My big plan

The death toll from the nightclub fire in Bucharest reached 48, and many more suffered severe burns. But the response to this national tragedy has been encouraging and frankly remarkable. Many thousands of Romanians took to the streets in anti-corruption protests and affected political change. That’s quite something. It will interesting to see where Romania goes from here under their new prime minister.

I’ve almost made up my mind to go to Romania next September. Exciting? Yes. Scary? Yes, but the alternative is even scarier. In trying to map out my future, there are no unscary roads to go down. September still seems an eternity away – I’d rather go sooner – but I’d like to teach English voluntarily for six months before I go. It should be a good month to arrive – it’s the start of the academic year and it will (hopefully) be neither too hot nor too cold. The big question – well, one of the big questions – is where do I base myself.

The city of Sibiu is in the Transylvania region in the centre of Romania, made famous by Dracula (it wasn’t long ago that I thought Transylvania was a made-up country). It’s about half the size of Wellington, population-wise. The word Sibiu is pronounced how you’d imagine it is, except that when two vowels clash heads in Romanian at least one of them gets mangled, and in this case the final ‘u’ becomes more of a ‘w’ sound. I find the combination of letters and sounds in Sibiu to be quite pleasing.

Sibiu is beautiful, clearly. The medieval part of town looks incredible, and I understand it got a major facelift about ten years ago. It is just me or is every town and city in Romania chock-full of stunningly beautiful buildings that get even more beautiful the closer you look at them? Many of the buildings have large attic spaces with small eyelid-shaped windows; the eyes are quite a noticeable architectural feature. This blog has some brilliant photos of Sibiu, showing the cobbled streets and one of the amazing Orthodox churches. The central square looks pristine, but like the blog writer, I’m a big fan of less-than-perfect. Cracked paintwork, decaying concrete, yep I love that stuff too. Sibiu is surrounded by mountains and offers a fantastic backdrop. You can traverse one of the mountain ranges via the famous Transfăgărășan road (definitely not an unscary road) which is understandably a Top Gear favourite.

Part of the attraction of Romania for me is that it’s mostly off the tourist trail. But for how long? Sibiu’s Wikitravel page talks about “tons of great souvenir shops” and give it the best part of another year and I might have already left it too late. I’ve had a look at apartments for rent in Sibiu; they’re even cheaper than in Timișoara, so from a purely financial perspective it’s definitely on my radar.

Wherever in Romania I end up, there’s the sense that yeah baby, this is happening. And man that feels good.

Romania has been in the news in the last few days. Last weekend 32 people died in a fire in a Bucharest nightclub which had only one exit, and now the prime minister has resigned amid anti-corruption protests in the capital and elsewhere.

If I do end up in Romania, it won’t be Bucharest. I’ve never been there but I can safely say that it’s too big, too noisy and too intimidating for me. Thankfully Romania has a nice selection of medium-sized cities, like Iași, Cluj, Brașov and …

Timișoara. Bet you’ve never heard of it. It’s stuck out on a limb a bit, in the west of the country, closer to the Hungarian capital Budapest than to Bucharest (which is nice, because I’d love to visit Budapest). It’s a compact city, a bit like Wellington, with a similar population. How to say Timișoara? Well, the s-with-a-comma is pronounced “sh”, while the “oa” is one of the famous Romanian mashed-together vowel combinations and it’s pronounced similar to “wa”. Put it all together and you get “timmy-SHWAR-a”.

The architecture is stunning. My two favourite buildings, just from Google street view and one or two other blogs, are Casa Brück and Banca de Scont (discount bank), both on the Piaţa Unirii. One day I’ll see and touch those beautiful buildings. I’ll make sure I do. The city has plenty of parks and green space and is extremely walkable, but it also has good public transport: trams as well as Wellington-style (for now) trolley buses. If I go to Romania I won’t get a car (not initially anyway) because driving there is a nightmare.

I’m lucky to live within (longish) walking distance of three markets here in Wellington. If I was to live in Timișoara there would be more than that, and they wouldn’t only be open at weekends. Markets are clearly a big part of daily life there.

Wellington also has a lot of street art. In July someone painted yin-and-yang dolphins on an electrical box just opposite me, livening up this end of my street in the process. I would have put up a photo of it, but some bastard tagged it two weekends ago. Timișoara is also teeming with street art. They even have an annual street art festival there.

