Romania: A sad economy and challenged environment

Heading east from Budapest on 14 September 2012, my train reached the Romanian border in a couple of hours. One of the first things I noticed about the monotonous agricultural landscape in western Romania was the absence of contour plowing in moderately sloping areas. I had seen other examples of poor soil conservation practices by farmers in Thailand and once again was reminded of a paragraph from John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath when the Okies back in the 1930s are discussing what happened to their farms:

Fella says to me, gov’ment fella an’ he says, she’s gullied up on ya. Gov’ment fella. He says, if ya plowed ‘cross the contour, she won’t gully. Never did have no chance to try her. An’ the new super’ ain’t plowin’ ‘cross the contour. Runnin’ a furrow four miles long that airn’t stoppin’ or goin’ aroun’ Jesus Christ Hisself.

Given the economic circumstances of Romania, I suppose the country can’t afford to send “gov’ment fellas” out to advise the farmers on better cultivation practices. Or maybe like the Thai farms I saw or Steinbeck’s “new super’,” someone else owns the land so why bother to take a little extra time to do a better job to cut down on water and wind erosion?

I was on my own in Romania with no contacts to show me around or help me navigate the challenges of travel. And my first hassle occurred shortly after the arrival of the train in Timişora (by the way, an “ş” is pronounced like an “sh”). I went up to the ticket window expecting to buy my ticket for the train back to Belgrade, Serbia in three days. “No train to Belgrade,” the agent coldly explained. “Only to Vršac” (a town just over the border in Serbia). “Is there a bus from Vršac to Belgrade?” I asked. “No information,” was the reply. “OK, I’d like a one-way ticket to Vršac,” I asked, figuring I would find some way to get from there to Belgrade. “No, you cannot buy a ticket until one hour before train leaves.” This was not a pleasant prospect considering that the train left at 5:40AM. Besides, what if I showed up at 4:40 on Monday morning only to find that the train was cancelled, or there was a huge line and not enough seats? I had to be at the University of Belgrade by 5 on Monday afternoon in order to make the bus to the WASWAC Conference. Ugh! I told myself I would just have to worry about all this later and spend a hundred bucks for taxis if there was no other alternative.”

A few minutes later came the next piece of bad news. I stuck my Schwab debit card into an ATM machine near the station and it was declined. This was the first time on my trip that I’d had a problem with an ATM. Fortunately, I had another card, so with sweaty palms, I tried my Capital One debit card. Thank Dog, it worked and I was able to score a couple hundred bucks worth of Romanian Lei. When I got back home the following month, I phoned Schwab to find out why my debit card hadn’t worked. I learned that they automatically block transactions in Romania because the rate of fraud there is so high. I had told them in advance that I would be in Eastern Europe, but they hadn’t warned me about this. I let them know I was very unhappy with their service. However, it was interesting that this was the one country I visited that had such a high fraud rate that an ATM card would be automatically declined there.

My next challenge was to get to the airport in Timişora where I had a rental car reserved. Seeing no taxis, I asked a young man who spoke some English how I could find one. He explained that taxis didn’t cruise here because they couldn’t afford to waste any gasoline. He walked with me a couple blocks to a taxi stand while complaining about the dysfunctionality of the Romanian economy. He also gave me a warning: “I’m not a racist but watch out for Gypsies”. This brought back memories of an incident in the Rome Metro ten years earlier. I was standing in a very crowded train car when I suddenly realized that a woman who appeared to be a Gypsy (I guess the politically correct term now is “Roma”) was skillfully inserting her hand inside my unbuttoned shirt to get to the passport in my neck pouch. This was the closest I’ve ever come to getting my pocket “picked”.

 

We found a vacant taxi that took me to the airport for about 8 bucks, and I faced my next obstacle. I had booked a Dollar rent-a-car a couple months in advance through Orbitz. Normally, when you make a reservation through an on-line booking company, you pay the quoted price. Not in Romania! The Dollar agent was very polite but presented me with a bill for a much higher price which included some “extras”: compulsory insurance (even though I showed him that I had paid for insurance with Orbitz), a US$25 “out-of-hours” return fee because I was returning the car on a Sunday afternoon, and higher taxes. He called his boss in Bucharest (the Romanian capital) who refused to budge on the price. They had me by the scrotum, because I knew no one else at the airport would have a cheaper price. I walked away (I absolutely hate getting screwed), thought it over, and decided I was being foolish to throw away a trip to the Romanian mountains over maybe 75 bucks. I walked back to the agent and told him I would take the car figuring to myself that I would fight with Orbitz when I got back home. As it turns out, Orbitz’s insurance carrier refunded me the insurance fee and Orbitz gave me a $50 voucher toward a future reservation.

