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BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS
The first step is to just walk around and look. Once you are familiar with the local geology you will start to recognise when something looks a little different. The late Cretaceous deposits around Hațeg are often a bright brown-orange or a blue-grey, with the bones inside preserved in white or brown. Combine that with the bones’ distinctly organic form and a good eye will find them with ease. Once a bone has been spotted the general approach is to assume there are more around it, so you carefully hammer chisels in a rough circle around the bone to lever a chunk out.You can then wrap it up in plaster or tissue to take back for preparation. This usually involves breaking the rock into smaller bits and isolating any other bones within for bagging up and sending to a museum collection. Sadly I cannot describe what we actually found due to research regulations.
Remember that I said it was hot? Very hot! About 35 Celsius – dry, continental heat, while smashing rocks open for hours on end. Some of our time was spent doing this in water, and the temptation to go for a swim to cool off was strong. At first we resisted the urge, as we had seen the rivers were home to lampreys and enormous leeches which occasionally had a go at nipping our wellies. But after a while we found a more isolated, empty, slow-moving section of river and were instantly refreshed by a dip in the cool pool.
Although we were there primarily for our expedition, we had time to visit some of the non-geological attractions the area has to offer. First we went to Corvin Castle in Hunedoara. The castle dates back to the fifteenth century and comes with battlements, a moat, a dungeon full of gruesome torture devices – the whole shebang. The theme of vampires comes up a lot at tourist centres in Transylvania, and Corvin Castle’s surrounding gift shops were no exception. Although urban myths claiming the castle partly inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula are just that, the castle did host Vlad the Impaler when he was imprisoned by Hungarian military leader John Hunyadi. It has also been used as a film set a number of times, including for the recent horror flick The Nun. But Romania’s history stretches much further back than this.
Peppered around the countryside are the scattered remains of settlements built as part of the Dacia Province of the Roman Empire. Two sites were on our to-visit list: the first and second capital cities of Dacia. Built in the second century and eventually destroyed by the Goths, the metropolis Ulpia Traiana preserves many building foundations and fragmented examples of beautiful Roman architecture. An amphitheatre, gladiator school and many temples are found at the site. A long, winding drive of 40 kilometres through the steep Carpathians brought us to the original capital of Dacia, before it was taken over by the Romans, Sarmizegetusa Regia. A mysterious concentric ring arrangement of rectangular pillars accompanies the many temples built at the site, along with what some believe to be a type of sundial (possibly inspired by the Greeks).
This latter visit also exposed us to a more natural spectacle of the region: thunderstorms.Thunderstorms in Transylvania are small, fast and dense. We had only just arrived at the site and got out of our car when we heard the thunder rolling in through the tall trees. We were making our way through the forest to the ancient site when lightning struck the ground close enough for us to see the exact spot it made contact with. We were in a forest on top of a mountain, 1200 metres up –not the best place to be when lightning is around. So we hightailed it back to the cars, creating a scene not unlike the climax of Jurassic Park when the T. rex escapes from its enclosure. Instead of a giant reptile roaring behind the streaming car windows, a lightning bolt threw itself down a radio mast about 20 metres away. Perhaps the Dacian gods had decided we should leave.
Later we visited the mining town of Petroșani, home to a wonderfully curated mining museum, which we were given an extensive and enthusiastic tour of (in Romanian, though our native colleagues translated for us). We also took a diversion to a cave called Pestera Bolii (‘The Cave of Disease’), which contains cave paintings and a wide subterranean stream – a welcome refuge from the punishing outdoor heat.
Until then we had been preoccupied with animals which had been extinct for millions of years, but on the outskirts of Hațeg we visited some animals which had been extinct for much fewer. Down a long meandering forest road, coming off the National Route 66, is a house. You pay six Romanian lei (about £1.15) and walk down a trackway to a clearing. At the end of the clearing is a gated field containing a herd of huge brown animals not seen in Romania since 1852. Bison look fittingly ancient with their fuzzy pelts, curved horns and hulking shoulders, as if they have walked straight out of a thawing glacier. It certainly served as a suitable bookend to my time in the country.
