So now we are out of the city on the 7 hour, 320km train journey from Cluj to Suçeava. Despite our fears and many a cautionary tale from inhabitants of Cluj the train is not unpleasant. The carriages are arranged into compartments of the type we are used to seeing in period dramas of early 20th century England with two rows of 4 seats facing inward. The 8 seats are full as we begin our journey, with a cross section of society represented. Ourselves (declaring ourselves as tourists when our first words are an apology for our lack of the native language), a very friendly well dressed Romanian lady and her teenage daughter who offer to converse with us in Spanish (another apology!) and later to share their snacks with us, a lady in more traditional dress and her little girl (probably Roma), the obligatory cheerful (drunk) chatty man with an aroma of alcohol who, on discovering we are Western European, wants to regail us with details of his 2 years in the South of France (my French is better than my Romanian or Spanish but I decide to keep this detail to myself (giving a blank face beyond ça-va bien) and a young Romanian student who's mistake is to reveal she has a little English and henceforth becomes chatty man's reluctant translator.
The carriage is hot, the air conditioning we were hoping for, was either broken or none existent. But once the train left the station, the breeze from the window made the journey comfortable.
Most of our fellow travellers are taking shorter journeys and after a few stations we can settle to enjoying the frumos (that's beautiful, my Romanaste is coming on) view as we climb into the mountains.
The sky is blue with fluffy clouds, the air is full of bright sunshine. The trees are in blossom and the air smells pure. My previous experience of mountains comes largely from the Lake District where they are clustered together withing a few miles and rise at relatively uniform inclines, forming, in the main, into small tarns or steep giants. Here is different, the mountain area rolls for miles and miles, there are mounds and hills, slopes, undulations, terraces, flat parts which have been farmed, populated with clusters of homes, claimed for industry or grown into copses of fir trees. It reminds me of the eclectic mix of architecture in Cluj but on the grander, more majestic scale of nature.
Our decision to travel by train is vindicated as it lives up to my hope that we will see rural Romania in its glory and beauty. I have seen haystacks, I have seen horse and carts, I have even seen a haystack on a horse and cart. Guards come put of their station to stand in acknowledgement even when our train is simply passing through. A group of people appear to have pooled labour to turn over a neighbours plot of land ready for spring planting.
We arrive in Suçeava , having left the security of our Romanian hosts behind, feeling privileged once again to be taking this journey.
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