My route by rental car in western Romania

Before I could head out on the highway in my rental car, I had to drive back into Timişora to find some petrol as the gas gauge was on dead empty. Now, I was finally ready for the open road heading east toward the Retezat Mountains which are part of Romania’s Southern Carpathians and reach altitudes of 2500 meters (8200 feet). I was on a wide, new two-lane highway (a European Union-funded project according to the signs – Romania joined the EU in 2007) with light traffic. I made a point of sticking fairly close to the 90km/hour speed limit, but every so often guys in big black Bimmers and Benzes with Romanian plates passed me doing 120-150 oblivious to the numerous babushka ladies, old men walking with canes, and children who were walking along the highway shoulders.

For most of my trip, I had made advance hotel reservations. In this case, I had sent an email to a pension in the Retezats which was mentioned in the Lonely Planet Guide but had never heard back from them. “What the hell, I’ll wing it,” I decided. As I was getting close to the Retezats, I spotted a sign which read “Pensiunea Mimi” next to the highway in the village of Bucova. As a student of French and Spanish for many years, one advantage I had in Romania was that Romanian is a Romance (Latin-based) language. Therefore, I could kinda read some of the words. “Pensiunea” was close enough to the French“pension” to catch my eye and sure enough, the building next to the sign was a small new hotel.

I walked inside the hotel which appeared to be deserted and called out,“hello” and “bon jour”. Eventually, a smiling, thin, attractive 40ish woman with dark hair responded to my calls. This was Mimi, hence the name of the pension. She spoke almost no English so I resorted to sign language putting my hands together in prayer position and placing my tilted head against them to indicate “sleep”. She took me upstairs and showed me a simple, newly furnished room with private bath. I smiled, said “nice”, and rubbed my fingers together while asking “how much?” “six hundred lei,” she replied in English. I did some quick math in my head and realized this was about US$180 at the current rate of exchange. “This place is nice but it can’t be that much,” I thought to myself. Instead of getting mad, arguing, or walking out, I suddenly had an idea. I gave Mimi a look of confusion, took out my wallet and opened it up showing her the lei I had gotten from the ATM machine. She reached in and pulled out a 50 and a 10 lei note. “Oh, sixty!” I exclaimed. “Yes, yes, sixty” Mimi replied. We had a good laugh together, and I held up two fingers. “Two nights,” I said, figuring that 18 (not 180) bucks was a helluva deal in this verdant mountain valley.

Figuring that there were no restaurants in the Bucova area, I tried to communicate with Mimi about the possibility of meals at her pension. We didn’t get very with communications so Mimi arranged for a young man in the neighborhood to speak with me. He was a law student and spoke good English having spent a year in California through a high school exchange program. I learned that Mimi’s husband was a good cook and would be able to fix me a pasta dish with locally grown mushrooms. The student also arranged for Mimi to make tomato and cheese sandwiches for my hikes the following two days as well as hard boiled eggs, toast, and tea for breakfast.

The next morning (Saturday) I drove east in the direction of Retezat National Park. After turning south off the main highway, I was having a hard time finding the correct road into the park and, at an intersection, I stopped to ask directions from an elderly couple walking toward me along the road. “Retezat?” I querried. They spoke no English, but rattled off a bunch of Romanian and, most importantly, gestured in the direction I should go (which turned out to be correct). Their friendly, nearly toothless smiles, wrinkled faces, and tattered clothes made them appear to be in their 80s but I suspected they may have been about my age. I thanked them and drove off feeling a combination of sadness and anger. Why is it that I’ve had a “right”to good dentistry all my life while these kind people have lost almost all their teeth? How can we call ourselves“civilized” and still tolerate such cruel inequities? One can only hope that EU membership will eventually improve the standard of living for Romania’s poor.

