by It’s been another week of soporific temperatures here in Timișoara. Yesterday I had sinus pain, and with that and the heat, I didn’t want to do a whole lot.
I tried to call my parents from the park this morning after my 9-till-11 session, but I didn’t get a reply. On Tuesday Mum told me about her exploits on the indoor bowling green (should that be mat? lane? track?) – she’d won an interclub doubles tournament. The indoor bowls “scene” is dying (literally – the average age is now above mum’s 72) and may not survive beyond the next few years. I’ve been reading about New Zealand’s border-opening strategy for 2022. By that stage the UK might be on the green list while Romania could be blood-red.
I’ve had some decent poker results – a second and a sixth from the four mini-buy-in tournaments I played on Wednesday – and my bankroll is now at $780.
So, more on my trip. After my eat-your-heart-out breakfast, I explored Iași (pronounced yash). Iași is a mish-mash. There seemed to be an even greater contrast between the beautiful and the ugly than where I live. The centre wasn’t a patch on Timișoara’s squares and surrounding parks. Bulevardul Ștefan cel Mare – Iași’s Champs-Élysées – was very smart, but partly spoilt by a near-200-metre-long apartment block that was almost unbelievably ugly, even for me, and I’m certainly used to eyesores now.
It was a grey old day. My first stop was the Trei Ierarhi, a beautiful 17th-century monastery. I questioned the wisdom of those kissing the icons. Then I visited the Orthodox cathedral, for me just a building, but for the vast hordes queuing to sign some kind of visitor’s book, it was something rather more. What I enjoyed most that day was the Palace of Culture, an impressive building at the end of the Bulevard, which contained four museums. I first went to the art museum (I got in without paying, because I didn’t know you had do and nobody checked my ticket) – there were some Romanian paintings I really liked, mostly of rural scenes, some I couldn’t stand, and not much in between. Then I visited the museum of technology, paying this time, and that was the most fascinating part of my day. Old gramophones, street organs, valve radios, primitive stereo systems, typewriters, machines that added and multiplied numbers, and even mobile phones from the eighties. One of the staff even got a cupboard-like machine to work. She cranked a handle, setting off hammers and clappers and cymbals on the inside (which were visible), as it played a noisy classical tune. Near the Palace of Culture was Casa Dosoftei, an 18th-century religious building which has since been converted into a museum of early Romanian literature. The woman could see me trying to decipher the old Cyrillic letterforms and she told me that it was all in Church Slavonic and I had no chance. Some of the old books were decipherable however, and they were things of beauty.
That evening I explored the train station, which is an interesting structure in itself, and made a big mistake as I sheltered from the pouring rain to have a shaorma and a beer in the pouring rain; there were beggars everywhere, and the weather meant I couldn’t easily escape them.
The next day, which saw a massive improvement in the weather, I walked to Copou where the old university is situated. It’s certainly the posh end of Iași. The main university building was quite spectacular. Inside was a cavernous hall, called the “hall of the lost steps” if memory serves. I was intrigued by this, and expected all kinds of cool Escher-style optical illusions, but was disappointed. In the Copou area there were multiple parks, much better kitted out than anything we have here, with assorted eateries and drinkeries. There was even a botanic park, a skate park and fun stuff for the smaller kids. I wandered around the local football team’s stadium – visitors are free to roam, and the running track surrounding the pitch was popular. I was wishing Romania had an equivalent to baseball in America – a sport that adds a pleasant drumbeat to summer over there, or at least did until very recently (more commercialism, fewer balls in play, and then of course Covid). Speaking of Covid, people gave markedly fewer shits about the virus than they do in the west of Romania. Masks were something to dangle from your wrist as an accessory, and vaccination rates were clearly through the floor. Big banners adorned town halls and leisure centres: Roll up for your PFIZER jab! The best one! No blood clots! No appointment necessary!
On my third and last day in the city, I took a bus to the end of the line and walked up a hill called Bucium. I walked for more than 5km, coming to a village called Păun (which means “peacock”). Suddenly everything felt very bucolic. I went further and sat down on the edge of a wood for a bite to eat. I then trekked back to the start of the bus line. The bus back to the city was slow. I found a marketplace near the train tracks and had a beer in an outside bar to the sound of Scorpions, which one of the patrons was playing on his phone.
The next morning, after my fourth big breakfast, I was off to Gura Humorului.
