Summer East – Romania

It’s round 5 pm but we choose to cross the border to look for a place to sleep. I would define the impact with the new country as disconcerting, security checks are absurd, we see police rummaging in car trunks, checking suitcases, randomly opening some of them . When it’s our turn, besides checking documents, they register the bike and ask us why we are there and which route we plan to do. We say goodbye to the Danube and releasing the clutch I exit the customs area. A signpost at the entrance of the city indicates road 67 that goes north to Targu-Jiu and, while observing some goats freely grazing along the road, we convince ourselves that, regardless of the hour, it is best to do some more kilometres.
The 80 kilometres that connect the two Romanian cities are the most peculiar and unexpected of the trip. We enter Romania and we see only underdeveloped rural villages, sewers next to the roads, animals and many stray dogs roaming everywhere. At the beginning, as when we were in the Albanian interior, we discuss poverty, pointing out the man with the pitchfork, the woman with the cow, the bare-foot child, the free goats on the streets. Then, at a second time, poverty makes us think, and I proceed in silence, at thirty kilometres an hour, among the looks that stare at me as if I were a spaceship. The sun is setting and during the last hour of light I do the last kilometres to reach Targu-Jiu, people from rural villages become city-dwellers and the suburbs first, the lights of the centre later, mix poverty with movement and traffic of Dacias.

The following morning we move north-west along a nice main road that connects Brasov with Sighisoara. As for Sibiu, we are astonished by its beauty and we feel like recommending and including it in a Romanian tour. You can feel the Saxon influence here, in its name and the city’s architecture and fortifications. It’s a gloomy day and while walking in the narrow Medieval streets of Sighisoara, we feel we are in the land of vampires, from the city’s highest point we look down to the church and cemetery (Biserica din Deal) and we understand how Dracula’s story was born here. We move on towards the heart of Romania, the Carpathians’ range is well behind us and there are only green hills that take us on a nice main road to Targu Mures first and then Cluj Napoca. Following back roads (1J) after Gilau we get on the 1F: a very pleasant road, good bends and excellent tarmac that crosses the northern forests of Transylvania up to Zalau.
This city is not exactly a ‘must’ but climbing a few kilometres up a hill to the east you can find Porolissum. This place is certainly worth a visit as Roman ruins are set in beautiful natural surroundings and the view is 360°… No wonder this was the last Roman outpost of the area, with a road that connected to Rome and the rest of the Empire.

We follow the river west, Ukraine is in front of us but we go south, until we reach the nice village of Sapanta, famous for its painted cemetery and for a nice modern wooden church which is 75 metres high. We leave the village and go towards Satu Mare, from which we then enter Hungary at the Petea border crossing.
Hungary is immense and flat, we could see that from the map but now we are here, entering from North-East we see it first hand. After Mateszalka we find the motorway and kilometre after kilometre I could tell you about forests and Alpine roads… But this is already our Europe.