Let me tell you that the Romanian mountainside in the spring is something else altogether. On one hand it's cold enough that you can still see the snow up on the peaks and down in the darker ravines, so early (or late) in the day you still get to feel that distinct smell of burning wood permeating the otherwise strong air. While on the other, the morning sunlight reveals bunches or even fields of small mountain flowers of all colours, along with assorted flies, roaches and spiders, all roaming around like their lives depend on it. Par example:
At this point the reader probably wonders what in the world a Boga is. Boga is, like Hondol, a small village lying in the Apuseni mountains, except this time in its western part, more precisely in Bihor. But otherwise in the exact vein of Hondol, Boga is an ex-mining commune developed during the last century, nowadays slowly decaying while nature is regaining lost ground1. And also precisely like that other Hoga, this small Boga borders an enormously rich hydrographic basin. To wit:
Our Apuseni adventure, however, began somewhere else:
This particular hill, which can be found somewhere very near Sebeș, Alba, is deemed a natural monument because this sort of terrain is very rare around these places. The odd formations are the result of a several million-years-old process of water eroding the clay soil. You realize, I suppose, that this puts current-day human activity -- or all of it, if we're to count in orders of magnitude, as magnificent as we may find it -- in the position of a small spot on the great arrow of time. So nevermind that humans could blow that hill off the map in a second; ask yourself, how much time would it take them to rebuild it from scratch right down to its every fine detail?
But getting back to Boga and the Western Carpathians, this time I decided to go through the old effort of making a selection of photos and using them as support, mainly because it's easier to compress a thousand words in a photo, or how did the saying go. I didn't really get to see any wild animals, or at least none that would pose for a quick shot, but take a look at these hornbeam leaves:
Also, if you're lucky enough to catch a sunny evening followed by a night with a clear sky, you'll get to see something along these lines:
The photos are actually posted in reverse, as we caught the sunset in the first photo the next evening. The weather was as kind to us as mountain weather could be: we got the occasional rain, actually it rained just before the pictured sunset. As for the stars, we were able to see them due to an absolute lack of light pollution in the Boga area, save for a fire pit that lit the trees. This sort of isolation doesn't come without hardships -- imagine, the folks who hosted us had actually sat unable to leave the cabin one winter due to an avalanche. The local authorities helped, but I suspect they helped more by virtue of fact that they're locals than through any sort of authority.
Which brings us to the more or less civilized part of this trip. We had a much -- by which I mean, at least an order of magnitude -- better meal in backwater Beiuș2 than we had in Bihor's capital, Oradea. We also went to see the museum inside Oradea's fortress and upon arriving late, we were greeted by a fellow who seemed a bit irked to see us at that hour. Nevertheless, he gave us a quick but condensed summary of the history of old Varad: it looks like the fortress was destroyed twice and rebuilt thrice, a somewhat poor record if you ask me. This made me wonder if they ever made any use of that hill downtown that provides a pretty good overview of the area. Actually, let me show you a quick shot:
Overall Bihor seems economically isolated from southern Romania. The only foreign supermarkets are to be found in Oradea3, the rest of them are local businesses. There I also found that Unicarm -- "carm" is a shorthand of "carmangerie", a word of Turkish origin denoting a butcher's shop -- are very much alive and kicking and that even the import market, say, in prepackaged junk foods, is nowhere near that at the south of the Middle Carpathians. In this particular sense, Bihor looks to me like a trip back to 1990s Romania. And I never thought that I'd say this, but for the first time, this trip felt damn good, much despite the sad apartment blocks in Pietroasa and the overall rural atmosphere. The rural atmosphere I can deal with, but the pretense to civilization downtown is absolutely bothersome.
Having said that, I'd definitely go back to Oradea for a full tour of their museum and nothing else besides that. If you're in Bihor, you're better off checking out Boga, just make sure to pack the proper equipment. That or the Bears' Cave or Sighiștel or in any case, any one of the plurious natural wonders populating the area, trumping the man-made ones in breadth, width and longevity.
Frumoasă țară, păcat că-i locuită, cum ar veni.
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Except in all the places where folks are aggressively cutting trees, but also (I suspect) "responsibly", as they say over in corporate environments. ↩
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Check out Roa Food&Drinks if you're ever in the area. I very rarely give out food reviews, and I suppose this is one of those times. I honestly don't think you can find better food in the area and honestly, I don't know how many restaurants in ye olde Bucreș are holding this standard, I know maybe a couple in the whole fucking capital of Romania. I suppose that a very select few of the folks who practiced the horeca business in the West came back and founded pub-like venues in their towns. Unfortunately for us Bucharestians, some of them decided to remain a wee bit further to the west. ↩
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Kaufland and Lidl -- you guessed it, both German, none of 'em French and Belgians anywhere in sight. ↩
For what it's worth, the photos in this article were taken entirely with a Samsung S22+. What can I say, I hate the fucking thing, especially the fact that it requires an all-too-often fatfingered touchscreen to operate. Plus, it's impossible to use it to take photos in high-contrast settings, so I missed a great deal of marvellous landscapes this time around, especially during the rainy days.
On the other hand -- just look at those stars. I captured them using the astrophotography setting while leaving the phone on a bench for a whole ten minutes. "AI" or not, I'd say the sensor does a fine job of sifting the noise from the light, something you'd only normally see on a DSLR. All in all, a decent tool for capturing some memories -- not to even mention that it's so small compared to an adult camera.
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