The Mountains of Romania - A Walker's Guidebook

Definitive guide to walking and trekking in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains, one of the wildest parts of Europe. Covers all the main ranges in the southern Carpathians, and the Eastern Carpathians and Bucovina’s monasteries. Complete information on getting to grips with Romania.

Guidebooks
Dan Richardson and Tim Burford, The Rough Guide to Romania, Rough Guides Ltd. ISBN 1-85828-0305-1. £10.99. In common with the other Rough Guides, this packs a lot of valid information between its covers and has a definite bias towards the traveller who wishes to discover the remoter regions as well as the cities – altogether recommended. The second edition is a notable improvement on the first. For the first time it is now illustrated; there is a very good bibliography. There are frequent mentions in the text of walks to be made.

Nicola Williams, Romania and Moldova, Lonely Planet. ISBN 0-86442-329-2. £10.99. Generally up to Lonely Planet’s high standard – commendable in the amount of research that has been carried out, including ground-breaking work in Moldova. A few errors, but nonetheless recommended.

Caroline Juler, Romania, The Blue Guide, A&C Black ISBN 0-7136-4096-0 £15.99. This, the most recent of the current crop of guides, has an emphasis on history and culture. It packs a lot of information in; since it is scant on information about the mountains, it is an ideal complement to this book. Recommended. (In USA published by WW Norton and Co Inc., 500 Fifth Ave., NY 10110 ISBN 0-393-32015-4.)

James Roberts, Romania – A Birdwatching and Wildlife Guide, Burton Expeditions. ISBN 0-9513513-6-2 £22. Available from NHBS Ltd, 2–3 Wills Road, Totnes, Devon TQ9 5XN e-mail: nhbs@nhbs.co.uk Their website is www.nhbs.com Detailed information on the wildlife and ecology of the mountain areas is combined with a wealth of information on where to go birdwatching. Those interested in mountain flora will find a useful appendix, also on the large mammals. Discount, post-free copies are available from 4 Vineys Yard, Bruton, Somerset, BA10 0EU, Tel 01749 813704, e-mail jameselena@netgates.co.uk.

Lydle Brinkle, Romania, Hippocrene Books, New York. ISBN 0-902726-52-8. Available in the UK, £7.95. A depressingly poor book with much of its text seemingly reproducing communist-era tourist-office puff – explaining for example without any humour intended that at Poiana Bra[ov ‘treatments exist for … physical and intellectual overexertion’(!). Certainly none of the latter can have been suffered by Mr Brinkle in writing this book.

Travel autobiography
Sacheverell and Edith Sitwell, Roumanian Journey, Oxford University Press (orig. Batsford 1938). ISBN 0-19-282884. £5.99. An aristocratic foody’s account of travels in the country in 1938. Delightfully entertaining and informative – very highly recommended.

Patrick Leigh Fermor, Between the Woods and the Water. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-009430-X. £4.95. This is his sequel to the brilliant A Time of Gifts. Starting in 1933 the author aged 19 set off from the Hook of Holland to walk to Istanbul. His accounts are superb. The writing has the unique quality of combining the enthusiasm and fire of his youthful experiences with an older man’s knowledge of all aspects of the history of the regions he travelled through. It is a portrait of aristocratic, pre-war Romania, with a definite pro-Hungarian bias, as many of the families he stayed with in Transylvania were Hungarian. For this reason beware of enthusing about it too much to Romanians – nevertheless it is a superb account and very highly recommended, not only because his travels in Romania, in common with the research for this book, were on foot!

Leslie Gardiner, Curtain Calls, Duckworth. Now out of print but obtainable in libraries. An account of travels in Albania and Bulgaria, as well as Romania. A perceptive and readable account of the region – well worth searching for.

Georgina Harding, In Another Europe, Stoughton. An account of one woman’s solo cycle ride across the region. She visited some unattractive regions of Romania at the nadir of conditions in the country under Ceau[escu – rather off-putting.

Dervla Murphy, Transylvania and Beyond, John Murray, 1992. ISBN 0-7195-5028-9. £16.95. An immensely perceptive account of travelling disasters at the time when the country was at its lowest possible ebb in fortunes. You will certainly find Romania a less tragic country than is portrayed; highly recommended as a read after a first visit. Some good insight into the behaviour of Ion Iliescu, the post-revolution president, re-elected to office in November 2000.

Anne Applebaum, Between East and West, Papermac/Macmillan, 1995. ISBN 0-333-64169-8. An account of post-revolutionary travels across areas of eastern Europe that have seen their borders change this century – regions inhabited by Poles, Germans, Lithuanians, Russians, Byelorussians, Ukrainians, Moldavians and Russians. A good account of contact with the locals in Cernauti, now in Ukraine, and in the republic of Moldova.

Sophie Thurnham, Sophie’s Journey, Warner, 1994. ISBN 0-7515-1006-8. £6.99. The account of an MP’s daughter and her involvement with a children’s home and subsequently a home for adults with ‘learning difficulties’ in northern Moldavia. An account of encountering the worst of Romanian corruption and ignorance and sheer wrong-headedness and trying to succeed in improving patients’ well-being despite them. No more a balanced view of Romania than if a Romanian had written a narrative of life in one of the worst of Britain’s inner cities among a community of drug-addicts and criminals. Recommended nevertheless – but perhaps after a first visit to Romania.

