If you’re not panting up the mountain, you’re not sitting here

After a pleasant night without being visited by a Sinti and Roma boy, we set off at nine o’clock. We say goodbye to Gabriela and let our bikes rattle down the gravel road. Then comes the first twelve percenter. As we are still strong in the morning, we take the opportunity to set up the tripod to film ourselves. Since we don’t have a cameraman with us, filming under such conditions is a challenge, to say the least. I click the video camera onto the tripod, switch it on and run down the mountain. Then we push our loaded wire frame up the hill and past the camera. Now the first cut has been captured on film. We stop, Tanja comes forward from the trailer, takes over the handlebars, pulls the brakes so that the Roadtrain doesn’t go off on its own, while I scurry to the camera. I turn the video camera around to film us from behind and we repeat the action. The settings take a total of 56 minutes. One reason why we can’t do so many kilometers every day is the documentation work. With a pulse of 150 in the morning, we work our way over the hills to the main road. Then we are challenged again by a gradient. Tanja’s knee complains. We stop in the village of Isaccea to look around for a place to have a snack. “I think my knee is showing me the red card,” says Tanja, visibly crestfallen. “What do you mean?” “I think it’ll lock up again if we keep going. The last hill was just too hard.” “What a bummer. We still have at least 45 kilometers to the border town of Galati today,” I reply thoughtfully and worriedly. “Let’s go to the pub there and think about the next steps,” I suggest. “Okay,” I hear a small, somewhat desperate voice. No sooner said than done, we push our bikes to the pub. A very corpulent Romanian woman sees us approaching. She steps out onto the street and waves us into her store. “Sit down there,” she says in Romanian in a commanding tone. We obey and sit down on the wooden bench. As soon as we have settled down, the pub owner puts a large bottle of juice on the table. “Service,” is all she says. Although we don’t want juice, we don’t have the slightest chance. “Service,” repeats the woman who introduces herself as Maria. We ask Maria where we can buy bread here. She immediately sends out an old, limping, slightly drunk man. He mounts his completely rusty bike and wobbles off. 10 minutes later he appears again. With the bread. It is stuck on the rusty luggage rack. He takes it with his not exactly clean hands, hands it to Maria and Maria places it on the wooden table. As soon as it’s on the table, Maria comes rushing back with a dark cloth to clean the table. She lifts the battered white bread, rubs the dirt off the table and places our lunch back on the now damp surface. The body’s defenses are alive. Tanja and I look at each other. Of course, we don’t need words to understand each other. “Don’t think about it bunny,” she says smiling at me. I take my Leatherman and cut up the bread. We spread it with a spread we have brought with us. Switching off my thoughts, I take a bite of the delicacy. It tastes excellent. Maria suddenly puts sheep’s cheese and tomatoes on the table. “Service,” she says and we can’t refuse. We are allowed to buy a bottle of water from Maria and are thus able to ease our conscience a little. Then we order two more cups of coffee. Although good, brewed Turkish coffee is the norm here, Maria serves us Nest coffee. “Buna” (good), she says with a beaming smile. As soon as I put my coffee cup to my lips, the heavy-set Maria comes sweeping back in and hands us apricots. I don’t want any apricots at the moment, but there’s not the slightest chance that we can refuse. “Service, Buna,” she says and disappears to bring another guest a beer. When I want to take a photo of Maria, she flatly refuses. Unusual for Romania. I accept immediately and put the camera away again. “You have to look after your bikes,” she tells us as a couple of Sinti and Roma walk past and get wide-eyed at the sight of our equipment. A guest immediately brings in his handcart parked outside the pub. “Look, that man over there,” says Maria, pointing to a guest, “the boy who just walked past stole his bike.” Unfortunately, we don’t understand each other well enough to ask how she knows that it was exactly this boy. Especially why this boy was not brought to justice? However, we are warned and if locals are robbed then we have to be even more careful. Although we like Romania very much, we feel comfortable in this country and it is a country where you can still experience fantastic and unusual things, the constant danger of being robbed is a real downer. “Have another apricot,” Maria asks me and holds it under my nose. As they are full of little maggots, I have no appetite for them and say: “Oh no, thank you very much. I’m full”, and rub my stomach in confirmation. “Well, well, a few apricots won’t hurt,” Maria replies and forces me to stuff them into me. “What do we do now?” asks Tanja. “I don’t know. I can’t decide about your knee. “You have to decide whether we can go any further today or not,” I say. I lift her leg onto my lap and massage the muscle. Maria brings me a bottle of beer from the fridge. I hold the bottle to the painful area to cool it and take the irritation out. “I can cycle in an emergency. It’s the mountains that irritate the muscle in my knee,” continues Tanja. “Thank God we don’t have an emergency. I think we should stay here. Maria said that there are no more mountains until Galati. But hills are not mountains for drivers and who knows if there might be one or two hills ahead of us. I think we should look for accommodation here and give your knee a chance to recover. We mustn’t overstretch it too much. We are still at the beginning of our journey. There are still a few thousand kilometers and a few countries ahead of us. Let’s not take any risks,” I say thoughtfully. “I’m still sorry to stop us after a ridiculous 18 kilometers,” Tanja replies dejectedly. “Don’t worry about it. Let it flow, Mother Earth has taught us again and again in the Australian deserts. We can’t change the direction of a stream. If we are stuck here, we will be stuck here. There is no point in fighting it. Apart from that, I can use the time to write. It doesn’t matter where I write, whether here or in Galati or wherever. In any case, I have to write. We’ve lost nothing if we get stuck in the nest. There’s a point to everything somewhere,” I talk my thoughts away. “Hm, that’s right. That reassures me a little. It also seems to me that we are covering many kilometers within ourselves on this tour. A route that doesn’t just take place on the outside but in our mind, our soul,” says Tanja. “Yes, I feel the same way. Who says how many kilometers we have to cover in a day. God knows it doesn’t matter. We know that we can do it if we have to. We’ve proven that to ourselves many times. I think it’s long past time to realize that experiences like these are worth more than eating up miles. Who has the opportunity to sit for hours in a Romanian street pub like this and watch people? I think Mama Maria is great. Maybe a little too authoritative, but definitely great. And above all very nice. If we hadn’t hiked up the mountain but had driven by car, we wouldn’t be sitting here. The nature of travel forces you to experience the extraordinary. This is one of them. So we can say thank you to your knee. Thank you for the rest. I like it here. It’s always the view,” I chat on and on.

