Travel: Romania

Coronavirus - Hiking - Photos - Travel: Romania

Is this it? And some snow scenes

March 19, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today I’ve had a bit of a runny nose and a cough. It can’t be, surely. Millions of people must be Googling symptoms, wondering if this sneeze or that sniffle might be it.

We’ve had yet another sunny day. After my two lessons (which is a good day all of a sudden) I read my book in the park. It didn’t feel like Timișoara, but more like an expanded version of Temuka. Tomorrow I’ll make some progress on the book I’m writing, as long as I haven’t developed a raging fever in the meantime.

I’ve been plotting Romania’s coronavirus cases on a logarithmic chart I manually created. The numbers now come out twice a day, and I was relieved to see the 6pm figure of “only” 260, instead of something closer to 300. It’s too early to say where we’ll end up, especially as I don’t know how much testing is getting done.

Elsewhere in Europe, it isn’t too early. The situation is very ugly now. The latest figures in Italy show 475 deaths (19% of the previous total of 2503) in 24 hours. The death toll in France in the last 24 hours was 89 (51% of the previous total), while in the UK it was 32 (44% of the previous total). It’s those percentages that are so shocking. Emmanuel Macron made an impassioned speech on Monday night, and hopefully the French will get the message and those percentages might start to fall. In the UK I’m not so sure. They wasted valuable time on their herd immunity “strategy”, and as far as I know, many Brits are still going to pubs and malls like it’s a divine right. My prediction for the UK is that it will end up in a very bad place indeed.

On a much more positive note, here are some pictures from my trip to the mountains. I hope you agree that it was a beautiful place to spend a “last chance” weekend. The picture with the logs and dogs was from the place where I was served palincă.

Coronavirus - Travel: Romania

Head in the sand

March 16, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

I got back from the mountain late yesterday afternoon. It was beautiful up there, but I could never relax because of what was going on a mile or so below us. My student picked me up at 7am on Saturday, after I’d slept maybe three or four hours. Soon after, he told me that the authorities had closed the hut a few days ago because of the virus, but he knew somebody who would be able to let us in. Seriously? You didn’t even tell me that? I was livid with him. We then picked up the other two – husband and wife – from Lugoj. By this stage I wasn’t in the mood for anything. We parked at the foothill of the mountain and climbed up through the snow to reach the hut at Cuntu. This trek took about two hours. There were at least three other people staying there, but thankfully we had our own room separate from them. I really wanted to avoid other humans as much as possible.

We dumped off most of our belongings in the room, which had a welcome fireplace, and then began our ascent up Mount Țarcu, though there’s no way we could have got to the summit and back in the light as we did last June. My student is fitter and had better equipment than me, and he was off like a rocket. I followed in his wake, while the other guy (who has a bad back and is carrying 20 kilos too many) and his wife turned back after a short distance. Just before Sadovanu, a smaller peak on the way, we too turned back. My student and I were still talking to each other despite my tirade earlier in the day. Back in our warm room, the others didn’t know what to do. I was quite happy to just lie there and read my book. I started to relax just a little. The others spoke a mixture of Hungarian, Romanian and English, often switching been languages at will, a skill that never ceases to amaze me. I quite liked it when they spoke Hungarian, with its alien euuuhs and oooohs, so I could switch off. I learnt the odd Hungarian word – the word for “they” or “them” sounds like the noise you might make while sitting on the loo: “euughhk”. I taught them the English word “ember” which means something like “mate” in Hungarian.

I ate a mixture of fish, beans, eggs and pasta, and that filled me up. I did much better on the food front than last time. The others bemoaned a lack of cards to play with – there was no “cruce” or “hatvan hat” this time – and it was lights out at 9:15. The lights were well and truly out – there was a blackness beyond anything I could remember. The Romanian word for that is beznă. I was wide awake by seven, and soon got hungry. I got up and had breakfast alone in an empty (and much colder) room. We left Cuntu just after ten, and stopped on the way at a friend’s place in the village of Turnu Ruieni. It was a lovely wooden house with a courtyard. He and his wife were very welcoming. He brews palincă and gave me two glasses. It was sweeter and more palatable than some of the stuff I’ve tasted.

