Thursday, 22 December 2016

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 16th 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 27th 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 12th 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 20th 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

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