plutoman.com – Page 21 – a romanian adventure

Better late than never

July 23, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

My hours are way down again. That means I can tackle my pretty lengthy non-work to-do list, but that also means making decisions about how and in what order and that in turn means increased stress. When I’m busier with work, my stress levels tend to go down if anything. Tomorrow I’m getting the car’s brakes looked at because they squeak when I brake for more than a few seconds and I’d rather not have dodgy brakes when I’ve got some long trips planned. It would have made sense to do that when I had the ITP done two weeks ago (that’s the equivalent of a WOF in New Zealand) but the chap at the ITP station wasn’t that easy to deal with. (The car passed its ITP without any trouble. I always got very excited when my car passed its WOF in NZ. That only happened three or four times in all the years I was there, and those inspections were six-monthly.)

Biden has pulled out. Far too late, but still, hooray! They must have read him the riot act because he seemed pretty sticky for a while there. I have nothing against Biden, but if he’d clung on, a Trump win (plus Republican control of all branches of government) was a virtual certainty. It may still turn out that way, but there’s some chance now of a non-terrifying outcome. Kamala Harris is just about nailed-on to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee.

Yesterday I watched the final round of the golf. I’ll be honest, I was hoping for mayhem. Howling gales, horizontal rain, scores drifting into the Firth of Clyde and sailing off the map entirely. That’s basically what did happen in rounds two and three. Guys with all their fancy laser tech being outdone by the elements. But what wind there was died down over the last round. It was chaotic over the first few holes because the sheer number of contenders made it hard to keep up, but around the turn they gradually whittled themselves down until one player – Xander Schauffele – pulled away. He shot a virtually error-free 65 and won by two shots over Billy Horschel and Justin Rose. I remember Rose’s incredible finish as an amateur at the 1998 Open, back when I watched it every year. He turned professional immediately and (famously) didn’t make the cut for absolutely ages, but since then he’s forged a successful career for himself, including a win at the US Open. Just like in ’98, they showed a close-up of the engraver about to etch the winner’s name on the trophy. With a name like Xander Schauffele, there were plenty of ways to mess up. I’m glad I watched the golf, even though the sport (like so much else) has entered the dark side recently. The third round in particular was pure theatre. I noted that the metric system has yet to make into the world of golf, in either Britain or America. I don’t mind a bit of good old imperial occasionally, but when a British commentator described the sea water as pretty chilly at only 54 degrees, that’s where I draw the line.

I can’t wait to get away. The UK trip is the one I’m looking forward to the most. No obligations, nowhere I have to go, no people I have to see.

Other sports - Tennis - Travel: Europe - Travel: Romania

A Scottish summer in full swing (plus my travel plans)

July 21, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

Our two-week heat wave has come to an end, for now at least. Yesterday the temperature dropped ten degrees from the day before, and finally I could breathe again. First I dropped over a quarter of a ton of crap off at the tip – bags of hardened cement, big sheets of MDF from an old wardrobe, and one of those old-style TVs. That felt good – the small room next to my office, which had become a junk room, could be pretty useful. There’s still a horrible carpet in there that I need to get rid of. Then I cycled to Sânmihaiu Român and back – only the second trip I’ve made on the new bike since I bought it.

After that, I grabbed lunch and sat back and watched round three of the golf. Round two had been dramatic enough. The howling wind, even worse than on the first day which was bad enough, sent scores skyrocketing. Pity the poor Japanese guy who made two successive nines (on a par-four followed by a par-three). At the end of the second round, roughly half the field would be cut. I was strangely emotionally invested in what the cut line would be. Would it be five or six over par? It could have gone either way as the wind dropped for the last few players out on the course, but six it was, and that allowed ten or so more players to come back for the weekend. Nice. The more the merrier. Then on to yesterday. After some better weather in the morning, which helped a Korean player in a Hawaiian-esque shirt hit a hole-in-one, sheer madness followed as it sheeted down with rain. The wind, which is affected by the tide, also picked up. Spectators and players were like drowned rats out there. The temperature plunged. Commentators described hands as being prune-like. But it was all beautiful in its way too.

