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{"id":26264,"date":"2018-11-26T21:50:30","date_gmt":"2018-11-27T02:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/?p=26264"},"modified":"2018-11-26T21:50:30","modified_gmt":"2018-11-27T02:50:30","slug":"in-the-car-with-kinga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/wordpress\/2018\/11\/26\/in-the-car-with-kinga\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Car with Kinga"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
The Transf\u0103g\u0103r\u0103\u0219an Road is the most famous road in Romania. Its twists and turns over the Carpathian Mountains are legendary and it is often dubbed the greatest road to drive on in the world. Tons of car commercials have been shot on it.<\/p>\n
I was standing somewhere near the bottom, staring at a closed sign.<\/p>\n
There was a single kitschy souvenir stand open near the final turn, guarded by an aggressively friendly stray dog. Our tour guide, Kinga, came back from speaking with the man running it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe road is closed,\u201d she announced, even though she had told us as much this morning. Since it was the plan for the day to go drive it, we asked her what we were going to do. \u201cWell, we will see.\u201d<\/p>\n
This led us to believe there might be a chance it would be open.<\/p>\n
For three and a half hours from our bed and breakfast, we sat in Kinga\u2019s station wagon. Transylvania’s landscape is lovely, but there isn\u2019t a lot of variation. After the first hour of fields, mountains, fields and mountains, I fell asleep for a bit. We listened to the radio. This was our third day of touring with Kinga and I suspect she was growing just as tired of our constant presence as we were of hers.<\/p>\n
We took a few half-hearted pictures of the surrounding woods, which had a certain charm. The air was mountain-crisp. There were patches of snow dotted between dark trees. Stray cats and dogs twined around our legs. Wood smoke added to the murkiness of the light.<\/p>\n
But it was not nearly charming enough to be worth the drive there or back, we now realized with horror.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou make picture,\u201d Kinga said. \u201cI smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI am Kinga.\u201d When I first shook her hand in the lobby of our hotel, I was taken aback. She must have noticed because she asked, \u201cYou were expecting a man?\u201d<\/p>\n
I had to admit I was. The owner of the company that connected us to her was male and I had never heard the name Kinga before.<\/p>\n
I was on a trek through Europe with my husband Joe. We are, for the most part, do-it-yourselfers. We research the best restaurants online. We ask locals where to stay and what to see. We take buses and trains no matter how slow or questionable. When it came time to plan our trip to the Romanian village where Joe\u2019s father was born, we dug into our travel guides and online resources and realized, abruptly, that we were in trouble.<\/p>\n