And So We Come to the End

Day the Last

Back in Seattle and drinking iced coffee. They don't have that in Europe. When I was there as a boy and drinking soda, they didn't have iced soda either. The joke my brother and I made was that the Pilgrims stole the recipe and booked it to America. Oh, or they were expecting a big shipment of ice, but the Titanic smashed it. These were our jokes. Then we threw a condom full of water at a police car. This is who we were.

The crazy cab ride from Brasov to Sibiu will be in my memory for a long time. Just a wild time watching the sun come up on the countryside and seeing farmers coax their animals to their labors. The priapic driver was a "hoot." The sketchiest part of the whole thing was his not wanting me to use the ATM at the train station. "Gypsies broke it," he said, "I'll take you to a bank."

He did, and I got out of the car to use the wall ATM. I didn't think it practical or proper to bring my backpack to the ATM with me. I thought: I'm somewhere I don't know at 5am, a train I need to be on is leaving in a city far away from here in just a few hours, and everything I own is in a car that may or may not be there when I turn around. I got the money and turned around. The cab was still there. I got in.

I've already told the story of the journey.

There was time to get a little bread ring and a coffee and also time to think -- my little carry-on camera bag that I used on this trip has a soccer ball on the side of it. I wonder if there REALLY WAS a train to Budapest from Brasov, but they didn't let me on because of the soccer ball. Was I profiled as a hooligan?

The train pulled in empty, though. Found the correct seat with exactly zero problems. I've mastered the system. Any time you need to know where to sit on a Romanian train, just get a burner phone from the station gift shop and text me. I'll set you up.

Read 200 pages of The Hunters (Salter! Absorbing!) without looking up. Finished it. Started BUtterfield 8 (so great!). Ate a terrible, probably expired, chicken sandwich from the dining car. The biggest problems I've had with language here all relate to milk in coffee. The word for "milk" in Hungarian is "tej" and in Romanian is "lapte." Neither of which sound that way, and even though I can GUESS they are asking if I want milk, they might be asking if I want sugar or if I'm asking for it for here or to go. Too many variables! If the girl behind the counter spoke English, she wouldn't be making coffee. She'd be the president of Romania.

Anyway, chick was just flat out yelling LAPTE at me like the louder she got, the more I would be like, "Oh, lapte!" Earlier, of course, the girl in the subway had come over with the bag of milk, but there was no lapte sack here. A dude at the counter made kissing noises at me and touched his breast. Milk! That was awful but... somehow... charming? I was like, "oh, lapte! Yes, please.

I bought him a beer. He was very grateful. He asked me where I was from. When I told him Seattle, he said "Oh, like movie White Night in Seattle!" I was like, "Um..." and he was like, "You must know it. Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan. This is major American movie." Hysterical. If he'd touched his breast again, I would have known immediately.

This guy didn't do it, but everyone else I told I was from Seattle asked where that was, and when I said "Washington" they would make big eyes and salute. They think it's the capital of the US, you see. I had three salutes in Europe. Two from when I told strangers I was from Washington, and one from Aleksandra when I told her I worked for Amazon. Funny.

Went back to my seat and read some more, and a German girl got on, and we just hit it off. Talked for five straight hours. I had sneaked a look at her Kindle to see the language, and it was German, so I wasn't going to bother her, but she muttered something in English when some kids got on, and then... off to the races.

Just a perfect strangers on a train conversation. Her name was Inga. She's from Berlin but studying in Sweden, and we just talked about politics and philosophy and literature and sociology and creativity and imperialsm for the rest of the trip. It wasn't pretentious. It wasn't show-offy. It wasn't flirty. It was just great, honest talking.

Two people who wanted company and who wanted to share ideas. We'll never see each other again, and it doesn't matter. We energized one another and parted at the station.

I had arranged a flop house to crash in about ten minutes from the station. Perfect location. Scary old building with no lights and long marble hallways with barred gates and loose balconies. Awesome horror house. The landlord was super nice, and her boyfriend's name was Simon. So, when she introduced me and he said his name, I thought he was saying MY name.

