holiday home: trip to sovata

my parents have 2 or 3 resorts where they keep returning for holidays - the conforts of the familiar etc. sovata remains one of them, even if they haven´t been for many years (10? who knows anymore? not them). i´ve only spent one holiday in sovata with them, and that was 20 years ago, omg i am so old! those were 10 very very long days, at the peak time when spending time with my parents seemed to me the most boring thing in the world. so it was fun these days to compare how my feelings re: the resort itself and tight family time measure up.
things you have to know about sovata:
- it´s an approximately 2 hour drive from bistrita (i´ve heard it called a 1-hour drive, but i wouldn´t want to get in those people´s cars)
- it´s in the heart of the hungarian-dominated part of romania. i think the statistics say like 90% of population hungarian. without accounting for tourists though.
- the main attraction is a lake of warm salty water, around which the whole resort was built. there´s a long tradition of people coming here for treatment (everything rheumatic) but just to relax is also a thing.

only just arrived in the resort, my parents and i are confronted with local bilingualism: what became our favourite-looking restaurant, facing the lake, is called "the little mushroom".

and the bilingual specials at the same restaurant, with (slightly misleading) visuals

traditional hungarian dessert - in this place it´s sold every 5 meters, you seriously cannot turn around without bumping into a kurtos kalacs-selling place

this amused me for a while, that they would call the main store in the resort "kevin". but one gets used to these sort of things so fast, by the second day it was all "we should go to kevin on our way to the lake"

a sort of taxi service, mostly aimed at kids (i think it´s free for kids?) that takes you on a tour of the resort, with stops at every hotel etc. it does come in handy, since although there are only 3 notable streets in sovata, one of them is so abrupt that walking it feels like a healthy hike

in the smaller pool. see? no hands!!
this is a longish story though. we started our mini-trip early enough, but by the time we´d gotten to sovata and found accomodation and changed to go to the lake and had some lunch, it was past 1 pm. swimmers are allowed in the big lake only from 10 to 1 and from 3 pm to 6 pm, the 1 to 3 period is break time (something to do with regulating the salinity??? have no idea.) so we started walking around the main lake, and to one side of it there´s an artificial pool, way smaller but entrance was cheaper and anyway i wanted to swim RIGHT AWAY. so in we went. that was our swim for that day.
this stagnant salty water keeps you bobbing on the surface even without effort. just in case you didn´t know or ever consider this. one barely needs to move to keep floating, but if you do want to swim of course you can.
 

 

pic taken by my mum from the wooden deck. i´m pretty sure my dad and i are in there somewhere - but this is mainly so y´all can see the actual size of the pool

apart from my weird facial expression (i think i was complaining of something...too cold?)... swimming is generally good father-daughter bonding time for us, because when else? (i did end up the next day regaling my dad with bits of "game of thrones" lore while hanging out in the lake)

best feeling: when you´re swimming around, ok flailing around in the warm-ish water (it was warmer by A LOT in the big lake) and it starts raining on you. nobody gets out, because why would they? i understand that rain´s been frequent in these parts this time of the year, but everybody knows it won´t last long. and while it rains it´s warmer inside the water than outside.
anyway: i don´t have lots of pictures from day2, because that was pretty much just enjoying the water - rain and sunshine. these ones from day 1will have to do.

next, around 5 pm when we were kicked out of the pool, we did walk around the big lake. the whole thing has been obviously renovated a huge deal since my last visit, so i just took in all the changes

there´s a lot of wood in the area, and they´ve used it to build these...structures all along the path surrounding the lake. it does look very good, but it´s like...so much wood! wooden stuff everywhere!

there are other lakes except the big one! close to it, to the side, there are the Green Lake and Red Lake. i´m not sure which one this is, but people use it for mud treatment, as this pic clearly shows. apparently it´s very good for rheumatic conditions so ok.

a vein of salt on the hill slope, looking like a tiny waterfall

duck swimming in weird-colored water, from the mud i suspect. i don´t really understand ducks living on salty lakes, but ok. they probably feed on flies and co.

at the farthest small lake, we stumbled upon a holiday camp gathering of hungarian kids. we were very amused at how happy, carefree and NOISY they were. .

moving on to the actual resort: the architectonic style is really particular (see: all wood all the time) and clearly very hungarian-influenced. i liked this little church especially because it´s so unapologetically black

 the way from the lake to our room passed by this house with this gate - our absolute favourite - very typical hungarian (szekely, they say) woodwork. also landscape painting on the outer wall panels!

trying to get the details of the pillar carving. note that this gate is probably new, or has been stripped down/redone in recent years - i saw an older picture of it on Wikipedia, wherein it was painted

we found the house on the first evening, and returned to it for photoshoot the next morning

the villa itself is obviously abandoned, but we hope someone will rehabilitate it and has just started with the gates

this is just gratuitous

ok, finally: day at the lake. it´s called lacul ursu (bear lake), and only half of it is accesible to swimmers - up to where that boat is patrolling

my father keeps saying how lucky we are to have had good weather - apparently bistrita and cluj were afflicted with rain all of this week too

getting in...we ended up finding towel spots under the farthest umbrela
as i said before, the rest of the day was not epic, because it was so good. i did like 3-4 tours of the lake, studied the ducks on the other shore with my dad (from the water), floated on my back for a while trying to perfect my balance (my actual swimming is one of the least graceful things you can imagine.)
warm water is so good. the body goes through it like it´s silk, you just feel so supple and smooth and everything feels easy. there must be a point at which  it becomes boring, but one whole day is not it.
now my mum keeps pestering me to go to the swimming pool in Montreal on the regular because it´s so apparent how much i enjoy swimming etc

near our villa, bird houses very high up

closer. and there are birds in them, and someone goes and places food there regularly

front of our villa.

this seems to be a trend - i´ve seen this type of figures in the yards of more than just the one central villa

Eagle Street, up the forested hill, and still it takes more to climb from the street level to each of the houses

Eagle Street communicates with the main street through a series of narrow abrupt steps, and this is what a house built on the slope looks like

 

end of day 2, in the parklet of what is the closest thing to the main square, trying to do the standard photo with the water fountain in the background. from this place you can hear live music from 2 different summer gardens, also you can buy icecream , popcorn , kurtos kalacs or have your portrait drawn without even bothering to stand up
note (before i forget) that we were among theVERY FEW romanians around. i had expected lots of hungarian tourists, from hungary and the rest of transylvania, but the invasion of moldavians, ukrainians and russians not so much.
my dad said post-factum that he´d been worried about bad service or feigned incomprehension on account of us being romanian. which i´m proud to report that was not the case at all, in any of the places we entered.

 

this little house (spotted on our last walk in sovata, up the hill) is for sale in case anyone is interested.
no, but seriously, there are lots of wooden cabins and villas built specially to be sold or rented in this place. most of them look lovely

randomly crossing this creek to get onto a country road up above the hill, that kept going and going...after half an hour we had to turn back, because there was no connecting path to the rest of the resort

but along the road it was full of cabins like this one, all open to tourists i expect

finally, before leaving sovata, i had to immortalize this work of art. it´s two pillars on the side of the steps that go up to one of the villas close to where we were put up. so it´s not like it´s anything special, just part of the daily decor. but see how it tells a whole story of family life (if you choose to interpret it that way)? i particularly like the guy hunting the stag...but is he a king? that does look like a crown.
unfortunately, there was no one around to ask.