Have you decided to go to Maramures? Well the first thing to know is where to stay over the night..
Don’t worry, you don’t need to book any room in some hostel..people will come to you and will offer you their home (for free) then they will wake you up in the morning with some good homemade cake and so you can start your trip around this beautiful landscape made of green fields, sheaves of straw, wooden churches, happy cemeteries and old steam trains crossing the forest in a deep savage canyon-valley where woodencutters and miners still work in full contact with nature.
In Sighetu Marmatiei (Sighet), where people speak romanian, hungarian and ucrain, visit the Museum of Arrested Thought located in a former communist prison in the center of town. This infamous prison, one of the most oppressive in the country during the communist years, witnessed the torture and starvation of numerous members of Romania's intellectual and political elite during the 1950s. Then rent a bike and lose yourself in the countryside, discover the wooden churces spread everywhere, each with its own interesting story and ask to the people of the villages for fresh cheese..they will bring you in their houses, wooden houses of course, and will explain to you the process of the cheese, who did it and how tasty it is if you eat it with onions!
30 km are not such a big effort with a bike but you’ll need to take a rest under the shadow of a wooden church . As it has for hundreds of years, social life in Maramures continues to revolve around the village church. The Wooden Churches of Maramures (Surdesti, Plopis, Rogoz, Ieud, Poeinile Izei, Barsana, Budesti, Desesti, Farsesti, Calinesti etc...) have been recognized by UNESCO as World Heritage Sites. Unique in shape and ornamentation, they have characteristic high roofs and tall, narrow, pointed steeples, often collectively describer as ‘the Gothic style of Maramures.’ :)))))))
But nothing is so amazing like crossing the forest in the Vaser Valley with a old steam train..You can meet woodcutters and miners that will tell you about the big flood that still left its print on the landscape of this region (In 26 of July 2008, due to the rich rain falls in Vaser Valley area, it took place a high flood and torrential water flow which destroyed the narrow railway, the only one access way on Vaser Valley area. The 192 tourist in that day rested blocked on Vaser Valley and spent the night in forester’s cabins. 13 of them have been descended by helicopter, the others by foot.Many people who had their houses near the river died.) and have a lunch (for free:) with home made cheese, homemade bread and meet that some (old) (rich) (strongly catholic) swiss volunteers will be very glad to offer you..In the deep hearth of the forest, smell the fresh cut wood, listen the on-rushing tumultuous river, the puffs and hisses of the train and the sharp whistles of the locomotive.
You will come back relaxed and still with the vivid colours of the forest in your mind when you’ll reach the small village of Sapanta, where dead people seems not really rest in peace there! Their wooden crosses tell to the walkers the story of their life or of their death, often with satyrical epithafs and joyful actitude. The cemetery dates back to the mid-1930’s and is the creation of the local folk artist Stan Ioan Patras, sculptor, painter and poet.
Don’t forget that people there are so kind and friendly as in all Maramures…it will be impossible to refuse to a nice old lady to visit her home for a while..she will prepare for you eggs with black bread and she will give you one big bottle of fresh fresh milk of the early morning…
It’s time to come back..12 hours by train..but it won t be so bad..out of the window just mountains, river valleys, wooden villages, sheeps, horses and chickens..while you mobile announce to you a nice “Welcome to Ucraine” !
Maramures…
