Hotel Zimbrul Baia Mare

... fall colors. Train rides like this are part of the experience, not just a way of getting between places. The windows are really dirty but I am acting like the consummate tourist and taking photos of the landscape anyways.

We travel through hilly farmland. Farmers are farming their land without equipment or even animals. I see them plucking ears of corn, cutting wheat from the fields. The plots are not large. People are wearing traditional outfits. Homes are ...

... at the sky.

“We are screwed,” I said as I looked up at the rapidly approaching rain clouds. We had about 17 km of walking ahead of us—walking that would be atrocious in the downpour to come. “Not as screwed as that cat.” Hannah gestured to a dead cat on the side of the road.

Having already walked the 19 km to get to Săpāntă (guidebook indicated it was 12 km), neither one of us was really anticipating the walk back, and ...

SEE YOUTUBE CLIP OF SOME OF OUR ACTIVITY IN VINOGRADOV TODAY We overslept, but the short nights have been catching up to us. We are comfortable settled at the orphanage in two rooms. We have breakfast that is prepared by Marichka. Her husband Vasya is there, too. The Scharpen's are really enjoying this experience. Vasyl arrive just after breakfast and we talk for a few hours. No problem talking. We ...

... controversy there. When I was going back to Sighet I was told it is possible to cross the border to Ukraine as Sighet is a border town. I had seen some SUVs with the words Politia Frontiere in town but hadn't really thought much of it as I just thought that the police in rural Romania might have a different name than the police in the cities. But those SUVs were the border police, who patrol the town. I figured that since the border was so close I might as well try to cross into Ukraine ...

... or involuntary shudders proves a challenge of politeness. In my opinion, any alcohol over 35% is meant to be mixed or shot. None of this sipping business. In the morning, Florin takes us out to see his country. Several times, we make him pull over to snap photos or to just traipse around in nature's glory. We pass gods and a shepherd, actively herding sheep, countless horse carts, laden with alfalfa and hay, and people everywhere in ...

... air museum. We did visit one of master carvers, Toader Barsan, who represented Romania in the 1999 Smithsonian World Folk Festival in Washington, D.C. Toader Barsan lives in Barsana in the Iza Valley-a beautiful drive! Toader is probably on the itineraries of most tourists to this area. Funny, though, he didn't have carvings for sale. It looked like he had a general store probably to supplement his carving income.

... died in 1977. Apprentices carry on his work. Here's something I wished I had known before our visit to the Merry Cemetery: Patras lived and worked in isolation until the early 70's, when a French journalist visited and wrote about his work. His fame grew; in 1974, Romania's notorious dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife visited. Their carved portraits and those of the entire Communist Party Committee now hang in Patras's little workshop, today a museum.

... restaurant. From Wikipedia: On 30 January 2000 a dam encircling a tailings pond at a facility operated by Aurul S.A., a jointly owned Austrian and Romanian company, broke. The result was a spill of 100,000 cubic meters of liquid and suspended waste containing 50 to 100 tonnes of cyanide[3]. The spill caused serious environmental damage on the river Tisa.

... more memorials, plastic bottled river banks and the occasional T-45 tank. Into Bustyna where we ate outside watching a few weddings. Found a few possible camping sites, then back into town to find a drink in Hungarian speaking gypsy bar. Lehel appeared to be randy, sloshed and slightly out of control, as we cycled into the dark through meadow. Tent up, undressed and to bed.

... it was nicely frozen beneath a thin blanket of dry snow. The whole village looked like a dream. Katrinka and I kept saying to each other, 'Is this a movie-set or a beautiful dream?' The people going by were either in a horse-cart full of hay or wood, or they walked. They carried axes or shovels or buckets (in all the various tasks I saw people involved in, there were no power tools to be found) and everyone wore strange clothes, hats and boots. They stared at us a ...