34 Traveller
WEEKEND EDITION
Journey
ur drive from Baia Mare (the capital of Maramures County, one of 41 counties in Romania) to historical Maramures only takes an hour or so, but we leave behind shops, banks, fastfood restaurants and everything I know about modern life and enter a semi-medieval world that I thought only existed in my pre-teen imagination. Locals, most in traditional handwoven garb, get about by foot and transport goods using horsedrawn carts. Cows are still milked by hand. Hay is handmade – it’s cut with hacks, then turned using wooden pitchforks, hung over fences to dry and finally shaped into haystacks. Hundreds of these hand-formed haystacks are dotted over a vastness of undulating hills, fields carpeted with wildflowers, and emerald green pastures that seem to stretch on forever. I gaze inquisitively at everything and question my affable guide, Rada Pavel, incessantly. It’s not every day you see jovial women in patterned headscarves pushing wheelbarrows crammed with mushrooms and wild berries, or a runaway boar flying down the street with its owner in hot pursuit, or kids actually playing with each other – no iPhones in sight. Rada laughs at my bemusement. ‘‘You’ll love it here – if you don’t mind roughing it up and going with the flow.’’ Maramures is not for luxury travellers, or tourists who need to
TRIP NOTES MORE INFORMATION romaniatourism.com visitmaramures.ro
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The Sydney Morning Herald
ROMANIA
Maramures offers travellers an opportunity to experience life unscathed by modern conveniences, writes Tatyana Leonov.
O
SEPTEMBER 12-13, 2015
The land time forgot
stick to schedules, or folks who can’t eat gluten or wheat or sugar. No, this rural fairytale is for adventure-seeking wanderers yearning to get lost in another world – to eat with the locals, to drink too much hornica (local plum brandy) and to do as the locals do. Our accommodation is at the Village Hotel in Breb, one of 50 or so villages in the historic region. Managed by expat husband-andwife team Duncan and Penelope Ridgley (who originally hail from the UK), the ‘‘hotel’’ is essentially a small collection of wooden lodges
with original facades and refurbished interiors that are designed to depict customary village life, albeit with a few additional comforts such as modern kitchens and flushing toilets. Dinner is at a local’s home nearby. Restaurants as we know them are thin on the ground in historical Maramures. Instead, most travellers prebook to dine at a guesthouse or enjoy a prearranged meal in a local’s home for a fee. Tonight Duncan and Penelope are testing out a new
family and the four of us navigate a labyrinth of muddy lanes until we get to a wooden house. The rosy-cheeked host welcomes us with a smile and shots of hornica. ‘‘It’s rude to say no to hornica,’’ Rada says. ‘‘You will find yourself tipsy often here.’’ Meals are the only component pre-arranged over the next few days (Rada explains we need to inform hosts if we want to eat at their premises so they can pick the vegetables and prepare the food). We wing it when it comes to the rest.
Maramures is known as the ‘‘land of wood’’ and visiting the wooden churches with their stunning frescoed interiors and admiring wooden abodes with their ornate traditional entrance gates is why many visitors come. The renowned gates are always much taller than the rest of the fencing, designed so full hay carts can easily get in. Historically the people of Maramures relied on the abundance of wood from the surrounding Carpathian Mountains. They built churches,
GETTING THERE
TOURING THERE
Fly to Bucharest via London with Qantas from Sydney or Melbourne. See qantas.com.au. From Bucharest travel to Maramures by train. If coming from Hungary, Budapest to Baia Mare by road is comfortable by minivan. See janositrans.ro.
For customised tours book with Rada Pavel. Rada spent eight years working for the Maramures Tourist Information office and is now a freelance guide. See prorada.wordpress.com. Duncan Ridgley is a former British paparazzo and his photography
tours are a wonderful way to soak up rural life. See photographytoursromania.com.
ranges from double rooms situated in the main house to large private cabins that can sleep groups. See villagehotelmaramures.com.
SLEEPING THERE The enchanting Village Hotel in Breb is managed by the Ridgleys and manned by a team of friendly village locals. Accommodation
The writer was a guest of Romania Tourism.