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 »

These are some notes on ram­bling in the U.K. that did­n’t make it into pre­vi­ous postings:

Bat­te­sea Pow­er Station

In Lon­don, I chanced to come near the mas­sive bulk of the old Bat­tersea Pow­er Sta­tion. This huge struc­ture is famil­iar to any­one who has a copy of Pink Floy­d’s Ani­mals, where it’s used in the cov­er art. Now it’s in the process of being torn down. For once, I deeply regret­ted not hav­ing a cam­era with me. I will not be able to find any pho­tographs of it in this par­tic­u­lar stage of demo­li­tion, where it looks like a diplodocus, supine and par­tial­ly dis­mem­bered by a T‑rex. Read more »

There’s a time in every jour­ney when things don’t go well. Usu­al­ly, some small event presages the com­ing trou­ble, as comets were said to fore­warn of the Black Death.

Not far from the spot where the Wilt­shire Wind undid my plans…the ancient arti­fi­cial mound known as Sil­bury Hill is in view.

In my case, the omen occurred back in Wilt­shire. I was afoot on the Marl­bor­ough Downs, trekking between Sil­bury Hill and a clus­ter of minor bur­ial mounds on a hill­top, well away from the road. I chanced upon a spring, and desir­ing some cof­fee to brace me in the cold wind, I made a tiny smudge fire (con­tained in my own steel pan, to pre­vent any scar­ring of the land). I boiled a small amount of water, and poured it through a piece of fil­ter paper that wrapped a lump of Ital­ian espres­so, as I had done many times before in the Cana­di­an bush. It’s a crude sys­tem, but it pro­vides an accept­able cup of cof­fee. When the process was fin­ished, I lift­ed up the sod­den fil­ter in one hand, and it was torn from my fin­gers by a sud­den gust of wind. The mess land­ed on my open note­book. About a dozen pages were soaked with hot water and cof­fee grounds. As I attempt­ed to remove them from the binder, yet anoth­er gust of wind tore the sog­gy sheets from the binder and scat­tered them. They were, I believed, only a few scrib­bled sketch­es, of lit­tle impor­tance. Read more »

Gog and Magog

Back in Lon­don (or Llundain, in Welsh), and I head­ed back to Cam­den Town, hop­ing to get a spot in the same “cheap” (by Lon­don stan­dards) hos­tel. This proved suc­cess­ful, and I left my pack in stor­age while I spent anoth­er day explor­ing the city.

I had deter­mined that the only cost-effec­tive way of trav­el­ing in Lon­don is to buy a day pass for the bus sys­tem, and stay out of the cost­ly Under­ground entire­ly. Bus­es move slow­ly, but once you fig­ure it out, the spaghet­ti-like maze of routs is actu­al­ly quite ratio­nal­ly planned. And from the top of dou­ble-deck­ers, you see a lot, and get a chance to ori­ent your­self that the “tube” does not pro­vide. Read more »

I heard some good music (Ivo Evans Band; The Enor­mous Sizes) at a pub called The End, in a not-very-pros­per­ous part of Cardiff not far from the Uni­ver­si­ty. I felt more com­fort­able there than at the Pen & Wig, the reput­ed hang­out of Sci­ence Fic­tion fans in the city. I popped into that one, briefly, but it looked a bit expen­sive for me, and no one I saw gave off the tell-tale signs of SF fan­dom. I felt more com­fort­able at The End, where I could afford a cou­ple of pints, and I seemed to fit in with the clientele.

Cos­burn Street, Cardiff

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