by It’s a beautiful Tuesday morning here in Timișoara. Earlier I went to Piața Badea Cârțan where I had a coffee and bought some vegetables. Three years on, being amongst the fresh produce on a sunny morning, and watching the world go by, is still a wonderful feeling. As I sat on a bench near the market, I had a view of a brick wall I hadn’t noticed before. I couldn’t read what remains of the writing on it, but it looks like the letter to the right of the emblem is a W. So it’s probably more than a century old, dating from when Romania was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Back then, Timișoara was trilingual (Romanian, Hungarian and German), and German is the only one of those languages to use the letter W.
Yesterday’s weather was grim in comparison to today’s. My parents had ordered a book for me ages ago: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. I think it will be a very good read, when I get around to it. But getting it in the first place wasn’t easy. It had come from Australia, via who knows where. Last Wednesday I finally got a note in my letterbox telling me that it was ready to be picked up. The next day I went to the main post office, where parcels normally go to, but I was told I needed to pick this item up from a different office, next to the railway station. On Friday afternoon I went there, only to find it closed at 1pm on Fridays and I was too late. Yesterday I went back – I got there ten minutes after it opened at 9:30. I went up to the first floor (where there was a poster telling me about the “new” notes and coins that came out in 2005) but was told I needed the customs office on the second. I spent the next half-hour in a forbidding waiting area, in which time six or seven other people collected their parcels before it was my turn. The room is what Romania must have been like under Communism. Everything was painted beige and brown, seemingly in about five minutes total. Aggressive-looking, bizarrely-printed signs adorned the walls. On the floor were some old scales, made in Sibiu in 1975, which had all the number fours printed in a typically Romanian way. I imagine they still work fine. The loud bang of metal doors closing in other parts of the building reverberated. I thought, I would not like to end up in prison in this country. When it was my turn, I entered another room, I handed over my passport, a man opened the package with a knife, decided there was no contraband inside, and I was free to go with my book.
When I got home I called my parents to tell me the book had arrived. We then moved on to the subject of Duolingo. I mentioned to Mum that I’d given 28 hours of English lessons in the past week, and she’d spent about as long on that site. I said it was an inefficient use of her time if her goal is to actually learn French, and she’d be better off doing 10 hours of Duolingo and 10 hours reading news articles, or something along those lines. Even the occasional conversation with me, perhaps. Suffice to say, this suggestion didn’t go down well. She wouldn’t speak to me. (That’s the way she’s always handled anything I say that she doesn’t want to hear. Even on a subject as unimportant as this.) I was just trying to help her. I honestly think it’s great that she’s trying to learn a language, and if she could get to the stage where she could go to France and communicate with people there, that would be fantastic. But I do have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t (it’s kind of, you know, my job).
After our chat, I bought a few bits and pieces from the supermarket, and on the way I popped into the second-hand clothes shop. Every six weeks or so, on a Monday, they have a new collection of stuff. I picked up a bronze-coloured leather jacket, made in Palma de Mallorca, for 70 lei (£13, or NZ$26). Yeah, I like this. It’s had some use, but not much. I thought it was pretty damn good value. It’s worth rummaging around in there sometimes. Beats going to the mall.
Although winter is around the corner, the markets are still full of tasty produce. Right now there are mountains and mountains of cabbages. Sometimes I buy a ready-pickled cabbage and try to make sarmale.
Two cancellations yesterday. I try not to let that kind of thing frustrate me too much.
