Sometimes in life you just gotta take a walk to savor slow travel at its utmost. The Romanian countryside around the small city of Miercurea Ciuc in autumn is ripe, and beckoned us to set out on an admittedly very vague plan to walk a “Mineral Water Trail” dotted with natural springs and thermal baths spread out over 50+ km of country roads and through quaint Transylvanian villages. Three days of walking, with perfect crisp, fall weather and only our end point known allowed us to find lots to savor in this beautiful rural countryside. Oh, and…the real story… <Getting chased by a pack of angry sheep dogs (twice!), struggling to find any food options whatsoever, inhaling potentially poisonous gases, dodging farming equipment and deterring would-be curious bears>

We began by taking the train from Bucharest to the small city of Miercurea Ciuc (still working on pronunciation for this one, let’s call it “MC”). Getting there was a process in itself because we unexpectedly had to wait 7 hours before departing Bucharest because of a sold out train, which has never once happened to us in Europe. It was the perfect introduction to the idiosyncrasies of public transportation in Romania. Fortunately, once we arrived in MC we had a wonderful host who picked us up at 10:30pm from the station and welcomed us with a shot of palinka (plum brandy) to his home (our AirBnB) which is a common welcoming drink in Hungary. Yes, in Hungary. But we’re in Romania… Yes, Miercurea Ciuc is part of a small community (enclave) in eastern Transylvania called Szkely, that is almost exclusively Hungarian-speaking even though it’s in Romania.

We spent two nights in MC before heading out on our walk and were lucky to be in town for the annual “Honey Festival” where we got a large jar of local honey for about $2.50(!) and observed a typical lazy Romanian countryside Saturday.

The leaves were already bursting with color so we took the chance to enjoy the local park.

Wait! What’s this…? We happened on this brilliant invention… a milk dispensing machine! Open 24hrs, because you never know when that craving for farm fresh milk! Get a liter of for about $.50, straight from the farmer! Amazing!!

A very unusual church we came across in Miercurea Ciuc.

Visiting our first Romanian restaurant, which was adorned with every bit of traditional Romanian charm you can imagine. The food, according to Mandy was…”eh, ok.” And the food according to Greg was “Mmmm…sweet meat!” From left to right: sour potato soup, bean goulash and home-made sausage.

At last! It was time for our walk in the Romanian countryside! Just us and the cows! As mentioned, we had a vague notion of where we were going, buoyed by our three(!) mapping apps we had downloaded for the occasion, and that we had planned accommodation for all three nights (mostly at the only possible accommodations available en route!) The website which featured the Mineral Water Trail included a list of villages and their mineral water sites and a very unspecified and generic, quite unhelpful map to connect the dots. Fortunately, as mentioned, we were armed with map apps.

We arrived to our first mineral water spring pretty quickly and Greg was excited to fill-up our water bottle. It was…not good. Tasted like licking an oyster. Greg kept stubbornly drinking it however with a feigned smile, insisting the medicinal benefits of the minerals far outweighed the “unfortunate” taste.

Beautiful Transylvanian countryside scenery.

We arrived to our first thermal spa, pictured here. But too bad it was closed on Sundays… and this was a Sunday. Well, it looked pleasant.

We also started noticing…everything is closed on Sundays. And… we had only brought some snacks and a lunch for day one of the walk. Being that we were backpacking to a tiny village for day two, with no restaurants and our upcoming AirBnB hostess not seeming to be responding to our messages inquiring about meal options, our stomachs began to grow a bit anxious that we might not be eating again anytime soon. So, we seized the opportunity to walk about 4K “off-trail” to another nearby village in hopes of finding any markets or food options that were open. Otherwise, we’d be eating apples, soggy reject rotten potatoes from the fields which the farmers had tilled, and/or filling our stomachs with the aforementioned mineral water.

Finding this cute bridge into the village of Sâncrăieni in pursuit of sustenance, we went directly to the church, knowing it was Sunday so there had to be locals to help direct us to a food source. No luck. We scavenged the whole town until we finally found a (totally unmarked) mini market which we only discovered because we saw someone carrying a bag of chips out of it from 100’ away. You should have heard Mandy’s excitement when she whooped, “they have chips!!”

The church with a steeple and no people.

Loaded up with extra lbs. of pasta, tomato sauce, beers, (because yes, we needed them!) fruit and yogurt, we found our way back to the route. Greg celebrates that we get to eat tonight!

After 22.2k (13.7 miles) of walking we arrived to our first village of Cotormani, population 58, with indeed no food. However, this view as we trudged in truly just made it all worth it. Talk about off the beaten path!

Walking up to the lady-who-didn’t-respond’s horse ranch, she greeted us and welcomed us to join them for a traditional Hungarian-Romanian dinner. She also curiously asked where we parked, even though Mandy had explained in messages we were walking. After a shower, and checking into our quite lovely room, however, we were very grateful for the dinner and chance to talk with them. They did seem a bit bewildered by the fact we were walking and almost immediately, and probably too directly for our own peace-of-mind, warned us of the bears (just brown) and sheep dogs…”You do have pepper spray, right?” Um, no…just point us to the nearest Wal-Mart. And yes, we ate spaghetti for breakfast the next day…

Day 2: after eating our spaghetti, we hit the road to our next town. Horses, buggies, and cows reminded us constantly of where we were.

Naturally, John Denver’s “Country Road… Take me home…” cropped up more than a few times on our walk. A lovely home on the side of the road.

Many of the houses had beautifully and  intricately carved wooden gates at their entrances, often with a heavy dose of religion and crosses on top. It is also common to see the Szekely Land flag being proudly displayed everywhere.

