Ups and Downs on the Transylvanian Trail

In between snide comments from the middle-aged Hugh Grant fan, who later tried to sell us a bed in his home for 11 euro, Elli made friends with Flori, a kindly old Hungarian woman. After bragging about her cats, who speak both Hungarian and Romanian, Flori invited us to spend the night at her brother’s house, her final destination on the microbus. As the clouds perched at the top of the ever-growing mountains looked a little ominous with each passing kilometer we seriously considered the offer. But for some reason we didn’t hop out with Flori when she got out at Guranyi. Instead, we were left standing with a piece of paper, her address, in Elli’s hand when the bus driver threw us out of the bus at Pietroasa, 20 lei later. ($4 per person for a 2 hour bus ride.)

Even with two hiking maps, a giant map of the village underneath a welcome sign alongside the road and river to orient us, we had no idea where to go, what to do. In our minute of paralysis, a fun thing happened. The whole village came out to help us, almost as if Romanians decided to come out, come out wherever they were, like when the munchkins realized Dorothy wasn’t a threat. An old man with an odd number of teeth twisted our map, almost hopelessly, trying to orient himself. A young woman and her mom got out of their car when they saw our befuddled maps. They left their car running on one side of the narrow bridge. When a man needed to get through, while they were still talking yellow dots, red triangles and blue dashes to us, he simply got in their car, moved it to the other side of the bridge, then went on his merry way.

They pointed us in the direction of Padis, and we marched away. We didn’t tell them our goal was a little more grand: hiking all the way across the mountain range in front of us, from south to north, until we got to the railroad connecting Oradea and Cluj-Napoca. They might have laughed at us like all the Hungarians did.

We hit the trail, after one last provision of food. I talked to a bunch of young Hungarians on our way out of the village. They had just come back from a long hike and offered unhelpful reports of rainy weather. It helped explain, though, why the river we hiked alongside was churning so brown, like a chocolate milk kayak park. It felt good to stretch my legs, kilometer after kilometer as we inched our way on the map up the mountains. The simplicity of wilderness has its way of soothing worries. We didn’t have very much food. We didn’t have much money either. (The later was important, for the first time on a trekking adventure, because the no-longer-nomadic Hungarians had convinced Elli that we would die – bears – if we tented, rather than staying at a cabana.)

We trekked through, and past, a village where the accommodation help didn’t seem so friendly. It’s an odd feeling, for an American backpacker, stumbling through the villages that speckle the European wilderness. It’s a nice, but odd, pleasure to be able to buy a coke, beer or soft bed along your hiking path. But in the itsy-bitsy crossroads of Boga, we found a guesthouse of vacationing Hungarians, quite willing to invite us into their Thursday evening’s festivities, complete with wine and grilled meat, hot off the bone. Elli chatted up a storm with them, while I amazed the kids with card tricks and shuffling skills.

Come morning, we set off, despite their protestations that we were foolish and should spend the entire weekend with them. We set out on the trail north, determined to get as far as possible so we could make it to the railroad on Sunday, or Monday at the latest. Our high spirits pushed us upwards, towards the misty clouds that tickled the tops of the green mountains. The train, an old road of some importance, snaked up the hillside cascading down into a steep ravine. The views backwards were amazing, and along the way we encountered pictaresque bridges and even mine shafts.a

But then, two hours later, the trail stopped. Just like that. We rounded a bend and nothing. The map showed the dashed line continuing to an important trail junction. It simply didn’t. I was disheartened. Elli wasn’t impressed. We bushwhacked just 10 meters, not a lot knowing me, before giving up. We started to slink all the way back to Boga.

On the way down, just as things couldn’t get worse, it began to rain. We stopped to put on our raincoats, cursing our luck. Ten seconds later, still fumbling with zippers, we gasped at the crash.

Falling timber! Crash! I almost died.

Lumberjacks, we deduced as we ran furious past the fallen tree and out of danger, dropped a tree, just ahead of us and above us, on a steep hill overlooking the trail. The massive trunk crashed violently onto the trail, shuddering everything near it, thundering down onto the very spot we would have been walking if we hadn’t stopped for rain gear. But we had a hard time appreciating our good luck, though, too busy curising dead-end trails and rain. We slumped our packs down on the guesthouse porch as the Hungarians who had warned us about the rigors of hiking the night before laughed at our return. We were back to where we started.

We devised a plan: just get to Padis, that mountain sanctuary that people had been talking about since yesterday, and see what happens from there. Unfolded maps were our table mats as we lunched. We didn’t have any other choice, it was raining. Hard. We crouched under the shelter of the porch. It was a bad sign, but we were optimistic it would stop any moment.

The afternoon of Friday, July 6th proved to be the absolute worst hiking experience of my life. Bar none. I almost died. Repeatedly.

We made a dash for the hills when the rain stopped at 1. We sloshed through wet grass and rained out gravel roads until the end of the village. Then the hills began. Each muddy footstep took us higher and further, except when we slipped back in the mud. The trail got narrower, the brush tighter. But the map said keep going, so we did. And then it started to rain again.

With an unhappy Elli, I had no choice but to be an exceedingly optimistic camp counselor, luckily a role I excel at. It wasn’t fun at all, nor is there any rational way to view it as fun, so I pretended. I encouraged Mother Nature to bring it, we could handle more of a challenge. So she did. It rained for two hours straight at we stomped uphill, in heavy shoes, soaked clothes and sinking spirits.

I proclaimed, as I looked up from underneath my blue hood for the first time in a long time “the greatest moment ever” when we arrived at an alpine meadow. And sure enough, our new setting traded rain for wind. We had a hard time despising our new unfriendly element, until it started biting through wet clothes. But the view was good, the meadow opened into a treeless alpine valley, flush with green grass. A small log cabin sat cozily in the middle, smile drifting lazily out of the chimney. Off on the far side of the valley, a flock of sheep sat like slow-moving chunks of white marble. Only fuzzy.

