Month: March 2020

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.

Coronavirus - Life :)

Eerie

March 14, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’m talking to my parents every day or two now. This morning Dad said he hoped I’d have a better time up the mountain than last time. I said that actually last time wasn’t bad, and then he reminded me of my hellish sinus pain, or migraine, whatever it was. It’s amazing how easily one can forget horrible experiences. I only have to read back over old blog entries.

So we’ll be setting off at seven tomorrow morning. If we don’t go this weekend, we probably won’t get another chance for a while. Part of me wishes I wasn’t going at all, but up a mountain honestly isn’t the worst place to be right now. And it will give me a break from the wall-to-wall grimness of news channels and websites.

In the last 60-odd hours, things have ramped up to the next level. Eerie is the best word I can use to describe the scenes here. All the trains and trams are still running to schedule, but the usual crowd at the nearby bus stop has depleted by about 80%. As for me, I have avoided public transport for the last three weeks. There are always old men playing games in Parcul Dacia. Always, whatever the weather. But there weren’t today. And neither were there in Central Park. And over large swathes of the world, life is gradually shutting down. This will be no ordinary spring and summer. If we’re lucky, only two grand slam tennis tournaments will bite the dust.

My lessons have taken a battering this week, but I managed four today: the brother and sister who live near Parcul Dacia (they were not enjoying their enforced break from school), then the lady who came here and immediately wiped down my desk, then the guy in the UK on Skype. As a listening exercise with the lady, I went through a 15-minute monologue that my dad had listened to on Radio New Zealand about a Romanian child who moved to NZ in around 2003 at the age of eleven. He talked poetically about the differences between NZ and his homeland, and quite movingly about his phone conversations with his very elderly grandmothers. Listening to that was the highlight of my day, and really an escape from everything else.

When I get back on Sunday afternoon or evening, we’ll have moved a further notch or two up the eeriness scale. My work is likely to be sparse. (I’m encouraging people to have Skype lessons if possible.) There are currently 86 confirmed cases in Romania (make that 88) of what most people seem to be calling simply “the virus”. I expect that figure to double in the next 48 hours. Meanwhile Italy has recorded 250 deaths in the last 24 hours alone. The projections I’ve seen for Romania – cases doubling every second day or so, with a 2% mortality rate – are sobering indeed.

Books - Coronavirus - Language teaching

Starting to bite

March 12, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

Coronavirus. It’s affecting me now. No, I haven’t got it or anything, but people are cancelling lessons left, right and centre. One of their workmates has “weird symptoms”, or maybe they have to look after their kids who are now at home. Today I’ve been given a complete day off. This morning I went to the supermarket, stopping on the way to pick up my second-hand copy of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings that I’d bought on Ebay. I thought I might never get it; seeing that slip of paper in my letterbox was a pleasant surprise on a sunny day of no lessons. At the supermarket I wish I’d used the self-service checkouts that were introduced just before Christmas. I prefer to deal with real people, and evidently so do most Romanians. But with the self-service tills you avoid crowds of often elderly people. On the way back I read the first few chapters of my new book, which was once a present for somebody named Dani.

The response to the virus continues to be bizarre and politics-driven, most notably in the US where the only reason cases aren’t yet at sky-high levels is that they aren’t testing people. At times like this, Trump is a very dangerous man. Last night he took the nonsensical step of banning travel to the US from European countries inside the Schengen zone. So you’ll still be able to fly from either Romania or the UK. In his speech he called the coronavirus a “foreign virus”. No it ain’t! It’s a fully-fledged citizen of the US now. No green card required.

Last night I dropped in on the Champions League match between Liverpool and Atlético Madrid. You’re playing it in front of 50,000 fans? Seriously? Allowing all that air travel from Madrid or wherever else? And just in case the risk factors weren’t already through the roof, the match went into extra time (an extraordinary half-hour, it must be said).

Yesterday, in my lesson with the twelve-year-old boy, the Hangman words and phrases included “Virus”, “Wash your hands” and “Don’t touch your face”. As for now, this weekend’s trip to the mountains is going ahead, but watch this space.

Coronavirus - Life :) - New Zealand

Certainty is overrated

March 11, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

The guy who invited me to go up the mountain came for a lesson this evening. There’s currently two feet of snow up there, so things might be interesting, shall we say. I don’t think we’ll go up Țarcu this time. Perhaps we’ll just potter about in the snow, or play that inscrutable Hungarian card game. Hatvan. That means sixty.

Another 168 deaths from coronavirus in Italy today. The whole country of 60 million plus is now locked down, as if it were a war zone. In Romania, chaos might just be around the corner. A dozen new cases were reported today, taking the total to 29. I’ve heard there might be two strains of the virus, where Italy has been struck by the worse form, which we will undoubtedly get too. Kids here seem quite happy with the situation: they’ve all been given eight days off school, and that could well be extended. This morning Dad called me; he and Mum seemed almost resigned to being stuck in the Southern Hemisphere for winter.

I’m being seriously hassled now to sign the agreement to sell our apartment block in Wellington. This is now urgent. Are you having difficulties because you’re overseas? Some of the other owners are overseas, and they’ve managed, so why haven’t you? Maybe I just don’t want to sign because I think it would be utter madness for me to do so. Maybe I don’t like the idea of guaranteed shit, and would prefer the chance, however remote, of some unshit.

Coronavirus - Family - Hiking - International travel

The calm before the storm?

