by Last weekend at tennis, there were seven of us and it was my turn to sit out, along with the two old geezers. Domnul Ionescu, the old one (as opposed to Domnul Sfâra, the really old one) is always complaining about modern-day Romania and how it has gone to the dogs. This time he was talking about Romania’s vaccination rate. “We’re last in Europe in everything. Why do we even have to be last in this? Vaccination rates are a measure of a country’s civilisation, or in our case, lack of it.” Domnul Sfâra agreed, and so did I, of course. The English couple who came to visit me in Romania four years ago have now had their jabs. The husband was very reluctant to do so, and in the end he succumbed to social pressure. Telling, I thought, because how and why people get vaccinated hardly matters. If it’s only social pressure that does it, who cares? The fact is that in the UK that pressure exists. If he’d been in Alabama there’s no way he’d have got the jab, and in large swathes of Romania the social pressure, if anything, goes the other way.
Today I might be playing singles. It’s another scorcher here.
More on my trip. On Saturday the 24th – a sunny day – I left Iași, taking the train to Gura Humorului, passing through Suceava where I was able to have a quick look around the station. The journey took 2¾ hours. I met a nice lady on the train who pointed out my stop for me, because it wasn’t all that obvious. My guest house was on a main road about a mile from the station, and when arrived around 3pm, nobody was there. I just had enough battery on my phone to call the owner who said she’d come over. All the time on this trip I was battling a rapidly depleting battery. The owner, whose name was Simona, took down all my details and complimented me on my Romanian. From that perspective it was a good trip for me. I didn’t do much else that day except read my book – All the Light We Cannot See – and grab a basic dinner in town. Gura means mouth; the town isn’t exactly at the mouth of any river (there’s no sea!) but it’s at the confluence of two rivers, the Humor and the Moldova.
Back in the guest house, I felt a mini-earthquake every time a truck went past. I slept well though, and early the next morning I visited the museum of local customs, where I was given a one-on-one tour. He said he could speak some English but I asked him to explain everything in Romanian. The traditions of the region – farming, cooking, religious festivals with all their superstitions – are still alive in large part today. They used – and still use – oxen to plough the fields, while most of the country uses horses. It’s all a century away from the likes of Fonterra. After the museum I trekked 6 or 7 km up to the monastery at Voroneț, which was built in the late 15th century in under four months. I couldn’t take any pictures inside without stumping up extra cash, but you can see the very colourful exterior painting. I wandered back to the town where I booked my train ticket for the next day and then slumped on a bench. Just like in Timișoara, men crowd around tables to play and watch various games, and there seemed to be a form of extreme backgammon in full swing. My dinner that evening was very chicken-heavy.
The following morning I had time to visit yet another monastery, simply called Humorului Monastery. This was a more interesting experience than Voroneț, because of the tower you could climb with claustrophobically narrow steps, and the view from the top which was breathtaking. I took a taxi to the monastery and while walking back (that’s where I took the picture of the cranes perched atop a lamp-post) a minivan pulled over, and the rather grumpy driver gave me a lift back for 3 lei.