Wellington is the most politically motivated city in New Zealand, which I suppose it should be as the capital. Timișoara came to the fore in December 1989, sparking the revolution that led to Ceaușescu’s demise. The country still has enormous problems but has come on in leaps and bounds since then. That’s all quite exciting to me. Most of the history I hear about seems so remote, but I remember 1989, which was an incredible year politically. And to think that when everything kicked off in Timișoara, I was living in New Zealand, probably lying on the beach at Caroline Bay.

Supposedly Timișoara has a bohemian café/bar where you can lie in a hammock and eat ice cream for about a dollar. Am I too old for that? No, dammit! I suggested to my mum that I buy her a hammock for Christmas. She said she wouldn’t want one because she wouldn’t have time for it. What? How? You’re 66 and you’ve worked hard all your life. How could you possibly not have time? I think I might buy her it anyway.

I mentioned Timișoara, among other places, in an email to my dad. No reply. Assuming he actually got my email, there’s nothing neutral about a no reply. But that’s OK. He doesn’t have to like my plans.

Tomorrow I’m flying down to see my parents. I’ll be flying into Timaru. I must like places that begin with Tim. My cousin’s middle boy is called Tim, and when I was in Boston I bought him a T-shirt with the name of a fairly famous university emblazoned on it, so that it he sees his name when he looks in the mirror. I also got it for him because he’s a smart kid and could go there one day. I think he liked it.

My trip to the US has done wonders for me. I’ve been back the best part of a month and things haven’t returned to normal at all. I wouldn’t want them to. Normal was terrible. Normal meant life was passing me by. Now I know that life can be bloody awesome. This feels just like it did after the summer of 2001 when I recovered from panic attacks: hey, I can live like me and dress like me and be like me and this feels fantastic. I never thought I’d get back there again. I still found social situations difficult, as I do now, but guess what, that’s part of me, and I can live with that.

In 2002, after nine months or so of being me in my final year of university, I had to get a job. This of course had to be one of those corporate jobs where I couldn’t be me at all, because that’s supposedly what my degree had been geared towards, and I never got any of those jobs because I interviewed so badly. For the next nine months I lived with my parents, packed boxes in a warehouse, and struggled with depression until I got a poorly-paying but actually not a bad job that allowed me to move into a flat and, to a limited extent, be me.

I moved to New Zealand at the end of 2003. I got my first proper corporate job a few months later. And that was pretty much that. With the exception of the work I did on earthquake claims following the two devastating quakes in Christchurch, I haven’t been me since.

I really wish I could get the whole team thing (that’s a part of being me that frustrates me). I didn’t get it thirty years ago; I don’t get it now. But apparently next week I’m suddenly going to love being part of a dynamic team, blazing a career path in my chosen industry, until in five years’ time I’m managing a team of dynamos myself. What really happens? I survive a year or two in my team environment by generally being personable and not pissing people off too much, or even making it all that obvious that I’m there, then I get depressed, I have a change of boss, I can’t face any more Christmas parties with those people, my performance takes a dive, and I jump, hopefully before I’m pushed. I might be lucky enough to get another job, in another team environment, and the whole process can start over again. I’m still young enough (and the retirement age will be old enough by then) to go through more than fifteen further iterations. My latest one, in the water industry, is about as good as it will ever get, I’m with a really nice bunch of people, and it’s still utterly hopeless. The vast majority of my work days are a case of damage limitation; the possibility of achieving anything hardly ever arises. I’ve got this to look forward to at least fifteen more times if I somehow survive that long.

Except I don’t. There are things I’m good at that I can turn into a career. Being bad at teams doesn’t mean I can’t work with people and help people. I like helping people. Language fascinates me, always has done, and my plan is to rent out my apartment and, as I alluded to in my last post, teach English in Eastern Europe. Traditionally when people from this part of the world teach English they do so in Asia, but I want to do what I think will work for me. I think Eastern Europe would suit me more (and I have an EU passport which will be very handy for this, although with the refugee crisis there’s an increased chance that the UK will leave the EU).

In a couple of years I won’t be attending meetings about strategic goals. I’ll be doing a job I love. And during my time off I’ll be doing 36-hour journeys on rickety trains, stopping at places I can’t pronounce, eating food I don’t even recognise, and it’s all going to be amazing. Yes, I know it’ll be challenging, it’ll be scary, but that’s kind of the point (and aren’t “normal” jobs challenging and scary enough?). I’m going to make this happen.

I’m looking at Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, with Romania winning at this stage for two reasons. One, there’s a lot of unjustified paranoia about Romania that keeps tourists away, and keeps the country largely unspoilt (for now). Two, well I’ll talk about that in my next post.