Arto's Blog

My trip to Moldova was great. It was originally planned to last for one week but became 12 days of having good time with friends, seeing some extraordinary places and tasting local delicacies, naturally including several different variants of world renowned Moldovan wine.

Getting to Chisinau (the capital of Moldova) from Iasi (in Romania) was a bit chaotic. I had checked at the bus station that there should be a bus at 14:00. However, at the information desk people instructed me to go 1 km away to a parking lot used by minibuses. The minibus driver wouldn't take me because I didn't have a visa and pointed that I should go with another man in a normal car. They said that the nearest border crossing used by the minibus wouldn't have a consulate, although I had checked from the web that there should be one. It all sounded exactly like an arrangement to rip off stupid tourists, but at least I got a fairly reasonable price quote of 35 lei (10 euros) which I wrote on a piece of paper.

In roughly an hour the man got the car full of other passengers (which were all Moldovans) and started the car. After that everything went fine. At the border crossing a young officer kindly instructed me to write "National day of wine" as the purpose of my visit, and I got a visa for 19 days free of charge immediately on the spot. Questions about a return ticket (which I didn't have), the amount of currency I had or other things mentioned in the visa formalities weren't asked. In Chisinau the driver offered to take me to any location I wanted and the price was the one agreed at the time of departure. My first evening in Moldova ended with a delicious meal with friends. The food was mamaliga, a corn based traditional dish in Romania and Moldova, served with meat, fresh cheese, smetana, garlic and wine.

The wine festival was a two-day event where all the major wine producers would come to city center to present their products. There was also a stage with traditional music and dance performances. The festival was mostly to celebrate new wine which some stands offered for free, others charging nominal amounts such as one Moldovan lei (about 0.07 euros) per cup. Older wines were available in bottles but I was a bit surprised that there wasn't any organized tasting of them. Perhaps it took place in some of the restricted areas which seemed to welcome mostly invited guests dressed in suits. Well, we shopped a variety of snacks from the long array of food stands and shared a bottle of 1994 Cabernet (about 2.5 euros) for lunch.

The most special place during my visit in Moldova was Orheiul Vechi. It's an almost 1000 year old cave monastery about 60 km north from Chisinau. The monastery itself was interesting but the real treat was the location. The monastery cave was situated near the top of a hill surrounded from three directions by a deep valley. A river flowed slowly in the bottom of the valley. The views from the monastery hill as well as from the cliffs on the other sides of the valley were fantastic. Surrounding villages were some of the pretties I've seen on the whole trip, with colourful houses, gardens and wineyards.

I went to Orheiul Vechi together with Erte, a Lithuanian guy who had come to Moldova by bicycle through Belarus and Ukraine. I had left mine in Bacau but borrowed a bike from one of my friends in Chisinau. We spent the first night in Erte's tent camping by the river, but on the second day asked the monk in the cave church if we could stay in the monastery. He welcomed us there and we had an unforgettable evening first cooking dinner outside on the stone terrace in moonlight, and after that listening to the monk's apocalyptic visions of the future inside the church. He was talking in Russian and Erte translated for me. We slept on the church floor and woke up to the morning ceremony conducted by the monk and a woman who apparently also lived there.

To be honest I had slightly higher expectations for the wine festival but Orheiul Vechi and other things more than made up for it. We went for walks and to see some nightlife in Chisinau with Natalia, one of the friends I had met in Slovakia, and a few other friends. Later she invited me and Erte to spend a couple of days in her small town where she lived with her parents. There it seemed that we were eating all the time, but a peek in the cellar assured us that we wouldn't be making a too big hole in their stocks for the winter. They also had home made wine as almost all Moldovans in the countryside seem to do - it's a pride of the country. If you're traveling there just ask around in a village and people will be happy to sell you some for around 0.5 euros per liter. Having a chance to visit the wine cellar and taste their best stuff is another story, that's kept for family and friends.

Now I'm back in Bacau in Romania and will stay for a couple of days waiting for Erte who'll make the trip here by bicycle. Then we plan to travel together for some time, maybe until Turkey.

Added 2007-03-22: See also the picture gallery.

Last week I crossed the Eastern Carpathians from Transsylvania to the region of Moldavia. On the way there were still two places which deserve a special mention. At Lacu Rosu, a landslide pushed trees to the lake long ago. Still today dozens of dead tree stumps stick out from the water creating an odd landscape. Soon after Lacu Rosu, the road went through the impressive Bicaz gorges, some 300 meters high walls on both sides of the road. In certain places the road actually was partly below the rock.

