Cycling Corabia to Oltenita, Romania: Warm Romanian Hospitality
8 - 11 October 2019
Corabia to Suhaia (8 October 2019, 74.5 km, 46.3 mi)
Since passing through Calafat four days ago, we have been following a route called the Danube Road in Romania. It was built in the 1800’s after Romania first gained independence, as a way to link the villages along the Danube. It mostly stays up on the ridge of the terrace that forms the edge of the Danube flood plain, because that’s where the villages were. It can be as far as 10 km from the river at times. So, we haven’t seen a lot of the Danube lately. The hotel in Corabia was an exception.
In the villages, people have gotten even more friendly. The kids seem more genuinely engaged, and the adults all wave and shout “hello,” in whatever foreign language comes to them. In the first few days in Romania, we heard more shouts of “yello!” But now the preferred greeting is “hola!” We wondered if the use of Spanish had something to do with family or business ties between this part of Romania and Spain.
As we’ve entered south-central Romania, the number of horse-drawn carts has gone way up. We probably saw 20+ carts today. Teleorman, Romania. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
One of the interesting things we have been seeing are “gypsy mansions.” Since the fall of communism, some in the gyspy community have become wealthy from metal trading and collecting scap metal from factories that have closed. They have used this new wealth to build really big, extravagant homes with columns, cupolas, balconies, and gold-embossed ornamental gates. They don’t take out loans to build the homes. They build them in stages as their personal finances allow. So one house can take many years to build, and some sections of the road are lined with elaborate houses in various states of development. A relatively small number of the houses seem to be completed, and fully habitable. The “gypsy mansions” really stood out in most of the communities we passed through, since in general Romanian homes are very modest.
A gypsy mansion, under construction. It looks like they hit the pause button on this one. More construction will likely happen after the family builds up its cash reserves. EuroVelo 6, Romania. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
We stopped at a small park in Seaca, across a dirt road from one of the mansions. The park was a dusty space surrounding a public drinking fountain. It creates an interesting set of contrasts to see the dirt road, dusty park, public fountain, and folks walking around in old clothes against the backdrop of a fanciful, ornate mansion.
When we reached the small village of Suhaia, we passed an attractive-looking, traditional house with a sign out front advertising guest rooms under the name of Edelweiss. As we were thinking about stopping there, the proprietor came out and suggested that we come inside, all in Romanian. He didn’t speak any English, but it was obvious that he really wanted us to consider staying. However, it was still pretty early in the day, and it seemed to early to stop. So we decided to keep going.
Just as we were about to pedal out of town, a car came scooting up next to us, and parked just off to the side. Out hopped the proprietor of Edelweiss, accompanied by an English-speaking girl he had brought along to translate. He asked us to reconsider staying there, arguing that the hotels up the road would be more expensive, and he promised we would be comfortable at Edelweiss. The guest house had seemed nice, and he was so eager for our business, that we decided to turn around and go back.
That turned out to be a great decision. Upon our return, we received a warm welcome. Edelweiss is run by a couple, the Chivus, in the home where the wife grew up. And they go out of their way to make you feel like family. It’s possible to camp in the apple orchard behind the house, but we opted to stay in one of the two guest rooms. After settling in, Mrs. Chivu gave us a couple of Romanian beers and peanuts. We sat out on the back porch to drink our beers, overlooking the orchard. There was a flock of turkeys cooing and feeding in the yard next door. It was all very relaxing. We were the only guests that evening.
A cool, light, Romanian beer set the tone for a relaxing evening. Suhaia, Romania. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
Suhaia is a tiny town, and there really weren’t any other options for eating. We arranged to have both dinner and breakfast at Edelweiss. The food was exceptional. The meal started with Mr. Chivu sharing a toast of Slivovitz, an intense, earthy plum wine popular in Romania, “Noroc!” (that is, cheers in Romanian). Another special treat was the chance to taste fresh-from-the-garden paprikas to accompany our soup. They had a real kick to them, numbing my lips and tongue. We then dug into a freshly prepared dinner of roast pork in a red sauce with mashed potatoes and cole slaw. After dinner, we had ice cream, topped with whipped cream. The ice cream was some of the best we’ve had in Europe. We wondered if it had been home made it was so good. Dinner was delicious, and we were thoroughly stuffed.
After dinner, the Chivus invited an English speaking girl, Michaela, to join us and help translate (up until then we had been communicating as best we could with sign language, a little bit of common language and Google translate). She was an interesting girl. She taught herself English at home. We learned that her father is friends with the proprietor, which is why they asked her to help with English translations.
Michaela, Mr. and Mrs. Chivu at the Edelweiss guest house. Suhaia, Romania. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
All told, it was a wonderful experience to spend the night at Edelweiss. Of all the places we’ve stayed along this journey, the Chivus take the prize for investing personal care into providing a memorable evening and very warm welcome for their guests. There’s nothing quite like their Romanian hospitality.
Suhaia to Giurgiu (9 October 2019, 81.2 km, 50.5 mi)
The home-made breakfast at the Edelweiss lived up to the high standards set yesterday evening. The portions were large, and included fresh tomato, cucumber, olives, cheese, ham, eggs, toast, and fig jam. The proprietors do everything they can to make the visit a great experience.
A hearty farm breakfast at the Edelweiss guest house. Suhaia, Romania. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
It was another day of pedaling through open plains on the top of the river terrace, through a string of small towns. There were stretches where the road had almost no traffic, alternating with stretches where the traffic was fast, frequent, and the riding was stressful. The route in Romania is definitely full of contrasts.
