My long, difficult day of travel from Breb, Romania to Cluj-Napoca began when I hitched a ride with two Romanian-Americans who were making their annual visit to family. They dropped me at the train station in Baia-Mare, where I hoped to score a ticket with my first class Eurail Global Pass. With the exception of … Read more
From the lush green floor of the valley I gazed toward the encircling dusky blue mountains. Puffy white clouds drifted lazily across the sky, allowing the sun to peek through just enough to make the afternoon comfortably warm. A week earlier the village of Breb, Romania, had been sweltering in a heat wave that caused … Read more
Had I only stayed one day in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, as planned, I would have left believing that the meandering rivers, lush orchards, and bucolic villages were pretty, but otherwise uninteresting. Fortunately, one day turned into five and this region, rife with legends that have been handed down from father to son and grandparents to grandchildren … Read more
The pungent scent of over-ripe fruit perfumed the air in Panyola, Hungary on the day I arrived. Limbs heavily laden with Nem tudom plums dripped over garden fences or scraped the ground in fields where trees stood in orderly rows. “Almost everyone has a small orchard or at least a few trees in their yard,” … Read more
Turning my back on the tiny settlement, I walked into brittle yellow grasslands that swept to the horizon. An occasional cluster of trees broke the otherwise unrelieved flatness of the endless Puszta, the Great Hungarian Plain. The sound of vendors hawking fur hats and cracking leather whips gradually faded and was replaced by songs of … Read more
