Author: plutoman

plutoman

I'm an English teacher in mad-as-a-box of-frogs Romania. Hope you like my blog! ✌️

The UK

Making the most of the trip I didn’t want — part 1 of 2

June 21, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

The sweet aroma of tei – lime – is now permeating the whole city, as it always does in June. It’s now 46 days until I really go away – this summer will be a short one for me.

As for my mini-trip to England, it wasn’t much of a holiday. I’d been struggling with sleep all week, and then on Friday I had to be up just after four to catch the plane. When I called the taxi at that ungodly hour, it was here in under a minute. The flight to Luton was as about as fine as it can be when you’ve hardly slept a wink. I took two comfortable buses to Cambridge and I was happy that they took a while. I arrived in Cambridge just before midday, and my first stop was – ugh – Barclays. The lady at Barclays didn’t accept my Romanian power bill as proof of address, so she asked me to provide a Romanian bank statement with my address at the top. Slight snag: my bank statement didn’t show that information. Oh god, what do I do now?

I took the guided bus to St Ives. The small market was on, and in a very British conversation, two stallholders were discussing the amount of jelly they liked in their pork pies. Up to the flat. Cup of tea time. Alas, no water. My brother had turned it off. I scrabbled around and eventually found the tap. Phew. A cup of tea and then off to the library. I needed online access to my Romanian bank, but I couldn’t receive text messages. After an enormous amount of faff, and two separate payments, I had roaming access. Whatever I did though, I couldn’t find anything on my online bank account that gave proof or even the merest inkling of my address. My only option was to phone my bank and hope they could email me something. Phone calls to Romania didn’t work, so I used Skype. I was on hold for ages but got through to a woman who said that, yes, they could email me something. After complimenting me on my Romanian she said she’d need to put me through to a colleague. While I was on hold for a second time, my Skype credit ran out, and after two hours in the library I left, defeated.

I went over to my parents’ friends’ place. They were working in the garden. He had improved since his I saw him last summer following his near-death experience, though he was still underweight. She was now quite frail. They let me use their laptop, and on my third Skype call (I got disconnected after 25 minutes on both my first two attempts), I got through to the bank. Yes, we can send you something, but it won’t be a statement as such, and anyway you won’t get it until you’re back in Romania. Fantastic. (Unlike the UK, where it’s a legal requirement for bank statements to show addresses, in Romania it’s a legal requirement for them not to show addresses. I was in something akin to a Catch-22 situation.) I didn’t want to outstay my welcome with my parents’ friends because they were heading down to Southampton the next morning for a surprise family birthday party.

That evening, and most of the next day, I felt shattered and didn’t want to do anything. The sinus pain wasn’t helping. I read and tried my best to complete a puzzle book that Mum had started in 2017. I could see that Mum had struggled to fill in the names of celebrities, and I was no better on that score. In the afternoon I forced myself to cycle to my aunt’s place in Earith, six miles away. I knocked on her door. No answer. The back entrance was unlocked, and I tapped on the window. My overweight, hobbling aunt appeared in a pink dressing gown. This was 3pm. As usual, she was aware of what was happening in the world but showed little interest in other people’s lives. She did however give me a beer while she smoked and drank, and then gave me a pizza to take home.

On Sunday I went for a longish bike ride to the Godmanchester nature reserve, and otherwise just read and hung around St Ives; the area around the river where I grew up, and away from the housing estate to the north, is very nice indeed. My brother would like to move back there, to the place where he grew up, and I could see why. I recently read an article about the other St Ives, the more famous tourist hotspot in Cornwall whose numbers swell every summer, and someone left a comment saying that people would have a better time in the less renowned (but just as interesting) historic Cambridgeshire town.

Life :) - Maths teaching - Music - New Zealand - Photos

More sad news, and some happier traditions

June 18, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just had a marathon – 81-minute – Skype call with my parents.