As this wonderful advert for a Scottish summer was playing out, it was time for me to play tennis. It seemed the weather system had moved south-eastwards in some style. Florin and I got there. We hit for 15 minutes when it started spitting, then after another 15 (following our best rally in which I finally got the ball past Florin at the net) the spits had become drips and drops and there was fork lightning in the near distance. Time to call it a day. When I got back, the golf was still on. Our shortened tennis session and the crazy weather in Scotland (which made everything take longer) meant I saw more of the closing holes than I otherwise would have. It’ll be one heck of a final round. Billy Horschel is on his own at four under par; six players are just one shot behind, including Dan Brown (not the Da Vinci Code guy) who was desperately unlucky on the final two holes. There are a further five players at even par or better; the winner is extremely likely to come from those dozen men. There could quite easily be a play-off, which would add even more excitement. I haven’t seen the weather forecast.

Travel plans. It looks like I’ll go up to Maramureș a week on Monday or Tuesday for five days or so. Then I’ve got my UK trip from 8th to 14th August. After that I’m thinking of four days in Maribor in Slovenia (19th to 23rd, or thereabouts), then there’s Vienna from 29th August to 2nd September.

Life :) - Other sports - Politics

Too much, too fast

July 19, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

Wednesday’s 90-minute Romanian lesson was curtailed when our teacher, based in Deva, lost power. We finished the session this morning at ten, so Dorothy and I met up at eight for a coffee. She’s in the last week of her sixties; her 70th birthday is next Thursday and she’s having a party of sorts two days later (my brother’s birthday, in fact) in Buzad. She sometimes intersperses Romanian words into her sentences, such as grătar, which means barbecue. (She plans to have one of those in Buzad.) At one point she said that something was grătarred. We pondered how this should be spelt. I said that it should definitely be with double r because grătar has final stress; she said she’d employ an apostrophe instead. Dorothy asked me how my mother was. She remembered Mum’s cancerous lump. I’d almost forgotten about that Tuesday until I reread the WhatsApp exchange I had with my brother. All the swearing and panic. Dorothy and I always have good chats. I often feel more comfortable with people of a very different age (up or down) from my own, or with people with different cultural backgrounds. They’re likely to think, oh he’s young, or he’s old, or he’s British, when in fact he’s just weird.

In the last week or two I’ve felt a sense of impending doom. This extended heat wave has left me confined to home in the daytime and starved of sleep. Other, richer, parts of the city (such as Dumbrăvița which is technically outside Timișoara) have suffered regular power outages. Up there they almost all have air con and many even have swimming pools and pumps. The grid can’t cope. It’s been a particularly weird heat wave; Europe has been split by two air masses – a cool one in the west that has pushed up and intensified our scorching one.

It’s not just the heat. It’s the darkness everywhere. Trump has picked Jance Dance Vance (or whatever he’s called) as his running mate. Someone who compared Trump to Hitler eight years ago. Trump is talking about God a lot. God kept Trump alive when he was shot. All those evangelical idiots are lapping it up. Unless Biden pulls out of the race toot-sweet (and maybe even if he does), things look very ugly indeed. I wish I could just ignore it all, like Formula One. I’m not interested in Formula One (even though I made a game for kids that is loosely based on it), so I can happily ignore any headlines or articles on the subject. But American politics profoundly affects us all. It doesn’t help that I’m out here on Ukraine’s doorstep. There was a wonderful feeling of relief following the UK election. Those experts, rather than yes-men, brought into government in a clean break from Tory incompetence and corruption. Sadly though, the UK is bucking the trend.

There have been IT outages all over the show today, caused by a software update by a firm called CrowdStrike. The name sounds bloody scary. My initial reaction was that if this pisses off a few tech bros for a few hours then good, a bit like last year when I saw scenes of orcas ramming luxury yachts. Good on ’em. But then I saw that public transport and even hospitals have been affected. Everything is growing too fast and is now, slowly but surely, coming apart at the seams. (WordPress, which this blog uses, is still running I think.)