Somehow we manage to end up celebrating all of our big-mileage milestones out in the middle of nowhere. This is a dilemma we’ve had going back to our bicycle trip across America. That’s when we first noticed that milestones like 1,000 miles seemed to land in the middle of farm fields, open wetlands, or forests without much visual appeal - and even fewer chances to acquire a celebratory ice cream. Today’s milestone fit the pattern perfectly. We hit the 9,000 km (5,592 mi) mark in the middle of a scruffy, agricultural landscape, almost exactly halfway between two distant towns. Ah, well. There’s always a place to celebrate down the road.
9,000 km, and still kicking! Teleorman, Romania. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
People along the way continue to be very friendly for the most part, with waves and shouts of “hola!” We had lots of high-fives today.
I always get a kick out of seeing a big grin on a kid’s face after a friendly high-five. Bujoru, Romania. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
Half-way through our ride, we passed several towns where brick-making seemed to be a cottage industry. There were numerous, small brick kilns along the road, as well as piles of freshly-made bricks. All of them were modest operations, that looked like they were run by local families. Pietrisu, Romania. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
We arrived in Giurgiu in the mid-afternoon and were delighted to find that we had a super-fast ethernet connection available in our room. PedalingGuy has been wanting to do a re-build of his cloud datasets for almost a year. The problem is that he needs a fast internet connection for re-syncing close to 200 GB of data from the cloud. And that includes the photos, of which we have TONS. With the fast connection, he decided to start the process running overnight.
Giurgiu Layover (10 October 2019)
Well, we woke up in the morning, and the re-syncing process was only about 20% complete. Not good. Our ability to access pictures, download pictures and write blog posts was going to come to an end unless we fixed the issue. We weren’t sure if interrupting the process would restart it from the beginning, so we started looking at options for staying another day to stay connected to the fast internet. We were in luck with booking another night but then disaster struck. At about 1:00 in the afternoon the hotel’s internet went down. Luckily for us, it wasn’t just the guests who were being inconvenienced. All of the hotel’s computer systems were down, including those for booking reservations, printing receipts, using credit cards, accounting and room payment. We were pretty sure they were trying their best to get things up and running as soon as possible since the hotel’s business operations were completely shut down. They had two guys working on the problem, but it took them a couple hours to figure out the issue and then they had to go out and buy a part. That’s never a good sign. The internet stayed offline until well into the evening. It was a huge disappointment, given that we stayed an extra day just to be able to use the internet.
Giurgiu to Oltenita (11 October 2019, 78.0 km, 48.5 mi)
The re-syncing process wasn’t finished in the morning, but it was making very good progress. We decided to give it until 10am before finally pulling the plug. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t completely finished.
Twice today we passed through small sections of the Comana Natural Park. The road in the park ran through thick woods, which provided full shade for the road. We reveled in the contrast to the nearly-treeless, open fields that we rode through for most of the day. The shade was especially welcome, because it was a warm day. We kept an eye out for any interesting birds, but the woods were pretty quiet because there’s not much birdsong this time of year, and we rode through the natural areas later in the day.
Comana Natural Park provided some welcome shade along the route. Giurgiu, Romania. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
The “wildlife” we did see came in the form of large clouds of tiny flies (if you look closely, you can see some swarming around the nature park sign, above). We’ve noticed that they tend to emerge in the afternoon, and gather over open spaces like the road. PedalingGuy got the worst of it, because he was riding in front (click on the photo to enlarge). Luckily, they did not bite and were harmless if you could keep them out of your eyes. Sunglasses were a must as bug protection.
Fire is a big part of the landscape along the Romanian section of EuroVelo 6, especially in the fall. For many days we’ve cycled past burnt agricultural fields, and have seen the smoke of fires on the horizon. But today, for the first time, we saw a burn underway. The low flames flickered out in a field of corn stubble. But most of the area just smoldered, letting off a ton of smoke and ash.
Clearing out last year’s stubble. EuroVelo 6, Romania. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
Approaching Oltenita, we saw another, massive smoke cloud blowing right into the city. There was a very large fire in a field just upwind and a strong haze of smoke in town. Where we come from, that would definitely be illegal because of its impact on air quality in a populous area. We were surprised that people seemed so laid back about all the smoke. But fires seem to be just an accepted part of life here.
Clouds of smoke from this fire blew right into Oltenita, Romania, creating a haze over most of the city. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
Our waiter for dinner in Oltenita was very friendly, and greeted us in perfect English - somewhat unusual in Romania. When we asked where he had learned English, we found out that he has been a professional waiter for 20 years, and lived in many countries including England, Spain, and Turkey (he’s Romanian by birth). It turned out that he was fluent in five languages. Wow. I always feel a little bit jealous of people who can speak so many languages. It’s so much easier to connect with locals when you speak their language. He told us he was hoping to move to Miami soon, to live with friends in the US for a while. We hope he has a great experience if he gets to do it.
One last thing to mention. The hotel room for this evening was pretty standard in a lot of ways. But it had one 100% unique feature: the ceiling in the bathroom was a backlit image of a blue sky with clouds. We’ve never seen anything quite like that in a hotel room before. It certainly brightened up the room, and made it feel like you were showering outside.
Blue skies in the hotel bathroom. Oltenita, Romania. Copyright © 2018-2019 Pedals and Puffins.
