Timișoara, Romania

Timișoara, Romania

The night passed relentlessly by. The empty black fields of the Transylvanian plateau were invisible from the dimly lit railway carriage. Every now and then, a lone weary traveller would rise wearily to their feet, retrieve a small piece of luggage and shuffle through the train to alight at some remote outpost and trudge off into the foggy darkness. I was not meant to be here. I should have been on a small bus approaching the outer limits of the western Romanian city of Timișoara. Instead, thanks to the confusing setup of Brașov’s various bus stations and my fundamental inability to be in four places at once, I was here, circumnavigating most of Transylvania in the hope of reaching Cluj by early morning, and there securing passage southwest to Timișoara. I had had a restless night and was dismayed that the final day of my trip was being cut short by however long it would take me to find a bus and get to my intended destination.

At Dej, north of Cluj, I had to change train. My tired brain failing me, I lost the ability to conjure up a phrase in pidgin Romanian, and instead gesticulated vaguely to the girl sitting beside me that I wanted her to move so that I could leave the train. Thinking I must have been a Hungarian, she began addressing me in that language, at which point I said in English that I didn’t understand her. Thankfully, she spoke that too; she was another of the many young Romanians I have come across who are fluent or at least advanced in two, three, or even four languages. We established that we were both bound for Cluj, although she was unaware of the need to change train to avoid ending up further north at Baia Mare. It was a massive stroke of luck for us both, as I convinced her we needed to move, and she spoke the local tongue and could confirm with the guard. Had I not been with her, I would have been sitting on the platform in Dej for a while because I thought the Cluj train was a later arrival. In fact, we merely needed to move forward a few carriages to board one that had been couple onto this train somewhere between Brașov and here.

Taking her large suitcase, I stepped gingerly off the train, and she followed with my smaller and lighter bag. The carriage we needed was two or three in front of us. To our shock horror, the train began moving off and we ended up sprinting as fast as was possible with the luggage we had, in the hope of scrambling up the metal steps and diving into the carriage. All the action films I had ever seen of heroes catching up with moving cars, rushing trains or even outrunning planes taking off, came to mind as the adrenaline flooded my body and I desperately tried to avoid being left behind.

This carriage, the rearmost of the Cluj train, was simply uncoupling itself from the Baia Mare train. After getting ourselves on board, we stood panting and looking dishevelled in the corridor, clutching each other’s bags, the victory of reaching the train turning hollow as it again slowed to a halt having successfully unhitched itself. Never mind. There is some kind of inseparable bond that connects two complete strangers who have shared a short and dramatic adventure such as this, regardless of the fact that it was proved unnecessary in the end. We had still ensured that we each reached our destinations.

The girl, Anamaria, and I had sat beside each other for hours and now had around ninety minutes of onward travel to get to know each other. She was glad of the opportunity to practise her English (which didn’t really need practising as far as I could tell) and was curious about what I was doing here. After all, it can’t be every day that a young Romanian student returning to university ends up dashing for a train alongside a young British traveller. I was far too sleepy, smelly and unwashed to represent myself well, but it was nonetheless welcome to have friendly company and genial conversation. Besides, it’s never a bad thing to have new contacts in places I would like to revisit, in her case someone in Cluj in addition to my friend Mihaela and her fiancé Adrian, and also a Hungarian speaker from the Székely Land.

We parted ways outside Cluj’s main station. As Anamaria headed for her student accommodation to begin another year of university, I crossed the railway line by a bridge I had previously walked over in May and had an innate sense of déjà vu as I approached the small bus station. Fittingly, it was a misty and rainy morning, the first case of bad weather since I had started this trip in Montenegro nine days before. After conferring with the woman at the information desk, I had an agonising wait as she couldn’t tell me until the bus was about to leave whether there would be any space for someone without a pre-booked ticket. This was somewhat ironic, since none of the many journeys I had made within any of the nine Balkan countries had been prearranged, bar the one I had missed in Brașov twelve hours earlier. There had never been any trouble in getting a ticket until now. At this rate, I could make it to Timișoara by 1700 and have a couple of hours of daylight to see as much as possible. Any later and there would be almost no point. The next bus wasn’t for a few hours. I would have stayed in Cluj had I not had an onward booking from Timișoara to Budapest, and from there to Prague.