It’s a shame that I don’t enjoy watching sport anything like I used to. It was once a biggish part of my life. Even in 2017 (which was a great year, looking back), I filled in Wimbledon draws and watched baseball. But everything growing too big, too fast, has turned me off. This week the Open golf is on – it’s being played at Troon in Scotland – and because golf happens at a slow pace I thought I’d dip in. Today they’re playing the second round of four. It’s worth watching for the views of the isle of Arran, which I visited in February 1997 (I became quite ill there – I wasn’t equipped for the extreme conditions), and the trains clattering by alongside the 11th hole. They have three commentators at the same time – one too many in any sport – and the ads are infuriating. I saw something from Accenture that talked about “Gen AI”, “unlocking insights” and “putting a digital trove of information into users’ hands”. I know golf is corporate and all, but I couldn’t be the only one shouting “Piss off!” at the screen. (Accenture are worth hundreds of billions of dollars and hardly anyone knows what they even do.)

Dorothy said I really should get away in between 14th August (when I get back from the UK) and 29th August (when we go to Vienna). I think I will.

Life :) - Other sports - Politics - Tennis

Two near misses (well, one was actually a near hit)

July 16, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

Firstly, the Trump shooting. I don’t feel sorry for him in the slightest. All he’s done for the last nine years is sow hatred and division. More guns, more violence. Then after being shot, he raised his fist – Fight! Fight! Fight! (against what exactly) – with the American flag as a backdrop, creating perhaps the most enduring image since 9/11. That I suppose is why he’s such a good campaigner – he knows what buttons to press. In America, those are the “playground bully” buttons. The cesspit of social media makes his strategy all the more effective. It’s now even more likely that Trump becomes president again (unless Biden gets out of the way I’d say it’s a racing certainty) and living on the doorstep of Ukraine I fear for what will happen next. After the last election I thought that Trump running again in 2024, or Biden for that matter, would be ridiculous. Common sense, in the shape of two new faces, would prevail. How naive I was.

When we were playing tennis on Saturday, a bird in a tree sounded as if it was being strangled. My partner identified it as a jay – gaiță in Romanian. He said that some people’s voices are said in Romanian to be like a gaiță, and I immediately thought of Elena (the 80-year-old lady who lives above me). She’s lovely, but her voice cuts through these thick walls. Yesterday morning I took her to the airport – she was flying to Toronto via Munich. She yapped and screeched the whole way in the car – all very distracting for me when it isn’t in my native language and I’m trying to drive – and I missed the turn to the airport. No problem; it was easy to turn back and we had plenty of time. We went to the brand spanking new Schengen-zone terminal which smelt of rotten fish. Her 10:50 flight wasn’t on the board, but a 9:40 one was. It seemed Elena had got the wrong time. When we got to the check-in desk at 9:03, it had officially closed three minutes earlier. (I was cursing my wrong turn.) The check-in lady made a phone call and eventually Elena and her suitcase were allowed on the plane. Phew. By this point Elena was hot and flustered and had trouble navigating the snaking security line. I’ve just had an email from her daughter to say she arrived safely in Toronto.

I saw a comment after the Euro final: “I’m beginning to think that football doesn’t want to come home. It seems to like it better elsewhere.” I liked the commenter’s A. A. Milne-style gentle humour. I wish there was more of that instead of the tedious memes, piss-takes and in-jokes. I watched the second half of England’s match with Spain – it was very watchable. Spain were clearly the better side and it would have been something of an injustice if England had won. It’s funny watching England games now – I hardly know any of the players, even if I’ve heard some of the names. When Cole Palmer equalised (great goal, by the way) I thought, ah yes, that’s the guy Luca said was his favourite player. (Luca is a 13-year-old boy I teach.)

I watched the men’s Wimbledon final, having not seen any of the men’s tournament prior to that. A fairly major wobble for Alcaraz when he served for the match, but in the end he beat Djokovic comprehensively. The sky’s the limit for Alcaraz. People are already talking about 20 grand slams. (He’s already 20% of the way there.) It’s very possible; the differences between the surfaces and the grand slams in general is much smaller than it used to be – the days of a Sampras who was imperious in two of the slams but always fell short at Roland Garros are over.

