Teodora
and Sima showed me around the Romanian town of Timisoara. Timisoara was at its base a university town,
with a small town center filled with old buildings, ranging from the 1500s to
the modern day, though the modern buildings weren’t nearly as profound as their
predecessors. The more interesting bars,
as I explained before, were often hidden from the streets, the entrances inside
the courtyards, the balconies of the courtyards or down sharp steps in interior
halls, with half rotten doors hanging from hinges of dark entryways. There was a certain romance and mystery
behind Timisoara, especially as the clouds hung low and the mists swirled
around the church steeples.
I met Teodora’s sister as we were eating eggs in the kitchen. Dark haired Patricia was wearing her pajama bottoms and a tight fitting blue shirt, her eyes still covered in sleep. Like Teodora she was studying in university, but also did massages for money and was obsessed with salsa dancing. She traveled the world in quests to find salsa parties and conferences. She almost reminded me of my Ghanaian friend Frederick, who I had once called the Salsa King of Ghana, for his smooth moves and quick steps.
Teodora and Patricia were off at university, which meant for my last day in Timisoara, I would wander around alone and find a café. I found one cafe, where the walls were lined with bookshelves, filled with books and games, looking quite like a study that belonged in the house of a pretentious nobleman. Music like from the Verve Remix albums were in constant play, a smooth jazz-house softly filling in the gaps of silence. Teodora met me there. From there we went to a shisha bar, where we met Patricia and more of Teodora’s friends. Patricia told us about how she liked a gay guy.
I’m using the word “gay” here liberally, in that Patricia never referred to him as a gay guy, but rather the guy by whom she was enchanted. The guy had never touched or kissed Patricia in their moments of constant hanging out and even spending the night together in the countryside and because, he too, is obsessed with salsa music. Not that I’m saying salsa is a precursor to homosexuality, just I often had my wonders about the Salsa King of Ghana as well – but he was never hesitant to touch a woman, which also resolved those wonders. We broke the news to Patricia that her friend was very likely gay.
Then I received a call. “Where you at?” said a familiar voice from the other end of the line. It was Pavlos. He had made it to Timisoara, two days after my own arrival. We were still on the same track, apparently, both of us headed to Timisoara, then to Cluj and then to Budapest. I gathered my new Romanian friends and we crossed the city center, passing the main square that was so thick of fog that the people we passed whose footsteps I could hear. And then into another unmarked hallway, passed another door hanging from its hinges, down dark stairs. There, they played heavy metal music, while people sat in dark corners, smoking herb and drinking hot mulled wine to stay warm. We found Pavlos and his couchsurfing girl friend in one cavernous room, with low, curved ceilings, where I half expected to see stalagmites hanging like spears from the ceiling, an upside down Vlad the Impaler at work in the dark underground bars of Romania. “She didn’t have much of a profile on couchsurfing,” Pavlos told me. “But she was hosted Aida, so she let me stay.” Aida, if you remember, was hour hostess in Slovenia.
After dancing with Patricia, I felt the weight of shisha smoke, beer and hot wine pulling heavily on my stomach. I went outside to wander around the Union Square and have a breath of fresh air. I sat down before the cathedral, whose bright orange double bell towers were like illuminated spears slicing into the darkness and fog. I heard a couple kissing nearby, as the wind pushed the mist into Archimedean spirals, I could see glimpses of them as the boy put his hand under the girls shirt and she moaned, half from the pain of his icy touch and half from receiving that touch for which she so yearned. Some other people were chatting behind me as they walked across the square, too far to see the couple, but close enough to hear the clopping of their footsteps, interjecting sharply through the smacking of the lips of the kissing couple. Where was that girl for whom I still yearned? Was she looking now, into the same fog, but from the other side, the winds carrying our gaze across mountains and seas? But fog obfuscates everything and time lifts it off into the sky to contact the stars, cosmic dust gently glowing in the trails of comets and meteors, speared the horns of the bull and devoured by the great bear.
I missed the first train to Cluj. It meant that I had to catch the next train, which was three hours later and wouldn’t arrive in Cluj until after midnight, as it was a seven hour long ride to transverse only a quarter of the country. I called Voltan, my next host to ask if that was okay. He affirmed it. I bought a ticket and then went to the information desk. “Is there a baggage check or lockers?” I asked.
The attendant behind the desk was on her cell phone. She put one finger up, showing me to wait until she was done talking to her boyfriend. Then finally, she pressed the button. “Jibba jabba,” she said. I assumed this was Romanian for “Can I help you?”