They showed me the complicated key system and got out. I took the world's hottest shower. Shaved with the world's sharpest razor, took one last walk into the Budapest night to get some Euros for the morning cab and some meat and cheese. Had a stack of Hufflebucks left in the graveyard, so walked into the grocery store looking to blow it all. Bought yogurt and a tube of crackers like I was some kind of maharaja.

Was suddenly bone tired. So many days of milking the cities (lepte!!) and taking early trains got me good. It was 9pm, and I had the Last Cab coming at 3am, and I was really worried I would oversleep. Usually I can sort of set myself not to... but...I felt super, super tired.

Did it, though. Walked through the impenetrable darkness of the Horror House, shoved the keys through a hole, so there was no turning back, and a little cab driver poked his head around the corner. "Cameras!" he said, "Police." I wasn't sure what he meant. He showed me his phone. It said "SIMON" on it, so I got in.

He meant he couldn't park on the street in front of the Horror House or he would get a ticket.

Made it to the airport with no problem. He wasn't very chatty. We passed a stadium being built, and he said, "Old stadium finished!" and that was it.

Franz Liszt Airport is designed more for suspense than efficiency. The monitors don't tell you what gate your plane is waiting at, they have a countdown that tells you how many minutes it will be until they assign a gate. So everyone just waits in a pile glued to the screen and ready to flee at first mention of the gate.

Got on the plane, ate some crackers from my tube of crackers and slept. Woke up, watched Bridesmaids and slept. Ate more of that awesome Dutch bread and slept. Woke up, watched Mud and slept. Made it home in a cab, binged on American football and slept. Woke up, ate a patty melt and knew I was home. Proust ate a madeleine, I ate a patty melt.

I bought a basket of painted peasants eggs to give my coworkers, and none of them broke on the trip. Total success.

I'm going to retire this blog until the next time I travel. I appreciate your reading it. The discipline of writing it was good for me, which is selfish. I am selfish. But I do care about you.

This was the magical Summer that changed my life forever.

The Romanian Countryside is a Child's Picture Book That Will Break Your Heart

The Penultimate Day

Pretty day in Brasov.

When the train pulled in, the platform was swarming with Hungarians wearing Hungarian flags as capes and football scarves. Big match here I guess! Left the platform, and the station was stuffed with riot cops. Like, an aggressive show of force. Plastic shields, helmets with visors. Yikes.

Grabbed a cab and split.

Despite her not being flexible with the check-in, Claudia was excellent with the directions and instructions. She told me to make sure I only paid ten leu for a cab ride. First taxi told me fifty leu. "Fifty leu!" I said. "I am not honest," he said.

That was so funny I almost paid him.

It reminded me of the time Mother and I were at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. The first guy we passed under the first arch we walked under was selling embroidered pillow cases. He looked us in the eye and said, "'Hello, my name is Reasonable Charlie."

I wonder if she remembers that. She must. We loved that and repeated to one another.

Right away there was an uplifting feeling here. After the doldrums of Bucharest, it was exciting to be in a vibrant, colorful, curvy little town again. A different sort of pleasure.

I reckon the experience in Bucharest helped solidify what I was thinking about before the trip started. Like, the ways you discover yourself through travel. If the whole trip is one constant tickle whisper party, then cool, you had a good time, but the real… discoveries happen when things get all radishy shaped.

All the guide books say that Bucharest is in a down cycle. The Lonely Planet guide actually says, "Most tourists flee after one day." But.. that was part of the appeal. My stated reasons for going were wanting to see a city overrun with wild dogs and crushed by the ghosts of communism. I wanted to see misery, because for whatever reasons, it was something I identified with. All my reading as a teen was about drunks or crooks or dystopian post-apocalyptic lamescapes, and not the kind where a cool guy and his gang of awesomites kill mutants, the kind where people just wander around until they lie down in a chest of drawers and die.

