Hangu - Iasi

DAY 18: Hangu - Piatraneamt: 65km
Day 19: Piatraneamt - Roman: 54km
Roman - Iasi by train

In the morning, we walked out of our pensiunea to see that it is snowing. Not much, but it was really cold anyway. We wore everything we had and started cycling. It went a lot downhill so we were quite frozen when we make it to bicaz for lunch. In the afternoon, it got a bit warmer as we go down. And there was a bathtub in the hotel in Piatra Neamt, Amazing to warm up your feet!! 

The next day was sunny again but we had to stop in roman after 50km. Kim had pain under the knee, and he fears a bad tendinitis if he goes further. The pain was there for a long time but never that strong. We took the train to Iasi in order to have one more rest day and hope that it will be enough to heal.

Crossing the Carpates, Reghin - Hangu

Day 16: Reghin - Toplita: 70km

Day 17: Toplita - Hangu: 85km

After the big day to Reghin, cycling up to Toplita was fairly easy. The breeze pushed us up there, and we didn't even feel that we went 300m up, as the slope was so gentle along the river Mures and its gorge. We were able to reach Toplita quite early, having cycled 1000km from the beginning !

We started the next day by climbing the Kreanga Pass at 1105m, which was not as rough as expected.

The weather was still really nice and we took real pleasure while cycling down on the other side of the carpates. We then reached lake bicaz,  the biggest dam lake in Romania , but......

It has almost vanished. We dont know if it's related to a special management plan of the dam or if the lake is really disappearing due to low inflow. So there is just a river and some flat lands, but the road goes up and down on the shores of an inexistent lake !

Reaching the pass

Enjoying BARILLA sauce!! 

This is supposed to be a lake

Cluj - Reghin

Day 15: Cluj - Reghin: 107km

Today was without doubt the toughest day until now, and the nicest and warmest as well. We crossed beautiful villages and landscapes and the people were really friendly. Usually, in Western Europe, people ignore us and in Eastern Europe people don't understand why, as foreigners who have money, we would cycle instead of driving a nice car. But here it is different. They all say hi, smile, give a thumb up and say bravo, the only ones that are aggressive to us are the dogs (and Audi drivers are pretty bad as well ;)).

We had actually planned to camp in between, but we had so much energy that we made it to Reghin, even if the road was going up and down all the time. So now we are exhausted, but we will have a shorter day tomorrow. We will start to cross the carpatians mountains and should get over them in 3 days, hoping to find hotels on the road to avoid camping in high altitude (and freezing) and in company of bears.

Budapest - Cluj

Day 12: Budapest - Debrencen by train and then Debrecen - Marghita: 70 km.

Day 13: Marghita - Zalau: 80 km.

Day 14: Zalau - Cluj by train and afternoon in Cluj.

Taking our bicycles on the train to Cluj was apparently not allowed so we decided better not to give it a try after having already made the experience of being kicked out of a train once in Serbia 5 years ago. 

Instead we got a train ticket to Debrecen, in the East of Hungary and about 200 km away from Cluj. We cycled through empty streets in Budapest (it was Sunday) to catch the 6:20 am train. We got to Debrecen just before 10 and could thus still enjoy a normal touring day. The 30 km to the Romanian border where flat and the Wind was favorable so that we got there in less than 1,5 hour. The contrast between Hungary and Romania was really astonishing, the first villages we crossed were very poor and looked deserted. We could see remainings of huge agricultural infrastructures from the collectivisation period. The landscape became more hilly, the roads quite bad and crosswinds were strong so it took us some time to cycle the 17 km from Sacueni to Marghita. But we really liked these kinds of landscapes and for once it felt like really traveling again (not only merely following a cycling freeway to get from one place to another). The initial plan was to camp along the way but we did not see suitable spots and did not feel totally safe about camping in the area. Luckily we found a really nice place to stay in Marghita with the receptionist speaking very good English. 

We left for Zalau the next morning and wanted to take a picture of the gigantesque photovotaic field outside of Marghita when we noted we had forgotten our camera at the guesthouse. Kim went back quickly and got it back!  Yey! The road to Zalau was very nice, we crossed many pretty villages with children very happy to greet us. That day we also faced our first switchbacks to get up a 50m hill!  ;) We reached Zalau at the end of the day, an industrial and very soviet style town and slept in the probable old communist hotel (see picture), which was very nice and modern inside. 

The question when we woke up was whether to cycle the 80 km to Cluj on a main road that did not seem very safe or to go for a 3,5 hour train journey to Cluj!!!  As it was snowing, the decision was quickly taken and we cycled to the train station. We then spent the afternoon walking around Cluj, had dinner with nice people from the hostel and then went for a beer with Maria, a Swedish friend of Leila, met in Quito in Ecuador in 2009 and studying in Cluj. It was really nice to see her after all this time and to learn more about life in Cluj.

Crossing Romanian villages 

Beautiful Marghita ;)

Cluj 



Our hotel in Zalau