The Olympics start soon, apparently. I can’t be bothered with them.

This is the longest, deepest heat wave in Romanians’ living memory. I’m seeing 34s and 35s for the coming weekend – that will feel like some respite.

Language teaching - Life :) - Maths teaching - Other sports - Tennis

Keeping out of the outside world

July 14, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

I’ve just spoken to Mum and Dad. They asked me if I’d seen the news. What news? Oh, I see. Someone tried to assassinate Donald Trump. I’ve since caught up with the news and watched the scenes of blood and mayhem. Living on my own, big news can pass me by at weekends – for instance I didn’t find out about the Christchurch earthquake of 2010, which happened on a Saturday, until many hours later.

We’re in the middle of an infernal heat wave. Far from my first I’ve experienced in Romania, but this one is unremitting. The last week has reminded me of Covid. Stay at home during the daytime if at all possible. Outside is scary and dangerous, or at least very unpleasant, between 11am and 8pm. If I visit the market in the morning, I can’t mess around. Make a list and stick to it, just like in the Covid days. Last night I played tennis between 8 and 9; I was glad Florin was happy to just bat the ball around without getting tangled up in a set which would have been brutal. Cycling is a breeze, literally, until you have to stop at a red light.

Last week was a busy and challenging one on the work front. Online lessons with tech falling over everywhere. A maths lesson where I had a girl (who is being taught under the British system) and a boy (doing the bone-dry, difficult and hopelessly impractical Romanian curriculum) at the same time, and felt all at sea. Wanting to print coloured worksheets when I’ve run out of coloured ink. A mother who printed out sheets for her son in black and white where he had to draw arrows to a blue ball or a red shoe. And in between, some much easier sessions with a new lady whom I’d put at an 8 on my 0-to-10 scale. She’s keenly interested in the language, and because she already speaks it so well, these lessons are a piece of cake and fly by in no time.

Apart from shortish trips to England in 3½ weeks and Vienna at the end of August, I don’t know if I’ll be going anywhere. I had planned to visit Maramureș and maybe even Slovenia, but the sudden uptick in my hours and the ridiculously hot weather might make those plans overly ambitious.

Sport. The final of Euro 2024 takes place tonight. England have lucked their way into the final, while Spain have been the stand-out team of the tournament and logically should win. But football doesn’t work like that. England could easily win their first big tournament for nearly 60 years, and it would be huge if they managed it. My brother mentioned a possible public holiday if “we” win, and I realised that for me the whole concept of a “we” in sport feels very weird now. I’ve been out of the UK for practically half my life.

This year’s Wimbledon has hardly featured in my life. Yesterday, however, I watched the deciding set of the women’s final between Krejcikova and Paolini. I thought about how the women’s game has changed beyond belief since the nineties when I watched it far more keenly. The first few games of the final set flew by, then there was a key moment at 3-3 on Paolini’s serve with break point against her. Her first serve was called out. She challenged it but lost, so she had to serve a second ball with her rhythm disrupted. A big double fault and a crucial break. Then Krejcikova just about served out the match in a long final game where nerves clearly got to her. The men’s final between Djokovic and Alcaraz takes place this afternoon.

In some good news, I got rid of one of my old bikes. The guy who nicked it in 2021 did a good job of buggering it up, so I was pleased to get even 100 lei for it. My latest one, by the way, cost 800 lei (£140 or close to NZ$300).

Politics - The UK - Travel: Europe

More UK politics thoughts and lack of motivation

July 7, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

I’ve just had a longish Skype chat with my cousin who lives in New York state (I stayed with him in 2015) but is currently in northern Italy. It’s always good to catch up with him.

We’re getting scorching weather again. We’re forecast to nudge 40 in the coming days. I’d planned another road trip, but I won’t even want to travel outside this air-conditioned room if it’s like that. I’m now thinking of making a trip to Slovenia in the next few weeks, then I’ll probably spend a few days in the UK in the second half of August before going to Vienna from 29th August to 2nd September.

