to live alone
By loading the map, you agree to Google's privacy policy.
Learn more
This post is about a 23km walk from Suplacu de Barcău to Voivozi Monastery. I plan to go see a lake, but in the end I sleep in a monastery.
I left the guest house and walked into the hills. It was glorious.
Sure, the road went up and down all the time. And sure, the temperature hovered around 35°C. But I had a lot of water in the Caboose, and I took a lot of short breaks on the way. The most important thing was that there were almost no cars on this road.
to the lake!
So I walked through the hills, and I didn’t see many people, maybe because it was so hot. But I didn’t mind. I wanted to get to a lake that I had spotted on the map. The plan was to camp there and be super romantic on the shore of the lake in the hills.
I changed my mind after lunch. I was sitting in the shade of a tree when the wind rose. It was a violent wind like the one that had accompanied the thunderstorm a few days earlier. I looked around: the sky wasn’t clear anymore; there were heavy clouds on the horizon. When I checked the weather app it said that there would be thunderstorms before nightfall. And then again after nightfall. And then all through the night, into the morning, and all through the next day.
the power of the fry
I decided to not go to the lake and find a sheltered place to sleep instead. When I got to the commune of Popești, I noticed a few abandoned industrial buildings, but I didn’t dare to go into any of them because I didn’t want to trespass and make people upset.
It was in an oddly large and oddly fancy restaurant that I ran into Rezvan. I had just ordered a serving of french fries when we got into a conversation. In the end he talked to his mom and his mom talked to the priest of a monastery nearby and the priest allowed me to stay. In fact he even gave me a whole dormitory all for myself, which was fitting because the word monastery means “to live alone”.
dinner with kids
In the evening I had dinner at the monastery with a group of kids who were there on two week retreat. They said they loved the place because there were so many animals for them to play with. I picked up a cat and sat there, and I petted the cat and talked with the kids, and it was good.
pictures
the walk from Suplacu de Barcău to Voivozi Monastery:
roadside ABC bar in Suplacu de Barcău
cross
wooden church near Suplacu de Barcău
yellow car
Mary
cyclist
industrial ruins in Voivozi
Rezvan and his mom
Jesus with clouds
the Voivozi Monastery
my dormitory