Blog of Romania

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I arrived in Timisoara at 06:45, Friday morning. The train ride was tiring and long and I couldn’t sleep much, but I read and thought about stuff *same old story, same old thoughts, same old shit* and by the time the train entered the station, I was completely wasted :)

I met M. in the station and we went to the campus. It was an interesting experience staying there for 2 days, but now I’m 100% sure I couldn’t have lived in a campus, I couldn’t have shared a small room with another person, I couldn’t have got used to the idea of common showers/toilets. The room wasn’t bad and the bathroom was more than OK, but I don’t know… yes, there are a lot students there, it’s the perfect place to make friends and get to know all kinds of people, but honestly, I prefer my big, empty room :)

After we slept for, I don’t know, 1-1.5 hours, M. showed me around town. What can I say… Timisoara is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. I’d been there only once before, when I was little, so I didn’t remember much of it. And then there were all these people telling me how nice the city is, how civilised, how Occidental. And it’s not that I didn’t believe them, but I had my Bucharest and it was enough for me.

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That’s the comic for today :)

Costel Busuioc, the recent flag carrier of the country which we live in, has won the contest “Hijos de Babel”. Basically, it’s the story of a Romanian who went to work in Spain, a “strawberry picker” who got into the contest because his hosts liked his voice. And yet, it’s not exactly like that. The story is more than that, it’s the story of a sad Romania, a hypocritical Romania that wants to have as much as possible without doing anything.

The Romanian Costel Busuioc is a simple man. A country man who left his home to win some money. He became a national hero overnight. Everyone is in a hurry to praise him, to praise the country he’s from. But no one is saying that Romania has no merit in what Costel Busuioc has become.
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Another interesting article from Michael Nork, Peace Corps volunteer in Lugoj.

‘Asta e viata’ (or, ’such is life’) is a typical saying in Romania. It seems to reflect a broad cultural outlook, perhaps left over from communism. In many ways it also reflects Romania’s current problem of an apathetic, disillusioned public. They know what their politicians are doing, but will it ever get any better? Many people I’ve talked to don’t seem to have any reason to think so.

Read the rest of the entry here.

We have the following piece of news in Evenimentul Zilei [The Event of the Day]: Chain accidents and dozens of crashed cars on the highways (here, in Romanian). Obviously, the geographical placement of Romania, a plot from the weather, the bad state of the highway etc. are at fault. I want to see somwhere, written down black on white, that the fault belongs to the Romanian race drivers. I want them put against a wall and see their heads banged against the asphalt until they learn that winter really isn’t like summer and that summer is not like a Formula 1 circuit and that size of the brain is in inverse proportion to the weight of the foot.

I am sick of hearing that no one, nowehere, never is guilty of anything. Only the government, the weather, the traitorous Westerners, the people who left to work abroad, the suckers who stayed and work here, all the saints in the calendar and whatever you want to add to the list. As long as it’s something absolutely generic. No one never is guilty, only the “bad guys”.

Being a poor boy living on the fringe of this pseudo-metropolis, I don’t know much. But I have driven in my life and every time I ran into a patch of fog, slowing down to admire it (what other reason could I have?), I was overtaken by all sorts of brave people driving at baffling speed. These are the idiots who cause accidents. Usually… But it’s not their fault… Poor them…

This time we were lucky. No one was harmed… But next time one of us might be the unlucky fellow to end up under a set of merciless wheels because of some cretins. And no one can make them civilized: not the law, not the police, not the government not the Holy Ghost. Maybe just the whip.

Original post: here (RO).
Dan is a 27 year-old from Bucharest who lives to read, write, take phots and discover the new and the old.

* Photos by Tibi Lupea.

At first, I was fascinated by Bucharest.

