The last Trip to Bucegi Mountains

As told by Dr. Fenyo Litman

Every spring we used to travel to the mountains. It was a custom to go there. The mountains are only three and a half hours away and its a different world.

In 1946 , we decided to go to Busteni, to the famous Hero's Cross, located in the saddle of the Caraiman Mountains, on the slope to the Seacă Valley at an elevation of 2,291 meters!

The cross itself has a height of 28 meters (92 ft) and two arms of 7 meters (23 ft) each.^[1] The monument was the tallest structure in the world situated at such an altitude. The Heroes' Cross was built between 1926 and 1928 in the memory of the railway heroes who died on duty in World War I fighting against the armies of the Central Powers. The cross was erected at the initiative of Marie of Edinburgh and King Ferdinand of Romania in order to be seen from a large distance as possible.

 

There was a paper factory there. A communist newspaper from Bucharest was purchasing the paper from this factory and having some connections we were all able to get a ride on a pick up truck that was headng that way free of charge.

We arrived in Busteni at noon time and headed to a villa that belonged to Niki's father. The group disembarqued , got into the villa and there was a big dilema. Since it was getting a bit late , and sundown was expected at 5 PM, some of us thought it might be better to sleep the night at Niki's and head off to the mountains early in the morning. Others and Mihai Schwartz in particular insisted to go to the mountains right away. And so it was!

We started moving into the mountains area , cimbing our way up, and  around 4 PM the sun started going down. It became quite cold and suudenly winds gusted and we found ourselves in a teribble evolving snowstorm.  We kept moving with the snow flakes hitting our faces . At one point we lost the direction. Someone suggested to use the Funicular cables as a sort of a compass.

So we all started following the cables hoping it would lead us to a safer zone. The marching in the snow was getting more and more difficult as it start piling up on the paths. Our legs sunk in the snow and toes began to freeze. 

 

Suddenly, we sighted a structure that seemed from eyesight to be reasonably close but under the existing conditions had turned to be quite a desperate trail. But when we saw there was  a chance to get out of this situation we got reenergized, increased the pace with a burning desire to learn more about this structure.

After we finally reached it, it was clear that this is a "Cabana" (belonging to the King Voievodu Mihai). We quickly decided to invade it and settle there for a while. We had our own food that we had brought with us and the cabana had its own means of heating with a woodburning fire.

 

We spent time sleeping, telling jokes and mostly expecting the the snowstorm to die down. We didn't dare to go out side and lived there for 3 days. Then the storm died down. We packed our stuff, got out of the cabana and headed back to Busteni, to Niki's villa. We felt we got our life back and we didn't feel like continuing the excursion. This was our last trip to the mountains. We had enough!