Fortune was on my side, though, and a couple of minutes before the bus’ departure, I was told I could go. It was something of a shame that I had come to Cluj, so far out of my way, without spending more time there. Under the circumstances, though, with an existing booking from Timișoara and no certainty that I could travel from Cluj to Budapest that evening, it made sense to keep moving. I enjoyed reminiscing about my previous trip to the city as I passed through Cluj’s centre and then out along the same road that had taken me to Turda and its salt mine four months before. I do hope to return to Cluj and its surroundings on an occasion when I have properly arranged it.

A short way beyond Turda, I received a phone call and, hearing me speak, the girl beside me pricked up her ears having been trying to sleep. Another student from Cluj, she was going home for the weekend and wanted to practise her English. Predictably, she also knew multiple languages although her passion was unexpected, as she was hugely enthusiastic about Scandinavia and keenly explained how she was enjoying studying Danish and Norwegian. These were certainly odd choices, as neither languages are widespread and the vast majority of Scandinavians are extremely good at English. Romanians meanwhile, traditionally learn English and are often competent users of their close linguistic relatives French, Italian or Spanish, and a reasonable number of people know Hungarian. We therefore discussed this peculiar hobby as well as languages in general, amongst other things. She left the bus abruptly at her hometown of Alba Iulia and no details were exchanged. The rest of the day crawled by and I sat in silence and slept on and off as a cloudy morning gave way to a sunny and hot afternoon. We passed through Deva and Lugoj, the former having an impressive citadel perched on a volcanic outcrop. It would have made a wonderful leg stretch to leave the bus and climb to this castle that commanded this huge valley.

Piața Victoriei, Timișoara

The Orthodox Cathedral (Catedrala Mitropolitană) and the city's Capitoline Wolf

A fountain in the same square. On the left is the National Opera House

Finally, at 1700, I arrived in Timișoara, and found my hostel, dumped my bag and set to exploring as quickly as possible. Romania’s third city and the unofficial capital of the transnational region called the Banat, it was for two weeks in November 1918 the capital of the Banat Republic before its dissolution and incorporation into Hungary, Serbia and Romania. The Banat takes its name from the Turkic word ban, the title of the governor of a province or banate. In the middle ages, this area was a fringe region of Hungary, before spending a century and a half as an outpost of the Ottoman Empire and subsequently being once again a part of Hungary within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Like neighbouring Serbia’s northern province of Vojvodina, which is also named after a title (a vojvoda or duke) and which partially overlaps with it, the Banat is a rich region with a mixed range of settlers. Both Romanians and Hungarians have historically been found here, along with Serbs, Germans, Ukrainians, Croats, Jews, Slovaks, Bulgarians and Romani (less politely referred to as gypsies). Today’s city of 300,000 is overwhelmingly Romanian with 5% Hungarian population and just over 1% each of Germans and Serbs.

Its major claim to fame is as the birthplace of the 1989 Romanian Revolution that toppled the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu, and this itself was intrinsically linked to the heterogeneity of the local populace. To put it as concisely as possible, the government’s eviction of a popular Hungarian priest, László Tőkés, from his home in Timișoara sparked protests on 16^th December. These spread around the country and in Bucharest led to open conflict as Ceaușescu’s uninspiring speech to placate the masses was disrupted and the army began arming the citizens to take on the Securitate secret police. On 27^th December, two days after Ceaușescu and his wife were executed, the revolution came to an end and communism was no more in Romania. I had no time to explore this story further at the museum dedicated to the revolution and its origins in Timișoara, but it was intriguing nonetheless to see where it all began.

Thankfully, the city centre is compact and easily navigated on foot. Its beautiful squares and buildings have earnt it the nickname Mica Vienă – Little Vienna – and it was evident that I had now come full circle. At the southwestern corner of the Banat, under three hours away, lies the Serbian capital Belgrade, the second stop of my travels earlier in the summer. And whereas many of the places I had visited in between on the grand anticlockwise loop I did are boldly Italian, Turkish or even Greek, Timișoara looks decidedly north and west, towards Central Europe. It was the perfect setting to end my tour.