We spent the first part of our call discussing the latest shocking news, that my Wellington-based cousin has cancer in her jaw. My parents had noticed something was up when they met her at their tragically young relative’s funeral in late April, but never imagined it was cancer. Googling “jaw cancer” makes for sobering reading. Jaw cancer is rare and doesn’t exist per se; it nearly always starts somewhere else in the mouth and spreads to the jaw, meaning it’s usually in an advanced stage. The prognosis can’t be good. On Wednesday she’ll have an operation to remove flesh from her jaw and replace it, probably from her arm. I must send my cousin a message, but what do you say?

A good half-hour of our chat was spent discussing life admin. It’s making my parents’ lives a misery. They must get rid of both their flats in the UK. They must move to somewhere far simpler as soon as the building work on their current place is finished. They must do things that are financially sub-optimal, just to simplify their lives. Seeing them buckle under the weight of all this crap is upsetting for me, especially at a time when I’ve been overwhelmed by it all myself.

Yesterday I had my pair of two-hour lessons in Dumbrăvița. When I turned up for the maths lesson, Matei’s father told me that the British school is hiring a maths teacher. I very much doubt I’d get the job anyway because I have no experience of teaching in a school, but if I did I’d have to Get Involved and coach football and heaven knows what else, and um, yeah, I’d have nice long holidays but no thanks.

After my lessons we were supposed to have the latest edition of the English Conversation Club, this time at my place, but just about everybody was away. Sanda, who ran the club in its previous incarnation, showed up at five. We chatted about wedding traditions and the word “venue”, and I gave her a Kiwi vocab matching game which she was somehow fascinated by. Then at 6:20 another woman, Ramona, turned up. She had lived some time in the US, and spoke English pretty well. At one point we discussed silent-b words: “subtle”, “debt”, “doubt”, and words ending in -mb such as “bomb” and “lamb”. Ramona told me, and I get this a lot, that “You don’t pronounce the b in doubt because you’re British. Sorry, but I learned American English and in America they pronounce it.” No, no, no, no, no. I may be British, but I’m also a teacher and I’ve taken the time to learn about pronunciation in different English-speaking countries, I also watch American films occasionally, and believe me, they don’t.

At seven, Sanda said she was going to the open-air museum to see Festivalul Etniilor, where performers based in the Banat region, but with different ethnicities, sang and played and danced. After tennis was cancelled because of the waterlogged courts, I decided to join her. There were Germans (Swabians or șvabi), Ukrainians, Serbians, Aromanians and Gypsies (Roma). It was a riot of colour as all the performers were dressed in their traditional costumes. The event was free and completely non-commercialised, unlike the much more publicised Flight Festival also taking place this weekend. The star of the show, Damian Drăghici with his group Damian & Friends, came on later. In the past he’s been a supporting act for the likes of Joe Cocker and James Brown. Towards the end he played the nai (a traditional panflute); the last song of the evening was Ciocârlia (the Lark), a very traditional Romanian tune – I much preferred last night’s version to the one in the link. I really enjoyed the evening; well, at least I did after the start – I was starving but grabbed a large langoș from a kiosk quite a way from the stage.

The Gypsies

The blind pianist

The flower stalls at the market, still open at 10:30 last night

I made a summer pudding for yesterday’s club which barely happened, and still have most of it. (We also discussed the word “pudding”. When I was growing up, we never used “dessert”. “Pudding”, or simply “pud”, covered anything that you ate after your main meal. For me, “pudding” sounds about nine times tastier than “dessert”.) The main benefit of yesterday’s “event” was that I made me tidy up the kitchen, living room, and main bathroom.

I promise I’ll talk about my trip next time.

Life :) - The UK

Approved, finally!

June 15, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’m back in Timișoara after my flying visit. I got home at 2:30 last night, but luckily I didn’t have any lessons until this afternoon. I called Mum this morning for her 74th birthday.

The big news: on Monday, Barclays approved my ID – eventually – so I should get my hands on that money after more than a year. That’s a massive weight off my mind. I’m not counting all my chickens yet as it could take twelve weeks to arrive (why?!?!), but after what Barclays have put me through it’s a jolly good start.

It was only a short trip, but even so it felt good to be back today. I visited the market on the way to my first lesson with the two sets of twins. They’d been recovering from chicken pox, and one of them was still in bed. They were fascinated by my British coins, mainly because they had the Queen on them; I happily donated a few. With the chicken pox and my market purchases (what do you call this?), there was plenty to talk about at the session went by quickly and easily. In the garden their mother was picking marigolds so she could make tea from them.

