Family

Family

Pain, pain, go away

October 30, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

This morning I called my aunt for her 72nd birthday. She seems remarkably good these days when I talk to her, but she still has episodes of severe depression and her world has become very small. That’s sad. I wish there was some way she could escape that cycle.

Sunday was a shocker of a day for me. I’d struggled all night with medium-level sinus pain, which became more severe during my lesson in the morning. I was begging for the clock to tick round to twelve and to be alone. When my student left, the pain became unbearable. Screwdriver rammed right up my nose. Pure torture. It was a sunny day and I staggered over to the curtains to block out the light as best I could. I tried pacing around; it was too painful to either sit or stand. Then I stumbled to the sink where I was sick. It took two hours for the pain to subside. I felt shattered and feeble for the rest of the afternoon, and it took until my 8pm Skype lesson to properly enter the world of the living again. My student gave me the name of a Bucharest-based specialist he thought I should get in touch with. But then, after reading a few websites, it dawned on me: maybe these aren’t sinus headaches after all. Maybe they’re migraines. I have all the symptoms, plus the family history.

Fortunately these bouts of excruciating pain don’t occur too often for me. That isn’t the case for my father, who has suffered from crippling migraines since he was a teenager, and has had headaches on a daily basis since about the time he got out of hospital. I spoke to him last night. He said that if they continue like this, his life will effectively be over. A permanent cloud, shrouding everything. The time zone change meant I could speak to Dad while Mum was at golf, without having to stay up past midnight. I get on very well with Mum these days, but occasionally it’s nice to speak to him when she isn’t there.

I also had a quick chat to my brother, who surprised and delighted me when he said he and his wife plan to come to Timișoara next April. It would be a pleasure to have them here.

It’s looks like the UK will be having an election in December. We might see a three-figure Tory majority. What a bloody fantastic Christmas present that would be. Not.

Family - Language learning - Language teaching - Life :)

Memories of prehistory

October 14, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Last week my dad got an email from daughter of my old kindergarten teacher at Hemingford Abbots, not that we used the word “kindergarten”. We didn’t say “preschool” either. It was playschool, or sometimes playgroup. It sounds so much more fun, doesn’t it? My old teacher is still alive; she’s now 87. My grandmother taught her daughter history of art (she became a teacher late in the day – in her early fifties – and the change of scenery rid her of crippling depression almost instantly). My dad forwarded the email on to me, and I replied, trying to remember what I could from her mother’s playschool sessions. The little black dog she used to bring in. My fourth birthday. I also remember a time I was stuck on the toilet, unable to go, and she told me to “make an effort”. I didn’t mention that episode in my email.

Nine cancellations in the last two weeks, not to mention the people who have given up. On the plus side, I’ve had some new people, including another pair of brothers, aged seven and nearly ten. Their mother (who could speak reasonable English) told me at the start of the lesson that she’d need to stick around and interpret everything I said, and I tried to put her off doing that. (My Romanian is good enough, I like to think, that I can get by without an interpreter.) They also have a little brother, aged just one. If I’m still here in a few years… Yesterday I had another duo – two women in their twenties. Trying to get the present simple and present continuous across to them was no simple feat. One of them seemed particularly vacant during that part of the session, glued to her phone while her so-called smart watch buzzed. I couldn’t entirely disguise my annoyance.

My mother has – surprisingly – developed what I’d almost term an addiction to Duolingo. She’s been learning French on it for several months. As addictions go, that’s a pretty good one to have, but I wonder how much she’s really learning. She seems pretty motivated by trying to gain promotion to the ruby league, or emerald league, or whatever it is. In the last two weeks I’ve been using Duolingo to learn (or re-learn) Italian, and yeah, I can see how it can draw you in.

I haven’t managed to play tennis since that time a month ago. I’ve made three court bookings with the same guy, but each time he’s pulled out because of the weather or (the last time) because he was “unexpectedly” out of the city. I think he’s simply got better things to do than spend time with me. (I’m used to that feeling.) When he pulled out last week, I hit against the wall for an hour, at one stage keeping a rally going for ten minutes.

My apartment in Wellington. They just want to sell. Now. To me, this is a total capitulation, a surrender (to go all Boris Johnson), and I can’t see how selling will benefit me while I get $24,000 in rent every year I keep hold of the place. But doing anything else feels almost politically impossible. I’m being pressured to consult a lawyer, which will cost me thousands, and I’m on the other side of the world, dammit. The thing that really rankles is that I’m being asked to urgently care about something – the sales process – that I don’t care about in the slightest. “Please progress this,” I was asked. Oh god. You’re using “progress” as a transitive verb. I wish I could disappear the whole thing.

It’s deosebit de cald – unusually warm – for this time of year. The centre of town has been packed all weekend as a result. In the forecast there’s a row of suns and temperatures in the mid-twenties, stretching out as far as it will go.

Family - Life :) - New Zealand - Politics

Turning it up to eleven

September 25, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Yesterday I watched live coverage of the UK Supreme Court’s unanimous and damning verdict. By an 11-0 margin, they ruled that Boris Johnson’s suspension of parliament for five weeks was unlawful. Yikes. I never expected that for one minute. I mean, silencing parliament for more than a month just so you get your own way should bloody well be unlawful, but the law so often makes little sense. Lady Hale wore a very striking (and symbolic?) spider brooch as she read out the decision, and she bore a slight resemblance to my grandmother at a similar age. This latest episode in the Brexit saga has brought to the fore a pair of eleven-letter words that I wouldn’t like to have to say once I’d had a few (which hardly ever happens these days): prorogation and justiciable. To be honest I’m not entirely sure how to pronounce the latter of these even though it’s 9am and I’m stone-cold sober. I think I’d go with /dʒʌˈstɪʃəbᵊl/ (jus-TI-shuh-buhl), but it’s a weird word.

Boris was in America yesterday. He met Donald Trump, and the two of them are looking more and more alike. Trump now has a pair of eleven-letter words of his own to contend with: impeachment proceedings. (OK, an impeachment inquiry.) I was hoping it would never come to this, mainly because the impeachment process, if that’s what we get, may well galvanise support for Trump. Then on Monday we had 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg giving a very powerful and emotional speech in front of the likes of Trump. So much has happened already this week and we’re less than half-way through.

On Sunday I spoke to my parents. They’ve booked their flights to Europe; they’ll be coming this way in May and will stay here for ten weeks. Can’t wait. (But it is a very long wait.) They’ll be flying direct, which I warned Dad never to do. “But we’ll have three hours in Dubai,” Mum said. Bloody great. We ended up talking, for some reason, about the Māori language. In the three years I’ve been away, it seems to have exploded. Ring up your bank now, and apparently you get a Māori (or should I say Te Reo) lesson while you’re on hold. As if the god-awful music wasn’t bad enough. My parents and aunt and uncle resent all of this, and I don’t blame them. A lady in my apartment block just forwarded me a letter she’d sent to some MPs about our situation, and at the beginning and end of the letter she’d written a sentence in Māori, complete with macrons (which represent long vowels), like the one I’ve put on the a in Māori. This woman is 0% Māori, but presumably she thinks slipping into that tongue for a few lines will help her cause when dealing with politicians. It’s a beautiful, powerful language (and the argument that it isn’t a real language because it wasn’t originally written down is absurd), but Māorification seems to be going too far, and who knows where it will stop.

It’s real Autumn here now, and I don’t mind that at all. Spring and autumn in Timișoara are lovely.

Family - Travel: Europe

Balkans trip report — Part 4

September 1, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I spoke to my parents this morning. It looks like they’ll be coming this way in mid-May. Eight and a half months away. Mum told me about her younger brother’s living hell. He’s been in and out of hospital, but mostly in, for the last four months. He recently had another operation and picked up an infection. His immune system is shot to pieces. It doesn’t seem long since he was at my brother’s wedding. It goes to show you never know what’s round the corner, which is perhaps just as well.

Now for the last lap of my Balkans trip. The journey from Mostar to Sarajevo took two hours by train (the scenery is supposedly spectacular, but unfortunately it was dark). The owner of the apartment met me at the station; that was an unexpected bonus. It wasn’t until the next morning that I thought I should really figure out where exactly I was. The apartment was located some way up a hill which rises from the city centre. I had blisters on my feet, and walking (even downhill) was slow going. I passed a graveyard where almost all the graves were from 1993 or 1994. A few minutes later I passed another, similar one. I wandered around the city, had some very cheap bureks (a kind of savoury strudels) for lunch, then bumped into somebody I’d met in Mostar. I joined him on another war tour, this time with a 34-year-old woman as the guide. She was a small child during the four-year siege, and at times during the tour she became quite emotional. We visited the market, still popular today, where a shell killed 68 people in 1995. We walked down the infamous Sniper Alley, surrounded by hills. Our final stop was a slightly bizarre monument: a large tin can, just like the cans of disgusting mystery meat that were supplied by the UN. Underneath the can was a semi-sarcastic thank you message. She explained to us the complexities of former Yugoslavia: an area the size of New Zealand is made up of nine or ten political entities or sub-entities, like Republika Srpska, the horseshoe-shaped Serbian part of Bosnia that takes in part of Sarajevo. I had dinner in a pleasant outdoor restaurant where the service was painfully slow. (By this stage I was getting fed up with the whole eating out thing.) I painstakingly made my way back up the hill.

I still had two more days in Sarajevo. The film festival was in full swing, and had attracted a lot of tourists to the city. I saw two films, that were both rather sad. The first – Ti Imaš Noć (You Have the Night) – was based in a coastal town in Montenegro, where a shipyard had closed down, leaving many people out of work. The second was called Transnistria, based in the thin strip of land (yet another political entity) in eastern Moldova that gives the film its title. This movie was shot on Super 16 film, which looks a bit like the Super 8 (cine) film my grandfather used to use.

The spot in the market where 68 people lost their lives.

On my second evening in Bosnia’s capital I visited Džirlo, a very charming tea house at the foot of the hill. My host had recommended it to me. The man who runs the place is quite a character. The next morning I had all kinds of hassle booking a bus to Belgrade for the following day. By this stage the credit had run out on my phone, so contacting my host was no longer so easy. I needed to contact him because the only time I could get a bus, without venturing into the part of the city in Republika Srpska, was at six in the morning. Would that be OK? Eventually things sorted themselves out, and I booked by ticket for the 6am service. That evening I had a Bosnian “combination” meal, which included ćevapčići, similar to the mici we get in Romania.

The following morning – Friday – I was up at 4:30. I didn’t want to take any chances. With no phone credit I couldn’t order a taxi, and had to go down the hill to hail one. I grabbed a coffee at the station before boarding the bus which left on the dot of six, and took us past the striking Twist Tower and the Olympic Park where Torvill and Dean won their gold medal in 1984. We then drove along a winding road through the forest. It was pretty the whole way, in particular when we entered Republika Srpska, which was obvious from all the Cyrillic signs. After another border crossing, we reached Belgrade in the scheduled 7½ hours. I checked into the guest house, and had a few hours to wander around the city again. I bought an Oxford-published Serbian–English dictionary.

Near the Bosnia–Serbia border
The market in Belgrade
I stayed in the Orwell Suite

On Saturday morning I visited the nearby market, and then it was time to go home. The minibus took an age – 4½ hours – including my fifth and final border crossing. On board was a Kiwi who had been travelling for months. He didn’t have too many good words to say about his homeland. I felt he was being quite harsh, except when he talked about New Zealand’s suicide rate which continues to be shockingly high.

Before I knew it, I was back, and that felt pretty good.

Family - Language teaching - Life :)

Back from hell

August 8, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

It hasn’t been a bad day at all. After a good night’s sleep I had breakfast consisting of porridge, slices of watermelon, and a cup of tea, then I printed off what I needed for my three lessons. My first lesson from 9 till 10:30 was with a bloke of about 25; at one stage we discussed all kinds of names for all kinds of body parts. That gave me just enough time to pack and set off for my two hours with the woman who is afraid to speak English, and two more hours with Matei. I think the woman likes to have lessons with me because she’s a bit lonely. Predictably, about two-thirds of everything she said (and she says a lot) was in Romanian, although if anything that proportion has dropped a bit.

After the session, I FaceTimed my parents from the small park next to my student’s apartment block. Whenever I call them from outside, Mum is amazed; she says she wouldn’t dream of making a video call without WiFi because of all the data it chews up. In Romania, for a few quid a month (and without any contract) I have more data than I could possibly need. It’s a great pleasure to contact my parents. Perhaps Dad’s ordeal has brought us all together, but mostly it’s just that I get on so much better with Mum these days. Starting up a new life in Romania has helped a lot. I think she respects me for having the oomph to do my own thing, for being independent. It doesn’t feel that long since she saw an online job ad, and I felt I had to apply to keep her happy even though I knew it would damn near kill me. I got the job. I took it (to keep her happy?). It damn near killed me. I was 30, nearly 31. How bloody ridiculous. Those were the dark days. I’m so glad they’re over.

I had sandwiches and fruit in the park (the bread I buy is excellent but very sandwich-unfriendly), then I was off to Dumbrăvița to see Matei. The “lesson” was really just a chat in an outside café. He’d been to Tunisia and on a basketball camp in Serbia. After a quick stop at Piața Lipovei (the market) on the way back, I was home at 5:40. Unusually, I was done for the day. My first instinct was to pour myself a beer, as I often do whenever I get a free evening, but I didn’t because I’d read what alcohol can do to your sinuses.

Before today, you see, I’d gone through hell with my sinuses. Absolute agony. And all I could do was take painkillers. As well as the pain to contend with, I had virtually no energy, I was irritable, clumsy, hopelessly slow. For two nights I hardly slept. Yesterday I somehow survived my session with the six-year-old. I had the presence of mind to at least bring my laptop, and he just watched Peppa Pig non-stop. Are you bored with this yet? No. Fantastic! His mother wanted a chat with me afterwards. Please, just let me go! Today, after a proper night’s sleep, was a blessed relief.

Family - Life :)

Time flies

July 29, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

I called my brother last night. It was his 38th birthday. (How did we get so old, so fast?) He was in St Ives with his wife. They’d been to Cambridge which would be heaving on a Saturday in late July. My brother described the experience as hellish. (Cambridge reached a demonic, record-smashing 39 degrees on Thursday.) He mentioned Boris Johnson, and was just about salivating at the prospect of a hard Brexit. In the army, he’ll be fine in such a scenario. Millions, particularly in what remains of Britain’s manufacturing industry, probably won’t be though. My brother and I are very different people. While reading the brilliant Chasing the Scream, I figured that my brother is so vehemently against any relaxation of drug laws (sorry mate, it’s happening) that he wouldn’t get past page ten.

Yesterday I also had a Skype chat with a woman who lives in my apartment block in Wellington. There’s a consensus among owners to sell; many of them just want the sorry saga behind them and are happy to flog it off at almost any price. She doesn’t see things the same way and neither do I. The tacit acceptance of our fate has been mindblowing to me. We’re looking to lose a shit-ton of money through no fault of our own, due a nonsensical policy, and what, we just shrug our shoulders? We need to be getting together with the many hundreds of owners in Wellington and making a fuss. Making shock waves. Hell, it’s Wellington. People should arrange to meet outside the Beehive at a predetermined date and time, carrying placards and chanting something that rhymes, like they do in Romania. I don’t think the lack of young, energetic activist types is helping (at 39, I’m one of the younger owners).

Alphabet card game
Two winning hands in the alphabet card game (see previous post)
This low-flying biplane is dropping the Romanian equivalent of 1080
Family - Language teaching - Politics

All fun and games

July 27, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Since I last wrote I’ve spent three hours with my youngest student, over two sessions. It’s felt closer to three days. What on earth do I do with him for 90 minutes?! He’s a nice kid, and he turns six next month. Last night I had a long chat to my university friend, and we agreed that things are fundamentally different below the age of about seven. The language stuff becomes secondary. The whole concept of reading gets tricky. Simple games with dice are no longer so simple. What exactly is six plus five? Is that even a number? At that age, it’s hard even to get kids to sit still. In the last two sessions I’ve done Simon Says and “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”, and one or two other bits and pieces involving animals or food; otherwise I’ve just let him play. I’m not complaining in any way here. Dealing with children so young is an interesting challenge for me, and one I certainly haven’t solved yet. (I wish I’d stood my ground when I first met his mother, though. An hour is plenty long enough.)

On Sunday and Monday I created and introduced a new card game. First I sourced 52 images from the internet; for each letter of the alphabet, two pictures began with that letter (for instance, umbrella and unicorn for U). Then I painstakingly printed and cut out all the images, and glued them to pieces of card. I added a 53rd card that acted as a joker; I was going to allow it to stand for any letter, but figured that would make life too easy for anyone who happened to draw the joker, so instead I allowed it to represent any vowel. At the start of the game each player receives seven cards, and you pick up and offload cards rummy-style. The winner is the first player to have cards showing images beginning with seven consecutive letters, such as QRSTUVW. The game was a success, I’d say. It helped with my students’ vocabulary and got them to think about the alphabet and vowels and words that begin with Q and W and the like, that basically don’t exist in Romanian.

If I find the time I’ll try and create some more games. I’ve got the idea of a pizza-related board game running around in my head, as well as ones that involve building skyscrapers and climbing mountains, although actually making those last two might prove beyond me.

Last weekend I had a Skype chat to my cousin in a fairly wet Wellington. We spoke later than we normally do, and the boys were either elsewhere or tucked up in bed. Normally when I ask about the boys, everything is always damn near perfect, with their achievements running the gamut from A-pluses to gold medals to virtuoso performances in underwater debating. But this time, with the boys away from the camera, it was different. The oldest and youngest boys were still going great guns, but the middle one seemed to be suffering from significant mental health issues. He’s only 14, but that’s plenty old enough, unfortunately. It was sad to hear that, and it made me wish I was still ten minutes’ drive away, and could pop round and chat to him. I suggested to my cousin that with all his schoolwork and extra-curricular activities, his life is quite high-octane for a 14-year-old, and maybe it would help if he slowed down a bit. That might not be the reason at all, though. Quite possibly he’s being bullied at school.

Boris. He got voted in as prime minister by a two-to-one margin. No surprises there. My friend from Birmingham suggested we could be heading for a general election, which he tips the Tories to win, and a no-deal exit. Looking at the people he has brought into his cabinet (and those he’s replaced) I can’t think much beyond “holy shit” at this stage.

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 - Hiking - Language teaching - Life :)

Some trip pics etc.

June 28, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Today is Dad’s 69th birthday. He isn’t doing an awful lot, and I can’t blame him. His recovery will take time.

Right now he’s struggling to go to the loo properly, and asked me what my record is for time between visits. When I was eight, I once went 18 days. Then another 16 days. Then 15 days. Or something like that. But the first figure I know is accurate. Yes, back in 1988 I really did go two and a half weeks without a poo. All the prunes, and jars and bottles of this or that liquid from the doctor, just wouldn’t shift it. The pain was excruciating. When I finally went, holy shit.

After last week when I could hardly keep up, this week my load is much lighter. (I’m talking about work now; I’ve moved on from the previous paragraph.) As Dad said (and he’s had four decades of experience) that’s what happens when you’re self-employed. It’s either feast or famine. You can’t win. On balance I’m grateful for the reduced volume; having to trek around the city to give lessons isn’t a lot of fun when temperatures soar well into the 30s.

I’ve watched a fair bit of grass-court tennis on TV. The most compelling matches have been at Wimbledon qualifying. The stakes are just so high. Yesterday I saw Liam Broady (a Brit) in the final round, where the men play best of five sets. Broady was off like a rocket, leading 6-3 6-0 in no time at all, but sadly that was all the time it took for his higher-ranked French opponent Grégoire Barrère to click into gear. For two sets he’d been nowhere. Barrère simply had more firepower – his backhand was particularly pacy – and he reeled off the last three sets. The other match I watched yesterday involved Sabine Lisicki, runner-up to Marion Bartoli in 2013 (what a wonderful match-up that was). Six years is an eternity in tennis, though, and Lisicki has practically zero recent form. I wanted her to win yesterday against Lesley Kerkhove from the Netherlands, and she started almost flawlessly, storming through the first set 6-0. But her level dropped and Kerkhove had just enough composure to capitalise, winning each of the last two sets by 6 games to 4. That was a shame. This morning I hit against the wall next to the courts in Parcul Rozelor. I managed to fall over on the concrete and graze my knee, and hit a woman on the head with the ball. Not my best session. (Normally there’s nobody else there to hit.)

On Monday I had a lesson with Octavian, who will be twelve next month. It’s natural on a Monday to do the “How was your weekend?” thing. After he told me about his weekend, I proudly showed him my photos from 2000-plus metres. His impress-o-meter wouldn’t budge. “Yes, I’ve been there. Yes, I know. You don’t need to show me that!” I slapped my phone down in anger. Look mate, I know you travel business class to Hong bloody Kong with your dad and have been there and done that, but you’re being quite rude. The rest of the two-hour session went absolutely fine.

Here are some pictures from last weekend. I hope you’ll be a bit more impressed than Octavian.

Hut at Cuntu
The hut we stayed in
The generator for the hut
Climbing up Țarcu
We’ve made it!
A typically Romanian structure at the top of Muntele Mic
Chairlifts on Muntele Mic
The creepy reception area of what used to be Hotel Sebeș
Family - Hiking - Romania

All clear! (and trip report)

June 26, 2019 plutomanby 0 Comments

Fantastic news. Dad got the results of his biopsy yesterday and was given the all-clear. No spread to his lymph nodes (I initially typed “nymph lodes” but corrected it). A small, low-grade cancer which he is now free of. The best possible outcome. His next check-up will be in three years. He said the feeling of relief was indescribable.

This morning was my first chat with him since his ordeal in hospital. It was a horrible business, but he couldn’t rate the service he received in Timaru highly enough. His warfarin regime was a complicating factor, but they were on to that, and just as importantly they had the human touch which is all too often missing.

I don’t know what my parents’ plans are now. Maybe they’ll go to one of the islands and do not very much. Dad is still obviously in the process of recovery.

So early on Saturday morning I was off into the mountains. My student picked me up in his less-than-roomy Volkswagen Up! (That’s not me getting excited; the car is actually called an Up! with an exclamation mark.) We switched cars in Dumbrăvița into something a bit more spacious. Just as well, because there were five of us, complete with bags. It took 2½ hours to reach the foothills of Muntele Mic (“the Small Mountain”). We met the other four people in the group (a family) and from there we trekked to our hut at Cuntu. Great name.

The hut was very basic as you’d expect. We then set off for Țarcu, the main goal of our trip. We’d only gone a couple of hundred metres when it began to tip it down. It only hailed. We sensibly aborted our mission and scuttled back to the hut. Our second attempt was a success. It must have been sixish when we reached the summit. There’s a weather station up there, manned by well, a slightly unusual man who went by the name of Tintin. I guess that isn’t what his birth certificate says, but you never know. Tintin gave all nine of us cups of tea. He spoke surprisingly good English, and spat out every UK-based cliché imaginable to me.

When we got back down to the hut, it was time to eat. That was the lowlight of the trip. My student told me beforehand that I should bring tinned food. I assumed that meant there would be some way of cooking it, but no such luck. I was just starting my second tin of cold pork and beans when I started to get unbearable sinus pain. It’s bad enough when it happens when I’m by myself, but being in a group makes it that much worse. I lay down in bed, then a few minutes later I was physically sick; a mixture of the cold slop I’d eaten and nervousness caused by being with all those people.

By about 10:30 I was back in the world of the living, and I joined the others who were playing cards. I should mention that they were all Hungarians, not Romanians, although most of them could speak English at a pretty good level. As for the Hungarian language, it’s so unlike anything else. Most European languages are related in some way or another – they’re all branches of the Indo-European tree – but Hungarian isn’t even part of the same forest. It might as well be Chinese. We have the English phrase “it’s Greek to me” but I would have understood more if it was Greek. The card game was called the Hungarian equivalent of “cross”, used a special and hard-to-decipher 24-card Hungarian pack, and was basically a more complex version of euchre, played two against two. I was all at sea, especially at first, as I struggled to read my cards, let alone decide what to do with them. It was fun though, in a strange sort of way.

I slept surprisingly well. The other three people in my room were all called Zoltán, and apparently one of the Zoltáns moved me three times during the night because of my snoring. We had breakfast (no cold beans for me this time) and left just after nine. We tramped back to the cars and then went up Muntele Mic, which is popular for skiing. That took less than half an hour. Back down below was the resort, which in all honesty was ugly. The ugliness was capped off by an abandoned communist hotel, a monstrosity from which anything of value had long been stripped. We decided to enter the dark, dingy building and climb the stairs to the first-floor rooms. It was quite creepy. Then it was back on the road. Our driver raced along at 170 km/h on the motorway; none of the others in the car even batted an eyelid.

I was back home at around 4pm on Sunday. Was I glad I went? Yes, absolutely. As much as I love Timișoara, I really wanted to escape the city. Was I fit enough? Yes. One guy had problems with his feet and was 20 kilos overweight, and he still somehow made it to the top of Țarcu. But was I prepared enough? Hell, no. My student invited me at short notice and with three busy days I had very little time to prepare. I was able to get a sleeping bag and a poncho and that was about it. Next time, I’ll definitely bring some better food. I hope there is a next time; walking and climbing uneven ground does wonders for the body, and being among nature is great for the mind. Plus I get to meet new people.

This is a big post, sorry, but with the fantastic news from New Zealand it’s been a pretty big day. Next post: trip pictures.