Piața Libertății

A monument to St John of Nepomuk, Piața Libertății. He was martyred in 1393 when he was thrown from Prague's Charles Bridge and drowned in the Vltava river

Another, more modern, statue in Piața Libertății

Because of the brief time I was ultimately able to spend in the city, I had much less opportunity to explore thoroughly and speak to people to pick up local information. Instead, I spent the last ninety minutes of daylight walking around and savouring the final hours of freedom before the long journey back to Prague and work. The hostel I was in was right on Piața Victoriei, the central square, where Timișoara’s Capitoline Wolf is (one of at least a couple of dozen in Romania), and its tall, striped, almost slightly Moorish-looking Orthodox Cathedral (Catedrala Mitropolitană). Two other major squares, Piața Libertății and Piața Unirii, are to the north. The latter is an open plaza with a grassy area at its heart, encircled by gorgeous architecture exemplified by the Baroque Palace (Palatul Baroc), the Serbian Church (Biserica Sârbească) and the Catholic Cathedral of St George (Catedrala Sfântul Gheorghe). Further on are the red brick walls of the city’s bastion, after which I followed the narrow, almost canalised Bega river through a succession of parks, all of which were teeming with families. The leafy trees overhanging the path, the children playing, and the small boats passing by reminded me of cycling along the Regent’s Canal in London years before.

Baroque buildings, Piața Unirii

The Serbian Church (Biserica Sârbească), left, in Piața Unirii

The Baroque Palace (Palatul Baroc)

The Cathedral of St George (Catedrala Sfântul Gheorghe)

Timișoara's bastion

The Bega river

'You have time... love', on the pathway by the riverbank

Sunset over the Bega

Part of the way along my walk, I was stopped by a group of three – a couple of men and a woman – who clearly wanted to enquire about directions or some other mundane piece of information. Looking at them apologetically, I turned to the go-to Romanian phrases I had relied upon for so many days. ‘Pardon, nu inteligent. Eu sunt engleză.’ After half smiling respectfully and nodding a curt thanks, they went their way and I went mine. A seed of doubt was forming in my mind, and I resorted to the phrasebook I had downloaded onto my phone. Damn! I had meant to say ‘nu înțeleg’ – ‘I don’t understand.’ No wonder they had looked at me sympathetically. I had told them ‘I am not intelligent. I am an Englishwoman.’ Sometimes conforming to the stereotype of the Brit abroad who just speaks English loudly may actually be less embarrassing.

As the daylight dwindled and it became too dark for further sightseeing, it was fitting that I discovered one final thing about this place. On 12^th November 1884, Timișoara became the first European city, and second in the world after New York to have electric street lighting. I can only hope there is a pub quiz sometime in the future when this knowledge will come in handy.

Timișoara - the first city in Europe with electric street lighting

The evening provided some entertainment as Timișoara was hosting a weekend-long festival of Hungarian culture, so I was surrounded by people chatting away in that impenetrable, alien tongue. (I mean that with no disrespect; Hungarian is a grammatically complicated language unrelated to the Indo-European family to which most of the continents languages belong. English, and Romanian, are more closely related to Armenian, Tajik, Hindi, and Sanskrit than they are to Hungarian). Despite my utter inability to comprehend any of it, the rock music the band was playing was mellifluous enough to accompany the scrum of a queue I found myself in to get lángos, that icon of Hungarian cuisine, to eat. A pack of unfriendly, snarling scavengers were elbowing and shoulder barging their way towards the service counter of the most popular pop-up stall in the festival area. I had to fight to hold my place, clutching some of my last few lei as I clung on to receive my delicious prize. Not yet satiated, I returned to a neighbouring stand for a crêpe, which I ate slowly while enjoying the music, trying to make the most of one of the last balmy evenings of the year. It was now October, and before long, the wind, rain and dark days of winter would begin to take hold.

The National Opera House by night

The following morning, I was up in time to leave Timișoara at 0300, proceeding as the sole passenger of a car to Arad, where two others were picked up for the journey to Budapest. By the time I reached Prague in the evening, I was in a different world to Romania and the wonderful countries to the west and south that I had visited in September and June.