“Is there a baggage check or lockers?” I repeated.
“No,” she said. She then picked up her phone. It was clear she had never hung up, but had come to a break in the conversation. I tapped the window, I wasn’t done. She put up another finger so that she could get to another gap in her conversation. When she was satisfied, she asked in English, “What?”
“A café?”
“There are cafes outside.”
“Yes, but where is there a good –“ I stopped. She had let go of the button and had already resumed her conversation. I knew that there was no point to continually trying. I walked outside. The station in Timisoara was surrounded by street vendors selling sandwiches, hot dogs and shwarma – I assumed that was what she meant by “cafes outside”. I walked some fifteen minutes down the street, backpack on and accordion dragged behind me, turned left at the train tracks and finally found a decent café to pass the time and update my Facebook and Google Plus statuses. This wasn’t a prettier part of Timisoara. Mostly, it was rows and rows of block apartments, common square structures of concrete common in the former Communist republics. Occasional older buildings stood out as eye candy, but they were few and far between.
The train to Cluj from Timisoara, as I said, takes about 7 hours. They call it the “starvation train”, since there’s no restaurant wagon and it doesn’t stop anywhere long enough to buy some food. This means either you just have to be hungry or you have to pack your own food. That was a common occurrence among my fellow travelers. An old, fat woman here would be digging through her bags, looking for a bag of hips and a sandwich, a small framed man over there was snacking on a Snickers bar. I spent most of my time writing poetry and watching movies, though I found that the loads of movies I had downloaded while living in Georgia were now beginning to dwindle.
When I arrived in Cluj, it was night and the ground was covered in frost, giving the concrete walkways a slick sheen. Zoltan had met me at the station. He was bald with a pointy goatee, making him look ever the wizard his name would lead one to believe he was. He worked in the IT department of a multinational company, and liked all the usual things IT guys like, such as Lord of the Rings and Transformers, except for video games. He drove me back to his apartment, which was in a smaller block apartment right on the edge of the Cluj city center. “Can I get you something to eat?” he asked. “I’ve got some left over spaghetti.” He served me his leftover spaghetti. “I’m sorry I can’t be much of a host tonight.” He poured two glasses of wine and toasted with me. “It’s just late and I have to work in the morning.”
“Come on man, you picked me up at the train station, drove me back, are giving me dinner and wine! How is that not being a very good host?”
“Just, you know, I feel there’s always more to give.” We clinked the glasses. I toasted him a traditional Georgian toast, that is, “To hosts, gaumarjos!”
 |
| Victory Square |
I met Teodora’s sister as we were eating eggs in the kitchen. Dark haired Patricia was wearing her pajama bottoms and a tight fitting blue shirt, her eyes still covered in sleep. Like Teodora she was studying in university, but also did massages for money and was obsessed with salsa dancing. She traveled the world in quests to find salsa parties and conferences. She almost reminded me of my Ghanaian friend Frederick, who I had once called the Salsa King of Ghana, for his smooth moves and quick steps.
 |
| Union Square |
Teodora and Patricia were off at university, which meant for my last day in Timisoara, I would wander around alone and find a café. I found one cafe, where the walls were lined with bookshelves, filled with books and games, looking quite like a study that belonged in the house of a pretentious nobleman. Music like from the Verve Remix albums were in constant play, a smooth jazz-house softly filling in the gaps of silence. Teodora met me there. From there we went to a shisha bar, where we met Patricia and more of Teodora’s friends. Patricia told us about how she liked a gay guy.
I’m using the word “gay” here liberally, in that Patricia never referred to him as a gay guy, but rather the guy by whom she was enchanted. The guy had never touched or kissed Patricia in their moments of constant hanging out and even spending the night together in the countryside and because, he too, is obsessed with salsa music. Not that I’m saying salsa is a precursor to homosexuality, just I often had my wonders about the Salsa King of Ghana as well – but he was never hesitant to touch a woman, which also resolved those wonders. We broke the news to Patricia that her friend was very likely gay.
Then I received a call. “Where you at?” said a familiar voice from the other end of the line. It was Pavlos. He had made it to Timisoara, two days after my own arrival. We were still on the same track, apparently, both of us headed to Timisoara, then to Cluj and then to Budapest. I gathered my new Romanian friends and we crossed the city center, passing the main square that was so thick of fog that the people we passed whose footsteps I could hear. And then into another unmarked hallway, passed another door hanging from its hinges, down dark stairs. There, they played heavy metal music, while people sat in dark corners, smoking herb and drinking hot mulled wine to stay warm. We found Pavlos and his couchsurfing girl friend in one cavernous room, with low, curved ceilings, where I half expected to see stalagmites hanging like spears from the ceiling, an upside down Vlad the Impaler at work in the dark underground bars of Romania. “She didn’t have much of a profile on couchsurfing,” Pavlos told me. “But she was hosted Aida, so she let me stay.” Aida, if you remember, was hour hostess in Slovenia.
