Day 42 ROMANIA Baia Mare

We weren't able to see 2 of the 4 wooden churches that we drove to. Most disappointing. At the first church, after ringing in WhatsApp 7 times, the key bearer said in Romanian that she was out of town. Before I could ask who else had the keys, she hung up and wouldn't answer further calls. We could not understand how the key holder for a UNESCO heritage listed church could be out of town and the key not be held by someone else available. We met different passersby and asked if they knew who held the keys and we were sent on a wild goose chase with no good outcome. A whole hour wasted. Frustrated, we reminded ourselves that this was all part of travel.
The second church was at Barsana. It had a beautiful large monastic complex for nuns. When we arrived at the Monastery, all we could hear was what sounded like a team of power tools only to find that it was only one nun wielding one monstrous Sthil whipper snipper. There was a whole industrious team of nuns gardening. Somehow it detracted from the calm peaceful serenity of the monastery. We left quickly to search for the UNESCO heritage wooden church, only to find yet again that we could not get it in. Our eSims only allowed us data and we could not actually call the numbers listed at the church door unless they answered WhatsApp calls which they did not.
With having two failures we decided to hunt for lunch at this much acclaimed Maramures local restaurant in Breb. We had been in the region of Bucovina for the last week and this region of Maramures has quite different cuisine which we were very keen to try. In keeping with the theme of the morning the restaurant was shut.
It was with extremely low expectations and spirits that we made our way to the next church. St Nicholas saved us. It was his church, where the spell was broken. A car pulled up at the car park just after we arrived. It was an elderly English couple who could call the phone number at the door. The lady who answered said she would be there with the key in five minutes. The little boy and his granny appeared soon after. The church was opened and the boy very officially collected our 5lei (A$1.75) and handed each of us a ticket. The boy handed Ruby his phone and we had a 20 minute guide through the church from a lady on the phone with the boy pointing out the relevant features and frescos. We thanked the couple for making the phone call and they thanked us for giving them the encouragement to do so as they too had been unsuccessful getting into these churches.
The key holder at the last wooden church answered the WhatsApp call and told us that the key was under the mat. He also said there was going to be service at 4pm. We waited for half an hour, and at 4.15pm when no one and nothing happened, we left. We were used to such miscommunication or Bulgarian/Romanian time that we did not mind. It was special having that quiet time in the church looking at the frescos. From the phone guide at Saint Nicholas Church, we learnt that the wooden churches had tiny little windows of about 20cm x 10cm. The larger windows were put in much later. We were glad for these larger windows as we could not find the light switch for the church.
The drive to Baia Mare on DN18 route involved crossing the Gutâi Pass, which features winding mountain roads and steep serpentines.Read more