by This afternoon my parents called me from their train which was at a station whose name began with K, about half an hour from Budapest. Barely an hour later they called me again from their Budapest apartment. They flew from Gatwick to Vienna, where they spent two nights. After two further nights in Budapest they’ll make their way to Timișoara, again by train. I’m pleased that they’re going by train: it’s a hugely underrated means of transport in Europe (the UK excepted, perhaps). Next Wednesday we’ll be bussing to Belgrade and spending four days there. If I’m honest I’d have preferred a Romania road trip, but with Mum a city break is a far safer option. I don’t take beta-blockers anymore.
It was a real pleasure to have my aunt and uncle (B and J) here, even for just two days. They’d been to China and South America in recent years, but Timișoara was something altogether different for them. They could see the city’s vast potential, but also the lack of resources holding it back. We visited the dilapidated but moving Museum of the Revolution (my fourth visit), and of course the Orthodox cathedral that’s almost literally a stone’s throw from me. I took them on a couple of mystery tram trips and we visited two of the largest markets. In late spring the markets here become quite spectacular, and my aunt and uncle were particularly impressed by the array of flowers on show. They’ve been in the flower business since they moved to South Canterbury in the mid-nineties, and it is serious business. My aunt is now the president of the NZ Rhododendron Society, and much of their travel (such as the time they recently spent in Holland) is rhodie-related.
We ate at Terasa Timișoreana both nights they were here. The second night I had the Romanian equivalent of a ploughman’s lunch, which would have been great if B and J hadn’t spent most of their time talking about (a) how Jacinda Ardern’s government is laying nine years of stability and prosperity to waste; (b) how they’ve worked very hard for everything they’ve achieved in their lives and so on and so forth; and (c) New Zealand should go back to first-past-the-post. I had the biggest problem with (c): I was convinced that FPTP was an undemocratic pile of crap at the age of twelve, and numerous elections in Britain and the US since then have done nothing to change my view. (No electoral system is perfect – that’s a fact that can be mathematically proven – but I’d say NZ’s current MMP system does a good job on the whole.)
Apart from the politics diversion which I could have done without, I got on well with B and J, as usual. They left on Thursday morning.
After a bit of a wild goose chase, today I finally got myself a fishing licence. It cost me 105 lei, including 10 lei for a passport-sized photo. Dad has packed a fishing rod in his suitcase so hopefully we’ll be able to spend a day on the Bega. Fishing isn’t something I was interested when I was younger, but in this fast-paced world it seems a relaxing way to spend a few hours, a long way from a screen.