After dancing with Patricia, I felt the weight of shisha smoke, beer and hot wine pulling heavily on my stomach. I went outside to wander around the Union Square and have a breath of fresh air. I sat down before the cathedral, whose bright orange double bell towers were like illuminated spears slicing into the darkness and fog. I heard a couple kissing nearby, as the wind pushed the mist into Archimedean spirals, I could see glimpses of them as the boy put his hand under the girls shirt and she moaned, half from the pain of his icy touch and half from receiving that touch for which she so yearned. Some other people were chatting behind me as they walked across the square, too far to see the couple, but close enough to hear the clopping of their footsteps, interjecting sharply through the smacking of the lips of the kissing couple. Where was that girl for whom I still yearned? Was she looking now, into the same fog, but from the other side, the winds carrying our gaze across mountains and seas? But fog obfuscates everything and time lifts it off into the sky to contact the stars, cosmic dust gently glowing in the trails of comets and meteors, speared the horns of the bull and devoured by the great bear.
I missed the first train to Cluj. It meant that I had to catch the next train, which was three hours later and wouldn’t arrive in Cluj until after midnight, as it was a seven hour long ride to transverse only a quarter of the country. I called Voltan, my next host to ask if that was okay. He affirmed it. I bought a ticket and then went to the information desk. “Is there a baggage check or lockers?” I asked.
The attendant behind the desk was on her cell phone. She put one finger up, showing me to wait until she was done talking to her boyfriend. Then finally, she pressed the button. “Jibba jabba,” she said. I assumed this was Romanian for “Can I help you?”
“Is there a baggage check or lockers?” I repeated.
“No,” she said. She then picked up her phone. It was clear she had never hung up, but had come to a break in the conversation. I tapped the window, I wasn’t done. She put up another finger so that she could get to another gap in her conversation. When she was satisfied, she asked in English, “What?”
“A café?”
“There are cafes outside.”
“Yes, but where is there a good –“ I stopped. She had let go of the button and had already resumed her conversation. I knew that there was no point to continually trying. I walked outside. The station in Timisoara was surrounded by street vendors selling sandwiches, hot dogs and shwarma – I assumed that was what she meant by “cafes outside”. I walked some fifteen minutes down the street, backpack on and accordion dragged behind me, turned left at the train tracks and finally found a decent café to pass the time and update my Facebook and Google Plus statuses. This wasn’t a prettier part of Timisoara. Mostly, it was rows and rows of block apartments, common square structures of concrete common in the former Communist republics. Occasional older buildings stood out as eye candy, but they were few and far between.
The train to Cluj from Timisoara, as I said, takes about 7 hours. They call it the “starvation train”, since there’s no restaurant wagon and it doesn’t stop anywhere long enough to buy some food. This means either you just have to be hungry or you have to pack your own food. That was a common occurrence among my fellow travelers. An old, fat woman here would be digging through her bags, looking for a bag of hips and a sandwich, a small framed man over there was snacking on a Snickers bar. I spent most of my time writing poetry and watching movies, though I found that the loads of movies I had downloaded while living in Georgia were now beginning to dwindle.
When I arrived in Cluj, it was night and the ground was covered in frost, giving the concrete walkways a slick sheen. Zoltan had met me at the station. He was bald with a pointy goatee, making him look ever the wizard his name would lead one to believe he was. He worked in the IT department of a multinational company, and liked all the usual things IT guys like, such as Lord of the Rings and Transformers, except for video games. He drove me back to his apartment, which was in a smaller block apartment right on the edge of the Cluj city center. “Can I get you something to eat?” he asked. “I’ve got some left over spaghetti.” He served me his leftover spaghetti. “I’m sorry I can’t be much of a host tonight.” He poured two glasses of wine and toasted with me. “It’s just late and I have to work in the morning.”
“Come on man, you picked me up at the train station, drove me back, are giving me dinner and wine! How is that not being a very good host?”
“Just, you know, I feel there’s always more to give.” We clinked the glasses. I toasted him a traditional Georgian toast, that is, “To hosts, gaumarjos!”
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