Briefly how this happened: in December 1918, in the wake of the WW1, Romanian delegates from throughout Transylvania voted to join the kingdom of Romania. The region of Szekely wanted to form their own Hungarian republic but was unsuccessful. In 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon, Transylvania was officially ceded to Romania and Romanian officially replaced the Hungarian language. However, the Szekely opted to preserve their Hungarian language and culture and remains this way today. This means all signs are in Hungarian and Romanian (two vastly different languages) and everyone is pretty much at least bilingual.

We encountered these unknown religious markers in a couple of villages and are unsure what they represent. Anyone know?

A common street scene in the village of Sânmartin.

We arrived to Cozmeni, our destination for night two, a little flustered. We had just encountered a flock of sheep, nearly 500 feet up a hill with no shepherds in sight, but plenty of big angry dogs. And the sheep dogs are not small, think Saint Barnard size. The dogs started barking as we got closer, and before we knew it about four of them were charging down the hill full speed directly towards our path. Fortunately, we started running downhill as soon as we heard the barking and we were able to run far enough away so they stopped chasing us before getting too close. This is when we learned the danger of getting too close to sheep. We were very happy to get to the town of Cozmeni. Here is the main church in that town.

Also, because it was about 2 pm, our stomachs were growing increasingly hungry despite our delightful Italian breakfast. We were also ready for a soak if possible at the nearby hot springs, however we had no information on its exact location. We checked into our pension and were glad to see an attached restaurant. But naturally…upon checking in we found out…they were closed. Not just until dinner but until the next day. Perfect. So, we walked to the very stark-looking “Tourist Information Center” to get info on restaurants and the spring. It was closed. And the map outside of the center was of the next county over…helpful. We walked around the village in about 10 minutes and found one restaurant…a pizza shop opening at 5. So we waited…and waited…and eventually had the best pizza in Romania so far. (Note: the food may be mediocre but there’s always cheap, delicious pizza!)

Day 3: a walk through the nearby village of Lazaresti

More quaint Transylvanian village street scenes.

And lo and behold… after 3 days of educated guessing we spot our first trail marker and it was the red one! We were actually in the right place!

The wells were plentiful.

We then started noticing the “beware of dog” signs on all the houses. What was funny about this is the pictures of the dog on the gate actually matched the dog inside. Like “hello I’m Bart, and I’ll be angrily barking at you today”… we can imagine some savvy entrepreneur had gone around, taken pictures of people’s dogs and then sold the signs to them! Kinda brilliant.

More beautiful scenery.

And drumroll…at last we arrived to our first mineral spring baths! Greg was eager to try all the “facilities” on offer while Mandy was a bit skeptical. Rightfully so. The first building we encountered was…a gas bath…also know archaically as a “mofetta,” or more commonly, fumarole. Used by the Romans, this “circulatory medicinal treatment” is essentially sitting in a volcanic vent (fumerole) and breathing in high concentrations of carbon dioxide, some radon and sulfur, and other smaller amount of vapors like oxygen. Check out the instructions.

It was going okay for Greg, he said he was “feeling good”, until he bent down to come out and got too big of a whiff of ??? From which, he said “wow!!!” as it burned his nostrils and put a bit of pep in his step as Mandy shook her head smugly. That was the end of the mofetta “cultural experience.”

Next, we came to a pool of mineral water. Yay! Time for a soak. But hmm…the water isn’t really steaming… although it is bubbling,and it’s also really, quite dirty? Dirt can be overcome but Greg does the foot test. And sure enough. Ice…cold! ?

It was now time to head up the ridge and over the mountain to the next village. Along the way, we ran directly into a farmer hogging up  our road (the nerve!) with his equipment so we had to climb up on an embankment to let him pass. We then entered into the forest where Greg started clapping. It was time to start singing and playing AC/DC as loud as possible to deter any would be curious bears.

Fortunately we did not run into any bears, although we got a little nervous in open meadows like this one, which had lots of “evidence” of bear activity.

Turns out it was not the bears we needed to be concerned with. When we came down from the forest to a T-junction, we again saw a flock of peaceful, grazing sheep up on a hill. “Uh-oh sheep…” Greg said. Preparing to turn left, we grabbed sticks and rocks as a security precaution and within moments, the dogs guarding the sheep started barking, and before long a pack of about eight sheep snarling, barking sheep dogs were bounding towards us. And (pictured by the green line) is the real-time path we took as we were literally being chased through the fields by the sheep dogs, Greg running backwards and swatting them away with a stick while Mandy is basically just running and screaming in a rather helpful manner.

In short, it was…terrifying but we got away unscathed. You cannot mess with these dogs… some advice if you see sheep in the Romanian countryside just go around. Needless to say, we took a detour and pretty much abandoned the rest of our walking tour, eager to get away from the dogs, and headed several miles back to civilization, fortunately not encountering any more sheep. Lesson learned: Maybe we HAD gone TOO FAR off the beaten path this time. ? Also, wear a go-pro for footage next time…

Arriving safely to the village of Tusnad, we decided to take the big, moving, metal, protective box (train) to the next town, not even caring we would have to wait two hours. We had a gentle friend to keep us company. Hard to believe this dog was from the same species as our previous encounter!

Eventually, relaxing and walking the streets of our final stop, Băile Tuşnad was incredibly pleasant. And we finally got our well earned soak, as well,  in their wellness center which was amazing(!) and featured five pools/jacuzzis of varying temperatures, a salt cave, three different type of saunas and a steam room. The mineral water tasted better here too.

The frescoes on this church was jaw-dropping.

Another view.

After a very rough night’s sleep, because the owner of our pension decided to drink too much and gab with friends right outside our room, we headed back to MC to collect our backpacks.

To sum up…it was quite an adventure…even for us. Maybe we should have just taken the Gas Tour…