Claudio Magris, Danube – A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea, Collins Harvill (8 Grafton Street, London W1). ISBN 0-00-271155-9. Highly recommended. The author, a Germanophile Italian professor, manages to deliver central and eastern European culture in a highly readable way, using a journey along his beloved river as the means. What a pity that from the Yugoslavian border to Ruse he travels on the southern, Bulgarian bank, not the Romanian. One tenth of this book is about Romania – the value of the book lies in its placing of Romanian history in the context of the country’s neighbours to the west.

Biography
Hannah Pakula, Queen of Roumania, Eland Books (53 Eland Road, London SW11 5JX) (Hippocrene in USA). ISBN 0-907871-91-7. £9.95. Originally published by Weidenfeld as The Last Romantic, this is a worthy biography of Queen Marie of Romania, the very popular British-born queen – a woman who changed the map of Europe. It is also useful in explaining Romanian history in the first half of the twentieth century, still relevant since Marie’s grandson, the exiled King Mihai, is alive and well in Switzerland.

Wildlife
Richard Mabey, Food for Free, HarperCollins £9.99. ISBN 0-00-219865-7. In print since 1972; a ground-breaking work, laying out knowledge that all our ancestors had at their fingertips. Not entirely a red herring here; a read of this excellent pocket-sized book could make all the difference to your time in the Carpathians, by explaining what there is to eat growing wild. Highly recommended

Christopher Grey-Wilson and Marjorie Blamey, The Alpine Flowers of Britain and Europe, Collins. ISBN 0-00-220017-1. £12.99. This is quite excellent, and as far as I know the second edition (1995) is the only flower guide that covers Romania. Ignore its errors, such as a map of Europe’s mountains without the Carpathians!

Guido Moggi, The MacDonald Encyclopaedia of Alpine Flowers. ISBN 0-356-10571-7. Originally in Italian, this covers alpine flowers of Asia as well as Europe. It is well illustrated with coloured photographs, just the right size for a daypack, but a little on the big side to be carried in the pocket.

For a more comprehensive list of books on wildlife covering the region, see the Bibliography of my book Romania – A Birdwatching and Wildlife. Guide.

Novels
Since Romania is such an unknown country, much can be learnt from novels set in the country, by local writers or foreigners.

Bram Stoker, Dracula, first published 1897, and in various imprints ever since. Notwithstanding the fact that the author never went near Transylvania, no one can visit Romania without reading this. A number of publishers periodically bring it out – make sure you buy a version that is complete and unabridged. An example is that published in 1993 by Wordsworth Classics (8B East Street, Ware, Herts SG12 9HU). ISBN 1-85236-086-X. £1.50.

Olivia Manning, The Balkan Trilogy, Penguin. ISBN 0-14-008296-4. The author lived in Bucharest during the early part of the Second World War and her experiences provide the background for her work. The first of the trilogy, The Great Fortune, is the one set in Bucharest – a portrayal of life in a well-defined social circle in the city at the time. The trilogy was filmed by the BBC.

Reference
Ilie Fratu, Andrei Beleaua, Octavian Fratu, Pe Custurile Fagarasene, Editura Pentru Turism, Bucharest, 1991. ISBN 973-48-0021-3. The definitive walker’s guide to the Fagaras, so good that it is useful even to the non Romanian-speaking walker, with its maps, diagrams and monotone photographs.

Nae Popescu, Muntii Retezat, Editura Stadion, Bucharest 1973. Excellent (though now out-dated) guide, with one-colour sketch maps of the higher parts and monochrome photographs.

Walter Kargel, Drumuri spre Culmi – Trasee alpine in Carpati, Editura Sport Turism, Bucharest, 1988. The definitive guide to climbing routes in Romania.

Valeria Velcea, Muntii Nostri: Bucegi, Editura Pentru Turism, Bucharest, 1974. A small staple-bound book with details of the geology and topography of the Bucegi, as well as walking routes. Useful diagrams and sketch maps.

Alexandru Bradut Serban, Singuratatea Verticalelor, Editura pentru Turism, Bucharest 1990. ISBN 973-48-0008-6. Autobiography of a climber who died young – useful climbing route diagrams.

Constantin Rusu, Ion Talaba, Gheorghe Lupascu, Munttii Ciucului, Ghid Turistic Abeona, 1992. ISBN 973-48-0082-5. Contains a passable map of the Ciucului – which are not the most spectacular of the Carpathians.

Ion Mac, Budai Csaba, Muntii Oas – Gutii–Tibles, Abeona, 1992. ISBN 973-48-0000-0. Useful for the western end of the Maramures area with a good map.

Mihial Gabriel Albota, Muntii Ceahlau, Abeona, 1992. ISBN 973-48-0018-3. Contains a good map – a good guide.

Mention should be made of the Muntii Carpati journal, published monthly by Concept Ltd. – a petrochemical company! This is aimed at hikers (less emphasis on climbing per se) and specialises in informative articles about the Romanian Carpathians, often grouping articles from several different writers on one mountain region. Well laid out and printed, in A5 format, every issue seems reproduce a good map of a particular area; there are occasional articles on Romanian expeditions overseas – eg. Caucasus, Himalayas, also on flora and fauna in the Carpathians. Well worth picking up a copy of the current issue, even if your ability to understand Romanian is limited. Usually on sale in gear shops in Bucharest – eg. Himalaya.