On the way home I apologised to my student for my outburst the previous day, and at about four I was back in Timișoara. It was a relief to be home. The scenery was wonderful but I’d had a hard time taking any of it in. The head-in-the-sand attitude of the others towards the coronavirus crisis irritated me intensely. “Don’t be silly, hardly anyone will die from this.” “It’s just flu, dammit!” “Whatever happens, happens.” “Soon we’ll get warm weather which will kill the virus.” And most annoying of all, “The show must go on!” Sometimes the show must stop! This blasé attitude is literally killing thousands across the continent.

Late yesterday afternoon, Central Park was mostly empty. Bizarrely, there was a man playing a didgeridoo. Outside the park were banners advertising events that now won’t happen. There’s now only one event in town.

This morning I did my big shop. I got to the supermarket – the one I know best – before it opened at eight. A man in front of me was coughing and spluttering and even spat on the ground. I gave him a wide berth. The woman in front of me pushed the revolving door with her elbow and took great care not to touch the handrail of the escalator. I’d drawn up my shopping list as Mum used to (and possibly still does) – with a map of the store in my mind. There were surprisingly few customers so I didn’t have to rush. I filled both my backpacks, mostly with cans and jars and packets of frozen vegetables. It was hard to squeeze everything in. As I came out of the store, one old lady was screaming “fuck off” (in Romanian, of course) at another. Charming. Then I had to lug it all home. I’m sorted for the next three weeks at least.

In my next post I’ll talk more about what has become the world’s deepest crisis in my parents’ lifetimes, let alone mine, and post some pictures of the trip.

Family - Language teaching - Tennis - Travel: Romania

Bike trip

July 3, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’ve just finished a two-hour lesson, the first hour of which my student spent showing me her holiday photos, with commentary almost entirely in Romanian. She also gave me a whole load of tomatoes, cucumbers and hot peppers, that came from a friend of hers.

I spoke to Dad again yesterday. We talked about the crazy month between his cancer diagnosis and his “all-clear”. It’s hard to believe it was only one month. During that month, everything became both longer and narrower.

On Saturday I had no work, and the weather wasn’t stupidly hot, so decided I’d cycle down the track to Serbia, as far as I could while staying within the law. I did 76 km there and back. For me that’s a lot, and I really felt it on the way back. I also caught the sun. I made stops at Sânmihaiu Român and the pleasant village of Uivar. Beyond Livada (“the Orchard”), where people flock to for beer and mici, there was hardly a soul. I had the whole track seemingly to myself. Eventually the kilometre markers were down to single figures, but just past the 2 km sign was a white line and a stop sign. Cross that point and I would enter no man’s land, and likely get a fine and all the bureaucratic hassle that comes with that. I met two other cyclists at the line who told me that no, crossing the line wouldn’t be a great idea. That was a bit disappointing after travelling all that way, but I liked the sense of remoteness and visiting another Romanian village (which, by that stage, was only just in Romania). Also the sheer amount of exercise made me feel good, at least when it was all over. When I mentioned my trip to one of my students, she thought I was crazy for doing it by myself. I guess I just need other people less than other people. (Being on my own was great. I could go as fast or as slow as I liked, and could stop whenever and wherever I wanted.)

Uivar
Uivar
5 km to go
5 km to go
Do not cross
The edge of no man’s land

Wimbledon has started. In fact, half the singles matches have already been completed. We’ve had two quite dramatic days already, with so many high seeds departing in round one. Yesterday saw Nick Kyrgios in action against his compatriot Jordan Thompson. Whatever you think of Kyrgios, this match was batshit crazy, couldn’t-take-your-eyes-off-it stuff. Another match to grab my attention was the last to finish. It was played on No. 1 Court, and pitted Donna Vekic against Alison Riske (whose last name is pronounced simply “risk”, not “risky” or “risqué”). Riske was teetering on the edge in the third set, but battled back to level the score at 5-5. Then, for the first time ever, they closed the roof. The £70 million roof. I dunno, that’s seems a helluva lot for something just to stop people having to come back the next day to hit a few tennis balls. The match could have extended another hour (and by Romanian time it was getting pretty late), but Riske only dropped two further points on the resumption. The biggest story so far, however, has been 15-year-old Coco Gauff, and she’s in action again today.

