top of page
Search

Selling honey by the side of road.

Writer's picture: Charles PitherCharles Pither

As we get closer to the Romanian border and count down the kilometres (Lupetto is not only left-hand drive but also has a speedo and odometer in Km) we notice the trucks slowing in the inside lane, a territory that is usually our own. Soon they are nose-to-tail and slow to a crawl. The sign says RO 10km and they have now stopped completely, so we move out a lane and creep past – for 10Km – and then join the varied assortment of vehicles that are not HGV. A simply staggering number of trucks, many more than private carsor vans. For the first time we do have to show our passports, but are waved through without formality into welcoming landscape that is Transylvania.


The truck line crept with the pace of a flatworm through the customs sheds and bureaucracy. How ever long must they have had to wait? Certainly, days not hours. Poor sods, we thought. Who’d be a truck driver? And yet trucks dominate the roads in this part of Eastern Europe.




We chose a rather odd itinerary, as a direct route would have bypassed any of the beautiful or interesting parts and would have been on roads stuffed full of trucks. So, we took a meandering route towards the town of Deva which had a lakeside campsite that looked promising. The road was green-fringed and reasonably surfaced, with a semi-defunct railway bordering it, ducking and diving into proximity. The electric gantries are rusty and broken, so too we noticed, were the grid pylons slanting up the hillside. The sun shines, but the driving isn’t easy because, you guessed it, there are too many trucks. The problem with trucks is two-fold. Firstly, because we are quite wide and lumbering, on narrow roads it is quite important that oncoming HGVs they keep to their side of the bargain, which they seldom do. Secondly, Carolyn squirms and writhes gripping the furniture each time one approaches, which does not make for relaxed motoring.



Surprisingly we see a train clanking along the line. Well stationary actually, but you get the point.

We pass through villages marked on our sketchy map, but they disappoint. A few roadside houses, square, single story, red tiled roof, a tiny patch of something green on either side, perhaps a rose bush, or interestingly Hemerocallis which is ubiquitous. Then a dilapidated one, then one joined to the other. Mostly there did not appear to be other roads running parallel to ours, so the village was really just a few houses along the main road. That was it; that was Lipova and Birchis and Capilnas. Where was the church, the shop the pub, the Hotel de Ville? Where was the village green or the square, or just a table chairs with a few locals passing the time of day? I couldn’t figure it. Where did the inhabitants buy things? Well it wasn’t online from Amazon that was for sure. The truth is that they really didn't buy things.














Arvad is a terrible place, unfinished bridges, broken roads and a site which to me has become the hallmark of this part of our journey – the cathedrals of communism. Every larger town or city has a huge crumbling concrete monolith surrounded by the detritus of industrial decay. Rusty windows and girders, abandoned derelict vehicles, heaps of rubble, shattered windows. These desolate edifices are ubiquitous and depressing. And then you think you see another, but it is a block of Soviet era flats. Start, grimy, unkempt, impoverished and apart from the dilapidations, identical to the next block in the next road or next city.



How large an organisational structure can one dislike with any degree of validity? I mean, one can dislike a family, probably a company or organisation, perhaps a town or even a city, but even then, one would be making massive generalisations – of course there will be good bits. A country? It’s just that I am not sure about Romania.



I’ve heard many speak of the beauty of rural Romania, and certainly we passed through some very lovely hills and scenery even on our truncated sojourn, but is that enough? Is it enough to remark on the fact that they still have donkey carts or cut the hay by hand, when what they have nothing and what they really need is a decent education, a proper job and a nice home?





There is minimal tourist infrastructure here. You can’t rely on a hotel by the roadside or even a meal in a restaurant. For the most part there is nothing, except a subsistence existence and a suspicious view of the world. We saw this last year in Albania; a sort of learnt helplessness combined with a dodgy opportunism, so well adumbrated by Robert Carver in his book The Accursed Mountain. Romania under Ceausescu was a ghastly place but his shadow still casts its pall. One tries not to dislike people on account of their parents but I found Romania hard to like.


We found our lakeside campsite and were enthusiastically welcomed by the Italian speaking concierge. We parked up and swam in the cool lake while the weekenders barbecued, partied and drank litres of beer at 1€ a pint.



The next day we drove back to make a reacquaintance with the Danube as we headed for Bulgaria, the main routes cloyed with multinational trucks. But there are perks for the thousands of un-thanked truckers who underpin the EU economy. In every layby or roadside halt is a scantily clad girl for sale. Not the honey we buy at the roadside in Greece. Not the most appealing aspect of an unappealing country.



104 views4 comments

Recent Posts

See All

4 Kommentare


g.tudor-williams
06. Juli 2020

Catching up on the blogs a little belatedly. The one involving Boris should have come with a public health warning. Not only did it mention the B word several times more than is humanly decent, but within two paragraphs 14,001 people had had their eyes gouged out. In the immortal words of Dylan Thomas, Boris took a dim view of 'no good Boyars'. But in another context altogether, it was Dylan Thomas who wrote 'Blind eyes could blaze like meteors...'

Am hoping the next chapter in the blog (if blogs have chapters) will take us to a sunnier place. You have done for the Romanian tourist industry what Priti Patel has nearly succeeded in doing for the UK tourist industry…

Gefällt mir

andrew.dicker31
02. Juli 2020

About 20 years ago I was driven by a Romanian psychiatrist from Bucharest to Mercurea Cuic, somewhere in the North, for a conference in a converted monastery. At that time there seemed to be only one road in the country running from South to North, and back, via Brasov, a ski resort in winter. The fields were full of women wearing brightly coloured drapery harvesting potatoes, the staple diet. The agriculture was medieval then and sounds like it has not changed. Congratulations on finding another road! The depressing communist apartment blocks were sold to their occupants in a post-Ceausescu initiative. To maintain the blocks they need the agreement of all the occupants, which turned out to be impossible, so the…

Gefällt mir

carole.pither
01. Juli 2020

Obviously nothing has changed since the Keraban expedition or my trucking adventures in 1999. It took 27 hours to clear customs. Pete says he once spent 3 days in a queue that long.

Gefällt mir

Peter Wade
Peter Wade
01. Juli 2020

Deliciously depressing Pither. Beautifully written. The scantily clad girl you photographed with arms outstretched seemed to have waited so long a statue had to be erected for her. . Mary Fergus had a similar problem I remember.

Gefällt mir
0fed45a4-57ca-4efb-8527-b2f01aed99fe.jpg

About Us

Charles Pither and Carolyn Horton live in as much sin as possible in a windy house on a hill in Buckinghamshire with two dogs, a peculiar cat and lots of old cars.

 

 

© 2023 by Going Places. Proudly created with Wix.com

Join My Mailing List

Thanks for submitting!

  • White Facebook Icon
bottom of page