Hitching rides in Romania

Europe — By Bob Riel on May 20, 2006 at 5:26 pm

Hitchhiking doesn’t have the allure it once did, and in a number of places it’s really not even an advisable activity these days. But Mat Schultz discovered a different world in rural Romania, where he hitched rides along with the locals and wrote about his experiences for Lonely Planet.

Botiza is the most perfect European village you’ll ever find, the kind of place where traditionally garbed villagers carrying scythes return together from the fields at dusk. Cows wearing bells drink from wooden troughs at the river’s edge, graze, and find their own way home. Old women open gates to let them in. On Friday nights, people sit outside houses, chatting. There doesn’t seem to be anything else to do. The hills surrounding the village are low and as soft as green velvet.

Maybe when hitchhikers die and go to heaven they find themselves in Maramures – a place where drivers actually stop, and the people are remarkably generous.