by There’s definitely been an upswing in my mood since I last wrote. I persisted with the woman at the hotel in Timișoara, and she replied properly, giving me some advice on dodgy Romanian landlords and basically telling me to knock on the door of every language school in the city. She offered me a small room in the hotel for 250 euros a month (just NZ$400) including expenses, and I accepted for one month. I’m going to Timișoara tomorrow but will be staying at another hotel for four nights before moving into what I expect to be little more than a cubby-hole, though I will have a shower, a fridge and basic cooking facilities. So Timișoara will be my new home for the foreseeable future. I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite city of those I’ve visited – that would be a toss-up between Sibiu and Oradea – but it’s where I was lucky enough to make a connection. Because it was the first place I visited in a country I was very much looking forward to seeing, everything all seemed new and exciting there, a bit like Boston did when I went to America last year. And just like Boston, I spent long enough there to at least sort of get to know it. It’s nothing like Boston though, let’s face it.
Arad, where I’m staying now, isn’t far from my new home and in some ways it’s a smaller version of it. I like it. Today I visited the water tower, partly because of a tip-off I got from someone in Bucharest that it would be interesting and its owner doesn’t speak much English. The water tower was built at the end of the 19th century and hasn’t been operational for 60 years. It now functions as a five-storey museum, showing the history of the city, some artwork and the fire and water services. You can enter the tank at the top through a hole which has been cut out. The owner explained the history of Arad to me and then let me get on with it, but after I came down we had a 15-minute chat in Romanian, my longest yet. If only I could manage that every day. They had a wine festival in one of the main squares. I only had one glass of mulled wine and (for the first time) some sarmale. I’ve been having a few tummy troubles and didn’t want to push it.
Yesterday’s near-three-hour train journey from Oradea, which cost just 18 lei (NZ$7 or £4), was interesting to put it mildly. The guy opposite me had a BO problem and fidgeted constantly. The guy across the aisle drank beer from a 2.5-litre bottle and some clear liquid, which I soon found out to be palinca, from another big plastic bottle. Behind me was a large contingent of gypsies, the equivalent I guess of a whanau. One of them, a girl of five or six, walked up and down the train, saying “Da-mi un leu” or “Give me a leu.” One leu isn’t very much, but it’s the principle I don’t like: a child learns at a young age that you obtain money by begging. The guy with the bottles wanted to talk to me. He didn’t make a lot of sense. I wasn’t sure whether that was a language barrier or a three-sheets-to-the-wind barrier. He offered me some palinca – heaven knows where it had been – and I settled for just a capful. The train stopped at numerous towns, villages, hamlets, rusty signs…
I can bring up maps on my phone, but I struggle to get an idea of scale in a completely unknown place, so last night I dragged my suitcase and carried my other bags more than a mile from the station to the hotel. Tomorrow I’ll get a taxi for the return trip.
One thing Romania is not is boring. It’s raw, it’s unsanitised (not like that), it brims with life. And now it’s my home.
