Romania

We knew we had one last trip in us, and there was so much we wanted to experience, like Estonia's capital, Talin; or Istanbul, not so far a reach only two weeks ago; or Paris, or Krakow. But for our final trip in Europe, we felt we'd miss a part of the Hungarian experience if we didn't travel to Transylvania, a region on the other side of the Romanian border Hungary still feels its own. Having it back was enough to lure the nation into Hitler's side of the war (although this is simplistic), because so much history and identity belongs to the totality that contains it. At this point, 7% of Romania is Hungarian. We heard a great deal of Hungarian in several spots, and learned that there are a couple towns in the middle of the country that speak nothing but Hungarian.

Another draw was the beauty of the place, the Carpathian mountains and the architecture we'd glimpsed in our imaginings of Transylvania especially, steep-pitched steeples and gothic churches. It turned out that many places we visited were as dramatic as anything we'd seen in any movie: fortified churches dotted all over our drives in the middle of our trip, their wooden towers, medieval towns, farmers riding atop huge piles of grass pulled by a horse or two, mountains in every direction, and much more.

Our itinerary was to drive first to Oradea (Nagyvárad), the next day to reach Sighişoara (Segesvár), then to visit a fortified church on our way to Sibiu (Nagyszeben), and, after stopping at the Hunyadi castle, to spend a final night in Timişoara (Temesvár) before heading home, a total of four nights.

We drove through Hungarian fields and past forests, through villages and  more fields, then crossed the border of Romania and were immediately met with smokestacks and potholes. The change was immediate and jarring. What we found throughout our visit through Romania was a casual melding of tremendous natural and architectural beauty and industrial decay.

Oradea was a great example of this.

Close to the border, Hungarian is spoken by many and signs and advertisements are largely bilingual, but proximity is not the cause: this is one of the areas that was long part of Hungary until the close of World War One. While we continued to try our Hungarian elsewhere, this was the only place where people didn't blink back at us and wait for some English.

The architecture was stunning here, familiar in its Austria-Hungarian roots and in examples of Art Nouveau. But I found myself twisting and dodging cars to get around the electric wires that were growing everywhere like black weeds, and so many buildings looked like they were in the middle of restoration abandoned years ago, facades held together in great swaths of dusty netting.

The main square of Oradea, painted, restored, a beautiful river cutting through it, tells one very fine story.

Other streets told another story, one telling of a glorious time past and slapdash modernity. Note the turret below, which looks to be held together with duct tape.

The grafitti at the base of this riverside building and its fading paint don't hide its grandeur.

This synagogue is impressive from any vantage point except the close one, where fallen timber and broken windows are all too evident.

We arrived in the late afternoon. The heat was in the mid-nineties, low for what we would experience the rest of the week. The girls were happy to stay in the hotel room playing with shower caps and bathrobes while I quickly explored and came back to get everyone for dinner. Our girls were happiest outside after the sun had fallen, true again the next few days; and when they discovered a ranging playground surrounded by statues and fountains. They wondered whether the playground was as good as the one in Salzburg. They said no.

Driving to Sighişoara, we pased numerous large, mutli-storied buildings with shining metal roofs built in an unfamiliar style, like the one below.

Churches are also being built with metal roofs in the region. This looks like copper. These two pictures, taken in what were essentially suburban villages, suggest there's some money coming in, but the wheres and hows remain a mystery.

There was nothing shiny about Sighişoara, one of the few medieval fortified towns still inhabited. The Transylvanian town has two and half as many people as Barcs, and so isn't very big, but it has an outsized draw. Artisans have been centered here since the Hungarian king invited German tradesmen to settle the region in the 12th century, and it still carries this tradition, craftsman chipping or firing or potting beneath tents inside the Saxon citadel, which is, in itself, worth visiting.

This is also the place where a Wallachian prince named Vlad Dracul lived in exile, and had a child who came to be known as Vlad Tepes, or Vlad the Impaler for running a pike through the anus and out the mouth, avoiding organs and prolonging death. Vlad III had been allied with King Mathias, perhaps the greatest and most successful Hungarian king, memorialized on the 1000 forint bill; but Vlad was later imprisoned in Visegrád by the same king when the Pope asked for a scapegoat to appease the Turks. In any event, Stephanie and I discussed it, and we decided that the Blood Countess Báthory Erzsébet (described in this entry) still seemed like a better source for Dracula than this warrior prince. The yellow building in the third picture below is considered Vlad III's birthplace.