In that time, I had spent 22 days in 9 countries. I had travelled 3,139 miles, 80% of which was done by bus. I had covered a further 270 miles on foot as I explored the cities and natural environments of the Balkans. I had used 7 currencies, crossed borders 16 times and had my passport stamped on 6 of those occasions. I had read 2 alphabets and attempted to speak all 9 of the languages of the countries I went to, and only been told off for doing so once, in Serbia. The negative experiences paled into insignificance compared with the positive. I had been chased by dogs twice, unsuccessfully conned by a Bulgarian once, and I was also inconvenienced in my travel arrangements only once.

But the statistics are not what matters. The experience is. I didn’t go to ‘find myself’ or for any other superficial and sanctimonious reason. I travel because I enjoy it, because visiting new places is fun. I travel because I like learning and exploring, seeing new things, trying new foods, hearing and reading different languages, and getting in touch with history. The Balkan peninsula is unequivocally the very best place in Europe to do these things. It is a cliché, but the notion of a ‘land of contrasts’ is so apt. The dark history of the region during parts of the 20^th century and in many cases, throughout the ages, the negative connotations of words like ‘balkanisation’, only exist because of the richness of this land and the respective legacies of a multitude of peoples that have settled here. It is a remarkable place.

The full extent of my tour

Go there. I cannot recommend it enough. Whether it’s lounging on a beach in Croatia, hiking or skiing in Bulgaria or getting to grips with the atrocities of what happened in Bosnia, it is an unforgettable region. Moreover, including Romania, Greece and Albania, its total area is slightly smaller than Turkey, but here there are eleven countries for the price of one. A quick search shows there are single flights from London to Sofia for £10, to Bucharest for £5 and to Timișoara for just £4. Once there, accommodation and food hit the wallet much less hard than in France, Germany or Italy, whilst it is far closer and safer than Asia and doesn’t require any hassle acquiring visas or being inoculated against some tropical disease or other.

I for one still have another 14 European countries before I’ve visited them all, and 162 await me worldwide. Despite this, I already have a wish list of more places I’d like to see in southeastern Europe and am eagerly anticipating my next opportunity to make it there. Bosnia and Romania made their mark the most, but I’ve fallen in love with the whole region. Go there, and I guarantee you will too.

The view over Piața Victoriei from my hostel

Bran, Romania

Bran, Romania

‘We’re going on a bear hunt. We’re going to catch a big one. It’s a beautiful day. We’re not scared.’ So goes the central refrain of one of my favourite childhood story books, as its characters negotiate swishy grass, squelchy mud and a dark cave to track down the elusive animal they seek. Never had these words been more apt than the morning of my second day in Brașov, when I headed west to a bear sanctuary near the Transylvanian town of Zărnești. A short train ride for a couple of lei took me to the village of Tohanu Vechi, from which it was a walk of nearly an hour uphill through open fields to the edge of a forest, to reach the ‘Libearty’ sanctuary.

The short Brașov to Zărnești line took me past misty mountains in the early morning

The village of Tohanu Vechi

The Transylvanian countryside close to the bear sanctuary

The gravel road leads to the edge of a woodland, where the bears are

I had had to arrive in the middle of the morning because the bears were to be fed around noon, and no visitors are admitted after 1100. What with the walk and the infrequent running of the trains on this branch line, I had already been up for hours by the time I was admitted. However, it was thoroughly worth it.

Romania has a terrible record when it comes to animal welfare, but recent efforts have been made to improve the situation, particularly as part of the conditions of the country’s EU accession in 2007. Bears and other animals were long abused in circuses and substandard zoos. The sanctuary was set up as a shelter for rescued bears, to enable them to live out their lives in as comfortable and natural an environment as possible. The guide who led our group around was excellent, with a thorough knowledge of each individual bear’s story and a clear passion for helping to raise awareness of the awful conditions that had led to the sanctuary’s establishment.

The most heartbreaking tale was of a male whose had been kept in a very restrictive cage, causing his fur to become permanently damaged. His captors exhibited him chained up outside a castle, where he was a prop for tourists’ photographs. To keep him in a condition that was safe enough for humans to pose alongside him, he was constantly drugged with alcohol and other substances, and eventually blinded to make him even less aware of his surroundings.