I’ll write a proper trip report, at the weekend probably.

Family - Life :) - Poker - Tennis

It’s snot much fun

June 6, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

I had a whole heap more to say last time, but didn’t want to bombard my vast readership with too much in one go.

Last Tuesday I went back to the neurologist for another consultation. My left nostril is “always on” and causes me considerable discomfort. The pressure builds up and builds up – and so does the pain – until eventually I’m able to blow the thick clear, colourless gunk out. Sometimes it shoots out with such force that I don’t know where it’s gone. Occasionally I can’t blow it out, and then I’m in a whole world of hurt – the pain can then become excruciating. I normally wake up in the middle of the night and have to give my nose a good blow – I’ve yet to devise a way of doing this in my sleep. I told the neurologist all of this, and he said that unfortunately most of the ENT specialists in Timișoara are lacking. He gave me the number of one who might be reasonable, but said that ultimately I might need to see one in Bucharest, and that wouldn’t be cheap. He quoted something like £2000, which I’d happily pay to get rid of this once and for all.

On Thursday I decided to give up on online poker, having lost the desire to play. I played one final session, finishing with a fourth and a third in my last two tournaments, then cashed out. Annoyingly they creamed something like 10% off the top – it was never anything like that high when I lived in New Zealand – but the remainder (around £1100 or NZ£2200) will be useful. So will the extra time. I’ll have a bit more time over the summer to work on these books which I haven’t forgotten about.

This afternoon, to my great surprise, I got through to my aunt on the phone. She rarely picks it up. She sounded fine, but admitted that physically she was a mess. I plan to cycle over to her place on Saturday, just like I did last summer. When I told her about the Barclays business, she said I needed to make an appointment at the branch, so I did as she suggested. I’ll visit Barclays in Cambridge on Friday (the day I arrive), then I’ll still have an appointment up my sleeve on Monday if that doesn’t work out, although that will mean making a special trip to Cambridge. Tomorrow I’ll need to get my electricity bill translated, once again. The whole thing slipped into the realms of farce ages ago.

Teachers have been on strike for the last two weeks. They’ve chosen the end of the school year, when all the big exams are held, for maximum disruption. I sympathise with them; teachers’ salaries in Romania are derisory. But giving teachers more money will hardly begin to repair Romania’s creaking education system. This is the subject of a whole separate post. (I need to make a series of posts on how stuff works, or doesn’t, in Romania.)

I played a strange set of tennis last night. I partnered Ionuț, a man of around my age, against his daughter and Gabriela, a competitive woman also in her forties. So yes, it was boys against girls. The girls won the first eleven points; in the end we won the set 7-5 despite (if I calculated correctly) winning two fewer points than them overall.

Nearly 300 people died in a horrific train crash in India on Friday. To see the grieving families was extremely distressing. The Wikipedia page on Indian railway incidents shows a litany of disaster over decades, although (this awful incident notwithstanding) they have reduced in frequency.

I spoke to Mum and Dad this morning. Workers in New Zealand had the day off for King’s birthday. Doesn’t that sound weird?

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Romania - Tennis

Back to nature

June 5, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

Lots of biking this weekend. This morning I met Mark at his place in Dumbrăvița and we cycled to the (relatively) nearby village of Covaci, then into the countryside, through fields of wheat and barley and rapeseed (though that had been harvested). As I realised we were at the highest point of a câmpie, a plain basically, I was reminded of Haddenham, a large village in Cambridgeshire and perhaps the highest point in that very flat county. (The Blossoms and Bygones open day held every May in Haddenham was really quite wonderful. The vintage cars, the traction engines, seeing horses being shod, trips on horse-drawn carts, going up the church tower and water tower, and best of all, cheap cakes and biscuits. This event seemed to run out of steam around the turn of the century, and Wikipedia tells me that it finished for good in 2013.) We saw two foxes and a hare (hares can run at around twice the speed us pathetic humans can) as well as several storks, and the puddles (of which there were many) were teeming with froglets. And, as always in Romania, so many insects. My old city bike, as opposed to Mark’s newish hybrid bike, coped OK with the narrow dirt tracks. Even on the paved roads there was gloriously little traffic; it was great to be away from the noise of people and their machines. We came back via another pleasant village named Cerneteaz (pronounced “chair-net-yazz“, or close to that; click for a late-eighties flashback) where we had a packed lunch. Traditional Romanian music was playing; we both agreed that we quite liked it.

