On to Romania

Blog post #800 finds us in Sucovita, northern Rumania, Moldavia, seeing our third "painted" monastery in a day, and parking in its visitor parking lot, not far from a restaurant with wifi. We finally got the needed new tires in Budapest, at a place called Automax. So far, so good. We drove on, after stocking up at the nearby Tesco, into Romania. At the border they stamped our passports, noting we were in a motor vehicle. (We'd better be in a motor vehicle when we leave!) We also bought the required vignette for travel on Romanian highways, about $30 for a month. We stopped a bit past Oradea, an unattrative Soviet-bloc industrial town, at a restaurant that offered free parking. A beer brought access to wifi too. The next day we drove on into the Marmures, the mountainous northern region, just south of Ukraine, famous for its wooden churches and continuing peasant life. Below are some scenes from the road...

Our first night in Romania; northern Romania has few--

possibly no--campgrounds; fortunately, wild camping is

tolerated; especially if you clear it with the proprietors and

buy a beer or dinner

Alas, it was only the next morning that we discovered we

had parked nearby a business that traffics in the gnome cult;

the gnome cult knows no boundaries, no borders

Romanians are renowned as the worst drivers in Europe,

the highest accident rate and the highest mortality rate;

despite the fact few own cars; here's the third auto junk

yard we saw the next morning, nearly all the wrecks

front-enders; this was the best-organized junk dealer I

have seen...

These are Romanian hay-stacks, all organized around

central poles; we have dubbed them "Vlad the Impaler"

style; we have seen tens of thousands more in the last

few days

Hotel Montana

Isvorul Crisului, aka "Souvenir Village" a

little town approaching the Marmures that

is lined, both sides, with little tourist

trinket shops

Goes on perhaps a mile or more; one of the things we have

learned is that, at least in this region, all the villages and

town go on a mile or more, generally more, since they

simply line the highway, with no side-streets or

off-shoots; this means you'll have a 3-mile village,

followed by, another 1000 feet, another 3-mile village;

consequently, if you abide by the laws, going is very

slow, in our case, averaging about 35 mph; we are clearly

the only vehicle in Romania that abides by the laws; these

people will pass you going uphill on a blind curve, in rain,

in areas congested not only by other cars but also horse-

drawn wagons, bicycles, pedestrians; we are driving very

defensively

We expected to see horse-drawn wagons occasionally;

they are everywhere, even in some of the cities

Ditto

Entering Cluj Napoca, another big city, not

attractive to our eyes

Back out in the countryside, nearly every

house has a painted metal Jesus

Ditto; the painted metal Jesus business must

be very good