Family - Language teaching - Life :) - Romania - Travel: Romania

Scaling new heights (and Dad’s operation)

June 21, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

On Tuesday one of my students invited me on a hike this weekend, with him and about half a dozen of his mates, to the top of Țarcu Mountain, at an altitude of 2190 metres. I shifted and cancelled this weekend’s lessons (it was hard to do that at short notice) and accepted his invite. We’ll be staying at a hut on Saturday night. I know it will be beautiful up there and I really want to get away and also explore more of Romania, so saying yes was an easy decision. I’m still (as always in these situations) apprehensive, though. Will I be equipped enough? Fit enough? Waterproof enough? Then there’s all the social stuff. My student is Hungarian. So are all his mates. I can’t speak a word of Hungarian. (It’s amazing really that even the Hungarians can speak Hungarian, it’s so complex and unlike anything else on the planet.) But it has the potential to be a great experience and a whole lot of fun too. Part of the whole point of living in Romania is to have these sorts of experiences. I had a gap in my schedule this afternoon where I ran around the mall trying to find a sleeping bag and other bits and pieces.

Dad. That’s the big news. The operation went about as well as it could possibly have done. I haven’t managed to speak to him since Monday’s op: the reception on the top floor of the hospital is patchy at best. Mum has been very impressed by the staff at Timaru; they’ve looked after him very well. He had a big feed at Mum’s birthday dinner, which he described as being like the Last Supper. It was his final opportunity to eat anything solid. We now anxiously wait for the results of his biopsy.

I’ve got a tricky-ish day in store tomorrow (but even the trickiest days are miles better than life insurance ever was). Two hours with Mr I Don’t Know’s mum, followed by two with Mr IDK himself, then 90 minutes with the 7½-year-old boy, then a final hour with a new boy of just five. Definitely a challenge.

Photos - Travel: Romania

Sighișoara trip pictures

August 17, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

As I write, we’re in the middle of a storm. For a moment I feared something as sharp and shocking as last September’s 15 minutes of carnage. It’s nasty out there and that lightning bolt just then was pretty damn close, but it seems we’ll be spared such horrors this time.

Yesterday was St Mary’s day, and about one in ten Romanians called Maria or Mariana or Marian or Marius (those last two being male names) or some other variant celebrated their zi onomastică. They’re basically tied with all the Johns and Janes and Joans, who have their big day in Johnuary.

Here are some pictures from Sighișoara and “Deer Meadow”:

Travel: Romania

Deer Meadow — Part 2

August 6, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Poiana Cerbului was peaceful and relaxing. I had sunny weather the whole time I was there, and thankfully it was never too hot. On Friday evening a group of eight French tourists arrived in their two cars. Again I had dinner with the old ladies. After the meal I drank two glasses of homemade vișinată, an alcoholic drink made with sour cherries. Luckily it was pretty weak. I went out for a walk that evening and met two farmers who asked me in three languages (if you count “moo” as a language) whether I’d seen their cow. Unfortunately I hadn’t.

The next morning, after being given vișinată as part of my breakfast, I chatted briefly with the French people. I tried to speak French, but I was mixing it with Romanian the whole time. And of course, I’m so out of practice with French now. I’m sure it would come back pretty quickly if I spent some time in France. I’m envious of people who can switch between multiple foreign languages. Both parents of one of the families could speak English fluently, and the father wasn’t far off fluency in Romanian; in the nineties he’d spent 18 months in Romania for his civic service in lieu of military service. He told me all about his time hitchhiking on horse-drawn carriages, and how much the country has developed in the last quarter-century or so.

To save the taxi fare I decided to walk to Sighișoara. It was about ten kilometres, four along the shingle track and the rest on a main road. When I arrived in Sighișoara I found a very pretty and old town, if a bit touristy, full of cobbled streets designed so that all the water flows through the middle of the street if it rains. Sighișoara’s history is German and Hungarian, and the centre of the town is very well preserved. I walked up the clock tower, around the fortress, and up a covered wooden staircase. And down lots of cobbled lanes, and eventually into a park where I could just sit down for a while and check the news online (the guest house had no access, apart from in a small corner, and to be honest I liked that). Then it was time to trek back to Deer Meadow. After all that walking I was pretty tired and hungry. I have blisters on my feet as I write now.

My stay at Poiana Cerbului was certainly worth it, even if it took me an insane amount of time to get there and back on the train. (Next time, I’ll consider hiring a car.) I got to speak a lot of Romanian and realise, hey, I’m not actually too terrible at this. I might recommend the place to my friends in St Ives, if and when they next come to Romania. The talkative lady took my business card, saying she might want some English lessons over the phone. I wonder if she’ll actually call me. Yesterday morning she got me to write down some useful English phrases for guests, along with a pronunciation key. For “welcome”, for instance, I wrote “uel-căm”. On Friday she gave me a book about reiki to read. Many of the pages had been annotated with what looked like the ravings of a madwoman – political commentary interspersed with bits of astrology and numerology.

One young guy from the French contingent celebrated his 17th birthday yesterday. They celebrated with breakfast birthday cake. I was thinking back to the day he was born, 5/8/01, when life had turned into a disaster zone for me. After breakfast I gave my hosts some money for meals, said goodbye, and then the French group kindly drove me to Sighișoara station. I had about two hours before my train left, so I called my parents on FaceTime. Nothing of note happened on the trains back. At Aiud I avoided that very unwelcoming bar like the plague, obviously. We clattered through five județe, or counties: Mureș, Sibiu, Alba, Hunedoara and Timiș. This reminded me of my train trip through five states from New York to Chicago. Late morning turned into afternoon, then evening and finally pitch blackness. We pulled in to Timișoara a few minutes before midnight.

Travel: Romania

Deer Meadow — Part 1

August 6, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

It absolutely bucketed down as I walked to the station early on Thursday morning, and by the time I boarded the train I was soaked to the skin. I made a beeline to the toilet so I could change my clothes. We don’t exactly have bullet trains in Romania, and the journey to Aiud, 267 km away, took more than six hours. If I counted correctly, the train made 17 stops. It was a pleasant journey until a gypsy whanau (or whatever the correct term is) got on at Alba Iulia. They were dirty, smelly and loud, and amongst them was a pregnant girl of about 15. They were also ticketless. You’re allowed to buy tickets on the train in Romania, but they cost about 50% more than at the kiosk. We’d gone two or three stops down the line from Alba Iulia when the ticket inspector did his rounds. He quoted the fare to the mother (or boss) of the whanau, but she was having none of it. Things got pretty heated. The inspector must have called the police, who threw the group off the train at Teiuș, the next station.

When I got off the train at Aiud, I was hungry and in need of the loo. Aiud is about the same size as St Ives, the town I grew up in, and in parts it is quite pleasant. I found a bar in a prominent position by the river. It was well patronised. I couldn’t see anybody eating, but I was confident they could rustle me up something simple. Even mici, if need be. As I sat down, I was met by some stares, followed by comments about my bags. Who are you? I felt uncomfortable. Humiliated, even. I did the sensible thing, and I got up and left to a chorus of guffaws. Just when I think I have some I idea how Romania works, I get that, which I might have expected in a dingy basement dive, but not there. I wandered around the town, frustrated at the lack of places that served food, until I came upon a place that supposedly did pizza. I went in, and after banging glasses together to get somebody’s attention, I finally got a beer and a bite to eat.

I wandered back to the train station, and had a conversation of sorts with a bloke on the platform. I was glad when the train arrived. The trip to Sighișoara was uneventful. From the station, I took a taxi to my accommodation, which was further away than I thought. “You almost need a tractor for this,” the driver said as we bumbled along a narrow shingle road. We got there eventually. The ride cost me 40 lei. Poiana Cerbului, “Deer Meadow”, was quite a wild place, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. A woman of about 70 greeted me, and I soon met her older sister. They gave me some meat and noodles, an omelette (the eggs came from their own hens) and a salad, again using their own tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.

I had no trouble sleeping in my double bed, in an otherwise fairly basic room. For breakfast I had scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, a large salad and some bread to mop up all that oil. At this point I was the only person staying there. I had a long chat with the two ladies. The 70-year-old lady talked a lot. The older woman had one good eye, not many teeth, and a crude DIY tattoo on her wrist which looked like the sort of reminder note I sometimes write on my hand. She was much quieter. I didn’t want to take a taxi to Sighișoara and back, because I’d only brought 710 lei with me, half of which went on my accommodation, so a few more taxi rides would have just about wiped me out. So on my first day I explored the wood at the back of the guest house (trying not to get lost), walked along the gravel road for a bit, and mostly read A Moveable Feast, a very readable account of Ernest Hemingway’s time in Paris. I also chatted to the old ladies. This was great for my Romanian.

Language teaching - Travel: Romania

How the other half live

August 1, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Tomorrow morning at half-six I’m taking the train to Sighișoara. I’ll have to change at Aiud, which I remember being quite a picturesque town as I passed through it on the bus from Bucharest to Cluj in 2016. It seems to be most famous for its large prison. I’ve got 2¾ hours there; it’ll be quite a long day. My train is due to arrive in Sighișoara at close to 6pm. I’m not actually staying in the medieval town, but in the remote village of Daneș about 10 km away. My accommodation will come with a panorama of the mountains, but no internet access. That’s not such a bad thing. Trains from Sighișoara to Daneș exist, and they cost literally pence, but they’re very infrequent so I might end up taking a taxi. I come back on Sunday; I’m due to get in to Timișoara just before midnight. All in all, it should be quite an adventure.

Yesterday I had my lesson with Matei. I got him to read three poems, complete a simple crossword, and answer about 15 “Would you rather…?” questions, which seem pretty popular with kids. Then I introduced him to the Formula 1 game which was clearly a success. We played two games, winning one each. (In the first I spectacularly ran out of fuel on, I think, the fourth lap.) Before all of that he told me about his English camp and his two-week family holiday in Egypt. He described his accommodation as a “seven-star” hotel which seemed to include its own theme park. He told me all about the pyramids and Giza and the Nile and the Red Sea and riding a camel and the searing heat and dirty, stinking Cairo with its population equal to Romania’s. I think of Egypt as being a faraway land, but it’s only three to four hours by plane from here. One of his “Would you rather…?” responses blew me away. Amid all the questions where he had to choose between two superpowers, I asked him if he’d rather be paid 50 lei for every hour of homework he did, or receive no homework at all. No homework, he quickly said. But, but, it’s 50 lei! What do I need that money for? Fifty lei an hour would be a huge amount for most kids in Romania, and even most adults for that matter, and passing up that sort of money at his age would have been unthinkable for me. But he’s right, he doesn’t need the money. I earlier asked the same question of another kid, whose parents are in a similar financial position, and got the same reply.

Next time you might get some more photos.

Language teaching - Life :) - Scrabble - Travel: Romania

Travel plans

July 28, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

I spoke to my brother this morning. He now has a beard. Yesterday was his 37th birthday. He and his wife have just put their house on the market: they might soon be expanding. The UK has been experiencing a heatwave the likes of which they haven’t seen since 1976.

I’ll have four work-free days in a row soon, so at the end of next week I’ll take the opportunity to do some travelling within Romania. I plan to visit the medieval town of Sighișoara, which is pronounced roughly “siggy-shwara”, just like the place I now call home is “timmy-shwara”. The -șoara suffix is some kind of feminine diminutive, and it comes up in a lot of place names, as well as in words like Domnișoara, which is the equivalent of the English Miss. (Mrs is Doamna.) Because of its prevalence in place names, I got really confused when I saw scorțișoară pancakes for sale. Where’s that, I wondered. The word in fact means cinnamon.
The only trains from Timișoara to Sighișoara take a circuitous route, and they all leave at an ungodly hour. Unfortunately I’ll miss the annual festival, which is taking place right now, so I might end up going somewhere else. But it’s been on my list for some time.

Six games of Scrabble since I last wrote. Three big wins against lower-rated opponents, two of whom resigned before the end, but the others were all close. In one game I found an early low-scoring bingo but my opponent drew both blanks, bingoed with each of them, and kept scoring heavily enough to snuff out my comeback chances. I lost that game by 27. My next game showed that bingos aren’t everything. Both times I bingoed, my opponent had the tiles and the presence of mind to make big scores immediately afterwards. I clung on to win by 22. I was particularly pleased to find BLOOPED in that game. B and P don’t go well together, and it’s easy to give up with a rack like that. I won my final game by just 11 points after going over time by a few seconds and getting stuck with a W. My score of 323 was my second-lowest in a winning effort since joining ISC.

