by My train from Arad (with its clean, modern station) to Timișoara was remarkably cheap: just under NZ$3 for an 80-minute ride at a leisurely pace. I was in a compartment with a man and a woman, both in their late fifties, who were having a vigorous debate about life since Ceaușescu. They disagreed vehemently on just about everything, except that things had gone backwards. I wasn’t able to follow the ins and outs of the discussion and certainly didn’t add very much to it. Much is made in both New Zealand and the UK of a generational divide, and there’s no doubt it exists. Some younger people in Britain wouldn’t even talk to their parents after the Brexit vote. But in Romania the gap is as wide as, well, as the one between a Romanian train and the platform. It’s massive, thanks to the 1989 Revolution and the sheer speed at which the internet spread here. And at 36, I seem to be living right on the fault line.
So here I am. This hotel isn’t far from the place I stayed in on my arrival in Romania (and will go back to on Wednesday), and is therefore within striking distance of perhaps the only laundromat in a land of 20 million. “Wash and dry in one hour!” If only. I had to wait for all the intimidating young people with their fancy phones to finish their loads first, while feeling the pressure of more intimidating young people desperate for me to finish mine. Getting my washing done was twice as costly as the train ride. The bottle of red wine I bought today was somewhere in between.
My hotel room isn’t great. The bathroom smells, despite strips of paper declaring that it has been dezinfected. (That’s similar to another mangling of the English language I see at train stations: reziduary waste. Where they got that from I have no idea. Simply “waste” or “rubbish” would have done the job.) There are large yellow signs next to the plug points saying “230 volts”; I clearly need to take extreme precautions before plugging anything in. My bedside lamp is purely ornamental. I haven’t got a fridge. And worst of all, I only have two towels instead of the customary six or eight. How will I cope?
The taxi driver in Timișoara asked me “Numero quattro, si?” Getting to the point where people think I’m Italian when I speak Romanian is what I call progress. But at the hotel I didn’t do so well. It’s a typical story. I field the first two or three simple questions, then I get a wall of words thrown at me, almost as a test, which I fail miserably, and any further words I receive are in English.
Only ten days until America goes to the polls. This is not a done deal, folks. The race has tightened perceptibly in the last three days or so, and now the FBI is investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails again. I’ve been on the losing side in every election or referendum I’ve cared about since Obama was re-elected four years ago, and the stakes then weren’t anything like they are now, so I must say I’m a little nervous.
