by Today is Mum’s birthday – she’s exactly three years younger than the orange man – and tonight we’ll be going to the opera. The performance will last three hours and I’d be very surprised if any of us has the foggiest idea of what’s happening. But the novelty factor and just being inside the beautiful building will surely be worth it.
Yesterday (after my two lessons) we went to Ciacova, that fascinating small town with the big square in the middle and the 14th-century fortress. You’re stepping back in time there. We had enormous pastries from a bakery on the square – these little places still all have proper bakeries – and then had coffee at a bar two or three doors down. Three cappuccinos. But these weren’t normal cappuccinos. I could smell the Tia Maria, or whatever it was, a mile off. They were very nice (we sat on barstools that were far too high for the table), but when I asked the bartender what she’d put in, she dodged the issue. With Romania’s nil alcohol limit for driving, I was a bit concerned. Mum paid for our coffees by card – not all places even let you do that – and was surprised to check her bank app and see they had come to NZ$6. You wouldn’t get a single coffee for that in New Zealand. In the evening we had a longish walk along some of the pleasant tree-lined streets near me (including Strada Inocențiu Micu Klein which I always find interesting) and down to the river. The sweet pungent aroma of the lime trees was combined with the smell of mici being barbecued. Mum and Dad commented on the power lines going straight through the trees and all the foliage. That wouldn’t exactly fly in New Zealand, but OSH hasn’t yet made it to Romania. You’re living in Cowboyland, Dad said to me. I suppose I’ve got used to it.
Cluj (or Cluj-Napoca to give it its full name) has a similar population to Timișoara, but it’s got a whole lot of stuff that my home city doesn’t have. Concerts, music festivals, and big swanky football stadium which sits right next to a modern events centre. It’s way better for young people than Timișoara; it has a far bigger student culture, even though Timișoara has a large student population in its two universities. Then after you’ve studied at Cluj, you can stay there and get a well-paid job in IT (you can become an ITist, as the Romanians say), though the market may be getting saturated now. Cluj is also very tourist-friendly – even signs like “Centru” and “Aeroport”, which needed no translation, were translated into English. Car parks were FULL, not OCUPAT or PLIN as you might have expected. It’s a better maintained city than Timișoara and the streets are impressively leafy. The two downsides of Cluj are: (1) it’s expensive by Romanian standards, and (2) all the traffic in the centre of town gets to you after a while.
My parents called my brother when we were in Cluj. He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. We didn’t know whether it was his wife expecting too much of him, or her parents being there far too often, or Mum and Dad not having visited him yet, or some combination, or just feeling low for no real reason. He’d been like that the last few times I’d spoken to him; it reminded me of all the business with his fiancée all those years ago. It certainly put a bit of a damper on things. At least this morning he looked more alive as he called Mum for her birthday.
The drive back from Cluj was fascinating in many ways exhausting. I really felt it the next day. There was all the congestion on the way out of Cluj, then the winding roads that seemed to go on for ever, then the potholed surface after we had our meal, and finally the deluge.
I haven’t fallen out with Mum (yet!) which is great. She does get stressed, but unlike last year we haven’t reached that tipping point. If anything I’m more worried that I might fall out with Dad. I really wish he’d delete that damn Daily Mail app.
Above are some assorted pictures of Cluj, from the airport to the city centre (the church where everything inside was a mosaic was quite striking) and the Botanic Gardens which were a great place to relax in on a hot day.
The trip back. I don’t know how that Antonov plane ever got up there. The last picture is one of the many poles with stork nests atop them. There were four storks in this one.