Bucharest showed me that I don't…want that. Like, that isn't me anymore. Being a misery chaser has held me back, I think. I've been attracted to "broken" girls for a long time. I'll be attracted to someone purely because they have bad teeth or their arm is crooked or they're violent or whatever. Hearing a girl say "I have a serious problem" was a bigger turn on to me than "I sure love cooking delicious food and curling up to watch a movie."

Misery chasing sure served a purpose in my life. Like, I don't think I was lost the whole time. If I weren't into that shit, I never would have made it in New York. If I wasn't cool with suffering (a little) and starving (sort of), I would have been like, "this place is dirty and the four Jews who run the place want to keep me down! I'm taking this cage of parrots and this suitcase full of house dresses back to Tallahassee!"

Instead, I accepted it for what it was until I could turn it around. What was the catalyst for that? I think it was being in a bad play. Like, at first it was funny to me to be in a bad play. Like, ha ha, I'm in a shitty play in the back of a warehouse. This would be a funny scene in a movie." And then I was like, "This is fun, but wouldn't it be better if it were… fun."

Then I started making my own plays and having a good time. Still, misery chasing lingered. I kept sad people close and drove good people away still thinking I needed the Sorrow Sword and the Dolorous Shield.

So for this trip, Bucharest whispered "I have a serious problem," and my tongue rolled out like a carpet and steam came out of my ears, and I was like, "Doris, cancel my appointments! Cancel everything, and hold my coat. I am going in."

Then I didn't like it.

Rolling into Brasov, I was like, "I prefer happiness now. It's who I have evolved to be."Smiles, everyone, smiles. Thanks, travel!

It was Day One of a week-long Oktoberfest for some reason, so the town was pretty packed. Um, guys, I know you got your own time zones up in here, but it's September.  

Classic charming little town turned into tourist Mecca. Ringed with hills, crazy cathedral in the middle (The Black Church of Brasov!) and sweet little shops. I met Claudia. She taught me how to lock and unlock the gate "because it is not a classic gate" and I took a little photo walk.

Then I took a bus to Bran, which is just a ways down the way to see what the locals call "Dracula's Castle."

 Is Dracula's Castle

Um, the historical Dracula, Vlad Tepes didn't build it, nor did he live here.

Yes, but he was imprisoned here once

No he wasn't

Yes, but Bram Stoker saw this castle and had it in his mind when he wrote Dracula

His personal letters say it was a different castle

Yes, but this castle was used in movie Bram Stoker's Dracula as Dracula's castle.

No it wasn't

Is Dracula's Castle.

It's pretty anyway. The best part was a hilarious little collection of kiosks and shops selling tacky Dracula garbage. Just awesome vampire kitsch and Germania. Like, stags and hunters in green hats and stuff. Mugs with fangs, piles of beads, peasant presents, scary roosters painted on clay dishes, and for some reason, fake plastic tits.

Who would buy that? Who would drag their coffin full of earth all the way to Bran, Romania in the middle of nowhere, see some fake slip-on plastic breasts, and think, "Oh my god, we're in vampire country, and here are some falsies. It's too, too perfect. You know Vlad Tepes wore these when he stayed here."

I bought a bunch of crap for friends and coworkers and a magnet for myself.

There was a haunted house with a speaker pointed to the street that kept playing thunderclaps and going "I. Am. Dracula. Ah ah ah!" and that, my friends, is exactly how it is done.  

Bused back. Thought about seeing what Oktoberfest was all about but got a soft pretzel, arranged a cab for the morning and went to sleep instead. And that, my friends, is exactly how it is done.

Now it was all logistics:

6am flight from Budapest on the 8th. Immutable. Can't be changed.

Train from Brasov at 6am on the 7th gets you to Budapest at 5pm. That would mean you have to get another hotel, sleep there a few hours and take a 3am cab to the airport.

Train from Brasov at 4pm, giving you another day there, arrives in Budapest at 5am on the 8th. You will never get to the airport on time.

So, your ONLY CHOICE is to take the 6am train from Brasov. 12 hours. No problem. The Romanian countryside is beautiful. If you don't sleep, you will have plenty to enjoy.

You get in the cab at 5am. It rockets through the stone streets of the medieval village blasting 90s dance music. The hilarity of hearing "I GOT THE POW-UH!" as you storm toward the train station is overwhelming. The driver smokes and shoots off Axe Body Spray to mask the scent. He is the funny Euro character from the quirky comedy.

You get to the station with no trouble. You ask for the ticket to Budapest. No Budapest. Um… sign says Budapest, 6am? No Budapest. Only train Budapest is Sibiu. Leaves 8:30. How do I get to Sibiu? No train. Take taxi.

You go outside. The taxi you just left is gone. Plenty of other taxis. Hello, my friend. Where do you want to go? Sibiu? I take you to Sibiu. $100 American dollars. Claudia has warned you about this. Another taxi driver says, "He is dishonest. Come in my taxi. I use the meter." You take this taxi.

The train to Budapest from Brasov was canceled because of the Hungarian football fans from yesterday. The cops didn't want them back at the station. Sibiu is…. not close. Sibiu is far away. You are in the taxi for over two hours. The meter passed $100 American dollars about halfway there. You have no choice.

You thought Sibiu was close, but it is far. It would be like a train being canceled in Seattle and the lady at the ticket counter saying. "Don't worry about it. Just go to Portland."You're also a rich American who has been living on soft pretzels. You can afford it. You decide to just lie back and think of Ink-lant.

Also, the driver is hysterical. He tells you the names of his girlfriends in every little village you pass. He tells you his wife is fucking other men, and that it doesn't bother him as long as she doesn't tell him who they are. He says he practices Zen Buddhism and when you are Zen you know people are just animals and must make love with variety. So, he sleeps with girls in villages and she is free to be an animal. "We are still love," he says.

You don't care about the money anymore. He gives you some sunglasses with yellow lenses, "because they make everything look better." His cab has wireless internet, so you can check to make sure the train is on time. He stops to smoke. The meter is still running. He stops at a convenience store where a friend has been charging his laptop for him. The meter is still running. Will you get to Sibiu on time? You care about the money a little bit.

He tells you he has a son in the hospital. A garbage can is in the middle of the street. He stops and puts it on the side of the road so it doesn't bother other people. He gets back in the car complaining about his countrymen.  He says Romanian people don't "think German enough." If they thought German, they would plan better. He tells you they built a road near his home but forgot to put something in the road, so they had to tear it up and rebuild it. "This is Romania," he says, "This story about the road is all you need to know."

You pass a crazy person in a robe on the side of the road. "He is Santa Claus," says the driver. The man's beard is amazing. White and black with braids. It's a triumph of color and design. You remember the old man from the train a few days ago. The sailing man. He got off in Sibiu. Would he still be there? Could it possibly be? There seems little chance. You arrive in Sibiu. The old man is not there. The bill is twice the driver's estimate. You don't have enough in Romanian currency to pay him let alone buy the train ticket.

He tells you he will go with you to buy the ticket and then take you to a bank where you can get more money. The window at the train station door is broken and he sticks his head through it "Heeeere's Johnny" style and cracks himself up. "Hello!" he shouts in English, "Is anyone home?"

You buy the ticket. He flirts with the ticket girl. He says to me, "I am making her smile." He is waiting for a text from his Sibiu girlfriend to see if she wants to have breakfast with him. She does not want to have breakfast with him.

There is no ATM in the station.   

You remember you have the Graveyard of Currency in your left pocket. There is more than enough in American money. You pay him in a whacky Happy Meal combo of colored bills from many nations. In your mind it adds up to exactly what you think the meter says. It seems fair to you based on the circumstances. 

He wants a larger tip, and you like him, but you remember he is totally ripping you off and probably lied about having a son in the hospital.

