Destination: Orsova
Starting Location: Petrosani
oday’s Kilometers: 0.00
Trip Kilometers: 617.75
Start GPS: Didn’t check
And that is: El cheapo hotel, Petrosani
Altitude: Now unimportant
End of Day GPS: Also didn’t check
And that is: Orsova, about 10-15 km from the Danube’s Djerdap 2 hydroelectric dam
Altitude: Maybe 10 meters above river level
Distance advanced:
By train 233 km (I know this because a 2nd class ticket tells you)
You are warned, this and further entries are no longer hiking, but just generic East European travel. The chances I will be eaten by bears or lose my innocence to a succubus are reduced substantially, so read on at your own risk.
Don’t look too blue, do it? View of the Danube just south of the Iron Gates gorge. Shot taken from the Serbian side. My hiker brain was unable to enjoy the scenery, it was too busy trying to figure out the easy ways past the high ground. Tuesday, July 06, 2010
The lesson of today really is: Google Chrome is the traveler’s friend.
After an evening pizza on the 5th I retired to my traditional room, killed the two recently-installed mosquitoes, and hooked up to the Internet. Thanks to Google Chrome, I was able not only to find the schedule for Romania’s national railroad CFR, but read it – Google Chrome has a fine autotranslator built in.
The schedule said, that if I wanted to get to my Danube destination Orsova from the mountain city Petrosani, there was a train leaving at 0755, one connection, and I would be in Orsova by 1622.
The ticket lady at the station confirmed exactly that, sold me a ticket for the equivalent of 11 dollars, and the train was a double-decker Eurostandard passenger, with plenty of room and well-maintained.
An interesting thing about Romanian passenger trains is, there is always a hum of chatting. Unlike most Slavs, who travel in glum silence, the Romanians seem always to have a conversation going. Passengers seemed a mix of families, students, and people going from "A" to "B" for whatever reason, but not by car.
I had to wait 3 hours for a connection but that was fine, I dragged out the computer at an outdoor cafe and finished up the final news feature story I am scheduled to write over lunch.
The next train, to Orsova, was more beat up and single-level and there were 6-person coupes rather than a single sitting area, but on the other hand one of my coupe mates turned out to be a Romanian working on a cruise ship on one of Switzerland’s lakes, so his German was excellent.
When I told him that sounded to me like a great job, he had a funny answer: "Weisse Schiff, schwarze Arbeit" (White ship, black work) to describe his profession.
His name was Horst and he was on his way home to see his family in Orsova, after working several months. After a month at home he would go back; he was another of Romania’s ex-pat labourers taking advantage of EU citizenship to go someplace wealthier and earn cash.
We shared a taxi into Orsova, and at the cabbie’s suggestion I stopped at a pension overlooking the Danube, on a secluded green side street. The proprietor was a retired medical worker, German, named Ralf. He had married a Romanian, cashed in his medical earnings, and was basically semi-retired in one of the warmest spots in Romania, as the Danube (at this point, like a mile wide) gave the region almost a Mediterranean climate.
His parents – Germans born in Romania but gone for some 30 years – and his son and two friends were there as well. As was a vicious-looking attack dog, I believe a pit bull, by the name of "Max", whose personality was absolutely wrong for his appearance, Max was friendly and if you even patted him a little he thumps his tale and gets a big goofy grin over a set of choppers that would make the Jaws shark think twice before tangling with him.
They (Max’s humans) invited me for a brilliant dinner with my first non-fried potatoes in over a month. A casserole with sausage and white cheese, and plenty of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers on the side. Prior to dinner a pleasant chat in the garden, literally on the bank of the Danube, and after dinner schnapps.
One of the things I learned over an evening of informative conversation was, the rumors of a ferry across the Danube were a rumor, one either drives across the bridge on top of the hydroelectric dam, or if one has no auto one hitches a ride. Ralf said he would drive me to the bridge the next morning, and so I was set to cross into Serbia and end my journey across Romania.
The weather was bright and sunny all day, and the second train leg was even hot and stuffy. But as the sun set in Orsova, the clouds began piling up. Maybe my trail name all this time should have been “Stormbringer”. But bad weather is not nearly so bad, when you know you don’t have to go walk in it. "Boola Boola!"
Stefan Korshak is a reporter and blogger at Trail Journals. You can read his blog entries at http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=311030