Last night I played tennis with Florin. I wasn’t very good. I led 3-0 and 4-1 but yet again we found ourselves at 6-6. I came from 3-0 down to win the tie-break 7-5. He won more points in the set; tennis is very first-past-the-post-y. We played to the sounds of Festivalul Inimilor, the festival of traditional music from many nationalities that takes place in Parcul Rozelor every July. It’s completely free, and after the game I grabbed a beer from one of the stalls and watched some of it. In the good old days, the musicians would parade past my apartment block, Olympics-style, to mark the start of it all. They still do that but I no longer live there. I really miss those early days.

Lately I’ve been lacking motivation and the capacity to enjoy things. I met Dorothy yesterday at Prospero, the bakery close to where I used to live that also serves coffee. It was my suggestion to go there; they always did very good bread. The place was packed with intimidatingly sophisticated women with perfect hair and matching handbags and jackets even on such a hot day; there were separate queues that made the ordering process painful. (When I’m on my own I find a simple little bar or a vending machine. It’s cheaper and I beat all that stress.) Things were fine once we eventually sat down.

We talked a lot about the UK election. Unlike me, she stayed up half the night to watch it. I wanted to upload a graph showing the huge disparity between vote share and seat share and how ridiculous it is, but WordPress isn’t allowing me to upload any pictures at all for some reason that is well beyond my understanding.

Ed Davey’s novel strategy of falling off paddleboards and screaming “Vote Liberal Democrat!” mid-bungee jump paid off, in terms of seats at least. It got him out there, and he used his frivolous stunts to make a serious point about social care; he has a disabled son who has to be looked after day and night. Good on him.

Dorothy said the Lib Dems (12% of the vote) were too woke. Dad said Labour (34%) were too woke. The Greens got 6%, and they’re obviously very woke. By my calculations, that’s a majority who voted for these woke parties. What that means that is most people under 70 don’t give a damn about wokeness or unwokeness and have more pressing issues like heating their homes and feeding their kids and seeing a doctor when they need one. Dad said the state of Britain is hardly the Tories’ fault – they didn’t create Covid or start the war in Ukraine. I said, no, it bloody is their fault. Institutions in and around London have got richer while the poor have continued to get poorer. They’ve caused that. Dad agreed with me.

The Tories were rejected wholesale by the young and the not-so-young. It’s only when you get to properly old that their vote held up, saving the party from total oblivion. The baby boomers have had their own way politically for a very long time. This time they didn’t. That can only be a good thing.

Some more good news is that the incoming government is much more serious than the old one. This is a moment in history that calls for seriousness. Much of that is down to Labour ministers coming from far less privileged backgrounds than their predecessors. “Born to rule” is hopefully dead.

None of this will be easy. They aren’t even talking about the environment or mental health, both massive issues. And where’s the money? They’ve kept quiet about raising taxes but surely they will have to. Then there’s the business of getting people engaged in politics at all. People have had enough. My brother voted at 8pm, two hours before polls closed, and was shocked by how few ticks there were on the list as his name was checked off.

One last thing: I bought a bike on Thursday. It’s German and far more modern than my previous ones. I guess you’d call it a hybrid: half mountain bike, half road bike. It’s got a dizzying number of gears. Why I need more than four or five I have no idea. The brand is Steppenwolf, which I thought was just the name of a band. I’ve now got two old bikes I somehow need to offload.

I’ll try not to write again for a few days.

Politics

A very British spectacle

July 6, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

Visually, British general elections are a wonderful thing. On election day you see all the pictures of caravans and laundromats used as polling stations, usually accompanied by dogs. Nerve-shredding anticipation builds and builds through the evening until – bam! – the exit poll lands just as Big Ben strikes ten. Then there are the (nonsensical to me) scenes of ballot boxes relayed in military fashion as two constituencies in the North-East vie to be first in the country to declare. At about 3am, a trickle of results turns into a deluge. The TV broadcasts home in on certain high-profile counts; all the candidates line up either side of the returning officer (the person who reads out the results, who is normally dressed in some kind of regalia). There’s always at least one candidate with a silly name wearing a silly hat, representing a silly party. Only hours later, assuming one party has a majority, you get all the pomp of the prime minister (in the case of today, a brand new one in Keir Starmer) meeting the King at Buckingham Palace and giving an acceptance speech outside Number Ten. Though it all happens at a frenetic pace, it is for the most part very dignified and makes you proud to be British.

