After a day and a half in L'viv, I decided it was time to get to the major objective for this entire trip - Romania. I've wanted to go to Romania for years. I think this desire dates back to my favorite video game series growing up - Castlevania, which is based around the legend of Dracula and the Belmont clan of vampire hunters. Yes, I just admitted that a video game helped drive me to visit a country on the other side of the world. I also was looking forward to being able to halfway communicate again, as Romanian is a Romance language.
In any case, I took the night train from L'viv to Chernivtsi, which turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant and cheap experience. The nine-hour train ride only ran me about $9, and the compartment I shared with a middle-aged Ukrainian woman was spacious enough for the two of us (could have been 4 of us in there). I was given a nice set of sheets and slept reasonably well, though for some reason the lights were on all night and would not turn off. The other thing of interest on the train was the bathrooms were locked. I went to several and they were all locked...with apparently no one inside. I'm pretty sure I had found the right place as it certainly smelled like a bathroom in that vicinity. In any case, having to go to the bathroom and not having access to one, I...got creative. Let's just leave it at that.
Upon arrival in Chernivtsi (about 50km from the Ukraine-Romania border), I attempted to find a minibus or shared cab to the border area. No such luck and no other travelers appeared to be headed that way. Generally I have luck in these types of situations, as services usually exist, but not this time. Communicating with the couple of bus drivers I talked to was getting me nowhere, as I had not a word of Ukrainian at my disposal and they appeared to have no English. This is not uncommon among older Ukrainians; they typically speak only Russian if they have a foreign language. Younger folks tended to have some measure of basic English. Luckily, I stumbled across a nice cab driver that spoke Portuguese due to spending some years there working. Thanks to last year's trip to Brazil and my Spanish skills, I can at least get around in that language. And surprisingly, some useful phrases came back to me pretty quickly. After a discussion in which I learned finding a shared cab or bus to the border would be best done from the bus station rather than the train station, we headed off in that direction for a few dollar (30 hyrv) charge.
We had a nice talk on the way as we rattled along the cobblestone streets in his 35-year old Lada. At the bus station he was able to quickly help me find a local bus that would end up dropping me off about 2km from the border, and even paid the 1.5 hyrvna (about 20 cents) charge for me to use the filthy fly-filled bathroom with squat toilets. The bus to the border area was old and banged up like most of the vehicles I saw in Ukraine. The only notable thing about the bus ride was I was nearly the only male on board, besides the driver and what looked to be the invalid caretakee of a tall, big-boned, sturdy, nurse-type woman that sat in front of me and repeatedly glanced my way. The bus dropped me a couple clicks from the border, and I stepped off in a light rain down the side of the four lane road leading directly to the border, hoping it would not start raining harder. (It didn't and soon stopped.) I considered trying to hitch a ride from one of the numerous cars headed past me to the border, but decided I would keep my options open on hitching a ride until I had crossed both borders on foot. On foot I have learned is often a quicker way through a border zone than the inevitable delays and searches that plague motor traffic. I almost re-considered though when an ancient motorcycle went puttering past...complete with open sidecar!!
At the Ukrainian border I was initially denied the ability to cross. The border guards made walking motions with their fingers and told me "Nyet" or "No" or some such negative indication. I accepted that for about 30 seconds before I went up to them and gave them a questioning-annoyed-frustrated expression, at which point they took my passport, ogled the different stamps and visas in it for a few minutes, and then let me on my way with a piece of paper of some import. I got my exit stamp from the Ukraine side, approached the Romanian side by passing what looked to be about an hour-long line of motor vehicles, and went straight up to a border agent standing on the side walk. He spoke good English, asked me a few questions, laughed when I said I was headed for the Dracula-trail, and said he would help me find a ride to the nearest major town in Romania, Suceava. He then had another agent stamp my passport and off he went.
A minute later I was sitting in a van with what turned out to be a Ukrainian police officer who spoke almost no English. He was a gruff and irritable guy that seemed to resent being corralled into taking me down to Suceava, but we managed to share a couple of laughs when he stated he only drank "a little" vodka nowadays...a little being a liter for a Ukrainian. After a 30-minute ride I was unceremoniously dumped off at a bus stop on what I thought to be the outskirts of town. (We were actually farther into town than I needed to be.) I had offered to pay him to drive me further to another larger city on down the road, but nothing doing. I gave him about a buck anyway, but if I had known what a useless place he had left me in I would have kept that too. The nearby train station I went to looked the part of a train station...complete with tracks populated by antique-looking coaches, and so forth. However, the station had broken windows and looked completely abandoned. Only one person was working one counter, and she quickly made the point that I needed the other station. Not sure what the deal was with that place.
It ended up taking me about an hour to get to the main train station in Suceava, by means of two local buses I boarded without paying, not yet having a dime of Romania lei. (I will mention that getting directions and catching two local buses would have been very difficult for me to accomplish in Ukraine, but in Romania I can communicate enough by speaking a Spanish-Portuguese-Italian jargon that what I am asking for is comprehensible...and I understand just enough that receiving simple directions even from an older person with no English is doable. Speaking that same Romance-language garble with a young person usually results in a patient expression and a subsequent reply in fairly good English.) I offered the fare takers on the buses Ukrainian hyrvna, US dollars, and Euros, but they were having none of it. They didn't ask me to get off though. By this time it was around 1300 and upon arrival at the station, I quickly saw a train was leaving for Cluj-Napoca, which I figured would be a nice ride through the Carpathians and leave me in a good place from which to explore Transylvania. I had no firm plan coming in to the day on where I wanted to end the day...I just wanted to see how far into Transylvania I could get.
The ride to Cluj ended up costing about $30 for a seat in "first class" which was more than I expected to pay. Turned out to be a beautiful 7-hour ride though. The northern branch of the Carpathians has some mountains that really go up quite high and mostly covered with tall pines. The whole area reminded me of a drive through British Columbia my dad and I did in 2007, only not quite that spectacular. Impressive it was though, and BC doesn't have the quaint looking medieval-type architecture (Yes, despite all I have seen, this trip particularly, that's as good a description I can come up with.) in the foreground that is so prominent here.
During the first couple of hours of the train ride, while I was still sharing my cabin with a few people, I was repeatedly warned to keep an eye on my things on the trains. These warnings were made to me by an old man using gestures and Romanian, an old woman using gestures and facial expressions, and a young lady speaking fairly good English. I got the point and after they had left I went so far as to remove my flash light from my bag...to turn on and shine out the compartment when the train went through the many tunnels. I will mention the train had no lights and the interior was completely dark every time the train went into a tunnel...good time to be robbed according to my cabin mates. The train had a fair number of gypsies on board, attempting to sell things and asking for money. All the warnings made me unable to relax...and so I kept vigilant and avoided having anything stolen. I've been pretty alert throughout the trip as I have had multiple things stolen from me in my life in many different circumstances and would like to avoid another such event. Here in Romania I will turn the vigilance up a notch, however, as this country is well renown for thieves - everything from cyber thieves to gypsy pickpockets. I try not to let the paranoia detract from the enjoyment of the trip, though I do find myself patting myself down for my belongings pretty frequently and after every time anyone physically touches me under any circumstances.
The train finally rolled into Cluj around 8pm; I found a hotel near the station and crashed for some much needed rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment