Romania!
Farewell Danube! Farewell Ullur!
Came close to tears parting from three of our ship’s crew members: Predrag, gallant Desk Man in charge: Young, handsome, helpful and Serbian! Helped unstintingly to call Lois for me from ship’s phone!
Alexandra: Bosnian Serb, short, chunky, unfailingly efficient and cheerful. Her birthday was 2 days ago. She came out from behind her computer and hugged me as though we were sisters — which of course we are! Her smile would banish shadows from any encounter. Orthodox, of course, she crossed herself “backwards” (from Catholics) and wished me God’s blessing. Daniel – My Turko-Bulgarian cabin steward, sweet boy, happy now for a time-out to visit his girlfriend.
Was almost too late boarding the bus to Bucharest with all my goodbyes, running like a retirement-age rabbit, forgot my jacket! Still brand-new, purchased for this trip, perhaps it will find a good home in eastern Europe – closer to Asia where it was probably made.
Always, as just now, with a helpful hotel attendant, I ask how to say and pronounce “thank you” in their own language. They seem pleased to be asked and to comply. Often feel moved to compliment them on sometimes excellent, even un-accented English. Given a few more moments, I learn where they learned it, what countries they may have visited … Thus they become, briefly, real people to me, instead of nameless faces in faraway places.
Relatively lacking in foreign language skills, but I smile inwardly recalling how urgent it became one year, briefly hospitalized in Istanbul, Turkey, to learn the word ‘toalet’! (This year, ‘Damen’ vs. ‘Herren’!)
Now, at Lois’s suggestion, to search out the hotel pharmacy, hoping for OTC relief for a nasty chest infection. The pharmacist, quite wonderfully English-speaking, sold me Romanian remedies and translated directions for me with great care.
I asked her about COVID in Romania these days. “Very bad, no vaccines available!” That is surely a frightening aspect of Romania’s prevalent impoverishment.
Earlier in the day, on the bus coming north from the Danube to Bucharest, our tour guide apologized more than once for the grim aspects of his country’s social and political condition: On arriving before the enormous Parliament building, rivaling the Pentagon in size, we saw, close by, large crowds of very noisy protesters, waving Romanian flags, and swelling the public square. A few teams (2 each) of well-armed police were stationed on the peripheries.
Curiously, our guide struggled with his English, called the shouting citizens ‘protestants’. We were warned not to approach or speak to these boisterous, unruly “Protestants”, for our own security!
Sadly (in another context) I’ve heard even tour guides here in Romania and elsewhere along the way, speak of the Roma (“gypsies”) or Sinti – if from Germany – with polite disdain: “They truly don’t mind being dirty, living surrounded by trash, do not care to observe rules of society, nothing can be done with them, etc.” Really sad! Even my own (brief) encounter with gypsies in Europe left me feeling uncomfortable, even nervous. Modern Lepers. They live in Ghettos, says the guide.
Later (Bucharest) in the hotel.
Slept most of the afternoon. Needed rest, did not join the all-day tour.
Got Jere and Patty’s room number (Montana contingent) so we can meet on their return.
Lois will be calling soon, my cheerleader from Wyoming – 8 hours earlier than here. 8:30 a.m. where she is right now.
Romania, as last year, on the bus ride from our ship, revealed the same dismal and derelict village homes and neighborhoods. Broken-down machines and vehicles, litter strewn everywhere, between lush, pancake-flat cultivated fields.
Earlier on this journey, saw lots of storks, with their nests on top of chimneys and public buildings, local people seemed both surprised and amused learning how I grew up hearing from others (not my parents) that stork bring babies – ostensibly to avoid trying to explain to small children where babies actually come from.
So more and more swans and ducks on the Danube as the week wore on – a remembered pleasure from last year’s Viking adventures.
Architecture in Eastern Europe
Apart from historic buildings, many (but not all) justifiably admirable and famous, plain residential dwellings, whether single-family size or endless blocks of grim, ugly Stalinist era apartments, are in every case built of concrete or something like adobe – or simply bricks. Never wood! Perhaps wood is too precious and flammable. Saw many forests of thin-trunked conifers, lots of deciduous trees but few with long, straight trunks. Pervasive decay in many older and outlying neighborhoods.
Collapsed roofs. Evidence of war damage. Poverty appears to prevail. Sometimes a bleak vista is enlivened by small flocks of geese, chickens, or a briskly barking farm dog.
Got up early this a.m. Bucharest time 1 a.m. way too early, I discovered, from what was actually my scheduled departure for the airport (heading home). A moment of panic, thinking at 2:30 a.m. that my group had left for Munich without me. Evidently there were several flights to Germany leaving during the night! Must have been wearing my Poor Lost Lamb look: Gracious Romanian staff came quickly to my aid. Turned out I had 6 more hours in which to rest before my designated bus departed for the airport.
Spent time elevating my legs, anticipating near-paralysis in Basic Economy. The 2-hour layover in Munich will help.
Met a friendly stranger earlier in the hotel lobby, who gave up her chair to me since it had a nice, supportive back. Seems she grew up in Manhattan, mainly right across from Central Park (East Side? West Side?) Lives in San Antonio TX now. I laughingly confessed to my Manhattan sojourn in 1960, “somewhat south of 14th St. where I’d catch the subway for Uptown,” and “somewhat” east of the Village in my “sort-of hippie days”. We laughed together when I said “But I never burned my bra!”
She’d been away from NYC at the time of 9/11, unlike my aunt and uncle, living south of the Twin Towers, not far from Trinity Church.