Drum Bun*

[shewhomust]

Friday on the road from Cluj to the Borgos Pass (map of Romania):

• Later on we came into the mountains, and saw the landscape from the picture books, the green meadows dotted with farms: but even so, it was gentler country than I had expected, with wide, flat valleys and low hills. The plain is a patchwork of tiny fields of maize or sunflowers or hay - at this time of year cut and stacked into beehive shapes. There were vines, but only in gardens, where they seemed to be grown mainly to provide shade. The villages are strung out along the roads, often almost without a break.


• The road north up the broad river valley from Cluj, and then east into the Carpathians, appears on the map as a major European route. It was the worst piece of sustained driving that we had during the whole trip, and matched all the warnings we'd heard about Romanian roads: a stretch of rough tarmac would give out without warning at every nasty bend or river crossing, with a sharp drop onto an unmade surface of rubble. This was not a result of neglect, but of an intensive programme of upgrades, and we later found out that it was atypical - but it formed our introduction to driving in Romania.


• David, just back from an archaeological dig in Constanta, had warned us to watch out for horse-carts, but I had assumed this was in the sense of the road signs in Britain which warn you to look out for deer: if you are lucky, you may see one. Not at all: horse-carts are commoner than bicycles, commoner by far than tractors, common enough that there is a road sign identifying roads from which they are banned.
  They come in all kinds, from the purpose-built waggon to three planks nailed together (one forming the base, and one obliquely on either side). Later we saw one consisting of the chassis of a car being used to transport a load of hay. Most are pulled by a single horse, with red tassels or ribbons hanging on either side of its head, but we saw one, piled high with maize stalks, pulled by two bullocks.
  The commonest loads were hay, maize and people; often with the driver and companion perched on a moving haystack. But some served as passenger transport: one was clearly serving as the school bus, taking children home at lunchtime. The following morning we saw them loaded with milk cans, and once or twice a sheep (not looking too happy at its situation).
  Horse-carts are the main reason not to drive after dark: they don't have lights. If you are lucky, they may have reflective number plates, but there may be nothing more than a rake projecting from the rear of the haystack.

To be continued...

*Drum Bun is the sign you see as you are leaving a town: as with so many signs, we found it easier to translate into French ("Bonne Route") than into English ("Thankyou for driving carefully"...?)