It was an anxious night with little sleep to be very honest.
Will today be the day TW560 is put into storage for a new rim to arrive (an me to travel back to Romania later this year to retrieve it) or will we be back on the road and on our way again?
First things first – the owner of the Hotel greets me at 7 am and offers me to have some early breakfast before going to the garage … and as Daniel calls that he’s ready to pick me up, he invites Daniel for some breakfast, too!
I’m having a lively discussion with both during breakfast about Romania, how safe and trustworthy everywhere is and that their ingenuity, since they ‘used to have nothing’ were forced to find ingenious solutions for everything.
Especially repairing everything – I can confirm this: I’ve seen so many ‘there, I fixed it’ things during the last 2 days that if someone was able to bodge things together, it was the Romanians.
We part ways with a warm handshake and another iteration of the promise: you will be on the road again – you need to see more of this beautiful country. … I agree!
Just 15 minutes later, Daniel rolls the TWIKE off the flatbed, collects an extortionate (in a Romanian context) amount of money (A – whom am I to blame, I’m from Switzerland and have the buying power and B – I’m not really in a position to argue), bids his farewell and leaves me in the hands of the ‘master welder’ himself.
We then proceed to lift the TWIKE’s main chassis with a forklift to get to the broken rim.
Both the mechanic and I then have a good look at the rim and lo and behold… MORE CRACKS are visible EVERYWHERE. I was 10 seconds away from total failure and massive damage. Lucky me!
Then the work begins – he first strips the paint
Then aligns the metal…
And then starts to weld the spokes back together again.
It all looks very satisfying
Since he has to do this for 5 spokes, I leave him to his work and start wandering around his workshop. All vehicles he’s doing work on currently are electric.
And for good reason: Unlike Serbia where I saw exactly 2 electric cars, here in Romania, there are all sorts of electric cars, especially and interestingly the fairly rare Renault Fluence ZE which has a swappable battery due to the Better Place project I actually wanted to visit in 2010 when I was in Denmark with TW560. Oh, those were the golden days of crazy money destruction for even crazier EV schemes! (well, actually, this is still the case today…)
Long story short: the rim got generous amounts of aluminium added and looks definitely like many other Romanian examples of ‘there, I fixed it!’
On the rim goes…
And there we are! Rim is back on and I’m back on the road!
It took only about 90 minutes total.
The TWIKE feels great and there is only one thing more for me to do in the ‘risk reduction’ department:
… lower my tyre pressure from 8 bar to 4. This will have a noticeable impact on my energy consumption … but I’d rather avoid any more problems in this department.
Now we’re ready – let’s be on our way to the next pass which should be even more impressive than the Transalpina pass I crossed yesterday.
Look at me – I couldn’t be happier!
The pass is on road signs very early and I’m so curious how it will be!
Since I’ve not charged since yesterday morning, I decided to add 5 kWh to my charge, just to be sure to make it to Brasov tonight – also, there aren’t too many charging stations my roaming providers offer in Romania – and none after the pass until Brasov… so Kaufland it is. I fire up my TCS charging app, connect the cables to the charging station and my EV emulator, flip the switches and I’m in like Flinn!
Here at Kaufland, I got to truly understand what Marian, the Hotel owner meant when he said: Romanians are trustworthy and everything is safe here –
Entering Kaufland with a backpack is not allowed. Fine. There are loads of lockers with electronic locks. Great!
There is a problem: NONE of the free lockers’ locks actually work. Then someone comes to retrieve their backback from a ‘locked’ locker only to reveal that, actually, NONE of the locker’s locks work. All the backpacks and valuables )(I saw key and mobiles) are in non-locked lockers with transparent plastic doors!
After my short charge and since I’m in Transylvania, I come across Count Dracula’s castle and museum. A quick stop to study the count is a must!
Shortly after we’re back to the serious business of crossing mountain passes 😉
Here we come!
With my new sensitivity towards bad roads, I can say that the lower portion of the pass is on the ‘man, so many bad patches’ side.
The reservoir shows seriously low water levels – the images does not really convey how many metres less than usual this is.
The sign below might be funny, but there are many, many other ones which show how less-than-ideal an encounter with a bear is.
I didn’t see any bears and was happy with that – the only thing I saw a lot of were sheep and mostly just as below.
The best part about driving up the pass today is the ability to leave the deadly heat behind. Combined with a slight breeze and some cloud cover: perfect temperatures.
The gradient is very consistent and very manageable by my fully loaded TWIKE. There is traffic – but less than I expected for such a famous pass (put a pin on that thought, there is a reason for this I will discover in a short while…I was just very lucky)
I still am missing the iconic view that you can find all over the internet – it must be on the other side of the pass.
And then, after 400m through a short tunnel, I make it out to the top of the pass with just a few minutes in a short queue for parking… which I don’t use as the TWIKE shall be a motorbike today.
There is a small parking lot where all cars want to go…which is full…so everyone just waits until a car leaves the lot again… and in the meanwhile literally no-one can cross the pass at all.
Sooo, regarding me being lucky… the other side seems to be the preferred one to climb and therefore has a 5km(!) queue thanks to this ‘waiting for free parking lot’ madness and no active traffic management.
The following video might give you an idea how this looked in practice!
Anyway – the food place looked really good and I was planning on going back after exploring the many vendors and vantage points for photos of the pass. I, too, wanted to take one of the iconic pictures of the winding road up the hills!
So, in the newly formed tradition of me sustaining myself on undefined meats and energy drinks, I chose the place that you saw in the video and pointed randomly at some pieces of meat plus other goodies.
And chose some 0,0 radler to go with it. The meat was exceptionally good and I had to get some young employee who spoke some English to explain what I had eaten.
After lunch, I headed further up the hill to get some pictures of the ‘tourist camp’ and the pass itself.
Tadaa – here you go! These are my Transfăgărășan pass photos!
A little further down the pass, I took another dramatic picture of the pass and the lower lying landscape. It’s difficult to describe the parallax effect whilst driving and how the depth of all of this looked during my descent.
And, as quickly as I was at the top, I was back to the hot air and just a very nice view in the rear view mirror that reminded me of yet another really nice pass. I disagree that the Transfăgărășan is ‘better’ than the Transalpina pass. I liked the Transalpina better – visually and from a dramaturgy-of-road point of view – Transalpina teased more and had more variety. Go and see for yourself!
From here it’s just 80 km to Brasov – I take the direct route and a larger road in order to keep TW560 off too bad road surfaces.
Not too much later, I arrive in Brasov and am immediately taken by the sheer beauty of the place.
I also spend quite some time finding a hotel that had a room free and then, one that would let me charge overnight.
After finding said hotel/charge combo not too far from the city centre, first treat myself to a long and cold shower and an hour in an air-conditioned room and then head out to the city centre on foot.
Brasov is one of the growing number of cities which have banned cars from all of the city centre, making it super livable again.
Lots of smaller side alleys have craft beer pubs, coffee shops, restaurants, shops and bars – maximum livability.
The hill behind the city reminds me of Zurich’s Uetliberg, complete with radio tower and panoramic restaurant.
I walk around town for an hour, have some great food and then retire to my room for some sleep – I’m really tired from yesterday and not sleeping too well last night – so no new entries today from me.
So what are the stats for today? Obviously much less than usual, as I started driving around 4 hours later than usual.
I’m just so happy that we’re back on the road again and can continue to Trace Hungary’s Border and the Carpathians.