Photo credit: (c) Eugenia PASCA / AGERPRES ARCHIVE

“Tourists, most of them Romanians, alongside foreigners too have chosen to spend the night between years either in the half-board houses in the Maramures County’s villages and communes, or in the motels and hotels of the five spas of the county. For those who preferred the New Year’s night in the countryside, traditional meals are waiting for them, of which the pork meals will keep the top: cabbage rolls (sarmale), jellied pork, white and black pudding, smoked bacon, next to Transylvanian specific meals. The traditional sponge cake and the stone baked, the wine and the mulled plum brandy from their own household too will complete the meals seasoned with some other culinary goodies in order to diversify the food on this special night,” the chairman of the National Agency of Cultural and Ecological Rural Tourism (ANTREC) Maramures, Victoria Berbecaru told Agerpres.

The tourists who are going to spend the New Year in the country will be carolled, and bands of folk music will delight their ears with recitals courtesy to some board houses’ owners.

“We are pleased that all guest houses and motels in the Borsa mountain spa are fully booked this year. It’s a sign that one could make performing tourism when having good road infrastructure,” said, in his turn, the Maramures County Council’s deputy-chairman, Gabriel Zetea.

Tourists who have chosen as destination the Vaserului Valley will enjoy an outdoors’ New Year’s night in the Maramuresului Mts., after strolling with the Mocanita narrow gauge train more than 21 km till the Novat-Paltin terminus station, where the train’s owners have completed preparations for a nature party.

“At end-journey, in the Novat-Paltin station tourists will descend and will be expected to spend their New Year’s night in open air at camp fire. All comfort conditions were created for such an event. The meals are traditional, and completed with hot wine and the customary Maramures mulled plum brandy, next to champagne. The charm of the night between years spent in the strong mountain air is something special and we are happy that the foreign tourists choose to spend the end of the year in such a landscape,” said Ioan Coma, the manager of the Viseul de Sus Forest Railway which administers the Mocanita train.

Price of a ride with the Mocanita train is included in the open-air New Year’s night and oscillates from 158 RON to 258 RON (rd 35 EUR to 57 EUR), and without accommodation. (1 EUR=rd 4.47 RON)

The price for the most important night of the year in a rural board house in Maramures County varies from 150 RON to 250 RON, and a day of full accommodation, B&B, could make it to 70-120 RON.

Over 440 guest houses, motels and hotels operate in the Maramures County, according to the ANTREC.AGERPRES