When I woke up on 2nd May 1997 I could practically taste the optimism as Tony Blair’s Labour won a massive landslide. This time around Labour have won a landslide of similar proportions, but that sense of positivity just isn’t there. The overwhelming feeling is one of relief – we’ve got rid of the bastards. What happens next is far from certain. For one thing, Labour’s big win came on just 34% of the vote and a historically pitiful turnout of 60%. Labour got 9.7 million votes this time; in 1997 they managed 13.5 million. The Tories took a historic hammering (yippee!), losing an incredible two-thirds of their seats, though they avoided being pummelled to the brink of extinction.

With an electoral system that’s totally wack, there’s always the chance of some very weird outcomes. The Liberal Democrats, with a brilliantly targeted get-out-the-vote operation and a leader who did crazy stunts throughout the campaign, won an unprecedented 71 seats (edit: 72) on 3.5 million votes; Nigel Farage’s Reform secured five seats with 4.1 million votes. (They won a fifth seat after multiple recounts.) Personally I’m very happy that the Lib Dems did so well. My brother, who always used to be Tory, said he voted Lib Dem this time. Good man, I said. They won the seat from the Tories. I’m also glad the Greens won all four of their target seats.

I certainly didn’t stay up all night to watch it all unfold – I had lessons with kids this morning and needed to be at least somewhat alert – but I managed to see the best bit. Liz Truss. Prime minister for seven weeks, famously outlasted by a lettuce. Her seat in Norfolk didn’t declare until 6:45 this morning UK time. She was defending an enormous majority, but the vote was split in all directions including an independent, and she lost out to the Labour candidate by just 630 votes. She took ages to appear on stage, prompting a slow handclap, then after the count she didn’t give the customary speech to congratulate the winner. Good riddance. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s defeat was pretty big, but no, Liz Truss’s loss was this election’s Portillo moment.

Language teaching - Politics - Writing a book

Democratic drama begins in 53 hours

July 3, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

Democracy in Britain can be dramatic, high-octane stuff. I recently watched a clip of the results from Sunderland in the 2016 Brexit referendum. This was only the second local authority to declare; Leave got 82,000 votes against just 52,000 for Remain. The woman who announced the results – to wild cheers – was sitting on market-shattering, tectonic-plate-shifting dynamite. In the general election of 1997, Michael Portillo, a high-profile Tory thought to be a potential leader, lost his seat to a Labour guy named Twigg that no-one had heard of. The declaration came after three in the morning. The announcer (a man that time) stumbled over Portillo’s middle name Xavier, coming out with the four-syllable ex-ay-vi-er. His shock loss became a symbol of the Tories’ crushing defeat, and people still call it the “Portillo moment” now. Credit to him though for slipping away in a dignified manner; afterwards he made some very good documentary series on railway journeys.

We could get this level of drama on Thursday. Let’s hope there are a whole raft of Portillo moments. The Conservatives bear little resemblance to the party I remember when John Major was prime minister. (He was our local MP.) They’re not interested in conserving a damn thing and have made people’s lives measurably worse in their 14 years in power. A dream result, though unlikely, would be the Tories’ relegation to third place behind the Liberal Democrats. My prediction is for the Tories to do catastrophically badly, but not (unfortunately) the extinction-level stuff seen in some of the polls. Unusually many seats are too close to call this time around; Reform have risen and there has been a notable decline in the overall vote share of the two big parties, so just 30% will sometimes be enough to snag a seat. I’d love to see some momentum build for electoral reform – the current system is unfair and isn’t fit for purpose. The exit poll is always a huge moment on election night; it comes at 10pm, or midnight my time, and in recent elections has been deadly accurate.