You wave to him and leave. He probably brings breakfast to the Sibiu girl anyway. You will never see him again. You have made the train to Sibiu. You have used your resources to recover from a bad situation. You feel good. You want very badly for the train to make Budapest at 6pm as it promised.

You stash your bags. You remember all the children from the Narnia books got into a train crash and were wrenched back to Narnia to stay forever. You sleep. 

Your hotel is waiting in Budapest. Your cab is waiting to take you to the airport. Your plane is waiting to take you home.

The Train to Brasov and What Happened Thereon

The Train to Brasov

My landlord in Brasov wasn't budging on the check-in time, so my options were to get in early and lug my stuff around the sleepy little mountain village for a few hours, or to sleep in in Bucharest and just get in when the brassy Brasov innkeeper wanted me to.

I chose sleeping in. Trip's been pretty packed with action, and I've been pushing myself. It's been leisurely in many ways, like it's all an explorative, half-planned ramble, but the street stumble yesterday gave me a whiff of mortality, and what was I going to do with three more hours in a medieval village? Attend mass? Meet a bespectacled Mormon chick and make Mitt Romany jokes until she showed me her magic undergarments? Take more pictures of weathered doorways?

I sure do love weathered doorways.

Slept in, made tea, packed everything just so, and that's it. The last few days of a trip like this rapidly become math. Like, you just calculate how many dollars and how much time. Train tables and exchange rates and departure times.  Cab fare and coffee money and berry money and tips. It's still adventurous fun, but you can sense the end coming. When you hold the conch shell to your ear, you hear it whisper, "Don't miss your flight."

I don't know, maybe this is what chicks feel all the time. Every time I visit a chick for three days, I get off the plane or out of the car happy to see her, and she's like, "I'm so sad you leave in three days." I get it now.

This is stupid, but one of the things I like about baseball, (ugh, sports! middle-aged white dude making a baseball analogy. Change the blog channel), is how each batter gets three strikes and each inning has three outs, and it's all geometric and orderly in that way, like there are rules and structure, but any fucking thing can happen. Like, the range of possibilities between a strikeout and a homerun are endless. But… there are three strikes and three outs.

So, no matter what, I have to get to Budapest to make my murder flight, but I could hit a double, smack the ball off my ankle, get bitten by spiders on a boat… anything. But I have to make the flight at the end of it. Framework! Structure!

Nice little walk to the train station, (Is the ballsports thing over yet? Is he done?), all tight in my pack and bag. The Currency Graveyard in my left pocket, the Active Currency in my right pocket. Passport in my breast pocket. Heavy but balanced. Happy with the expectation of making the train.

I remembered the way, no problem. Bought a ticket and a chicken sandwich, no problem. They call grilled chicken "fried chicken" here, despite the proliferation of KFCs.

Went to buy some plums and remembered a funny part of the conversation with Aleksandra the Gypsy Girl. She was telling me about her garden at home and telling me what they grow there. She was like, "Beans, and melons, and plums, and apples, and figs, and, I don't know how to say it. It is like an apple but wrong. Our word for it is 'pere'" I was like, "A pear?" and she was like, "Yes, that is what we call it. I do not know the English word."

Marvelous.

The same thing happened with "radish," which she called "a hard, bitter fruit we call 'radishy.'" 

She also did that thing where she told me how many meters long and wide her Goblin Market garden was, and I just glazed over. Meters mean nothing to me. Might as well be talking about how they keep score in cricket or a recipe for pere pie. I know what a liter is, because Coke comes in 2-Liter bottles.

Same with Celsius. It's 35 degrees out! Is that cold? Hot? Should I put on a scarf or a bathing suit? I'm half willfully ignorant and half… just unable to get it. Shame!

While I was dreaming about all that, the train pulled in, so no plums for our zero. Did a much better job of making sure I had the right seat this time. Only off by one train car this time! I bet the next time I'm fooling around in Romania, I'll have it exactly. Hope they have the same system in 2034.

Sat with a sweet little family. Man, woman, little girl. I asked the girl if my seat was correct, she said yes, I said thank you, and she said, "It is only pleasure for me."