Made from mud and glass bottles, it’s supposed to be like this

Yesterday I had my maths lesson with Matei, who had just got a D grade in a test at school. That disappointing result was little to do with him and a lot to do with his teacher who hadn’t really done her job properly. Her explanations had clearly been superficial, so no wonder when she dumped a demanding test on her pupils, they were mostly at sea. Matei showed me the unprofessional-looking test which had been cobbled together from at least four different past papers. The worst part was the marking scheme. Not every mark on every past paper is worth the same. One two-hour paper might carry 100 marks; another two-hour paper which has just as much stuff in it might only have 60 marks. If you’re going to just smoosh different papers together, you have to adjust the marks up and down accordingly. You’d think a maths teacher might have figured that out. After seeing Matei I met Mark at a restaurant called Astur, just off the main street of Dumbrăvița. Unusually there was a large, nicely mown beer-garden-style outdoor area. I was hungry so I had a carbonara and a beer as we sat in the full glare of the sun. (The tops of my legs certainly caught it.) As we were about to leave, my brother surprisingly called me and showed me my nephew, now closing in on nine months old and a different person from the previous time I’d seen him. He’d just uttered his first word: cat. He and the cat are best mates; they spend many hours in close proximity. It was a bit awkward to talk, so I called my brother back in the evening after tennis.

Mark and I soon parted ways, and I cycled to Giarmata Vii to look at yet another Dacia, this time a bright blue one from 2005. It was going for 1500 euros. It had one or two small spots of rust, and only had two weeks left on its ITP (MOT in the UK, or WOF in New Zealand). The owner took me for a ride around the village, and it seemed fine. I don’t know what to do. On Tuesday I looked at another car that seemed fine on the surface, but I found out that it had been in a crash that damaged both the right doors and the pillar and cost a lot to repair. At this rate, buying a car is looking as hard as buying a flat was. (I still have awful flashbacks to that meeting in the lawyer’s office on 5/5/22. My stress levels were off the scale.)

On Friday night I had my lesson with the guy who lives in London. He’d recently been to Alton Towers. I went there twice, in 1999 and 2003. The more famous rides, such as Nemesis, and Oblivion which was brand new in ’99, are still running. He’d also been back to Romania with his family to attend a wedding. They stayed in a hotel which he’d booked on booking.com. The hotel was dire and he duly left a one-star review. The hotel owners then tracked him down, found where he works in the UK, and gave his company a one-star review. What bastards. After he read articles about Boris Johnson and Philip Schofield, he said he’d read The Noonday Demon, a 2001 book about depression that I’d been meaning to get hold of. He said his wife suffers from depression but is denial of it. We had a very interesting conversation about the subject, in particular the number of people who are affected indirectly.

Tennis. I played last night for the first time in two weeks. I played with the teenage girl; her father and 88-year-old Domnul Sfâra were on the other side. We won 6-1, 7-6 (7-5). The local tradition of swapping the side you receive from with your partner every second game is weird and against the rules of tennis, and gets very confusing during a tie-break. Our first set point at 6-3 in the tie-break was the most incredible rally I’ve been involved in for some time; the fact that a near-nonagenarian was also involved made in even more remarkable.

Only four full days until I go away.

Books - Family - Language learning - Language teaching - Life :)

What the hell is it this time?

May 30, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today started off with a Romanian lesson. I made my fair share of mistakes, and only got into the swing of things when (alas) the 90 minutes were almost up. If I somehow had whole days of making conversation in nothing but Romanian – something approaching proper immersion – I could make great strides, but in the absence of that I keep hitting an unbreakable ceiling.