Wandering the churches and courtyards and teetering gravestones of a beautiful old town was good, but it was also so hot. After a mountain of heat and a slightly less-muggy lunch in a stoned inner room, Stephanie and I left the girls in our hotel to play with more shower caps and bathrobes, returning for them in time for an evening dessert of pancakes and fruit.

 

From Sighişoara to Sibiu, we passed several fortified churches, but we cut down a country road to Biertan to visit one of the largest. We spent a long time looking out at the beautiful countryside hills surrounding the walls, at the friezes in the wood within the church, at a lock on one of the old doors, and then, longest of all, at the wood tower where the majestical bells rang and rang at noon, waiting for the woman Maisie spotted just before the tolling to emerge, and there she came, short and stocky, slacks and a pedestrian shirt and unfocused expression, trotting by us and down the hill.

 

We saw many hay carts along the way, but this picture, taken through a very buggy windshield, is my only depiction. The Romanian horse carts were plentiful, and different than ones we see in Barcs, which are capacious and boxy. In Romania, all the carts are small and angular, often seating five or more people nevertheless. I suspect that under this giant wad of grass is a surprisingly small frame.

My favorite place we visited came next: Sibiu. By the time we arrived, we didn't even take the kids out for a spin: we just let them play in their room while Stephanie and I walked the old town in the heavy sun. The churches towered over large, shapely squares, and the Carpathians stood tall in the distance.

Along our walk, Stephanie and encountered some very old churches hidden among rowhouses. Outside, crusty walls and wire and debris; inside, frescoes and stunning craft.

Outside this particular church, we also saw a port-a-potty with a logo that caught our attention. In Timişoara, we would see a similar picture on a bathroom door, with that demonstrative bend in the leg.

I was also charmed by the bicycle race that was occurring the day we arrived. Imagining the ride past medieval walls on cobblestone roads lined up some of my longings. 

Maybe if it weren't so hot, there'd be romance enough for the rest of us.

I was very excited the next day to stop off at the Hunyadi castle. This magnificent building has a replica in Budapest, and it's no wonder: it is the place where the great Hungarian king discussed above, Matthias Corvinus, grew up, and it is a marvel to behold. Earlier in the year when we talked about going to Romania, it was one of the images we collected and yearned to see in person.

But when we arrived in Hunedoara, we thought we had certainly come to the wrong town. This one had smelters and smoke stacks every few feet, an entire hillside shorn off for mining, the trees bitten and the sky grey. But turn the corner, and there, in the midst of it, is the great Hunyadi castle. From the turrets, through the arrow slits, over the battlements, not 500 meters away lie the dead factories and fallen churn of Soviet era steel production.

Inside the castle we heard Hungarian almost exclusively as buses of tourists came to visit. We all read about the bear pits and torture tower and the enslaved Turks who, when promised freedom, dug a well for 15 years and met with execution instead, and we wandered the old halls in wonder.

We didn't have to drive far to reach beauty again.

Finally we came to our last destination: Timisoara. We drove by this impressive cathedral without stopping, so ready were we to settle in after a long morning or driving and castling. 

I spent some time arguing with the hotel receptionist about what I did or didn't ask for, and later when we were better friends, we spent some friendly time reviewing what I did or didn't ask for; later still the receptionist talked to me about what I did or didn't ask for, and told me about his job and about how he has complained about the reservation software but no one listens because he is only a minimum worker. He also described hotel history, how it was taken by the communists to be used for State leaders, and how it reverted to the original owner who flipped it to a guy who flipped it to someone hoping to turn the rooms into apartments before he ran out of money and turned it into a hotel. Then we talked about what I did or didn't ask for again, and he told me he is always on the side of the guest.

We brought the girls out into the heat to eat dinner, dragging them from one square to another, hoping that the many sheltered tables being shot with mist like hothouse flowers would serve food, and finding that the many people happily sitting there were drinking only, or eating ice cream. Again, what would this experience be like without the heat? There was much to explore and find impressive, but the girls were miserable until we escaped into a basement pub and emerged in the growing dark.

For myself, I was fascinated by the little street scenes I observed walking by, the crowds of men playing chess, the remarkable graffiti, the policeman ticketing a man sitting on a bench, the large man in the small suit checking his engine, the bronze triple-chinned bust, the arrogant gaze of a monacled man with bare shoulders: there was much to see.

As before, with the angry sun going elsewhere, the girls livened up and we were happy once more. But when we pulled back into our driveway in Barcs for our last week before we return to the States, we were relieved to be home, the bend in the road and trees familiar, the house gates enclosing friendly yards and people who shout their hellos.