Yesterday, after a delay of several hours, I flew from London to Timişoara from where I travelled to Caransebeș for the night. Today I walked to Borlova along roads and over a gentle hill under overcast skies.
My return to Timişoara from London's Luton Airport was somewhat delayed. The flight was originally meant to leave at 8:00 am, which meant getting out of bed at an early hour in a nearby hotel to check in. A long queue snaked left and right waiting to be scanned at security, so you kept seeing the same faces looking at you. Once in the departure area a series of delays were displayed on the information screens, these were punctuated by emails from WizzAir reporting the new, later departure times and supplying snack vouchers, followed by automated phone calls saying how sorry they were and asking if I had received the vouchers ("answer Yes or No after the tone"). Finally at 13:30 we were lined up at the gate, and by 14:40 we were accelerating down the runway. On arriving at Timişoara a further email announced an additional delay, a bit surreal as we had already arrived!
Plans for catching buses back to Caransebeș were wrecked by the long delay. There was a late train which I could just make by taxi, however the taxi driver offered to drive me to Caransebeș (a little over 100 kilometres away) and despite the 500 Lei cost (a little under a hundred pounds) I took this option being logistically simpler than negotiating trains and train stations late in the evening. A code had been supplied to enter the hotel I had booked, but as the keypad was a piece of smooth black plastic, and as the numbers only lit up when I pressed random points I had difficulty entering the code correctly. Eventually I was successful but on trying again after visiting the shop next door for a soft drink and a snack, I totally failed to make the door understand that I had the right code. Fortunately a random stranger came to help otherwise I would have been left in the street with my belongings inside. In the morning I left the hotel without ever having seen any of its staff. I had prepaid so there was no need to wait for anyone to arrive and as I missed a proper diner last night I was keen to find a place to eat breakfast. Despite it being only 8:30, the centre of town was busy with several places selling coffee and stalls and shops offering "food to go". As I drank a coffee on a table outside a café, I watched people buy filled croissants from a hatch in the window of the patisserie opposite. Others frequented a stall selling pizza slices and sausage rolls, which they ate for breakfast on the move as they walked to work. White haired men sat on stone benches chatting, women crossed themselves as they passed the open doors of the cathedral. The gold of the iconostasis was visible through the church doors, reflecting the light of many candles. After a slow search of a small supermarket I found enough supplies to sustain me for a couple of days, then purchased a sandwich from a glass walled stall for my lunch.
My walk today was not a long one at 23 kilometres, one should not overtax oneself on the first day. It began with a walk down the road to the settlement of Buchin where I rejoined the route of the E3. Turning off the road into untidy farmland I passed with some trepidation a flock of sheep penned behind a fence. Where there are sheep there are often aggressive dogs. Shortly after, as I put on my waterproofs owing to light rain, the flock of sheep came passed me, a shepherd at the front, another at the back, making sounds to keep their sheep going in the right direction. Fortunately their dogs were not interested in me.
A length of quiet, single track road followed with a couple of villages strung out along them. Single storey houses in a long terrace, each with a slightly different height and design. People were gathering at one of the churches, a funeral maybe as black clothes were being worn. Leaving the road there was a ridge to climb over on a track by fields from which hay had been harvested. There were meadows with the remains of flowers, neglected orchards, and rose acacia trees (according to my App but I thought they might be black locust trees).
Dropping down into the red-roofed village of Borlova I searched without success for the "Gasthaus Maria" at the location marked on Google Maps. I asked a group of men drinking beer at tables outside a shop where it was, showing the name of the place on my phone, but they were unable to help, although I was offered a beer (which I declined). Although they lacked any English and I lacked any Romanian they pointed to the building opposite where there were workers on scaffolding. They could not assist me either. After searching satellite images on Google Maps for a place possibly consistent with the pictures on booking.com I discovered that Google also had a "Pensiunea Gasthaus Maria" marked, a kilometre or two down the road outside the village. This proved to be the place I was booked into.
On finally arriving at my lodging, the manager was out but I was directed to his brother who was sitting outside beside the pool. As I enjoyed a coffee, he spoke of British politics with which he proved to be more familiar than I might have expected. In the evening over dinner at the guesthouse in a room decorated with rustic farmhouse implements, I chatted with a French family who were also staying there. Their grown up son, a student about to study engineering, spoke good English, as well as French and Romanian. It puts my lack of language skills to shame! Immigration was brought up in both these conversations, it seems a concern across Europe.
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