Weather: ⛅⛅⛅⛅⛅
Picnic: 🥪🥪🥪 (3 out 5, sandwiches with leftover cheese and bacon from breakfast)
Track: 🇷🇴🇹🇩 (2 out of 5, pleasant roadwalking)
Hotel: 🛏️🛏️ (2 out of 5, nice, basic cabin)
Name of followed trail: alternative trail on the road
Special mention: the Sunday farmers market in Borca, we accidentally walked past. A joy to visit!
We leave Madei around 8.00, ready for 30 km of roadwalking. We actually have a surprisingly enjoyable day on the road.
We get offered a ride twice, have a nice conversation with the lady of the café where we have lunch and visit the Sunday farmers market. We also get blessed by a monk that is in a car with 3 nuns, getting groceries.
The roads here are full of surprises and give many chances to connect with the people on it.
On the market we walk around between the slowly driving cars that do their shopping like its a drive-thru. We get asked where we’re from by a farmer and get disbelief when we tell him what we’re doing. We also get free grapes from him 🙂. The market with its people, sounds and colors makes me realize that this is what we hike for. The people, the sincere meetings, the small, yet meaningful moments of connection across languages and cultures. And today we find these moments along our roadwalk.
We are still in the process of changing trail, but we look forward to what the Via Transylvanica has to offer, and are getting more curious to what letting go of E8 will bring.
When we get to Poiana Largului, we have a slight mix up about where we spend the night, but the neighbors help out by checking the options we have.
We end up having dinner first and then walking a little further to our hotel, where we have a cabin. We have quite some time, but I need it all for replanning, while Mark writes part of the blog. This planning puzzle is almost done. Just some finetuning to get us back on track in Odurheiu Secuiesc!