that there was a fine 13th cen­tu­ry citadel, which we would prob­a­bly like to see, and that we could eas­i­ly get a train from there to Braşov, our next des­ti­na­tion. He had grown up in the region, in fact had been a shep­herd him­self, part of the dis­tinc­tive sub­cul­ture of “moun­tain men“ of Hune­doara, He had an inti­mate knowl­edge of the area’s his­to­ry, geol­o­gy, agri­cul­ture, and soci­ety. Read more »

We had two short rides from our camp­ing spot, one from a doc­tor, anoth­er from a sales­man from Hune­doara who was deliv­er­ing a door to a vil­lager. The door was tied to the roof of his Dacia [which is real­ly a Renault, with a dif­fer­ent body]. The door turned out to be the wrong one, which result­ed in a long dis­cus­sion about the accu­ra­cy of the sales cat­a­log. I was sur­prised at how easy it was to pick up the gen­er­al sense of a con­ver­sa­tion in Roman­ian, which is as obvi­ous­ly of Latin deriva­tion as Ital­ian or Span­ish. In fact, apart from the odd­i­ty of hear­ing the Slav­ic loan word “da” for “yes” used repeat­ed­ly, often in strings (“da-da-da!”), it sound­ed a lot like Ital­ian. This would prove very use­ful. In a pinch, I found that I could make a stab at guess­ing a Roman­ian word by call­ing up an Ital­ian word and replac­ing the end­ing with “u” or “e”, and the lis­ten­er could usu­al­ly guess what I was dri­ving at. Read more »

In the morn­ing, I did what I could to prac­tice Mag­yar with peo­ple, includ­ing the own­er of the Panzion, and it was to prove use­ful to us over the next few days. On the edge of town, there was a cramped lit­tle store where I bought toi­let paper. It seemed to be patron­ized exclu­sive­ly by the Roma, who were gath­ered around it with their horse carts, chat­ting and bar­gain­ing, per­haps trad­ing in hors­es (for some were unhitched, and were being close­ly exam­ined). I heard some Romani, but they appeared to be most­ly con­vers­ing in Mag­yar. Roman­ian toi­let paper comes in hideous pink colour and has the tex­ture of roof­ing tiles.

When we felt that our oblig­a­tions in Valea lui Mihai were com­plet­ed, we start­ed to hitch-hike again. Our next des­ti­na­tion was the ruins of the ancient Dacian cap­i­tal at Sarmizege­tusa. This is rather high in the South­ern Carpathi­an moun­tains. Between us and this area is a region of rugged, but low­er moun­tains and plateaus, heav­i­ly forest­ed. Read more »

Our attempt to hitch-hike out of Prague was a dis­as­ter. We had select­ed a spot, with Fil­ip’s advice, which by the log­ic of hitch­ing should have been fine. How­ev­er, it turned out to be torn up with con­struc­tion. The only prac­ti­cal spot to hitch was high up on a ramp with only mod­er­ate traf­fic. We wait­ed an hour and a half before get­ting a lift from two young women, who took us a few kilo­me­ters, to a ser­vice sta­tion. This should have been per­fect, because it was the last sta­tion serv­ing out­bound traf­fic towards Brno. There was a steady stream of traf­fic, and a spot that looked ide­al. Read more »

I was met at the air­port by Isaac and Lour­des, who is Fil­ip’s part­ner. We then picked up Fil­ip from his work (he works in the film indus­try). We head­ed direct­ly to the heart of the Old City (Jose­fov / Pra­ha 1). Fil­ip was eager to feed us a very tra­di­tion­al Bohemi­an meal, and we were equal­ly eager to eat one. For me, this was a Bohemi­an-style goulash, quite dif­fer­ent from the Hun­gar­i­an, and for Isaac it was a cut­let in sweet pep­per­corn sauce. Both were accom­pa­nied by won­drous dumplings, which Fil­ip instruct­ed us not to eat “like and Amer­i­can”, i.e., as if they were pieces of bread. They are prop­er­ly to be cut and eat­en with a fork, like pota­toes. Read more »