by Yesterday morning I had my usual lesson with a married couple (he the same age as me, she a few years younger), and after the lesson (on the present perfect tense and phrasal verbs, with a handmade game of Taboo chucked in at the end) they invited me to go with them to Lipova. I gratefully accepted. We drove along the same road that I followed six weeks ago with my friends from St Ives. In one of the villages in Timiș, in a scene that’s about as Romanian as you get, we met a man who needed a push to get his totally clapped-out 1980-ish Dacia going. Off it spluttered in a puff of blue smoke that reminded me of the emissions from Mum’s Allegro. Apparently Romania does have an equivalent of a Warrant of Fitness, but sufficient cash will get you the green light. Over the border into Arad county, the road became potholed; our driver did a much better job of avoiding the pits than I did.
In Lipova we visited a beautiful Catholic basilica which had recently been restored. There is also a monastery that pilgrims flock to every September, often from Hungary. There are services in Hungarian and German, as well as Romanian. We had a guided tour of the top floor of the basilica, where our guide explained what the slightly bizarre pictures that had been donated by parishioners actually symbolised. Outside the basilica was a sloping zigzag path with fourteen statues, representing the Stations of the Cross, arranged chronologically from bottom to top.
From Lipova we drove to Arad, the nearest city to Timișoara and the last place I visited on my tour of Romania last year. We met my female student’s cousin at a restaurant where we had pizza. Her cousin, a teacher, was amazed (in a good way) that somebody from a wealthy English-speaking country would choose to live and teach in Romania. It was the first time I’d ever eaten pizza topped with peas and corn. Not my first choice I guess, but it was fine. From Arad we took the motorway back to Timișoara. By that stage I was tired. I’d been speaking Romanian – or attempting to – all afternoon, and speaking any language for hours at a time is exhausting for me.
I might try and write again this evening. One of my students, who weighs 19 stone, has had to have a knee operation, so I have a gap in tonight’s schedule.