The Sinti and Roma boy walks past for the third time and laughs at me. He tries to get in touch with me. The furtive glance at the wheels cannot be overlooked. Maria now takes over the massage of Tanja’s knee. She brings a cushion for Tanja to put her leg on. Then she talks about Tanja’s swollen legs and massages the swelling out. Christi, her obese husband, is ordered to fetch a cream. He limps away groaning and brings an ointment for baby bottoms. Tanja is now being worked on. In between, Maria gets up to serve her guests. There’s nothing to eat here. The guests only come to drink. “Service,” says Maria and places a small bottle of iced tea on the table. I didn’t fancy iced tea at the moment, but what can I do? Maria talks about her three daughters who all live in France. Although we don’t speak their language and they don’t speak ours, we understand each other. Her daughters were sent to France at government expense as part of a student exchange program. “In Nicolae Ceau?escu’s time, there was still something like this,” she says. “My children have stayed in France. They are married there, have children and are happy. I get to visit them once a year. Now I’m flying over again in August,” she says with a smile on her face. She is still massaging Tanja’s legs. At least 1 ½ hours already. I ask if there is a guesthouse here. “No,” we hear. “Hm, what do we do now?” asks Tanja. “I don’t know,” I reply and think about it. Maria jumps up immediately. We keep hearing the word Americano. It doesn’t take long and Maria sends me off with the old, drunken man who got the bread earlier. The poor man limps through the ugly little border town next to me in this heat. Ukraine is just three kilometers from here on the other side of the Danube. We might even want to take a ferry across, but from Galati to Moldova. We reach the Motel Americano. It is completed. No one there. A woman who owns a store next door tells us that someone should be here in two hours. So we walk back again. The little father next to me limps terribly and tries to keep up. I slow down so as not to overtax him. “The hips,” he mumbles, pointing to his joints. Mama Maria is still massaging Tanja. She tells us to forget about the motel and talks to a beer-drinking, only slightly buzzed guest. He takes me to his house. The guest and I walk through the dusty nest again. Construction workers tear up the road with a pickaxe. They sweat miserably in the sun. One of the workers calls my eventual host over. “Let me look in your bucket,” I understand. The construction worker and I discover large grasshoppers or beetles in the bucket. “For fishing?” I ask. “There, for fishing.” We reach the hut. There is no possibility to set up a tent in the garden. Every centimeter is used to grow something. At first, a little mother looks at me with a startled expression on her face. Her husband introduces me and explains that we need a place to stay for the night. She thaws immediately and smiles graciously at me. She proudly leads me through the dark hut. The windows are covered with cloths. Probably because of the heat. A door to an adjoining room opens with a squeak. An old bed huddles in the corner. Still older and worn cushions and blankets lie on top. The white of the walls has yellowed over the years. A cupboard stands three-legged on one of the uneven walls. A stone replaces the fourth foot. A light bulb also hangs yellowed from the ceiling. In the corner of my eye, I spot something like a photograph on a wobbly little table. If we mediate well, we could place our equipment with our bodies in the room. The bikes would have to stay outside. In a place with so many Sinti and Roma, who apparently live mainly from theft? Not a good idea. The air is stuffy. Hot flushes move inside me. “Oh, please don’t,” I whisper and try to smile at the very kind people. They are eagerly waiting to hear what I have to say. “I can’t refuse”, I think to myself, thinking at the same time of the millions of mites that must live here. When the fisherman tells me something about mosquitoes and I understand the word spray, my decision is made. We can only live here in an absolute emergency.

