Into the Carpathians

Gordon:  For most of our trip across Europe we have had the benefit of relatively flat cycling.  That changed today as we entered the first hills of the Carpathians.  Ruth says that I get a special sparkle in my eyes when I am in the mountains, and I must admit that I am excited to be surrounded by forested hills.

The change that we have experienced is not just physical, it is also cultural.  Twenty-five kilometres from Oreada we left the main highway and passed through a series of villages on a small secondary road.  We immediately started seeing horse drawn wagons and other evidence of a less affluent rural life.  We encountered a youth work crew at a wooden church we visited, and we had the clear sense that we had moved some distance from being eccentric foreigners towards a status as the incomprehensible other.  As Ruth commented "this morning we were in Europe, but this afternoon I'm not so sure."

We made a side-trip to visit our first historic wooden church in Romania.  This  one was constructed in 1714.  The walls are squared logs and the structural members for the roof use mortise and tenon joints secured by rough dowels.  The roof is covered with small wooden shingles that overlap laterally as well as vertically.  The overall impression is of a rough and enduring beauty created by rural artisans.  I understand that we will have the opportunity to see many more of these churches in the next few weeks.

I should acknowledge how pleased we are to be back in a country where a Romance language is spoken.  Slovakian and Hungarian were so completely incomprehensible to us that we often were not sure what we were buying in the grocery store.  Many Romanian words are of course a mystery to us, but there are many cognates.  It is nice to be able to read some things, and we have even learned a few words.  That said, we did buy some "milk" that turned out to be some sort of sour, thick milk product that really was not that good on granola.