I was fascinated by the sea of people flooding the streets, swallowing you up and making you feel small and unsignificant, making you lose yourself and your goal. I was fascinated by the indifference hanging over each passer-by, the distance and the arrogance you were regarded with on the subway, or the reserved and superior smiles when hearing the Moldavian accent. I was fascinated by the imposing buildings, with bulky architecture, dominating you with their massive presence. I was fascinated by the crazy traffic, blending with the stinging smell of burnt gasoline and the piercing sound of the excessively-used horns. I was fascinated by the fast life pulsing in the vein of the City and the sensation lasted for several years. It was normal. I was a child on the verge on adolescence, freshly arrived from a countryside town with small ideals and stunted dreams.

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Clear skies, sunny but cold weather and, like the song goes, blue sea. Deserted beach, frozen sand, waves breaking lazily along the shore. A dog runs away, scared by the ice cold water. This is how Vama Veche looked like on February 2nd. You almost couldn’t recognize the beach. Too few algae, almost no trash - Romanians aren’t suckers, of course they didn’t clean up the trash they left on New Year’s -, no open pubs.

The image of a deserted Vama Veche is weird. On one hand, it looks like one of the weekday summer mornings when the village doesn’t turn into a neigborhood of Bucharest. On the other hand, it looks like a picture torn out of a western, with a small town deserted because of the bandits, wind blowing along its streets, where the dogs left behind when the owners ran away rule the territory.

We got there on February 1st, in the evening. We stayed at Casa Nicoleta, the one before the last on the right, on the road across from the one going towards the sea. No one would be so silly to stay in a tent in the middle of winter.

Dogs, rulers of the wilderness

At 8.30 in the evening, we got restless: let’s see the sea! Our host had told us to be careful because there were a lot of dogs running loose. We agreed with him and did what we wanted, anyway. We met two packs, rocks flew, one dog ran away whimpering and another one followed it, scared.

Going to the beach was the most difficult, as when we came back we only saw one dog following us, a hundred or so meters behind. However, we weren’t spared the long barking of every dog in town and the haunted Wild West town look of the surroundings.

While in summer everything is lit up from all the bars, in winter the only light comes from the dim bulbs on the poles. When you get near Ovidiu’s only a quarter of a light can reach you, and when you set foot on the last piece of beach before the sea, it’s already dark.

Only the stars shed some light. Billions. You will never see something like this in Bucharest. In the capital, the sky is covered in smog. Here, the sky is as clear as the sea.

Our customer, our master

The Romanian who said that it’s better to build a carriage in winter and a sleigh in summer wasn’t wrong. To paraphrase him, I’d say that Vama Veche locals make money in summer and sources for the money for the coming summer, in winter .

On Satuday, our second day in Vama Veche, the first thing we saw on the way to the beach were the workers. They were building and hammering away. Vama Veche is literally being raised. New buildings are growing. A Mercedes is parked in front of Dambovita, where they’re building something. The village on the Bulgarian border seem to belong to investers now, not to the locals.

On the road parallel to the beach, where Club A is in summer, another building has appeared. A sort of motel which, I can bet, will be ready by the beginning of June. Let’s build! Let’s not leave one free inch of land! people seem to be thinking.

Silence

The sky is of a rare blue. No cloud in sight. Almost all my photos turn out too white. There’s no wind. The sea is surreal blue, I’ve never seen it so clear and calm. A corner of heaven at 12 degrees Celsius. No one to bother you, all your problems left behind, in the day to day world of concrete and dust, only silence.

On the beach, a handful of runaways from the city have stretched out a couple of chairs and built a fire. We are not the only ones who ran away from the stress of the city. Further away, towards Proplaca, a couple of kids came by car and have started on a bottle of liquor. In front of them, three guys are throwing sticks in the sea. One of them asks for a cigarette. I give him three. Further on, a couple is lifting their blanket off the sand. They’ve finished their picnic and are heading for the car.

Vama Veche is probably one of the few oasis of silence you can run to. Kill the stress, the week’s annoyances - although “the month’s” would be more correct -, get away from the worries. If it were possible, I would’ve stayed there for a least a week. As things stood, we came back to the same grey Bucharest, the same worries, same problems and same stress.

Other photos:

Original post: here. (RO)
Alex is a 23-year old journalist and has been living in Bucharest for two years.

That’s the comic for today :)