Thursday, 27 September
Once a year, I spend about a week hiking in places where the chances of being struck by lightning are higher than those of encountering another human being. I find this beneficial ‒ both for myself and, presumably, for those I fail to encounter. After hiking on the Dalmatian islands and in the forests along the Bavarian–Bohemian border, this year I felt drawn to the land beyond the forests: Transylvania.
When I announced my plans, I received advice that made it abundantly clear that buying property in Romania would not be profitable for quite some time. Alongside recommendations not to get bitten and to carry a sufficient supply of garlic, I was confronted with a question of a more basic nature:
“What ‒ Transylvania actually exists?”
It does. And without it, I would not. All my maternal ancestors ‒ Transylvanian Saxons and Székelys alike ‒ come from there. This made complete anthropophobia impractical on this trip, as I was obliged to meet a small number of people who might be able to tell me something about them.
A flight from Munich to Sibiu (Hermannstadt) costs no more than one to Paris or Rome. The aircraft, however ‒ a Canadair 900 ‒ was noticeably smaller than what I had come to expect as an occasional flyer. Ducking my head in the aisle, counting four rows of seats and observing the thinness of the cabin walls, I briefly regretted my choice of a window seat. Shortly before landing, this regret evaporated: the view made it clear why a guidebook claims that Romania transports visitors back to the Middle Ages, at least as far as the landscape is concerned.
There were no high-voltage lines, no industrial zones, no motorways or other dubious blessings. Even on the few rural roads, horse-drawn carts and cars of comparable speed shared space and time with admirable restraint.
Sibiu Airport itself seemed like a tentative attempt to leap straight from the stagecoach to the space station: a cuboid dropped into the middle of an open meadow, labelled Aeroportul Internațional Sibiu. This sounds considerably more exciting than “one of Romania’s four airports” and allows for swift dismantling should modernity prove a miscalculation and the building be required for chickens, peppers or corn.
Arriving in Sibiu means stepping off the jet, walking some twenty metres across the tarmac, presenting your sacred EU passport to a stern-looking customs officer, picking up your luggage more or less as you walk ‒ and then exiting the building on the other side to discover that there are no taxis in an open meadow.
Eventually, one appeared, presumably summoned by one of Romania’s rarer mobile phone owners. The journey to the hotel took half an hour ‒ not unreasonable for ten kilometres in a Dacia, though considerably extended by a Romanian taxi driver’s enthusiasm for conversation. He understood my Italian with surprising ease; I understood his Romanian hardly at all. The time passed in strained jokes, but at least it passed. The meter came to just under thirty lei ‒ slightly more than six euros.
This seemed modest to me, but for the driver it constituted a small crisis: my ten-euro note exceeded his available change and required him to reveal a collection of foreign currency concealed beneath the spare wheel. While searching for coins, he asked whether I intended to stay in Sibiu or travel on?
I named Sighișoara as my next destination ‒ and even pronounced it correctly.
This changed everything. Sighișoara was his home, the car was effectively mine, and for eighty euros I was welcome to drive it myself. There seemed little reason, in his view, for me to remain in a hotel when I could arrive at my final destination the same day.
The possibility that I might have plans did not arise. He merely wished to go home. Some negotiation followed. When he reached forty euros ‒ clearly against his better judgement ‒ I accepted the outcome. As I had no intention of leaving that day, I gave him the change as consolation, and myself forgiveness.
Given these prices, I was curious about the cost of beer, or indeed dinner. The old town was a short walk from the hotel and easy to locate.
In 2007, Sibiu had been European Capital of Culture. In many corners it was evident that preparations for this were already in full swing ‒ and in the heart of the city, even completed in places.
The historic centre, situated on a hill, consists largely of two adjoining squares, the “Small Ring” and the “Large Ring,” bordered to the south by remnants of the old city wall and facing the nearby, clearly visible Carpathian Mountains.
While the Small Ring benefited from the sunset that began upon my arrival and inspired hope for its bigger brother, the latter disappointed ‒ through no fault of its own ‒ by hosting a folk festival, complete with everything long banned elsewhere but newly fashionable here, and therefore all the more enthusiastically embraced.
A looping roller coaster, from which adolescent screams issued without pause, detracted not only acoustically from the grandeur of the magnificent buildings. A ring of wooden stalls offering food and trinkets formed an inner circle around the square, at the centre of which a marquee had been erected.
When I arrived in the early evening, it was already well filled and occupied by a Styrian guest band playing precisely the same rubbish that would be played at such events anywhere else. Behind the musicians ‒ who already looked thoroughly drunk ‒ a banner adorned the back of the stage, reading “Oktoberfest pe românește.” Next to the lettering, a man in traditional costume who looked like the inventor of Grammelschmalzbrot was smiling and raising a shot glass toward the viewer.
It soon became clear that the Romanian Oktoberfest version was superior to the original in many respects. The excellent beer came from the tap and was served by mostly pretty girls (of whom, inexplicably, there are no photographs). A pint cost the equivalent of thirty pence. There was still space at the tables, the crowd was cheerful without being excessive, and the culinary effort made Munich’s Oktoberfest look almost pathetic.
The entire rear side of the tent consisted of a single, extensive grill producing sausages of forearm thickness, mountains of schnitzel and steak, massive pork necks and cascades of poultry ‒ along with pretty much everything else that benefits from heat.
The pork knuckles were particularly notable, emerging like menhirs from landscapes of fried potatoes. Their degree of crispiness only became clear to me after I took a closer look at the huge copper cauldrons steaming over open fires behind the tent, which from a distance appeared large enough to cook pigs in. Using a visit to the lavatory as cover, I discovered that pigs were indeed being cooked in them ‒ or rather, the knuckles were pre-cooked there before being returned to the grill for final treatment.
Side dishes were plentiful. Bread loaves the size of toddlers and enormous preserving jars filled with cauliflower, peppers, courgettes and other vegetables were stacked so high that, briefly, I wonder whether they were not meant to be eaten at all, but were holding up the tent roof.
When the evening and the mood had progressed far enough to give rise to a conga line, I decided it was time to leave.
In any case, my stay could not be prolonged. The train to Sighișoara departed at seven the following morning. On the walk back to the hotel, I caught a few more glimpses of the actual city. Perhaps next time I should come during a pork-knuckle-free season.