After Romanian it was back to English, with four lessons. My 16-year-old student is going to Bucharest tomorrow – a 12-hour journey – to get her hair dyed. As you do. The single pair of twins who live in the dark apartment near Piața Verde wanted to know about Mrs and Miss and Ms. This topic comes up surprisingly often. They were in fits of hysterics every time I said Ms, so of course I kept saying it, and in an increasingly exaggerated way. “So it was really as a result of discrimination that Mmmzzzzzz came about.” The girl said that Ms might even be her new favourite English word, supplanting her previous favourite, queue. One of my adult students says that her favourite English word is the rather banal although, because it sounds so delightfully English. An ex-student of mine, a man of about fifty, said his favourite was foreshadow. When I got home I had two online lessons, one with a man a little older than me and another with Octavian, the teenager who started at British School two months ago and says his classmates are hopelessly spoilt.

I spoke to my parents three times last week. Mum seems tired so often these days, as if she’s collapsing under the weight of life admin. I wish it wasn’t like this. I wish they could simplify everything, financially extricate themselves from the UK forever, and enjoy their remaining years. Their capacity to enjoy anything is hugely reduced by all this crap. I sympathise with them because it’s happening to me too. (I mean, international travel just to sort out a problem with my bank – and there’s no guarantee even of that – is crazy.) We’re all being bombarded by crap from all angles. I don’t do social media, I’m not in any active WhatsApp groups, and even I just want to punch a permanent mute button. I get yet another anxiety-provoking instant message and I’m thinking, what the hell is it this time?

Of course there’s always new tech that forces you to act in a way you’d prefer not to. On Friday, when picking up some overpriced ink cartridges, I was faced with the latest trick – a jumbled-up PIN keypad. Yeesh. For the previous ten years I’d been typing in my PIN instinctively as a series of finger movements without ever thinking what the numbers actually were. But this time the digits were arranged 562 904 317 8 or whatever. What actually is my PIN? I was relieved to get it on my second go.

We’ve had atrocious weather – bad enough to hit the orange alert level and make my phone emit ear-splitting noises. Tennis was a washout on both days at the weekend. This evening I was seriously worried about being struck by lightning on my bike. And there’s no respite in sight.

I’ve been reading Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. For some reason the previous owner of this flat had left a copy of the novel, printed in 1981, several years before she was born. (She left many other books behind and even – weirdly – a load of old photos of her as a child.) Not my thing really, but I’ve been enjoying (in a way) the depiction of Oxford University with all its obscure terminology that, as far as I know, still persists. The vernacular is similar at Eton and some other prestigious public schools. Given that so many senior British politicians took the Eton-and-Oxford route (or something close to it), it’s no wonder the political class over there is so hopelessly out of touch.

At the weekend I read an article about Nick Drake, a folk singer-songwriter who was underappreciated in his lifetime but has found considerable posthumous fame. He suffered badly from depression, and I sometimes listened to him (perhaps unwisely) during my own depressive spells before coming to Romania. He studied at Cambridge. I read an extraordinary letter that his (obviously highly educated and intelligent) father wrote, imploring him not to drop out of university. Nick Drake died of an overdose at the age of just 26.

I said I’d give up looking at cars until I got back from New Zealand, but tomorrow morning I’m going to have a look at a black 1.6-litre Dacia Logan. After that I’ve got my appointment with the neurologist. I wonder if anything will come of that.

Life :) - Music

The queue of despair

May 26, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

It hasn’t been the best of weeks so far; at times it’s been utterly dismal.

After Sunday’s debacle, I looked at another Dacia the following day. Although I’d spoken to the vendor half an hour earlier, when I got there he told me he’d already sold the car but would give it to me instead if I paid extra. Bullshit. The people I have to deal with here, jeez. It would have been a bit of fun to bomb around Romania for a bit before my trip to New Zealand, and on Sunday my chance of doing that was in excess of 90%, but with all the other crap I’m dealing with I’ve decided to delay my pursuit of four wheels until September.

