Hills without end

Tired and exhausted, we leave our sweat chamber. Tanja’s body, especially her eyes, are really puffy. After a quick shower, we have breakfast in the simple restaurant. Would like an omelette without cheese. Get an omelette with cheese. But the bread roll is from a bygone era. A completely ragged Romni watches us eat from the fence. I fill one of the sandwiches with cheese, take the T-shirt from the trailer that we received as a gift from the Antenne 1 TV station in Calarasi and give it to her. “Lei,” she says and makes the sign for money.

Despite the exhausting night, we are cheerful and full of energy. We don’t want to be boxed in by yesterday’s traffic and such accommodations. We have experienced too much in recent years to let it have a lasting effect on us. Situations come, situations pass. In the end, the most unpleasant experiences are often the pepper and salt of a story. It’s the balance that counts. All in all, it makes our lives worth living. What would life be without a pulse, without highs and lows? It would no longer be life, because our life, like electricity, needs voltage in order to flow. We can often determine how much tension and how steep the incline or decline is ourselves. And while I’m on the subject of gradients, it is indeed a steep downhill. On a small side road, we roar with joy down into a valley to a small branch of the Danube, about seven meters above sea level. A honey seller sits on the side of the road selling his wares. We stop, take a few pictures and engage in rudimentary communication. Then it goes on. This time uphill, steeply uphill. The map promises hills for the next 80 kilometers. Without a doubt, we should have taken the wine route. What the heck, we’re here now. The hills were simply meant for us. We cannot escape them. For the first time on this stage, we have to shift into first gear. With a gradient of eight percent, we puff up the hill for several kilometers. Our well-trained muscles don’t let us down. We manage to get all the equipment to the top without descending once. “Do you think we’re on a plateau up here?” asks Tanja hopefully. “I don’t think so,” I disappoint her. A short time later, things start to go downhill again. Our hard-earned vertical meters are squandered in an exhilarating descent. We take a short break at a magazine. The boss prepares us a strong and very tasty cocoa. The best since we’ve been on the road with our bikes. The atmosphere in the small pub is fantastic. We film and photograph. The guests cheerfully stretch their faces into the camera. Taking portraits in Romania is a real pleasure. After our rest, we climb back up to an altitude of 270 meters only to immediately pick up speed again. Over the course of the day, we’ll probably gain over 1000 meters in altitude. Unfortunately, with our current technology, I can’t record the altitude covered during a day’s stage. The sun shines from the firmament at around 48 degrees. Approx. 36 degrees in the shade. Thank goodness we have a tailwind today. Mountains with headwinds are a killer. We often pedal our bikes uphill at around 4.5 kilometers per hour for 20 minutes. The burden on us is increasing from hour to hour. Again and again we come across shepherds sitting by the roadside guarding their flocks. I ask someone for directions. He kindly explains to me in his own language where we have to go. In the afternoon, our tires spin through a cosy village. We discover one of the usual magazines. There are no guests. A woman watches us in amazement as we lean our roadtrains against her fence. We use sign language to make her understand that we are hungry. Her face immediately lights up and she leads us into her sacred rooms. There are about 10 beer benches lined up in the dark hall. The floor is wet and it smells like a men’s urinal. We should sit down in here and rest. “We’d rather sit outside,” we say and settle down on the broken chairs. The woman brings a loaf of white bread. Put it on the dirty table. It is the Romanian white bread that passes through a thousand hands from the bakery to the consumer. “The body’s defenses are alive,” I say to Tanja. Tanja unpacks one of the few spreads we have with us and smears the bread. We drink water and enjoy the delicacy. Ducks waddle across the dirty village street. A well shows where the people here get their water from. There are no sewers here yet and it will certainly be a long time before the EU connection brings such luxury to the remote and poor villages. When we want to pay, the innkeeper cheats us out of 30% of the price. We take a relaxed view, pointing to the individual items we have bought and the price on the yellowed label. The woman smiles, shrugs her shoulders and gives us the correct change. “You can try,” I read in her facial expression. We drive on. Back up the mountain, steep until your muscles almost burst. Then back down again, only to step right back up again. Wow, what an exhausting day. “We should have taken the wine hill road on the Bulgarian border,” it goes through my brain.

Eternal fields stretch across the hills to the horizon. They seem endless. Here you can see that around 65 percent of Romania’s total area is used as pasture and arable land. Around 42 percent of the working population is employed in agriculture. In the 1980s, Nicolae Ceau?escu focused on promoting industrial development. (This is one of the reasons why we have seen so many dilapidated factories). The necessary improvements and investments in the agricultural sector were therefore neglected. The misguided economic policy even led to a food shortage during this period.

