1999 Biking East Europe

Wednesday, September 15 – en route Budapest
Distance cycled: 12.5 – Maximum speed: 30 – Average speed: 14

Breakfasted at Motel Restaurant Buti on salami and bacon omelettes, mixed salad, rolls (the first time we’ve encountered different bread), fruit juice and coffee. Then walked through town to the hospital taxi stand after enquiring at a craft shop about transport to Sapanta. And got there a local communal taxi at 10 000 lei each to Sapanta and its absolutely divine Merry Cemetery – “the creation of Ioan Stan Patras, a simple wood sculptor who in 1935 began carving crosses to mark graves in the church cemetery. Each cross depicts the deceased at their trade with humorous epitaphs inscribed below. Since Patras’ death, Dumitru Pop, his apprentice, has carried on the tradition”.

OK, so the place is superbly eccentric – I mean you laugh when you enter the church property and graveyard, an unusual response! It is also extremely personal and depicts the local community with humour and understanding and love – the jobs and lives and deaths of the people. Apparently the sculptor attends the wake and talks to friends and family to get a feel for the deceased, before putting himself to work. The graveyard is very crowded so that you see a forest (community?) of crosses first and have to wander down the narrow, overgrown paths to get a closer look at the individual graves.

The crosses consist essentially of a vertical ‘sleeper’ painted blue with a floral-motif cross above and an elaborate tin rooflet to top it all. On the sleeper is carved an appropriate image of the deceased – at work or at home usually, but sometimes at the moment of death – and some words below. Interestingly few religious images.

So each cross is unique, each intensely personal, each documenting how the deceased lived and sometimes how they died (for example, in a car accident or an ‘explodat’ at the factory). Farmer with scythe, truck driver, beer bottler, mom, wool weaver, sheep herder, fruit picker, soldier, housewife-cum-cook, teacher, doctor, railway worker, scholar, miner, tailor, fireman, musician. Twins depicted as angels. Self-satisfied looking okes with fedoras on their heads and no obvious trade ( Charl reckons these are the local mafia). And Patras’s own cross (a self-portrait self-carved) – a little larger than the others and really rather self-important – pity he didn’t portray himself carving instead.

When we had had our fill we walked the couple of blocks to the two-room peasant house, home of the original artist, now a museum. Containing his bed and a few items of furniture and delightful and unexpected examples of his work including village scenes and Ceucescu and his executive committee.  Apprentice Pop now operates from the same property, though a different abode. We met him there as well as his wife and the priest from the church – while I dithered over whether or not to spend $80 on a charming carving by Pop of a wedding in Sapanta. Finally, decided against it as there was nowhere to cash money in the town and I preferred Patras’s work. Not sure I made the right decision though.

We hitched a ride back to Sighet with our first thumb with a cheerful but silent truck driver who dropped us at the piata. Returned to our motel to pack our bikes and cycled the 6kms to Vadu Izei and hitched an almost immediate ride over the Gutii pass (987m) (the road over the pass consisted of one hair-raising hairpin bend after another – enough to make me, in the back of our airless van, feel ever so slightly car sick) to big busy Baia Mare where we planned to spend the night in preparation for getting our train to Prague tomorrow at 09h39. We went straight to the CFR to finalise our reservation – only to find that our rapid train had been cancelled. So we now have to take a slow train at 22h58 tonight instead to Valea Lui Mihai arriving at 04h15 and change there to a small train for Budapest at 05h18 which should get us to Budapest by 08h30 – we think. We are rather anxious about our bikes which we plan to dismantle and package with string in plastic hessian bags bought in Brasov at the fruit and vegetable market.

We passed the time before heading for the station by getting Charl’s hair cut, enquiring at the bicycle shop for bike bags (none to be had), window shopping for local crafts and dining at McDonald’s. Where we watched people going by – late risers enjoying the long warm evening – and youngsters arriving with gifts for a birthday party.

En route to the station we saw a watermelon salesman from whom Charl bought – at 100 000 lei, after some haggling – a long sheet of strong plastic, much better than our hessian bags for the packing of bikes into. We found a quiet spot on the platform and completely dismantled our bikes and wrapped them in plastic and tied them with string – ending like gypsies with far too many heavy parcels rather oddly packed. This process took ages and we were working in the end by the dim glow of a nearby station light. An inquisitive passer-by came to inquire of us if we were trying to avoid the levy – which did not make us feel more secure about our ability to avoid having to pay yet another unaffordable bribe.

I later left Charl to watch over our goods while I tried to confirm exactly what was happening with the trains as the CFR had said something about having to get a coach at some point due to problems on the line and that one of the trains would split at some point – only a portion of it going to our destination. All somewhat confusing in limited English. In the end a helpful non-English-speaking lady passenger whom I encountered at the enquiry desk, also en route to Budapest, and clearly nervous of travelling alone, indicated that we should stick with her – which luckily we did.

We boarded the first train OK, changed OK to a Carei-bound coach at Satu Mare, where we boarded unknowingly the wrong end of the next train. Our shy companion finally figured out we were all in the wrong carriage – in fact we were nearly as far from the right carriage as it was possible to get – and went scurrying down the dark platform to the correct coach – Charl hot in pursuit, me bringing up the rear and really struggling with my share of our difficult luggage (Charl says I was making terrible grunting sounds), and terrified that the train would pull out without me. We shared a coach with our helpful lady and a pumpkin pip-popping young man. Leaving our bikes piled on the seat opposite us.

The trip and our attempts to sleep were regularly interrupted by passport control officials, customs officials and a variety of conductors. Most of whom, despite raised eyebrows, ignored the bikes. But while I was in the loo on the Hungarian side of the border – with the train tickets – one man harassed Charl saying we were overweight and that the bikes were taking up too much space. Charl played dumb, speaking only in Afrikaans to him. The obnoxious shit even called our shy companion into the passageway and tried to persuade her to do something (can’t imagine what). He went away in the end (after which we figured out a way to tie our bikes to the overhead racks) but did return later to check our tickets and make some sort of note in them – though not to try any other funny business.

Speaking of shit – we had been confused and distressed to note that a shitty smell dogged us throughout the night. We later discovered (on arrival in Prague) that there was dog shit on the plastic in which we had wrapped our bikes – and that we had carried it with us through four countries!