On Tuesday morning I was free of lessons, so I got up bright and early to visit the immigration hellhole, attempting to get the address on my residence permit updated so that Barclays could have proof of where I live. I set my alarm for 4:40, had breakfast, and was there at 5:30. By “there” I mean outside the office (if you can call it that) which opens at 8:30. They’d drawn up an informal numbered list of people in order of their arrival; I was ninth. One man was incensed because apparently there had been another list which someone had ripped off during the night. I chatted to a young Serbian man who was studying at the university. He was a linguist. His English and Romanian were both impeccable. Eventually staff arrived and the doors opened. EU citizens, of which I’m no longer one of course, had priority. They only have one person processing everybody, so the queue moved at a snail’s pace. Then disaster struck. A group of eleven Vietnamese workers arrived, and because their boss was Romanian they could jump the queue. During my fifth hour in that inhuman cesspit where everything is yellow and brown and falling apart, it dawned on me that maybe I’d never reach the front at all before the office closed at 12:30. And that’s exactly what happened. What a waste of seven hours. There was anger, not least on my part, but the real shocker was the older Romanian couple in front of me in positions seven and eight on the list. Forty years ago they would have routinely queued for several hours just to get bread. Why they were in the office I didn’t know, but I went up to them and said, “You do realise that the office closes soon and we’ll have got out of bed at a ridiculous hour for absolutely nothing?!” They didn’t care. If it closes, it closes. Wake up, you fucking loons, I wanted to say. Perhaps I did say it, I can’t remember now. I bet you don’t vote in elections either. A country of incredible beauty, but one in which its bureaucratic systems and processes demonstrably fail to function. (The immigration office did function, up to a point, during Covid when virtually no workers were entering the country. Now they are arriving daily from India and Pakistan, and obviously Vietnam too.) That evening I saw the after-hours doctor and I came back via the office. It was 10pm, and people were already queuing outside for the following morning, all relying on a lack of Vietnamese or Pakistani shelf-stackers.

So, Barclays. I called them later on Tuesday. I was told that yes, if I visit a branch in the UK then I can get my ID documents certified and hopefully my money back. So, having exhausted all options that don’t involve actually being in the UK (I’m not going back to that office again until my residence permit expires in 2026; heaven help me at that point), I bit the bullet and booked a trip over there. I’m leaving on 9th June, two weeks today, and will come back on the 13th. I hope to meet my university friend there. Before I booked my flights I asked him which of my two options (the 9th and the 23rd) would suit him better, and he said clearly the 9th. Then he told me why. His girlfriend, in only her early thirties, has been diagnosed with breast cancer and will be starting a course of chemo later in the month. He said it’s been caught early and the prognosis is very good, but yeesh. What a shock. A lovely person too. Hearing that put my wasted hours in a queue into some sort of perspective.

Tina Turner has died. An extraordinary talent, a million miles from a modern diva, and in the eighties a superstar. And all after a tough upbringing and an abusive relationship. Yesterday morning Tonight, featuring Tina Turner and David Bowie, came on the radio. A beautiful song. And now they’re both gone.

Life :) - New Zealand

… or no deal

May 21, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

So I met the guy in the McDonald’s car park again and went with him to the mall. He was more friendly this time. When we got to the mall though and it became apparent that I didn’t actually have the equivalent of 2000 euros – almost 10,000 lei – in cold hard cash, his mood quickly turned sour. He accepted a bank transfer, but wanted it done there and then, and the sum was above the limit set by the banking app. My bank even has a branch at the mall that’s open on Sundays, but they wouldn’t allow me to withdraw that amount at the desk. The guy then got angry with me for not sorting all of this out beforehand, and at that point I decided to walk away. He asked me for 100 lei for wasting his time, so I gave him 50 and was relieved to get out of there relatively unscathed. Like so many Romanian men, he resorted to sheer aggression to get what he wanted. One of the guys from tennis recently lamented the “softness” of young people who live in cities. “They’re so much more aggressive in the country.” Aggression is seen as a positive attribute here. Well, this guy’s aggression cost him a sale. There’s one more car I’m interested in, and if nothing comes of that I might wait until I get back from New Zealand.

