08 Sep Valea Babii
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I was picked up quickly by a man who lived on the Slovakian/Hungarian border. He tried very hard to communicate, and wanted very badly for me to visit his village and stay for a day. I started to feel uncomfortable, but I stayed polite and counted the kilometers. He didn’t feel dangerous, just uncomfortable. My fortune held, and he dropped me off safely just past the Hungarian border. From there I picked up a ride almost instantly from a trucker heading to Istanbul almost instantly. The driver was Turkish and he even taught me a few words for my trip to Turkey next month. He happened to be passing through Hungary to Romania and agreed to take me across the Romanian border.
Achmed was awesome. He lives near Cappadocia, a beautiful area of Turkey famous for its strange rock formations, and has a son about my age living in Istanbul. He didn’t speak much English, but we made do with hand gestures and long explanations. Around noon he spontaneously asked if I liked omelet. Uh, yes…I love eggs. Weird question. He soon pulled over at a rest area with nothing but bathrooms and began pulling cheeses and butter out of the cooler in the center seat. He then walked around the side of the truck where he unlocked a compartment beneath the trailer. There he had a cook stove, several dishes, food, and a water canister! He pulled out a stool and proceeded to place a table with newspaper lining. He made Turkish tea, and we had a delicious lunch of egg, cheese, bread, butter, jam, and the Turkish version of Nutella (not to be confused with actual Nutella. He was adamant.) We packed back up and moved on, passing slowly through Hungary, the land of sunflower fields. Achmed offered me a ride all the way to Arad, where I would hit another large highway to Deva, but I chose to go a more direct route from the border.
I was delayed at the border when they couldn’t find the passport stamp for me, but I chatted with the English-speaking border patrolman while I waited and it was eventually sorted out. I stood in the hot sun for a while, wondering if I should have accepted Achmed’s offer, when a young man driving a bright yellow van stopped. He had no interest in chatting, and barely even looked at me the entire ride, but when I did speak he was polite, smiled, and turned down his music to listen attentively and tried to understand. He even handed me a coke when he exited a small market. I could say that we rode in mute silence, but rather it was as if I watched a film reel of nature on fast forward with a soundtrack of Romanian rap and pop played at maximum volume as he raced at top speed past families still using horse and buggy and over the winding mountain roads towards Deva.
Just after dark he dropped me at a pull off 5 km from the city and pointed the direction. Unfortunately, it was dark, which is not good for hitchhiking. I’m not sure what I would have done when I got to the city anyways. I wish I had asked him to pull over earlier in a more rural area, but here I was. I wandered around, looking at my map for a good place to walk to and wild camp. There was some forest, but it was across a busy road and still a few kilometers away. I ended up finding a decent area up a hill hidden from the main road with thick, high grass I could trample down for my mat. I settled in with my sleeping bag wrapped up and over my head to keep the mosquitos out. I woke up every two hours, and therefore didn’t get much REM sleep, but I still see it as the first successful solo wild camping experience I’ve had so far. Why? Because I wasn’t afraid. And I wasn’t freezing my ass off for once. I think I had trouble sleeping because of the Coca Cola I drank in the evening and because I did a bad job folding my pillow. I still felt well rested the next day, and the stars that night were glorious.
Hunedoara
In the morning I packed up and walked into the city. I contacted my host at the farm and hitched to Hunedoara where I waited for Kadi, who was doing some shopping in the village. I walked through the market and ate at a local restaurant where I could use the WiFi. The menu was all in Romanian and one of the women was so helpful trying to translate the menu. I ended up with a cabbage salad and some typical Romanian lamb sausages called MICH. At 3 o’clock I wandered back across the market to find the bus that drove back and forth from Lunca Cernii three times a week.
The driver waved me to the back of the bus to put my bag down with everyone else’s groceries and luggage, and I paid him the 10 Lei for the ride. Then I stood looking around for a seat. The whole bus was looking straight ahead, but staring at me out of the corner of their eyes. A thin, elderly man in a hat with a large nose dominating his narrow face smiled at me and motioned for a younger woman to move over to make a seat for me. I thanked them both in Romanian, and he tried to ask me who I was. I got across that I spoke English only, and he shook his head at me, then we got around to Korbi and Kadi and his face lit up. He hollered to the rest of the bus ‘Hej! Korbi! Engleza!’, and the rest of the bus erupted in chatter, ‘Ohh, Korbi!’. The curious frowns from locals unused to strangers turned to smiles. I’m just another volunteer. At the last moment, Kadi ran up with Janine, another valley resident, and we sat together in the back of the bus to get acquainted.
Valea Babii
We arrived in the village 1 1/2 hours later, and the driver dropped people off one at a time. We were the last, and were picked up from the one small shop in town by Lawrenz, who brought his family from Holland and is building a house near Korbi and Kadi’s. We drove even farther into the hills up muddy and rugged roads, and I wondered how the car found traction to keep going. We got to the top of a steep hill where Lawrenz was going to show us his building site, but the car wouldn’t make it through the last bit of mud. He parked somewhere else, and we walked over to check it out. We took off our shoes and walked barefoot down the hill to Korbi and Kadi’s cottage while Lawrenz brought the car around.
