Comuna Sălătrucu

When the rain briefly stopped in the morning I knew it will start as soon as I'm packed and ready to continue #acrossRomania. I wasn't mistaken 😅

The slow climb to the lowest pass over the Carpathians took me by some wonderful houses. To paraphrase @cyan, it's a style invented by Ion Mincu, after the Romanian unification in 1918, and it wasn't continued after WWII, as the communists tried to distance themselves from the "bad" interwar period trends.
I found this style really present in central Romania and not that much in western parts, where secession styles, typical architectural remnants of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, prevail. And cities have brutalism in abundance.

It's raining constantly, so I have rain gear on, which makes me steam up easily. But the wonderful lush green scenery makes it worthwhile.

The moss looked almost edible.

The narrow mountain road led me by the monument of ⚔️ the battle of Posada (1330), in which Wallachian (Romanian) army defeated a much larger army of a Hungarian king. A little bit more and I should be at the top of the pass.

After this tree, that is torn and unsure which way to grow, the track started going downhill. Muddy, rainy, had to hold the brake very often on my way down, but I was over the mountain. If it wasn't for the rain, I wouldn't find this particular climb challenging at all. After all, with its highest peak (⛰️ Moldoveanu peak) at 2544 m (8,346 ft), crossing the same mountain range at the height of roughly 900 m (3,000 ft) feels almost like cheating. 😊
I was kinda sad though that because of the rain that was following me, I didn't see Moldoveanu in the distance, as I was only 🧭 20 km away from it.Read more