Back at the restaurant, I tell Tanja about the hut. In the meantime, Maria massages her temples and the back of her neck. It’s now been two hours. I take a sip of water and watch the bikes while Tanja indulges in the massage. A drunken couple, who have been here for hours, are sitting in the corner. They start arguing violently. Two men are sitting on a sofa. They oil their throats with vodka. One of them calls Maria, who immediately jumps up to give him a refill. Then the massage continues. Sinti and Roma reappear in front of the pub. They spot our wonder bikes and can hardly avert their eyes. “Not a good idea to display our possessions to the whole town for hours on end,” I think to myself. Suddenly Maria stands up and orders us to take the bikes to the garden pub. Several men have sat down about 30 meters away and are discussing loudly. They must have said something that prompted Maria to do what she did. We feel uneasy. Maria suggests pitching our tent here on the cobblestones. Then when the guests have gone. But when do drunken guests leave? Besides, the Sinti could easily jump over the fence and steal everything during our blissful sleep. No, not a good idea. “I think it’s like playing Russian roulette to leave our bikes in the poor people’s garden or here tonight. We’ll also be eaten up by mosquitoes in the hut there. Even if we can hang up our mosquito net, the mites will finish us off and the place here on the sloping cobblestones? I don’t know… I should have another look at the Americano,” I say to Tanja. “That’s a good idea.” I do indeed meet two women in the Americano. At least one of them is very nice. Do they speak French?” she asks me. “No, just German, English, perfect gibberish, a bit of Spanish, Russian and sign language,” I reply, gesticulating wildly and grinning. The woman shows me the room on the second floor. I can push in the doors and windows with my left hand, even though they are locked. Nevertheless, I have a good feeling here. We agree on a price of 13 euros per night. Far too much for the hole, but at least it seems safe. I happily walk back to Tanja. After three hours, Maria is at the end of the mega-massage. Tanja does indeed feel much better. No wonder.

We set off to secure our equipment in the accommodation. She has to get off the road as quickly as possible. You don’t have to irritate people to the point of white heat. As is so often the case, we are the only guests at Americano. We lug our stuff up the stairs. A Sinti boy clings to the fence and begs. He keeps a close eye on where we stay and what we have. The owner of the Americano works in America. Sure. He is also a hunter and has a sharp dog. When the dog sees the boy at the fence, he goes crazy. The boy disappears. We put the beds together in the room. Old Parisians and dirt appear. The only cupboard on which the dusty TV stands is broken. The door opens onto the carpet, which is why the cupboard seems to be leaning towards us. Tanja hangs up our new Brettschneider mosquito net. We carry two beer benches from the anteroom into the room as storage space and our camp is perfect. At least it’s much better than the mite bunker or the paving stones. Above all, our bikes are locked behind an iron door in an extra room on the first floor.

In the evening we meet up again at Mama Maria’s. She greets us warmly, immediately offers us a seat and brings us two beers, which we are allowed to pay for. No sooner have we finished them than the next two are on the table. The pub is now well frequented. Consumption is high. The Brotholer is now completely sealed. He has parked his head on his hands. Every now and then he lifts it up abruptly and slurs something that the Romanians can’t understand. Maria invites us to dinner. There is tomato salad, sheep’s cheese, hard sausage and tortured white bread. When we want to leave at 23:00, she pushes us back into our chairs. A local politician joins us at the table. More beer will be provided to us. We can’t do any more. After such a day, we are at the end of our tether again. But we still have to drink. The politician speaks to us. We don’t understand a word. He asks us to follow him. We grope through the nocturnal, dirty border nest. “There’s my house”; he points over a fence. A sign in Romanian explains the man’s position. We only know something about border patrol. Back in the drink store, he tells us something about his daughters, his family and Germany. My eyes pop and Tanja soon slips out of her chair. We rise with all our strength and manage to say goodbye. We cautiously make our way home. A drunk staggers across the street in front of a bar. Young people stand in front of the bus stop and look over at us. A horse-drawn cart bumps along behind us. Music and loud bawling echo from a pub. We look around again and again. We don’t want to get paranoid, but we find it hard to stay relaxed. When we reach the Americano, it is in complete darkness. The two ladies are at home. The dog is locked up. We only hear his deep bark. As a precaution, we pull out our pepper gas and enter the haunted house. A glance at the lock and the iron door reveals that our bikes are resting untouched. We climb the creaky stairs to our room and unlock the door to another room. When we flick the light switch, we are dazzled by an orb of light in various bright colors. Suddenly we have to laugh. What a bizarre situation. The windows are still all locked Everything is in perfect order. Nobody attacked us. We brush our teeth and slip under the mosquito net. Before I fall asleep, I hear the bloodsuckers buzzing loudly. I think about the day. My stomach starts to complain. The sausage was definitely too greasy.

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