Day 58

14/10/2011 – Day 58

Turnu Mǎgurele to Zimnicea – 57km

This morning the weather forecast was for rain showers but mainly dry. After eating the one breakfast between the two of us we headed to the restaurant we stopped at yesterday to finish the job that was due this morning and have some coffee.

By the time M had finished it was lunch time so we stayed at the restaurant for lunch before heading off to Zimnicea where we were supposed to be going yesterday.

When we finally left Turnu Mǎgurele the sun was shining and the wind had dropped. The road out was straight on all the way, we just had to follow the road. Although there was little wind the road did not lend itself to a fast pace as there was a lot of up and down, small steep hills followed by longer shallow descents.

When we paid the bill at the restaurant we had used up the last of our cash so we could not even stop for a beer on the way. Fortunately we had plenty of water and the remains of our shopping last night so we had a picnic on a bench in Viişoara where a man came up to say hello. He had been a long distance TIR driver and had retired here. He just wanted to say hello and good luck. As he left he promised there would be no rain today. Two kilometres later it started to rain!

This section of the route is not really that interesting; we are travelling along the escarpment to the north of the river, either on top of it or at the bottom edge. The villages we are passing through are all the same, poor, dirty and rundown. The road is pot holed and mostly dead straight for kilometres at a time.

We can see the river off to the right every now and then but the days of dedicated cycle paths along the banks are long gone, in a country as poor as this cycle paths are obviously very low on the list of priorities and rightly so.

When we arrived in Zimnicea it was still early afternoon and there was no rush to find a room. The first place we asked at was a four star hotel! Who on earth would build this here? It is owned/run by a company called Interagro and they have a plant on the edge of town. But 50m away was something more in our price range. It is exactly how you imagine a communist era hotel to be run, the rooms were OK but worn out, everything needed replacing and the windows were useless at keeping draughts or noise out. The ‘restaurant’ was more like a factory canteen with no decoration and metal tables. The waitress brought us the menu and said there were some things that were not available. While we sat there and looked through it a group of Chinese people sat behind us eating a huge meal.

Having made our choice the waitress came back and said that all they had was beef or chicken soup and fried chicken or fried pork. That was it out of a 5 page menu! This is not the first time I have come across this though, last time it was in Czechoslovakia just a few weeks after the fall of communism, but today in Romania it is a bit of a surprise.

The town itself is a bit strange as well, there are very few women on the streets, the bars and cafés were full of men only. The whole place has an air of despair and decay, not a happy place to stay.