Last week there was a fire in a hostel in Wellington, just a stone’s throw from where I used to live. It was almost certainly arson, and at least five people were killed. The building had no sprinklers – amazingly, given how stringent New Zealand’s safety regulations tend to be across the board, it was exempt from them. Very sad and a total failure on a number of levels, but to put it into perspective, fatal fires are probably a weekly occurrence in Romania.

I’m just about to meet Mark in town. Apparently there’s a “festival” of overpriced “street food” going on. It’s such a nice day; it’s bound to be heaving there.

Family - Life :)

A Dacia deal

May 20, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

It looks like I might have bought a car. I met the owner in a McDonald’s car park earlier this evening. He intimdiated the hell out of me, after seeming quite personable on the phone. This red 2006 Dacia Logan looked in good nick, but what do I know, really? I offered him €2000, which was my absolute limit, and he accepted. It isn’t finalised yet – we’re going to meet in Iulius Mall to hopefully go through the process on Sunday. I expect to be intimidated again. The car has air con – an absolute must here – and interestingly it runs on both LPG and petrol. It starts on petrol and then uses LPG as long as it still has some in the tank. I expected the LPG tank to take up half the boot, but that wasn’t the case. I hope that the LPG will provide a fuel saving for me. Frustratingly I wasn’t able to test-drive the car properly. I drove it in the car park – literally two or three turns of the wheel – and that told me nothing apart from that car parks at one of the busiest times of the the week are horrible places to be when you’re out of driving practice.

This was the third Dacia I looked at this week. On Tuesday I took the bus into the depths of Calea Șagului to look at another red one. After hanging around an industrial park and eventually finding a coffee machine, I met the owner and gave the car a proper test-drive. I liked what I saw and felt. The major sticking point was the price. He wanted more than it was advertised at. Are you trying it on just because I’m foreign? Whatever the reason, bugger you. Then on Wednesday I looked at a navy blue Dacia in the south of the city, but discounted it immediately because it didn’t have air con.

Timișoara gets pretty congested at times, so I’m hardly salivating at the prospect of driving in town. Outside the city, though – well, that’s the whole point.

When I got home from viewing the car, I watched the first episode of Wild Carpathia on YouTube. Not quite as enjoyable as Flavours of Romania (you can find that on Netflix) but still well worth watching, especially for the bit at the end with the future king.

Mum and Dad were in a dull mood when I spoke to them this morning. All the banking stuff was getting them down, especially Mum. She looked shattered.

A busy Saturday in store tomorrow, with four lessons.

Life :)

Romanian customer service

May 16, 2023 plutomanby 0 Comments

I went to the mall today to get my licence converted, and to my surprise all my paperwork was in order. (There’s usually some unforeseen problem.) Everything got rubber-stamped and I just had to pay 89 lei. Out came my wallet. “You can’t pay here. You’ll have to pay at the post office. Go to the end of the corridor and turn right.” Fine. But the post office was in the process of being moved next door, and nothing was set up for anyone to pay or do anything. I was told to pay using the machine outside – the roboțel, they called it – but it wasn’t working. So I trudged back to the licence office to tell them what had happened. The large uniform-clad woman in the back started laying into me. How do you expect us to issue you a licence if you don’t pay?! “Look, I tried. This isn’t my fault.” Of course it’s your fault. How can it not be your fault?! Just pay, for god’s sake. “I’m a human being, not an animal.” She, or was it the other less awful woman, said that there were other roboțele around the mall, but I couldn’t see them, and they probably wouldn’t have worked even if I had. The only solution I could find was to visit a normal post office away from the hideous bright lights and muzak of the mall. I might have to queue up, but it least that should work. Half an hour later I was back with proof of payment, the awful woman was gone, and I had a piece of paper authorising me to drive (in Romania only) until my real licence arrived. Great.

So today I had yet another experience of a person in uniform who had no idea how to deal with human beings. Maybe she’s got kids and when she takes off her power costume she turns into a delightful mother.

Tomorrow I’m going to look at a Dacia on Calea Șagului. It currently has red number plates, which apparently mean that it isn’t properly registered or certified or whatever yet. That, and the whole idea of driving again after all these years, is filling me with apprehension.

It’s my first anniversary of moving into this flat.