The big question is what will happen after the election. Look at the surge of the far right in France (their final round is this weekend). Look at America where the most likely outcome this November could have frightening repercussions. I expect Labour and Keir Starmer to be miles better than the Tories and their numerous leaders of late, but they’re being far too timid in their plans. (Yeah I know, they’re way ahead in the polls so want to play it safe.)

This afternoon I had a quick demo session with the lady this firm have given me. I’d completely forgotten that I was being observed in incognito mode by a woman from the firm itself. That was a good thing – I’d have been panicking like mad otherwise. We’ll have our first real session tomorrow evening.

Dad has sent me some more illustrations to go in the book. He’s less busy with painting these days, so he has more time than usual. The illustrations are mostly great, but I need scanned (not photographed) versions.

Edit: The Netherlands have just opened the scoring in the 20th minute of their Euro 2024 match with Romania. (I first wrote that Belgium had scored. I’m not following it all that closely.)
Update: Romania were basically thrashed in the end, 3-0.

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Prigor and thereabouts — Part 2 of 2 (with photos)

July 2, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

According to the radio, Saturday was the feast of St Peter and St Paul. I had a simple coffee at Prigor, then went to Șopotu Nou to start a hike that would go to Lacul Dracului – the Lake of Hell. Just before Șopotu Nou there was a flimsy suspension bridge over a river. I’d be hot and tired after the trek, and if I crossed the bridge there’d be a nice place to sunbathe after a paddle in the water. The bridge did look very dodgy though; it made me think of old cartoons where the thing gives way slat by slat, domino-like.

It was a hike of 7 or 8 km from Șopotu Nou to the lake. The track was signposted surprisingly well for Romania, there wasn’t another soul around and the sun beat down on me. At 11am it was already 30 degrees in the shade. I thought about Michael Mosley, the journalist who died in the blistering heat of a Greek island while hiking alone in early June. Is this wise? I crossed a sturdier suspension bridge, passed another disused mill, and descended a steep slope to arrive at a spellbinding turquoise abyss surrounded by gnarly rocks. There marked the start of Cheile Nerei – the gorge of the Nera river. I met some actual people there. They were surprised that I did the trip alone – dangerous and boring, surely. After eating my lunch by the river, I headed back. Thankfully it had clouded over. Climbing the slope was easier than coming down; the return trip was speedier than the trek to the lake.

I did cross the flimsy bridge, very gingerly. I went for a dip, finding an eddy in the surprisingly fast-running river, but didn’t exactly sunbathe for long as there was no sun and thunder rumbled in the distance. A bit later, the thunder having passed, I stopped in the village of Dalboșeț for a coffee and an ice cream. (Villages often have one or more of what you’d call a dairy in New Zealand.) This piqued the interest of certain older locals (there aren’t many young ones) who asked me in their palatalised way whether I liked the village. I entered some other villages with the intention of taking photos, but there were eyes on me, often from several directions all at once, from the moment I stepped out of the car.

I had a shaorma at Prigor – this was much better than the pizza I’d had the night before – then went back to the guest house. By this time a troupe of ten-year-olds had arrived for their camp; they were staying in huts outside the main building where I was staying. I’d have liked to watch the football but the TV in my room (the only facility it had) didn’t seem to have the channel. Germany’s win over Denmark, in which a torrential storm stopped play for 25 minutes, would have been worth watching. Last night England came back from the brink to defeat Slovakia in extra time; I missed that match too.

In the morning it was time to check out. I was glad to after certain guests (or were they the owners – I couldn’t tell) were being far too loud far too early for a Sunday morning. I had my second coffee of the day at one of the betting shop cafés in Bozovici, just so I could use the loo there. Where it comes to loo availability, Romania is at the other end of the pipeline from where New Zealand sits.

On the way home I stopped at Cascada Bigăr, no longer the same after its collapse of three years ago, and then (by a happy accident) took a different route through Anina and the large town of Reșița. I’m already thinking about my next trip, which will likely be to Maramureș in a couple of weeks, and how I should prepare for my next solo hike.