Others had been likewise disfigured and were psychologically, if not physically, scarred from their ordeals. Often these involved being made to fight with other bears, or cruelly forced to ride bicycles for people’s amusement. None of these bears were in any state to be returned to the wild, and although many of them looked large, healthy and strong, they had insufficient knowledge of the forests to be capable of surviving alone. For this reason, the males had all been neutered to avoid any cubs being born, for these cubs would also have no ability to live independently.

One of the sanctuary's many brown bears

The sanctuary's wolf

This male had been blinded and kept drugged with alcohol to maintain a drowsy, harmless state

One or two were in solitary confinement because they were aggressive and possibly a threat to themselves and other bears, whilst a couple of males were isolated from the majority and fed copious amounts of food (largely bread, carrots and chicken) to fatten them up to as close to a normal adult size and weight as possible. Impressively, though, one enclosure had no fewer than a dozen bears, all wandering around close to the fence, and no doubt many more in the expanse of paddock that went into the trees. These bears would never have lived in such concentration in the wild, but here tolerated each other and lived contentedly in an environment that allowed them to walk on grass (not just concrete), climb trees and swim in ponds. It is a wonderful way to see bears in something close to their natural habitat, and all the better for the fact that the entrance fee helps support the programme to further recover bears from the inhumane conditions in which some are still kept. In all, there are around 80 bears at the sanctuary, almost entirely brown bears from Romania, but there is also a wolf and a couple of wild bears that were flown in from Georgia where they had been repeatedly encroaching upon a town.

These two bears were being kept isolated so they could fatten up before being released into an enclosure with other bears

Eleven bears enjoy a feeding frenzy

A magical Transylvanian scene: a tiny wooden chapel and a backdrop of mist covered mountain peaks

At the sanctuary, I met a couple of Americans who had flown from Pennsylvania to go on holiday in Romania, and had been exploring the southern Transylvanian mountains for a few days. They had come from Brașov by taxi, and we agreed to share a taxi to the place we were all coincidentally but unsurprisingly heading next, Bran Castle. This saved me an hour’s walk across an open valley, for which I was grateful. The taxi driver didn’t speak English and I was rather suspicious because his meter ‘didn’t work’. Practising my minimal Romanian, I established the price he would charge, which was reasonable for the distance, and in the end he kept his word.

Romanian is, by the way, an intriguing language. More than any I have come across, it seems that all its positive words sound pleasant – atrăgătoare (attractive), frumoase (beautiful) – and all its negatives sound ghastly – murdar (dirty), urât (ugly), rău (evil). I am particularly fond of the words pisică (cat), because it sounds endearing, cuțit (knife), because it looks and sounds like what a knife does, and minge (ball), for obvious and unashamedly immature reasons. Moreover, it has some beautiful connections that hint at a blunt, plain-speaking society, if not now then certainly in the past. Prime examples are seen in familial words, such as tată vitreg (stepfather), in which vitreg also means ‘cruel’, and copil (child), which stems from a Slavic root meaning ‘bastard’.

Rural scenery close to Bran

Bran Castle (Castelul Bran) is known far and wide as Dracula’s Castle. It is not. Historically, the castle was built by Saxon knights in 1377 due to its strategic location on a small outcrop commanding the entrance to a mountain pass. Vlad III of Wallachia, known as Vlad Țepeș (Dracula), passed through the valley but didn’t own the castle, nor was he a vampire. In literary terms, Bran Castle is also not the home of Dracula, because the Irish writer Bram Stoker, who authored Dracula in 1897, is not believed to have known about this castle’s existence. Stoker never visited Transylvania, though for his novel he did draw upon extensive research into Central and Eastern European myths and legends. His Dracula’s Castle was a fictitious fortress atop the 2,000 metre peak of Izvorul Călimanului, around 25 miles from Bistrița in the north of Transylvania. Regardless of the authenticity of Stoker’s story, his Dracula has done more than anything else to perpetuate a romanticised ideal of Transylvania, and has drawn in tourists for years.