After we passed a stationary horse in the middle of the road, it certainly acted confused as we walked passed, we veered off the road, up a mountain pass to take the trail recommended by our map. The trail was hard to follow, so we blazed our own up the bushy, rocky terrain. Half way up the first rumble. Elli and I looked each other, mountain passes are bad places to be during storms. But it wasn’t ominous. I pushed us up the mountain with a nod of the head.

The next time I looked up, sheep. Coming straight down the pass at us, a whole flock of them. I laughed, “Ha ha, we’re be attacked by a flock of sheep, Elli!” It’s funny, of course, because sheep are as non-violent as a khadi-clad Gandhi. I stopped dead in my tracks as the cuddly flock exploded in angry, attacking barks.

Sheep dogs! Attacking! I almost died. Again.

It turns out that sheep dog are firmly at the opposite end of the Gandhian spectrum. Two packs of four dogs each burst from each flank of the flock, rushing downhill at me, teeth barred in the growl of anger. Elli was at least 20 yards behind me, I didn’t look back, I couldn’t. My eyes widened, my jaw dropped, as they charged, barreled down. I couldn’t even say a word as the stormed within striking distance. As if to accept my fate, I put my hands out in front of me, nothing but open palms facing the flurry of eight jaws ripping me apart.

Miracles of miracles, they each stopped, snapping loudly a foot from my feet, snarling a venomous warning to this and any other trespasser. I might have squeaked out a “nyugi, nyugi tigris,” but it’s hard to talk when you’re scared that badly. I almost died.

An ancient Romanian shepherd, as saintly in my book as Jesus or any Good Shepherd, called them off in a stoic Romanian I couldn’t understand. He was wearing a clear, plastic poncho. Grudgingly, the dogs retreated with a few warning snaps. I stood in place for a full minute, Elli did, too, before putting a foot forward and drudging uphill again.

Five minutes later, half the way up to the crest, thunder. This time a crack, then a flashbulb pop of bright white.

Lightning! Mountain ridge! I almost died. Again.

We beat a quick retreat down the bare slope, slipping and sliding down the wet grass as I gave Elli the quick run-down on what to do during a lightning strike in the mountains.

Two near-death encounters later, still wet and cold, we found ourselves back at the same road that ringed the entire alpine valley like a lazy necklace. We pushed on with plan two, take the road, rather than the trail to Padis. Ten minutes later, that’s when the “grindina” started. What does the Romanian word “grindina” mean, you ask?

Hail! Falling hard! I almost died. Again.

We sat out the painful hailstorm under an evergreen tree. By now, the misadventure was almost comic, except that we couldn’t be certain of the ending with so many near misses. We were far from home and uncertain of the terrain. We didn’t know how we were going to get back home, how we could just make the adventure end. Plus we were cold. And wet. And hungry.

As we plodded on, I began to invent a tale. A tale to trivialize the hazards, the celebrate the unknown. The basic premise was the long process Elli would have had to gone through if I would have actually been eaten by the sheep dogs. She would have been distraught, of course. The shepherds would have taken her into their warm cabin, she would have traded our Nutella for warm clothes. The next day, after riding back to the closest bus stop on a sheep, should would have had to wind her way to the nearest American embassy. There, via helicopter, she would have escorted U.S. officials to my remains on the mountainside, then back to Hungary. The story continues, of course, but it didn’t need to. By the time the story was over, we could see the start of the shacks of Padis.

It really isn’t more than a cross-roads. Think an Everest base camp. A few plywood huts that sold beer and other necessary supplies out of a front window. Three places that rent small rooms cramped with beds for the night. A bevy of tents in the corner of a field, a community of hikers huddling for warmth and friendship. And two drowned Americans, stumbling through it all in delusion.

We finally walked into a door in desperation. My glasses fogged up as we stepped into a raucous room of stranded hikers, determined to make the best of a cold, rainy day with beer and games, and friends both new and old. We asked at the counter if they had any beds available – we were too cold and too wet for the back-up tent in my pack – she pointed toward the back. She pointed to the set of six extra-large wooden barrels, each with a flimsy roof on top and a thin door on front. 40 lei. 15 dollars. We slammed the money down in joy.

Our electric heater didn’t work, but we stripped of wet clothes and put on whatever was dry from our packs. Not much survived the day without taking on lots of water. I was under-packed. I shivered in my sleeping bag for two early evening hours, trying to light myself with the paperback History of Hungary that has suffered water-damage as well. It didn’t work. My sentences started to lose coherency.

Hypothermia! Closest I’ve ever come. I almost died. Again.

Elli insisted on warm soup, even though we were worried about spending all of our money, without being able to withdraw more. It was a great choice. The charda, or something along those lines, was warm and wholesome, a traditional Romanian specialty. And we made new friends at our table, three hikers who had just finished studying in Cluj-Napoca. Flori, for example, had just finished degrees in a geography and tourism. They all spoke great English. By the time we ambled back to our almost-dark barrel, we were warmer, drier and three friends richer. But the verdict on the weather was still out. The sky was red at sunset. According to legend, we were in for “sailor’s delight,” as opposed to the warning a sailor takes from a “red morn.” We decided to figure our course of action in the morning, when we knew what the weather would be like. Good weather, see some amazing sights before heading back to Pietroasa. Another day of bad weather, though, and we’d pack it in as soon as possible.

That’s how we came to spend the night in a barrel, considering ourselves lucky for making it through a day in the Apuseni alive. Barely.