It is another 50 kilometers to the next motel. Impossible for us. We buy water in a village so that we can later take shelter somewhere in the bushes. But we can’t find a single spot for our tent in the endless fields. It’s almost exasperating. There are no forests. Apparently all deforested for agriculture. We drive up and down the hills. We stop again and again to inspect the landscape. But there is no place to be found where we can hide unseen. “We should ask at a farm,” Tanja suggests. “Yes, I think we’ll do that,” I reply. In Panteleimon we ask at the entrance to the village. The man nods his head and points to his neighbor. We bump along the gravel and clay path to the house. It looks friendly and exudes a good atmosphere. I lean my bike against the fence and wait a few moments. A man, his wife and a little boy come out. They look at us questioningly and somewhat alarmed. I try to explain what we want using sign language. When I pronounce the word “Kort”, which translates as tent, the couple nods kindly. They immediately show us their courtyard where we are allowed to set up our kort. We are really relieved, as we have already been on the road for over eight hours. Our strength is exhausted and the uneven clay floor of the courtyard feels like paradise. For the first time, we asked a farmer in Romania for a place to stay overnight and immediately got one. Fantastic.

Visiting poor farmers

“You’re welcome to spend the night in the house”, we understand after the ice has been broken. “No thanks, we’ll sleep in the tent,” we reply with sweeping gestures. Niko, the landlord, immediately brings me a hammer for the tent pegs. Tanja goes with Marianna to the village well to fetch fresh, cool and clear drinking water from a depth of around 30 meters. We feel very comfortable here straight away. The family let us set up camp in peace. It’s not like during our trip to Pakistan or India where word of the arrival of strangers spreads within a few minutes and the whole village gathers around to watch and comment on every hand movement. We are simply left in peace here. After a hard and tiring day, this kind of hospitality is ideal. Of course, we don’t yet know whether this is common practice in Romania, but recent experience tends in this direction.

Tanja cooks us pasta from Rapunzel on the Primus stove. Carbohydrates are exactly what our body needs most right now. As I take notes, I let my gaze wander over the estate. There is no doubt that our hosts are poor people. Everything is in danger of falling apart. The roof of the mud house has been provisionally patched with rags in several places. At one point, a rusty pot has been placed over an opening. Maybe it used to be a kind of fireplace. The boy, who is about eight years old, is playing next to us. He climbs up the broken and repeatedly repaired wooden wall in a shed, jumps back down and climbs up again. Then, with visible joy, he pushes his little sister in a rickety baby carriage across the swept clay floor of the courtyard. Niko, the landlord, scatters chicken feed in an old tin bowl. The little chicks come scurrying up and, famished, they dig their beaks into the bowl. The hen is tied to a post with one foot. This ensures that the chicks do not run away. A few ducks are brought into a small shed by Marianna. Rusty fence mesh is the door. A young dog, he looks like an unconventional Pekingese mix, jumps around us in a friendly manner. Another barks from another yard. Niko brings the only horse from the pasture and ties it up next to the guard dog in the other yard. The dog is probably guarding the horse. At least that’s how it seems to me. As the sun slowly bows and the evening wind refreshes us with a cool breeze, Tanja crawls into our Fjällräven tent. I, on the other hand, can hardly get enough of this idyllic place. I walk around a bit with the film camera. The trees are suddenly buzzing as if millions of bees had invaded them. I take a closer look at the phenomenon and to my delight discover thousands and thousands of cockchafers. They hum for all they’re worth. Some of them even think I’m a tree. Their wild wing beats flutter around me loudly. They circle ponderously around my head. Settle in my hair. “Cockchafer,” I whisper devoutly. As a child, I used to catch them and keep them in a shoe box. I let them fly in my room and looked after them until they eventually died. There are hardly any cockchafers left in Germany today. I haven’t seen any for a long time. Are they extinct here? The world still seems to be in order here. Out here in the Romanian countryside, far away from all the hustle and bustle. I wander around a bit more. Enjoy the last hint of the fading light and crawl into Tanja’s tent, highly satisfied with this exhausting but wonderful day.

Tanja’s thoughts:

When we arrive at the friendly farmers, I can hardly believe our luck. What a wonderful gift, at the end of this day we get to spend time with the people here and get a nice and safe place in their yard. I often think about the happiness of the different people we meet on our travels. In the most diverse life situations, beliefs and, of course, different financial statuses. I immerse myself more in this thought and realize for myself that we are already very influenced in our western society and often equate happiness with finances and possessions. Of course, I realize that it’s certainly no fun here in winter and that illness can be a disaster for people. As I sit there and experience Marianna and Niko’s home, a cloak of incredible love wraps around me as I look into their faces. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person in my whole life who radiates so much love at this moment as Marianna does when she smiles at me and shows me her little daughter… Sometimes you wish a moment would never end… Later I fall asleep happily with the Ohm the cockchafer.

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