Bran Castle, seen from the village

A stone cross featuring an inscription in the old Romanian version of the Cyrillic script, which includes several letters that are no longer used in any version of the alphabet

The castle has great views of the countryside to the north

Vlad III of Wallachia, 'Dracula', who neither lived at Bran Castle nor was a vampire. He was, however, rather fond of impaling people

Even though this wasn't the real life home of Dracula, Bran Castle does acknowledge that it's scary.
(Not really; the sign is warning about the stairs)

There is little to Bran besides the castle, and at its foot is a small market filled with vendors selling souvenirs at inflated prices. The castle is the only real sight, and it has an interesting history of its own, its strategic location meaning it was important during conflicts between the Hungarians and the Ottoman Empire. When this land was transferred from Austria-Hungary to Romania in 1920, the castle was passed into the possession of the royal family, although it was seized by the government when the communists took over in 1947 and Romania’s last king, Mihai I, was exiled. After the revolution in 1989, the castle was deemed to have been illegally appropriated and was returned to the Habsburg family, who subsequently opened it as a museum in 2009. Today, its Saxon-built mediæval structure houses a collection of furniture and personal effects belonging to the Romanian royals of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

One of the bedrooms of the castle

This rug looked to have had a somewhat less fortunate fate than the bears I'd met earlier in the day

A Cluedo-esque secret passageway connected the first floor with the third

A flat plain extends to the north of Bran

To the south is the beginning of a mountain pass that cuts through the Southern Carpathians (also known as the Transylvanian Alps), linking Brașov with Pitești

This tower isn't the castle's highest, but it is the most attractive

The inner walls of the castle surrounding its small courtyard are beautifully uneven and disordered

The two Americans and I found a shop selling lángos (fried flatbread), more evidence of Hungarian influence here, and then we took a bus back to Brașov. We then split up as they climbed Tâmpa mountain, as I had done the day before, but met up again for a meal in the evening. A relaxing couple of hours discussing our respective experiences of Romania and of Europe in general, as well as sharing our opinions on the then forthcoming American election, passed quickly. I gathered my stuff in plenty of time and went off to find the bus station I needed. To cut a long story short, I missed the bus. Brașov has a confusing set up, with the major stops all on the same road, and identified by a name and a number, although these two systems weren’t used consistently. The internet and the people I asked for advice contradicted each other, and in the end, with only a few minutes before departure, I called the number on my ticket. The woman at the other end spoke only Romanian. With a concerted effort to remember the key phrases I knew and the odd words I had picked up from elsewhere, plus a smattering of French and Italian words, I got the message about my situation across. She rather uselessly repeated the name of the bus station to me, and my attempts to describe my location didn’t prompt her to give any indication of where the bus stop was relative to my present position. In the end, I went to the most promising looking bus station, arriving ten minutes early. Unfortunately, my gamble hadn’t paid off and I now faced a dilemma.

I was trying to get to Timișoara, but not many buses served a route on the east-west road between Brașov and that city. I would have to call the hostel owner and ask for another night, and try again in the morning, although there would be no guarantee that I could get a bus onwards. I would end up trapped in Brașov, which admittedly is probably one of the nicest places in the world to be trapped, but it wasn’t convenient because I had to leave Timișoara in 36 hours’ time in order to return to my job for Monday morning. I proceeded to the railway station to see if there were any overnight trains in that direction, but there were just a handful left before the following morning. Even then, nothing was going directly due west. I ruled out taking one of the many trains south to Bucharest on the grounds that I could then be stuck a further two hours from where I needed to be, as it was uncertain whether it would be easier to get to my destination from there or not.

One last option remained; Baia Mare. Frantically looking for it on the map, I found it was far to the northwest, close to the borders of Ukraine and Hungary. Not necessarily any better than here. However, Cluj wasn’t far south, and that city is something of a regional hub for northern Romania. There was every chance I could get a bus to Timișoara, and if not, I was much better poised to get to Budapest on Sunday and make my connection to Prague. I bit the bullet, and at 2345 I finally waved goodbye to the wonderful city of Brașov, exhausted from a long day and not likely to get a good sleep tonight. I needed to stay alert to avoid oversleeping and missing the connection I had to make at the town of Dej. Moreover, on my last overnight train journey, I had been robbed, so I was anxious to remain vigilant. An uncomfortable night passed. The next day would be my last in Romania, my last in the Balkans (if Transylvania and the Banat can still be considered as such), and I had to be hopeful that I could get as much out of it as possible.

Back in Brașov, the town hall is dwarfed by Tâmpa mountain

A final look at the Black Church (Biserica Neagră)