Fall foliage was just starting to appear on September 15
in the misty Retezat Mountains

My trail in the Retezats wound through a lush forest

A variety of flora and fauna typical of a humid, mid-latitude forest environment

My objective for the day was to hike up into the mountains reaching timberline and a wilderness of glacial lakes and alpine scenery at about 7500 feet. All I had was an inadequate map of the park from the Lonely Planet Guide, and the park had no visitors’ center, useful signs, or patrolling rangers to help me find my way. After a couple of false starts, I found a trail up into the mountains but would have needed a very full day of hiking (and probably a local guide) to reach the alpine area and return before dark. I had the trail to myself, a light rain was falling, and I was soon pleasantly distracted by the cascading streams, foggy atmospherics, and lush forest vegetation which were reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest.

After returning to my car, there was some daylight left so I continued east on the highway to the next large town, Haţeg. There was a pleasant park in the town center, but not far away, a polluted river lined with derelict buildings cut an ugly swath through the community.

Top: Abandoned mine drainage in Retezat National Park

Bottom: Polluted river in the town of Haţeg

The law student had told me that I could also get into the mountains by taking a gravel road south from Bucova. There was a monastery about 8km down the road and the monks could give me directions to local trails. A short local hike seemed like a good plan for Sunday morning since I had to have the car back to Timişora by the afternoon. I left the hotel around 8AM and found the monastery along a mountain stream and met a young, skinny, friendly English-speaking monk sporting a cassock and short, scruffy beard. He invited me to join them for the Sunday morning liturgy and offered to take me on a guided hike after lunch. Attending a Romanian Orthodox church service had some cultural appeal but an afternoon hike was out of the question given my schedule.

Chapel at the Romanian Orthodox monastery in a valley south of Bucova

The monk told me there were trails heading off the road up ahead. I drove a few more kilometers up the deserted forest valley before hitting a bad section of road. Common sense prompted me to go no further and take a walk along a primitive road up a side valley just below my turn around spot. The stream had wandered on to the primitive road and it was rough going but after about an hour I spotted an opening in the trees up ahead. It was not a natural meadow but a clear cut. This area was not part of the national park and was not protected from the ravages of chain saws. What would you expect in an area where people think they have to choose between protecting nature and economic survival? Fortunately, the clear cut area appeared to be no more than a few dozen hectares. This was verified by checking an aerial image of the area on Google Earth this morning.

Clear cutting in the forest south of Bucova

Logging road constructed along a stream channel

I made it back to back to the Timişora airport in time to avoid any additional rental car charges. A bus took me to the train station area where I had a reservation at a rather drab hostel/hotel. I might have explored more of the city by bus or tram but there was apparently no place to buy tokens on a Sunday. Instead, I walked south along the Boulevard General Ion Dragalina and across the Bega Canal. Timişora (population 300,000) is the largest city in western Romania, and it was here that the first riots against the communist regime broke out in December 1989 which culminated in the overthrow and execution of President Nicolae Ceaușescu on Christmas day. Somehow I had expected a more proud and vibrant city and maybe I was in the wrong area. However, what I saw were dilapidated buildings, unprosperous businesses, sterile apartment blocks, and a slimy canal. I gave up on my search for a good restaurant and settled for a wretched vegetarian pizza and a beer at a bar. The pizza “sauce” consisted of a bottle of ketchup and the veggies were uncooked onions and canned peas. I had to eat outside in a corner of the patio to avoid clouds of cigarette smoke.

Drab, communist-era apartment block in Timişora

Peeling paint on an historic building in Timişora

The next morning, I walked to the station at a quarter to five to be sure to get a ticket on the train to Vršac, Serbia. No problem – there was no long queue for tickets and a comfortable new train delivered me promptly to Vršac after customs stops on either side of the border. The ticket agent may have been clueless about onward transportation from Vršac, but as soon as we arrived there, the train conductor told us to go out to the station entrance for the bus to Belgrade. I was back in Belgrade by 8:30AM, bought a tram token at a newsstand, and arrived at the university for a leisurely day of working on my next blog story, enjoying a good lunch, and even finding a shop where I got a good haircut with the help of a bi-lingual grad student.