Beks design
A colourful cemetry
lovely wet roads
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to his friend on the otherside!We woke up to the sound of large bells tinkling, when we looked out of the camper there were approx 15 cows walking down the street, all of which had cow bells hanging from their necks. They were leaving home (back garden of their owners) to go grazing for the day.
Our first port of call for the day was Sapanta’s merry cemetery. Here the graves each a have colourful wooden cross with an epitaph. Unfortunately we haven’t yet mastered Romanian so we couldn’t read the epitaph ( all are supposed to be humorous) although the engravings gave an idea of what their life entailed and some what they even died from, there was an engraving on one of a man drowning and on another of a man caught under a train.
After Sapanta we stooped off in Sighetu Marmatiei for several hours where we had a wander around the town and visited Sighet prison which had been turned into both a memorial and a museum. Due to the communist regime between 1948 and 1952 Sighet prison housed 180 members of Romania’s academic and government elite , 51 of the prisoners died here.
We then drove through more small villages, one was called Barsana and dates back to 1326 this is the place of pilgrimage for The Maramures people and home to several monasteries. From here we went to a huge open air museum which depicted rural life in Romania over the centuries. We had a half hearted walk around as we figured we had seen first hand what was on display and the sheep were also kept in poor conditions.
Later that evening we arrived in Borsa, the Lonely Planet described the campsite which we reached by a dirt track as a tourist complex complete with ski lifts. When we arrived there was one other van parked at the campsite but the site was so small (no sign of ski lifts either) there was no room for us so we parked on the owners front lawn. We arrived at the campsite with the numberplate dangling, earlier in the week we arrived at one and the headlight glass was hanging off. That evening we got chatting to the other vans owners, a German couple travelling with a 9 month old baby who had just driven the route we were heading the next day. They said the road was so bumpy and full of potholes that they ended up cracking some eggs. We were used to bad roads by now, the whole days drive (plus days prior) was spent dodging potholes. At one point the car behind us was beeping. The beeping of a horn is normal in Romania for no obvious reason so we didn’t pay much attention and commented that they were annoying us, after a while we realised the bike rack strap had broken and they had been trying to alert us that the bikes were swinging widely back and forth lol. The roads are in bad condition but we also have to be wary of cows, dogs, pigs and chickens which roam freely, people also walk in the middle of the road.
Our first port of call for the day was Sapanta’s merry cemetery. Here the graves each a have colourful wooden cross with an epitaph. Unfortunately we haven’t yet mastered Romanian so we couldn’t read the epitaph ( all are supposed to be humorous) although the engravings gave an idea of what their life entailed and some what they even died from, there was an engraving on one of a man drowning and on another of a man caught under a train.
After Sapanta we stooped off in Sighetu Marmatiei for several hours where we had a wander around the town and visited Sighet prison which had been turned into both a memorial and a museum. Due to the communist regime between 1948 and 1952 Sighet prison housed 180 members of Romania’s academic and government elite , 51 of the prisoners died here.
We then drove through more small villages, one was called Barsana and dates back to 1326 this is the place of pilgrimage for The Maramures people and home to several monasteries. From here we went to a huge open air museum which depicted rural life in Romania over the centuries. We had a half hearted walk around as we figured we had seen first hand what was on display and the sheep were also kept in poor conditions.
Later that evening we arrived in Borsa, the Lonely Planet described the campsite which we reached by a dirt track as a tourist complex complete with ski lifts. When we arrived there was one other van parked at the campsite but the site was so small (no sign of ski lifts either) there was no room for us so we parked on the owners front lawn. We arrived at the campsite with the numberplate dangling, earlier in the week we arrived at one and the headlight glass was hanging off. That evening we got chatting to the other vans owners, a German couple travelling with a 9 month old baby who had just driven the route we were heading the next day. They said the road was so bumpy and full of potholes that they ended up cracking some eggs. We were used to bad roads by now, the whole days drive (plus days prior) was spent dodging potholes. At one point the car behind us was beeping. The beeping of a horn is normal in Romania for no obvious reason so we didn’t pay much attention and commented that they were annoying us, after a while we realised the bike rack strap had broken and they had been trying to alert us that the bikes were swinging widely back and forth lol. The roads are in bad condition but we also have to be wary of cows, dogs, pigs and chickens which roam freely, people also walk in the middle of the road.
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