March 9, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

I FaceTimed my parents this morning. That might be the only way I’ll get to see them for the foreseeable future. On a screen. Strapping themselves into a flying tube packed with 500-odd other poor souls, for roughly a day, might be out of the question long before they’re due to take off in late May. It’s sad, but there’s a very real chance I’ll miss them for the second summer in a row.

When the first Romanian cases of coronavirus presented themselves, my Biziday app alerted me with an ominous chime. For the next handful, only a message flashed up on my screen, which I often wouldn’t see until later. Now I’m not getting messages at all, and probably won’t unless and until somebody succumbs from the virus. So far “only” 15 cases have been confirmed in Romania including five in Timișoara, the same as in the whole of New Zealand. The level of panic is (so far) very low. Very occasionally I’ll see someone sporting a mask. At the supermarket this morning all the shelves were stacked with loo roll. Scented, quilted, embossed, polka-dotted, you name it, they stocked it.

The situation in Italy seems to be something approaching mayhem. This afternoon we had wet weather and I decided to watch the Serie A match between Parma and SPAL, which was a local derby of sorts. I hardly ever watch domestic football these days, but all Serie A matches are now being played behind closed doors, and I figured it would be a bit of a novelty to watch crowdless top-level football, live from Parma which I visited in 2010. At kick-off time all I could see was a large zoomed-in football in the centre of my screen. Apparently the players were on the pitch then, but the Italian Sports Minister had just made an announcement – he wanted games called off entirely, fans or no fans. The game did go ahead in the end, 75 minutes late, and SPAL won 1-0.

Lombardy and the surrounding regions, encompassing Bologna and Parma which were a pleasure for me to visit, are now sealed off. This is (or was) Italy’s economic powerhouse. The impending lockdown was leaked and chaos ensued. It’s been an awful day there, with 133 further deaths. The Wikipedia page on the outbreak in Italy now looks absurd – the initial cases, in their ones and twos, described in great detail, but the entry for 8th March simply states that more than 100 people died in Lombardy alone.

I read a piece by Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, saying that when America is facing an epidemic on this scale, having this particular man-baby at the helm is dangerous. He’s dead right. It’s a shame someone like Krugman isn’t president.

In other news, my student has invited me on another trip to Cuntu (the name is still horrible) and/or Mount Țarcu, where I went last June. He’s planning it for next weekend. It’ll be a damn sight colder than it was then, so I’ve really got to make sure I’m properly prepared. I bought some boots, a bag and some wet-weather gear from Decathlon, the go-to place for this stuff, without completely breaking the bank, but still need a warmer sleeping bag. And absolutely no tinned food this time – there’s nowhere to cook it.

I mentioned to my parents that I’d browsed tents in Decathlon and was amazed just how much tent technology has come on. This prompted Mum to show me photos – the best she could on a grainy FaceTime screen – of our camping holiday in Northern Spain in 1988. Back then you could have a cheap, simple holiday by a Spanish beach without hordes of people. The trip did have its moments, though. Half-way through our three-week stay, my parents had the bright idea to visit Sitges, a resort near Barcelona where they’d clearly had a great time in the seventies before I and my brother came on the scene. Dad drove close to 400 miles, through the night, in his Mazda. Then when we arrived, Sitges had obviously changed. The sea was soup-like. My brother didn’t like to get his face wet, and Mum sensibly stayed out of trouble too. But Dad and I went in, properly, and were sick for the next four days. We went back up north and saw out our holiday up there. We went to and from Spain by boat – 24 hours each way, to and from Santander. The return sailing was rough and my brother got seasick.

I’ll give my brother a call now and see how much he remembers. My guess is a lot – he has very good recall of his early childhood. I’ll also see how much bog roll he has.

Coronavirus - Language teaching - Life :) - Romania

The latest fodder

March 1, 2020 plutomanby 0 Comments

I’d only just hit “Publish” on my last post when I got an audible red alert from the Biziday app, its highest level of notification. Coronavirus had hit Timișoara. Predictably, the affected woman had travelled from Italy. So far there’s little sign of panic here beyond the occasional face mask.

This morning’s student told me he now wants to move to the UK. It might not be the cure-all that he expects. He comes every Saturday, and at the end of today’s session he correctly pointed out that it was his fifth meeting with me this month. He’ll have to wait 28 years to have the pleasure of seeing me five times in February again. I have vague memories of a maths lesson 28 years ago today (yes, a Saturday – my school was decidedly weird) where my teacher said something about the palindromic date: 29/2/92. I have much clearer memories of 29/2/16 – flying from Timaru to Wellington after I’d seen my brother and future sister-in-law, wandering through the airport at the other end, and feeling sick because there’d be no escape from my flatmate when I got home. It shouldn’t have been anything like that horrible, but it was.

I had a busy evening yesterday: a lesson with the two boys in Dumbrăvița, then a session with the 18-year-old girl in Strada Timiș, then just enough time to have a late dinner before my Skype lesson, which finished at 10:30. With the young woman I played perhaps my favourite game, where I ask my student to bet on whether words are real or fake. “Scurvy?! There’s no way that’s a real word.” Coming up with dozens of fake but plausible words was time-consuming but fun. In the middle of the game, I thought, this isn’t a bad life really.

real or fake game
Isn’t tomfoolery wonderful?

At this time of year the streets are lined with mărțișoare, which are talismans (I want to write talismen but that can’t be right) that men give to women to mark the beginning of spring on 1st March, and all the optimism that’s supposed to go with it. Some of the handmade ones are pretty cool. This year I’ve given a mărțișor to all my female students.

mărțișoare
Street stalls selling mărțișoare