The second day of hiking, I went to one of the top sights of Maramureș: the old wooden churches.
The Maramures region is characterized by wood: houses made of wood, wooden gates of several hundred years old, wooden churches from the fourteenth century and wooden headstones.
From Oradea I continued further in Romania to Cluj-Napoca, the cultural capital of Transylvania, where I stayed with a friend of Bea for a couple of days. Before going more south and east I wanted to explore the beautiful Maramures region in the north of Romania.
After taking public transport in Hungary I picked up hitchhiking again from Debrecen, Hungary, to Oradea, Romania.
The day I started hitchhiking from Rakol'uby towards Hungary was quite gloomy again: it was cold, the sky was covered in clouds and it looked like it would start raining pretty soon. Nevertheless I tried to hitchhike towards Hungary anyway. I tried to go towards Nitra first, which would bring me on a highway towards Hungary.
The day after I arrived at my cousin's apartment in Bratislava we took the early morning train going to Nové Mesto. That particular train had a restaurant car which gave us the chance to have a nice breakfast to get the day started. Soon after arriving at the nice house in the village we drove to a small village somewhat further. As a little "work-and-travel" experience, I helped my cousin collecting nuts. A large part of which I later got back as provisions for the road, together with a liter (!) of Slivovitsa. This is a brandy made from fruits (mostly plums) and resembles Palinka, from Hungary and Rakia in general. For the Slivovitsa I got, Manu and Lucia had gathered the plums themselves.
After the five days of Budapest, I planned to go to Bratislava to meet my cousin who lives in Slovakia. From there we would take the train to Rakol'uby, a small village with a few hundred inhabitants.
Last year, me and 3 friends all turned 25 around October and November. To celebrate, we had organized a party for our friends. We asked them to not give us presents but instead give us a small donation, so we could go travelling together in the near future. After some discussion we decided to take a trip to Budapest for 4 or 5 days. Maxim, Wout and Louis would go there by plane, and I would make sure I got there by hitchhiking.