The cottage in Valea Babii is picturesque to say the least. Korbi, Kadi, and their children, Lian and Muna, moved from Germany and bought an old wooden farmhouse in Valea Babii – the Valley of the Old Woman. They have been building and remodeling the house and surrounding land for the last four years. I stayed across the creek and up the hill in ‘the caravan’ with another volunteer, Grace. The caravan is an old camper that Lawrenz and his family moved here in. They built a porch on and put in a bathtub, boiler, and wood stove. The other volunteer, Claudia, was staying in the unfinished loft of the barn behind the house. There were also several wood and tool sheds scattered around, a chicken pen with only one chicken at the moment, and a compost toilet.
Across the bend in the creek there is a large vegetable garden, and in front of the house across the road there is an herb garden and small greenhouse overgrown with vegetables and weeds. Up the road is some more cultivated land, mostly small crops of potatoes, beans, and tobacco. Janine lives in a house up the opposite hill from me, and further up the dirt track were more houses from other families that were away at the moment. Everything was spaced out and hidden by the hills, so it felt like we were the only ones in the valley. Oftentimes the only noise you would hear in the morning was the sound of the kids laughing, or Lawrenz driving the car over. He often stopped by the house for a cup of coffee and to let the kids play.
Mornings were slow and we spent a lot of time chatting about what to do today, what life is all about, and the meaning of the universe and everything. But we also plowed fields and harvested potatoes, cut and raked hay, weeded the gardens, and collected, pressed, and preserved apples to make endless amounts of juice and cider. I don’t think I’ve ever drank so much juice in my life! We put a new concrete floor in the terrace room, and when the water source from the creek would clog one of us would go up the stream and dig out the mud around the pipe. One afternoon we drove the car through the field to pick up birch trees they were cutting for a new fence and spent the whole evening carbonizing them in a big bonfire.
Work and fun was well balanced. Kadi is incredibly creative, and we did some projects just for fun, like weaving baskets from the trimmed willow tree. They respect creativity in others as well, and were happy to let us work on any projects we wanted to do. Grace and I picked wild plums and made our own plum wine, and Kadi taught me how to make a salad from edible weeds and herbs. One day we hiked to a neighboring community called Aurora just to chat and see their home. Along the way we met several local farmers and picked up some homemade sheep cheese. We shared cooking duties and sometimes experimented with new recipes. Most evenings we gathered and played music in the kitchen. Korbi and Kadi have all sorts of instruments, and we jammed whenever the mood hit us, which was often. They even had a violin!
We volunteers had some solo adventures as well. When Grace arrived from Australia, we took a hike up the tall hill overlooking Valea Babii. We talked about our travels and Grace taught me a new way to make flower crowns. Several mornings she and I tried to milk Kadi’s cow, as her calf was beginning to eat more grass, but the flies were terrible and it was difficult to get her to stand still. It was definitely an adventure, but usually Grace could get a couple of cups of fresh milk to use for the day. One day we went to a neighbor’s farm to see if we could try milking their cows instead. We hiked over the hills and watched them finish their haystacks as the sun went down. One of the daughters spoke a bit of English and we tried to communicate, and when the cows came in we watched in astonishment as the mother milked. She got about 5 liters of milk in just a few minutes! It took us longer than that just to get the few cups! We paid for the milk as well as for some cheese and hiked back in the dark.
Another day Claudia and I went to a different neighbor’s farm with a note from Kadi in Romanian that we would like to buy some cheese. We walked down a hill towards this house while an old man and woman stopped and stared at us. This man, wearing a striped shirt that was both unbuttoned and tucked in, waved us in towards the house and sat us ceremonially on a bench. He glanced at the paper, then called his wife over and gave her the letter to read. She shuffled by with her back bent from the weight of the years and moved between the barn and the house carrying large, heavy looking buckets of clear water, brine, and feta with little apparent effort. We had asked for 5 kg, so it wasn’t just a small handful we wanted.
Meanwhile, her husband stood directly in front of us with his arms crossed and began to speak about all manner of things, even though we obviously had no idea what he was saying. We nodded and shook, and ‘da’d and ‘ya’d, and generally tried to follow him as the old woman worked. She finally brought a bowl full of large chunks of creamy, crumbly, salty cheese. She held a hanging scale and hung our bag on the hook, adding chunks of cheese, and occasionally giving us a slice to taste. When she had made it exactly 5 kg, she nodded and smiled. We paid the husband, and he walked us out of the garden back to the hills, still chatting away.
Time To Move On
After two weeks in the valley, it was time to move on. Grace and I got along so well that we decided to spend some time traveling in other parts of Romania to see a bit more of the country. The valley was a slice of paradise, but it had its challenges as well. The work was unstructured and it was difficult to get motivated to start new projects without guidance. They were soon going to the Canary Islands for the winter, and I think their minds were also distracted with new adventures on the horizon. It was hard to leave a place so full of love and creativity, but we were ready for our own new adventures. Kadi sent us off with a gift – a ukelele, so we could continue to be musical on the road, and we waved from the sun roof of Lawrenz’s car as his partner, Kim, drove us into town.
Kim had to go by an outdoor shop, so we stopped there and I bought a new pair of hiking boots. A gift to myself that was long overdue, if you could see my sneakers. She then took us to a traffic circle that led to the highway heading East, and we parted ways.
Here’s to the open road.
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