Rethinking Bucharest — beauty, boulevards and a past revisited

The whole of Eastern Europe seemed to have been painted with the same soulless Stalinist brush, with joy buried in a coffin beneath the pollution factories that replaced them, as depicted by documentary photographers like the celebrated Hungarian André Kertész (who also authored the first photography book I bought as a journalism student). 

And yet, on a recent visit to Romania’s Carpathian mountains, I spent an afternoon in downtown Bucharest. While looking for dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s 1,000-room palace and its 2,000-plus chandeliers, I didn’t see those distinctive apartment blocks. 

From my modest three-star hotel I walked the half hour to the old city, as one does in European capitals, and noted instead lush urban parks, boulevards with enormous trees, outdoor cafes, fashion billboards and expressions of culture and creativity.  

Glimpses of those Soviet-inspired monstrosities I found fringing the smaller towns instead, out in the Transylvanian countryside, where I would be working, designing a walking trail through the Carpathian range of mountains with Dan Chitila, a mountain guide and my partner in this Transylvanian escapade.

Food and the Romanian tongue

Back to the present. The owner of the guesthouse Pensiunea Alina, Toni Alina Claudia’s understanding of English is a bit like my relationship with Romanian – not so good. 

Belonging to the Latin Romance family of languages, I recognise Italian and the odd French word, all delivered in what sounds like a Russian threat, ending with “da”, which Gwede Mantashe and some veteran members of the ANC may remember means “yes” in Russian. 

I fumble around with the French and Italian but when I am given, after a fairly lengthy discussion, peppermint tea instead of black, I realise Dan’s help is essential.

While my Latin teacher, Mr Klevansky, would have been thrilled (although he kicked me out of his class for sleeping in his lesson) that I remembered my Latin, my linguistic fumbling with Alina highlights the importance of having a guide in a country where the nuances of road directions and menus take on added importance. 

In the cities English is widely spoken, especially among those under 60, but in the rural areas it probably won’t be found. Which can be tricky when ordering from a menu in one of the mountain villages passed through while hiking. 

From the breakfast spread Alina put before us – featuring a basket of homemade bread, cheeses, cold meats and salads (apart from the cooked breakfast) – we made sandwiches for our first day’s hike. 

It’s important to keep in mind that Romanians like to eat – “in the rural areas people work hard, out in the fields and on the farms, so they eat a lot”, says Dan – and lots of food will come, whatever your order.

Leaving our accommodation at Pensiunea Alina, we head through what looks like Bilbo Baggins’s shire in Lord of the Rings. It’s pure Hobbit country, with lush, green, rolling hills leading into large, dense forests, and clouds swirling around pointed peaks that on this cloudy day could pass as Mordor.

Ciucaş mountain

The road becomes dirt, we follow a river, and then find something I’m more used to after a flood back home in rural South Africa: the road has been washed away.

We grab our day packs and for maybe 2km follow the river, roughly, through meadows to where we would have parked the car. It’s muddy. 

On the fairly steep ascent, the beech and deciduous trees are draped in all shades of spring green, and the birdsong is raucous. It’s a feast for the senses. 

Black woodpeckers, long-tailed tits and goldcrests offer their tunes between the occasional bear tracks and dominant song of the pretty common chaffinch. The ground is wet. 

In and among the beech and conifers we start to notice what appear to have been two or three sets of tracks – claw marks distinctive – in what must have been a downhill slide in the mud. Maybe from the previous night, or much earlier. We’re meant to reach 1,950m, but at 1,600m our phones buzz wildly with alarm sounds – a storm is coming. The way down is quick. On the way we pass young shepherds with their dogs and elderly men driving the cows.

Alina feeds us a lot when we return. Everything is made in the village, from the pork sausages and polenta, cream and cheese creation, to the salad ingredients. 

Dracula

On the 90-minute drive to our next Carpathian trail we drive past Count Dracula’s castle in the charming little town of Bran, where Dan told me that, apart from the story being a fiction (in case you haven’t revisited the tale for a while), false vampire teeth are sold inside.

Turns out the fictitious tale of Dracula was invented by an Irishman (Bram Stoker) who’d never been to Romania, yet had read about the very real and unhinged-sounding “Vlad the Impaler” aka Vlad Tepes, who ruled the region (Wallachia) for a few years in the mid-15th century. He was depicted by some historians of that time as a bloodthirsty, ruthless despot.

The only thing I’m thinking of drinking before our hike is coffee. As the brew Alina served with breakfast was good, “Bran Coffee”, opposite the castle, looks appealing for a machine-pressed 2nd.

However, just as I have no need for teeth and we wish to get to our next starting point in Moieciu de Sus and start on the trail, we choose a takeaway. The coffee is thus far good in Romania.

“Bucolic walking?” asks Dan at the end of our hike. “Is this what we could call it?” After starting with a steepish ascent it was gentle, rolling hills, passing through villages and farmhouses — 12km in about four photographic hours, walking fairly briskly, stopping to shoot loads of images. We agree we can make the days as long or short as walkers want.

Thoroughly bucolic, I respond calmly, although acknowledging within that this country keeps getting more beautiful.

Every day is so delightfully damn different

The place where the leather and sole meet on my left hiking boot has filed for divorce over the past few days, long before its time has been served. Czech-made, blue suede(ish) leather and a comfortable fit, it’s only done five serious hikes, the snowbound German Alps and the Baviaanskloof Leopard trail among them.  

But they’ll see out this trail, which today offers two options. Three hours boulder-hopping up the steep-sided Zǎrneştilor Gorge in the Piatra Craiului National Park, then up and over a hill-cum mountain into pastures and forests and back down again, about six hours at most. 

We decide on the second, hiking an hour into the gorge – where a unique bird called a wall-climber, only found in such gorges across Europe, joins my growing list of “lifers” – then taking a drive up into the villages above Moieciu de Sus, where the views are wide and high.

Up there we meet a man named Gheorghe Petrescu, who says “I’m not photogenica” in Romanian, as he exited his gate, but then offered to pose for a photograph.

We find a horse that makes the perfect prop for his pasture. Snow caps the opposite mountains in front, while the graves in the Orthodox cemetery behind lend credence to the “blue zone” theory that people live longer at higher altitudes. Well they did back then anyway. DM

Angus Begg designs and leads safaris, informed by decades as a current affairs, conservation and travel photojournalist. He hosts walking trails through nature, history and cuisine in southern Africa and Europe.