That was my farewell to the mountains for a while: after Bicaz the landscape turned into hills and later to flatland. My picture this time is from Pipirig, one of the villages where I could admire traditionally decorated houses. Some typical features are visible in the photo: a two-part gate featuring both a larger and smaller entrance, decorations on the walls and roof edges, and the ubiquitous horse-drawn carriage. I cannot count how many of them I've seen on this trip. The carriages normally move at about 10-15 km per hour, so usually at least ten times per day I find myself behind one. I take a look at my mirror making sure that no cars are right behind, and then accelerate to overtake as fast as possible.

In Moldavia I also went to see a couple of beautiful religious sites, namely the Neamt and Agapia orthodox monasteries. Although the trip was not a religious pilgrimage for me, the places were certainly worth a visit. I especially liked the Vovidenia hermitage close to the Neamt monastery and the older part of the Agapia monastery on top of a hill, featuring a pretty wooden church surrounded by a garden full of flowers.

At Lacu Rosu I also met Nelu, an avid cyclist who has traveled with the Romanian professional cycling team in many places around the world, working as a bicycle mechanic or volunteer organizer in the competitions. I got his contact info from a Romanian friend in Finland. It was very nice to spend a couple of days cycling with him, he was kind enough to reduce his normal average speed by about 10 km/h to match mine. :-)

At the moment my bike is at Nelu's apartment in Bacau and I'm on a short side trip using public transport. The main destination of this trip is an European capital - Chisinau in the Republic of Moldova! In Slovakia during Ecotopia biketour I met some Moldovans who are waiting for me there, and there's a big wine festival this weekend. I'll head to the border tomorrow, armed with a printout of a web page which says I should be able to get a visa free of charge, conveniently because of the festival. Well, I'll see what happens.

Last weekend I celebrated my 29th birthday hiking and camping out in the wild. The picture is from the top of Mt. Pietrosul, the highest peak of the Calimani mountains. At 2102 meters above sea level it's not very high, but the views were still great. And I had great company plus chocolate pudding for the birthday breakfast. :)

After a couple of days in Targu Mures and the Calimani mountains I rode 50 km south to the town of Sighisoara. It was a pittoresque town, no surprise as it's included in the Unesco World Heritage list, but one afternoon and morning was enough for me to see it. Today I continued further east to Odorheiu Secuiesc or perhaps I should rather say Szekelyudvarhely, which is the Hungarian name. Most of the inhabitants here are ethnic Hungarians and that's by far the most common language heard on the streets too. Unfortunately I've already forgot some of the words I learned in Hungary, and I find it difficult to set my mind to "Hungarian mode" as I've tried to pick up at least a few words of Romanian during the last three weeks.

An interesting detail told me by Erika, my host in Targu Mures (who was also Hungarian), was that you can often distinguish Romanian and Hungarian houses by the color of the gates. Blue gates are Romanian, green ones Hungarian and others could be either. Red seems to be a common color too, I saw a lot of red and green gates today when riding through villages.

My bike also had a special day today, as the odometer went over the 30000 km mark. Roughly half of the parts have been changed at least once since I bought it but it has still seen a lot of road for a bike. On this trip I'm at 4540 km and will add about 90 tomorrow riding to Lacu Rosu, yet another mountain lake which should be a beautiful place.

As a technical note, my site has been moved to a new server which uses a more recent version of php. This finally resolves an annoying bug with the admin interface of the blog software. If you notice that something has been broken due to the upgrade, please drop me a line.

Last Tuesday I was cycling in Northern Transsylvania and planning to camp or stay in a pension somewhere by lake Colibita, a beautiful mountain lake next to the Calimani mountains. The road was following the lake shore but from a few dozen to a couple of hundred meters away from it. I took a smaller road which seemed to lead towards the shore through a small patch of forest, hoping to find a place to camp or at least take a swim.

I indeed found the shore, but also about one hundred sheep, a few dogs and two shepherds there. They were quite surprised to see such an unusual visitor. I greeted them and we exchanged a few words in Romanian using the very limited vocabulary I had learned from my phrasebook during the trip. Then I asked if I could camp somewhere nearby. After pondering for a few moments they pointed at two houses saying that a third shepherd had a free room and I could sleep there.

In a moment I found myself in a small but beautifully decorated guest room. It had a separate entrance from the house and looked like it might be a room to rent for agroturistic holidays. I'm not sure if that was the case (I didn't see any signs indicating that), but at least this time they wouldn't accept any money when I offered to pay for the room.

