58. Day - Sept 4: After the church service, free ride to Romania

Today on Sunday, September 4, we said goodbye to Hungary with a harvest thanksgiving church service and set off for Romania.

Before the church, the pastor greeted each churchgoer. Out of approximately 500 members of the congregation, about 80-90 visitors attended the church service. I wrote about why this harvest thanksgiving church service is so important there in my blog yesterday. I thought it was a very good turnout compared to our church services. Like at the other church services on my journey, I understood almost nothing, but the pastor gave me the sermon text in German. I was greeted at the beginning and during the intercessions, a prayer was also said for me and my journey to God. However, communion was somewhat unusual for me because the participants had to line up in a queue. At the end, all children were asked to come forward and the pastor pronounced a special blessing for their new school year. Almost at the same time as in Diesdorf, to which I had also invited the families from a distance.

After the church service, I packed my belongings at the family's house where I stayed overnight, loaded my bike, and was warmly bid farewell. There was a hint of melancholy in the bright sun during the farewell. It was only about 15km on completely deserted country roads to the border with Romania. The border crossing was marked on my road map, but apparently it was only intended for pedestrians, as a barrier blocked the road. But there was no border guard in sight. So I pushed my bike around the barrier and continued on and suddenly I was in Romania. It's that simple, without any checks or officers, crossing the border within the EU. How nice, I thought.

It was about 20km to the first Romanian city - Arad. There, I exchanged the rest of my Hungarian money, had a coffee, and tried in vain to buy a map. I did some research on the website of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Romania. However, the first Protestant parish is only located in Broos, about 200km after Arad. So I decided to ride on the E 68 highway until dusk and to get as far as possible in the direction of Transylvania. On the way, I visited an open Romanian Orthodox church, which was beautifully decorated with typical iconic elements from the outside. I found a scenic spot near the village of Capruta on the Miersch River and was able to set up my tent during a beautiful sunset. At the end of the day, I had covered 115km of distance, was correspondingly tired, bathed in the Miersch River, ate something, and went to bed early in my tent. Now I had arrived in my fifth country of my journey and was curious about what awaited me.