It looks like I’ll have some work over the summer, through a firm that is struggling with demand for English speakers. I was apprehensive about this at first, but a phone conversation today has put me more at ease. More work is nearly always a good thing.

Cascada Bigăr, post-collapse, on the 45th parallel opposite the one near Oamaru

Travel: Romania

Prigor and thereabouts — Part 1 of 2 (with photos)

June 30, 2024

by plutoman 0 Comments

I’m writing this from a guest house in the village of Prigor, but I won’t post it for a couple of days because I can’t get a signal here. (I could do it on my phone in the nearby town of Bozovici where I can get a signal, but that’s too much hassle.)

On Wednesday night Romania played Slovakia in their last group game. I had a lesson with someone who couldn’t have cared less about the football, so I didn’t see Romania scrape through with a 1-1 draw, thanks to a dodgy penalty. They’ve got the Netherlands in the next round. (We used to call that country Holland, didn’t we? Romanians still call it Olanda.) All the teams with a positive or level goal difference made it through, while the eight teams with negative goal differences all went home. I’m not a fan of the format, but that worked out neatly.

Yesterday morning I had just one lesson before getting on my way. It was a pleasant three-hour drive that (towards the end) retraced part of the route I did with Mum and Dad in 2017. I crossed the 45th parallel at Cascada Bigăr which I saw with them; the structure collapsed three years ago. This guest house is big on views but low on facilities. I could murder a cup of tea right now but there’s no way to boil water. Hordes of kids are arriving tomorrow so they’re getting the swimming pool ready for them. Last night I checked out a disused mill, built in 1858, that stands opposite this place. (It’s next to the River Prigor, but the mill race – I think that’s what you call it – no longer flows.) I then met Ilie, the man who lives in the house near the mill. He invited me to guess his age. I hate that, even though I sometimes ask kids to guess mine. He said he was born in Prigor 86 years ago; his first wife died in 1988 and his second in 2012. Ilie gave me a tour of his fruit trees and bushes and large vegetable patch, then a sneak peek of the inside, including his spanking new kitchen. (He lives with some of his children and grandchildren.) I had a beer outside, then nearly finished Christopher Robin’s book in bed.

This morning I had muesli and fruit (including some of Ilie’s strawberries) for breakfast, then headed to Eftimie Murgu, a small town that sits on the Rudăria River and is home to 22 mills, all still in working order. (The town is named after Eftimie Murgu who was born there. He was a radical 19th-century politician.) I grabbed a coffee before taking a look at the mills which are manned on a rota system. The lady at the Firiz mill twigged that I wasn’t from these parts and started communicating with me using hand signals only. I then asked her to speak Romanian. (The accent here is different. In particular, the d and t sounds palatalise into the equivalent of English j and ch respectively, before the vowels e and i. I think something similar happens in standard Brazilian Portuguese. Before e and i, the n sound also turns into the sound represented by ñ in Spanish mañana.) She poured in some grain and showed how the millstone could be adjusted to give coarser or finer flour. Later the old woman at the “Îndărătnica Dintre Râuri” mill insisted that I buy something bottled or jarred or knitted. When I reached the Tunnel Mill at the end, I came back and bought some syrup and jam from the Îndărătnica lady and some wholemeal flour from the Firiz lady.

After my mill tour I sat in the park in larger town of Bozovici (pronounced Bozovitch, the name sounds like a highly strung tennis player). It being Dad’s 74th birthday I gave my parents a call. They told me about Biden’s embarrassing first debate against Trump. I would be on board with replacing Biden at this point. Better late than never. I had a packed lunch and from there I drove around without really getting anywhere. The driving wasn’t easy. Roads were shingle, or riddled with potholes, or frighteningly narrow, or corkscrew-like, or on a one-in-five gradient, or some combination. The temperature climbed throughout the afternoon and I thought about a swim in the river, but nothing I saw looked very swimmable. All the while I saw people tending their tiny pieces of farmland, bare-chested men with beer barrels sitting on benches, old ladies hunched over, and dogs that were drawn magnetically to the centre of the road. So back to Bozovici where I got a quattro stagioni pizza and ate it in the car as it pelted with rain.