The language barrier has been porous, most of the time I get by on pure inflection. No idea what words people are using, but their gestures and tones just get me where I want to be. I usually don't try to talk. I just say the name of a place. If they talk to me, I very apologetically say, "sorry, only English," and they either speak English or go, "ah!" I smile a lot. Everyone speaks that.

The train sat in the station for about twenty minutes during which a Circus of the Wretched paraded by,   folks limping into our cabin, waving a palsied arm and rattling off sad tales. "I was a train traveler like you once, but then I took an arrow to the knee." The dad usually told them to go away, but sometimes he gave them thirty-three cents.

There was every malady possible. Arms held up by rags, lobster hands. One guy scooted in on his ass, just dragged himself across the train floor.  One guy pointed to a lumpy foot and was like, "Mooze neesh, bela karoly, nadia comenici" and Dad was like, "God! Here!" and gave him a leu. Then the dude pointed to his other foot and dad was like, "You're fucking kidding me. Get out."

When we were moving, the healthier sort came in trying to sell magazines or blinking frogs on metal chains. I got some berries from the berry guy. I like that tradition. Trainberries!

Easy ride. I finished Boys of My Youth. I liked it, though it kind of went on at the end. Memoirs are great. There was a beautiful image in there concerning a dog she had to put to sleep. She loved it, and still expected it to be there each morning, which was sad, and then at some point she finds a bird's nest made of the dog's shed hair. I thought that was a really stunning, sweet image, and I made a noise aloud.

It was something between a gasp and a sigh, and then I wondered how I would explain to the Romanian family what I was sighing about. No way to mime it. Figured I would have to draw it. They didn't ask but I drew it anyway. Did I do that because I was lonely or just to see if I could?

Am I lonely? None of my appetites have been very strong on this trip. Like, I haven't been very horny or hungry for a week. My "soul" is being filled with adventure, I guess. At home, I eat three meals a day and get shaky if I don't get lunch at my lunch break. Here, I walk around all day, drink a mineral water and have a kebab at night, and I feel totally satisfied.

At home, I know darkness twice a day thinking about old girlfriends or girls I wish were my girlfriends. Is it from boredom? Here I explore all day and then just… read and sleep.

These things are just habit at home, I guess. Will I eat less when I'm back at work? Will I eat trainberries? Is this good or bad? Am I losing or gaining my masculinity? My humanity? Am I evolving into a stronger, stranger being, or is my vitality just dripping away to be replaced with sugar water and red dye #5?

Maybe I'll get home, disrobe, and discover an Otter Pop.

Out the window a gypsy shepherd forced his goats across a rocky stream. I switched to a book called The Hunters by James Salter. Korean War flying aces!

When we got into mountain country, a politically passionate old man got on and started yelling at the family. I'm sure it was like, "Nobody in this country cares about making anything of themselves! But why would they bother? The four rich Jews who run the world wouldn't let them anyway! The pyramids are spaceships! Your daughter has no chance in life! The heads on Easter Island don't pay taxes. America tests its vaccines on Europe. Everyone I know got the flu and died from the flu pills the Americans gave them. Guess they won't use that pill in America. You ever hear of the Illuminati? They've heard of you, my friends, I guarantee you that!"

He went on and on. Loud old man with that perma-frown underbite some of them get.

Sometimes the Dad would agree or disagree and the Mom would pat his thigh.

Outside, jagged green mountains were embraced by a tender mist. There and here, colorful chalets dotted the hills. Shepherds reclined in fields while their swollen-uddered cows and spindly colts grazed. There were peeling mansions and tiny rag markets and the roadsides were lined with industrial supplies. Timber, steel beams, fence posts, concrete columns.

The family detrained, and I was left alone with the Conspiracy Theorist. He tried to talk to me. I finally had to show him my passport so he could see I was from the country that tests vaccines on his people. He was like, "Ink lant? You Inkland? ay domini, ay domini!" He counted to four on his fingers and looked me in the eye. I was like, "Yep, four. That's four."