The shepherds went back to take the sheep in a fenced area for the night. I had some bread, cheese and fruit for dinner and walked out to the lakeshore which made the dogs go wild for a while. The shepherds were still within eyesight so I wasn't too scared of the dogs but I abandoned my plans for swimming. After a while the owner of the room came and asked me to turn off the small lamp - the house didn't have electricity and the lamp was being powered by the tractor battery! I switched to my own headlamp, put my own bedsheet on top of the bed and was just about to start writing my travel diary as the owner came back and invited me to have a drink.

It was a bit more than one drink. I joined the dinner of the shepherds which consisted of several cups of home made palinka (a kind of aperitif) followed by soup, meat, vegetables and wine. I tried to share some of the food I had but they wouldn't even want to taste salmiakki. ;) This was one of the occasions where I really wanted to be able to speak the local language, but even without many common words we managed to communicate a little bit. In the morning I was still treated to a similar breakfast (well, with a bit less palinka) before I was let on the road again. I left an origami swan, which seemed to be a funny thing to them, as a small memory and got their address so that I can send at least a postcard later.

This was not the only case of Romanian hospitality I've encountered during my trip. Near Gherla I met two local cyclists and we rode about 30 kilometers together. One of them, Alin, invited me to stay for the night at his home with his grandparents and I also there I was offered delicious meals and food to go on the trip. In the Apuseni mountains I met Michael from Germany and Tibi from Romania (but who was living in Germany), had a dinner with them and later also met Tibi's wife in Bistrita. I came to Romania with few contacts and little knowledge of the country but I seem to meet wonderfully friendly people all the time.

Now I'm in Targu Mures, staying with Erika, a Hospitality Club member. She loves mountains and tomorrow we're going for a weekend trip to Calimani mountains together with three other friends of her. I'll see if I'll meet more foxes or other animals there. :)

I was camping in a beautiful place by a small river in the Apuseni mountains, Romania, close to the Padis mountain hut. I had spent a good part of the afternoon climbing uphill narrow and bumpy gravel roads, resulting in a record low 9.0 km/h average speed during the 37 km of cycling that day. After that I had put up my tent, cooked a dinner and was looking at maps and writing my travel diary in the tent.

Around ten o'clock in the evening I heard small noises next to the tent. I opened the zipper and popped my head out without seeing anything special. After a few minutes the noise came back, this time clearly indicating that something tried to get inside the tent. I put on my shoes, grabbed my headlamp and went out, finding a pair of eyes staring at me in the moonlight about 10-15 meters away. It was a fox which had just stolen the plastic bag containing my half-full tuna can. Running towards the animal and making some noise made it run away in the forest, without dropping the catch.

I went back in the tent, but after about an hour heard noise again. Oh yes, I had some salami inside one of my bicycle panniers a few meters away from the tent. It was properly wrapped inside two plastic bags and then packed in the pannier, but the smell was certainly strong enough for the fox to notice. Quite persistent was the fox - I took some photos using flash just meters away and it was still trying to get inside the pannier. Moving yet closer and making noise made it to run away.

Experienced trekkers are probably already trying to hide their smile behind their beard. It's common wisdom that food shouldn't be stored inside or right next to the tent. However, having mainly camped on campsites where it's convenient to gather all your gear as near to you as possible, or having been lucky when camping in the wild, it just didn't occur to me that time. I was glad it wasn't a wolf or a bear, but also happy that due to the mistake I got some nice pictures of the fox. :)

My next step was to carefully pack all the food and related items such as the trash bag and hang them up to tree branches as high as I could reach, away from the tent of course. The fox came still back at least once, but after not getting anything eventually gave up.

Besides the fox, I saw some impressive gorges and caves in the Apuseni mountains. More about them when I get my pictures sorted, which never seems to occur in a timely fashion. I've also been in two cities, first in Oradea right after the Hungarian border and now in Cluj-Napoca at the western edge of Transsylvania.

Riding through the Romanian countryside I'm clearly an odd sight, even more so than in Poland or Slovakia. On the roads shared by pedestrians, horse carriages, hens, ducks, dogs, cows and nowadays also an increasing number of cars, a touring cyclist doesn't exactly blend in the crowd. I've taken the habit of waving my hand and saying hello in the local language to the people standing next to the road and looking curiously at me.

Traffic on the main roads and in cities has been a bit wilder than in the previous countries I crossed, with the exception of Kaliningrad, where it was comparable. I need to pay attention, as it only takes one bad accident to end the whole trip, but I haven't found it too bad yet. Small roads have been fairly quiet. People have been friendly and I've liked it a lot this far. The only sad thing has been the large amount of trash carelessly thrown in the nature. Most of the young Romanians I've met mention it too, it seems to disturb many of them as well. Maybe that's an indication that it'll change in the future. I hope so, the country is too beautiful to be spoiled by trash and other pollution.