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To lose its generally accepted ideas

Romania

To show itself well our friends the customs officers we took the practice to exchange a minimum of two or three words in their language with them plus a smile
Is your mother it well?
And your dog?
Not, more seriously one especially tries to learn with each passage from border small basic formulas from the type, hello, goodbye, thank you.

For Romania it is Buna siwa, the arreveder, multsu mess with reading in phonetics... or thank you all bonnement. The customs formalities filled and proud of the first official plug on our passport we start AKdyane to conquer Romania and to overcome Dracula! It is 2H00 morning.
By Loïc precaution took the wheel. Romania it knows to have already come there in 1996. It knows in particular how to be caught there with the carts which emerge nowhere, and the holes which bar you the roadway to be broken into two your axle.
Me Romania I do not know, and I penetrate there with stereotypes full the head.
I open large my opened wide eyes because the night is black, which does not make that to accentuate my anguish. Difficult to feel at ease when there are as much people everywhere. Everywhere people who look at you, everywhere abandoned dogs bursting the flagstone. I am anxious and donot can what think. For me basic franchouillard, Romania is summarized with 22millions gipsies and pick-pocketing, it is all.

The first minutes in this country disaster victim are sufficient to validate my very Western and French opinion, that in the East there is nothing bon…
After some hesitations on the place to choose to sleep, we decide to stop the car not far from the Hungarian border with Pecica. There is light, TIR (Road International Transport) transporting sheep and pigs, a hotel, that seems attended and more or less kept. It is good one can stop. In order to avoid any muddle with the hotel (zero star), we will warn the gatekeeper who we sleep there. He nicely makes us include/understand with gestures the place where we must park ourselves. He returns 5 minutes later with a ticket of parking. Price: 1 euro. It is the price to pay to exist, all at least on a bit of paper, that reassures us...

The next morning the road is taken again. The trucks, which takes care it protected us from the inquisitive eyes, left late in the night for their destination. We continue our, Bucharest direction. I discover as we advance in the interior of the country, the landscapes surprising, but more still, I discover people. What I believed being yesterday evening of the robbers and the brigands, is actually poor people, but who work hard. I will learn thereafter in Bucharest, that the Roumanian does not make the sleeve and will never make the sleeve to live. On the other hand, all that it can sell it sells it, of the fruits of its kitchen garden, with cheese of its goats, while passing by the honey of its bees. Every morning, it leaves its table in own way graver on the edge of the national and draws up the fruits of its labour there, in waiting that somebody stops for buying to him.

Between the apprehension that I tested yesterday evening and what I feel this morning by driving the car, it is the day and the nuit… Romania opens with us into polychrome. The houses which border it national that we borrow are sumptuous colors and details hidden for that which can see them. The villages are stretched along the main roads with for any pavement against alley, out of ground very often, separated from the road by trees and a ditch, thus allowing, at the houses not to fall directly on the cars. The short cuts are as for them, in general, exclusively out of ground and very often deserve the turning. One can see there, which refuses to be seen since the road, namely the proud face of entire people.
I make knowledge, with the first carts drawn by one even two horses, with Dacia (Rumanian car, repurchased in 1999 by Renault) and with the cows in the ditch of the roads.
We make our second halt with Sibiu on one of the places of the low city. We are already much intrigued by the ceaseless activity of the Roumanians. Of each with dimensions of us, sleep of Dacias. They do not seem any more to have rolled since the end of the communist mode, us will thus not be located, it is on! One falls asleep on the intestines of cow which we had eaten at the time of our stop with Axente Sever (40 km of Sibiu). Rumanian speciality has one says us, they are delicious. The alarm clock the next morning is fast because, here, the activity of the city starts as early as it finished late.
Sibiu will be our first Rumanian amazement. City in which Dracula remained 1 year and us one night. We visit it all the morning of July 11 (happy birthday with Sophie with the passage).
Sibiu is a marvellous city with its coloured houses and its small run under the arbour and it is managed by a German mayor.
There exists, indeed, in Romania a German colony remained after the occupation of the 10th century. They are called the SASI (Sachi delivery) or SAS in the singular. These German preserved their name of origin and are very well integrated into the Rumanian population.

At the exit of the city, a small village draws our Boita attention, funny of nom… Superb orthodoxe church in restoration. The village was cotisé to give it on foot, any help of the government bus too many requests and other priorities undoubtedly.
The presence of water in these villages is omnipresent, not running water well on, but a multitude of artesian wells. Men, women, children all, each day will seek water with the puit. For luckiest of enter them, the puit is in their garden. The water drudgery it is fortunately also the occasion of speaking with the neighbor or her buddy.

We arrive to Bucharest to midnight. The calamitous state of the roadway reminds to us that France is already far behind. It is not rare to have to make a yaw by-Ci a yaw by-there. Only everyone made the same thing here, therefore all is well. Rupert a friend of Loïc offers his hospitality to us. A room and an office with a connection Internet in under grounds, entirely renovated, the but suffering one of atrocious problem of moisture.

Thursday July 17 16h30 we leave Bucuresti for Tulcea (Delta of the Danube). One summoned us to return to us there in this part of Romania.
"will find there You all the problems conceivable and unimaginable concerning water", explain us Gelu and Bianca two friends Rumanian who want us good. In Tulcea we will sleep besides in the parents of Gelu the one night time or two.

On the road of Tulcea, the landscape and the villages are always also astonishing, of the zones seriously disaster victims are next to villages and superb points of sights. After 4 hours of road, one badly did not lose oneself while leaving Bucaresti… we decide to stop us to make a control of routine of the levels of oils, brakes and engines. Loïc is occupied of the brakes, I occupy itself of the engine. All is ok, one sets out again. After two minutes of road the car starts to spit a black smoke of all the devils. Holds?? Can be although I would have forgotten to close this rotten stopper of the oil tank say myself I all bas… Useless to open the cap to make a state of the damage. The engine all is bonnement salopé of oil, which gives place to an argument of routine. Nothing good engraves one knows it, just what défouler a little mutually. One was afraid for the engine veiled all. Now it is hoped that a thing it is that this unpleasant burned oil odor is transformed into caramelized sugar odor. We burst hunger, a package of chips for any meal, that sharpens the nerves and the crocs…

Arrived at Tulcea at 1H30 of the morning, we have appointment with the father of Gelu in front of the hotel "Delta". His/her father is old against-espionage under the mode of Ceausescu. Today he is a colonel in the Gendarmerie responsible for the district of Tulcea and his surroundings. One wonders a short moment about his past in against-espionage. It has awaited us well for two hours bus on we have delay. He and his wife is adorable people, it speaks like Minine the woman about Mickey, speaks to him little. There remains beside us quiet if he does not have anything to say. When silences are too long it smiles. We feel that he wants to be quite simply to hold us there company. We remain on their premises until Saturday afternoon, just time to meet a family living on banks of the delta (cf drives delta of the Danube).

We leave Tulcea with the regret to say to us that we leave Romania, country ignored and mésestimé. We are sad to especially leave these children who run us afterwards in the street and who laugh while seeing passing our car. We had taken the practice to answer their great smile by two blows of horn and the signs of the hand. The hours of glory deserved well of Adrienne we did not know it pas… ended; We sleep on a carpark close to Constanta, city balneal of the Black Sea. We take again the road the following day for the Bulgare border.

Newspaper from the 10 to July 20, 2003 writing by Geoffroy

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