Szilvasvarad to Repashuta

Now there are three of us on the team. And, for the first time, a woman walking with us. Not that women have not been excluded from our walks before, but this is the first time that circumstances have had one of the fairer sex join us.  And this day was a trial by altitude and distance for all of us. And I’ll say up front that Diana hung in there with the rest of us just fine.

It seems repetitious, but the after a short walk out of Szilvasvarad, the rest of the morning was spent going uphill. Some gradual, some steep.

Szilvasvarad was hosting mountain bicycle races this weekend, and much of the race was along our route. There were three different races, and probably 500 bikes in total.  After a bit, our route left the bike race and got really steep. The bikers got the easy part.

After a few hours of heading up through a beech forest, it leveled off, and we had a couple of hours of high meadow walking before reaching the (tiny) ski village of Bankut. ­The meadows were full of wildflowers in bloom. Diana identified and named more than a dozen.

We stopped for a bit at a lodge in Bankut, but there was some strange children’s  birthday party  going on with a loud announcer and some kind of karaoke. We moved on to someplace quieter.

As is typical, the afternoon walk was pretty much spent giving up the altitude we got in the morning. And after a few hours generally downhill through pine forest, we arrived at Repashuta.

I’ve got to say here that having a woman walking with us does change some of the cultural and social characteristics of the walk. But I know Diana was doing her best to fit in to the ethos of walking in Europe.  That is to say, she only asked for directions twice, which is a remarkable number for a whole day for any woman.  But I suspect that number was kept down a bit by the language barrier that prevented the folks she asked directions of from having any idea what she was asking. And, of course, kept her from getting any useful information out of anything they said.

Repashuta is a quiet little mountain town, off of not only the beaten path, but all others as well. There’s pretty much one street, lined with houses. The houses seem to all have well tended gardens and poorly tended dogs. There is one church, probably two lodging places, and one restaurant.  

We stayed for the night in what was probably a lodging place, but the jury is still out. Our first room had wet sheets, wet towels, ants, and a rusty shower. We tried our luck with another room. The second room was an improvement. It’s amazing what a difference dry sheets and towels can make to the ambience of a hotel.

It’s pretty clear the place we stayed focused more on the restaurant side of their business. It’s apparently known for the game on its menu. Too bad that Diana is not a fan of game on the menu.  Their special of the day was a deer stew, that Marty and I had, and enjoyed. Diana had a breaded chicken breast with sour cream and garlic that was also well done.  Just as important, the place had plenty of cold beer.

By length and altitude gain, this was the longest day of this walk, and one of the longest Marty and I have experiencded.

 For Diana, it was jumping into the middle of the fray. She did great, and it’s so good

having her along.