by So I met the guy in the McDonald’s car park again and went with him to the mall. He was more friendly this time. When we got to the mall though and it became apparent that I didn’t actually have the equivalent of 2000 euros – almost 10,000 lei – in cold hard cash, his mood quickly turned sour. He accepted a bank transfer, but wanted it done there and then, and the sum was above the limit set by the banking app. My bank even has a branch at the mall that’s open on Sundays, but they wouldn’t allow me to withdraw that amount at the desk. The guy then got angry with me for not sorting all of this out beforehand, and at that point I decided to walk away. He asked me for 100 lei for wasting his time, so I gave him 50 and was relieved to get out of there relatively unscathed. Like so many Romanian men, he resorted to sheer aggression to get what he wanted. One of the guys from tennis recently lamented the “softness” of young people who live in cities. “They’re so much more aggressive in the country.” Aggression is seen as a positive attribute here. Well, this guy’s aggression cost him a sale. There’s one more car I’m interested in, and if nothing comes of that I might wait until I get back from New Zealand.
Last week there was a fire in a hostel in Wellington, just a stone’s throw from where I used to live. It was almost certainly arson, and at least five people were killed. The building had no sprinklers – amazingly, given how stringent New Zealand’s safety regulations tend to be across the board, it was exempt from them. Very sad and a total failure on a number of levels, but to put it into perspective, fatal fires are probably a weekly occurrence in Romania.
I’m just about to meet Mark in town. Apparently there’s a “festival” of overpriced “street food” going on. It’s such a nice day; it’s bound to be heaving there.