Update: I’ve since had a nightmare game which I had in the bag with both blanks on my rack, only to lose by seven. But for the ten-point time penalty, and possibly the sinus headache I was grappling with, I would have won. Time management is a massive problem for me. Well, it’s not time management as such, it’s just that I can’t see the best plays fast enough, especially towards the end of the game when the board gets blocked. My opponent played all his words in just six minutes. Straight after that horror show I had a lesson with an Italian guy. He didn’t want to do our customary IELTS writing exercise so I half-jokingly suggested we play Scrabble. He agreed. He went first, played SPENT, and on my turn I found SPINDLES through the P. I then had to explain what a spindle was.

Update 2: It’s getting worse. Three more losses on ISC, by 51, 16 and 8.

Update 3: Now two wins! By 27 and 16. Could easily have lost both of them. In the first game I was 133 points down (that’s a lot!) before I remembered from somewhere in the recesses of my mind that CANG was a word. That allowed me to play GLUMmER and gave me just a glimmer. In the second game I led by 109 but was swamped with consonants and swapped tiles three times, and only because my opponent was overrun by consonants at the end was I able to sneak a win.

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The Big Day and trip report — Part 4

June 3, 2018 plutomanby 0 Comments

Sunday. The morning after the night (and day) before. No full English breakfast this time. A bunch of us, including my brother, his wife, and most of the New Zealand contingent, met up at a café in the Barbican. Then it was back to the Sergeant’s Mess, where about ten of us, blokes mostly, spent two hours dismantling and re-mantling everything. My uncle B felt honoured to be selected as a tidier-upper; he likes to boast of his “special relationship” with my brother. (As a kid, my brother liked to spend time on their West Coast farm whenever he came to New Zealand. They moved back to South Canterbury in 1996.) My brother kindly gave B and me a bottle of whisky each for our readings the day before. When all the white frothiness had been cleared away, the mess looked much like a century-old tennis club room. The usual inhabitants of the mess, many of whom were at the wedding, form a very close-knit community.

I had a lazy Sunday afternoon watching the opening day of the French Open in my parents’ room. In the evening we went to Wetherspoons, where I had a curry and an apple crumble, and then walked to the newlyweds’ hotel room on the seventh floor of the Crowne Plaza. We didn’t stay long there.

Plymouth is an interesting city, particularly along the beautiful coastline, but the city centre was bombed to pieces in World War Two, and the collosal hideous-looking blocks that sprung up in the next two decades wouldn’t have seemed out of place in Communist-era Romania. Plymouth also appears to have a serious obesity problem. On that note, I’ve lost about three kilos (or half a stone) since my trip to the UK in April.

On Monday morning I had a full English once more, and then it was time to say goodbye to all the Kiwis, with the exception of B and my aunt J, who were coming to Romania with me. This was the end of their marathon trip that took in the US (where their son lives), Canada, and Holland (for the flowers). We took a taxi to the train station (they had far too much luggage to make walking an option) and boarded the 12:05 train to Paddington. We sat at opposite ends of Coach C. The journey to Paddington seemed to whizz by. We hung around Paddington station for some time; our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 9:50. We snapped up six reduced-to-clear sandwiches for £1 each from Boots, but then paid through the nose for coffees and muffins: three each of those cost more than I receive for a lesson. I got a call from a frustrated Mum, who had been stuck at Kings Cross for an hour and a half on a driverless train with no air conditioning. Mum and Dad were very tired and were extremely glad to eventually get back to St Ives.

Having loads of time up our sleeve helped to reduce stress. B and J were a little out of their comfort zone on the underground. My offers to help B with his suitcase mostly fell on deaf ears. We negotiated the underground, took the train to Luton, and then hopped on the shuttle bus to the airport where we ate our sandwiches and whiled away two more hours before boarding the plane. I realised that travelling with other people can be less stressful than travelling alone. Boarding was slow, as always with Wizz Air, but we were up and down in under three hours. It was after 3am by the time we exited the terminal building, and taxis were thin on the ground at that time of night, so I had to call one. B and J were staying in an apartment in the building next to mine. We followed the owner’s instructions involving keys and lifts and PIN codes, which my aunt had meticulously copied down, and (in what felt like a miracle after such a long day of travel) they gained access to their spacious apartment. Welcome to Romania!