He counted again and tried to hold my gaze. Maybe he was counting the number of rich Jews who control the world.

 We went through a tunnel. It was blacker than night, and ay domini, the Pleasure of Darkness. It was beautiful suddenly to not be able to see. I did that thing where you put your hand in front of your face and nothing. Couldn't even sense the motion of it. Marvelous, complete blackness. I don't know why I responded to it so much. It was only pleasure for me.

Then I broke the spell and made myself laugh imagining we would come out of the tunnel, and the old man would be gone! Vanished! Then I really got myself going imagining the light coming back and the old man slumped over with an enormous jeweled dagger in his back. Framed!

You didn't realize you were sitting next to the Fifth Jew, old man.

When the light came back everything was normal, though. Giggled myself to the Brasov station and got off. A lady named Claudia had my room key, and I wanted it!

The Museum of the Romanian Peasant

Come back to tour the roads
and walk with happy Romani

This stage of the trip is mostly recovery and final planning. I'm sure a 6am flight from Budapest to Seattle made sense three months ago when I booked this thing, but it suddenly looms like a peasant's threshing machine over every remaining decision.

Looks like it's going to be a trip to Brasov to see mountains and castles, and then a mad dash for the Hungarian border. More night trains! Get some!

Bucharest is doing its bucha-best, but I'm pretty sure I won't recommend it to anyone. I mean, it was apparently a glorious Eastern European Paris back in the 20s, but wars (wars you've heard about with Germans), and commies and, heartbreakingly, earthquakes have made it the stack of concrete it is today. Like, it doesn't look like a mess. It's been rebuilt, just... in an ugly way.

I dunno, Vlad the Impaler died here. Maybe the place is cursed.

Their villainous leader for twenty years was a fiend in human form named Nicolae Ceausescu who did the usual commie shit -- scary police force, cult of personality, turning all the churches into factories, making it always winter and never Christmas, etc. He took a weekend trip to Pyongyang to visit a brother communist, Kim Jong Il's daddy, and came back with visions of wrecking the town in his head. He loved what he saw up there. Like, it looked good to him. Starving unhappy, broken, terrified people with no hope for a future? Oatmeal skyline? Where do I sign up?

Are there ANY good commie stories? Like the idea of even distribution of wealth and equality for everyone sure SOUNDS good. Like Marx sure paints a compelling picture, but... did anyone ever come close to making it happen? Like, our country sucks because we make war on other countries, but the commie countries seem to make war on themselves.

Ugh, I buy a plane ticket, and suddenly I'm a political philosopher. Suddenly I have opinions. Get home and write some coupons, ya creep.

The plan today was to sleep in, take a bus tour to see if anything was left of this place, like give it a chance to show itself the way it wanted to be seen, the aspirational Bucharest. Woke up nice and early, made some tea, and warmed my feet under a sheepskin. I was tiptoeing around, but I'm the only one in this place. It's, like, a three bedroom home with a spiral staircase and some groovy tiles.

The shower is nuts. It like, squirts you horizontally. Never seen anything like it. I actually said, "the fuck?!" aloud when I turned the knob and the water shot past my face.

It was fun to shower in! I had to get on my knees to wash my hair.

A one-armed man made me coffee in a little breakfast place on Theodore Aman Strada. He didn't speak English, and his way of asking me if I wanted steamed milk was to fire off the steamer and point to it. I nodded yes, since I couldn't remember if thumbs-up was a mortal insult.

He had the news on and it showed dogs being rounded up on the street and then video from the US of a shopkeeper foiling a robbery. The one-armed man and I were amazed by the footage and smiled at one another.

One of the reasons I came here was because I'd heard the place was overrun by packs of wild dogs. Like, that sounded scary and amazing to me.

Saw videos of the dogs waiting at stoplights and going only when the light turned green.

I studied what to do in case of dog attack (avoid it by not running away or looking them in the eye), thought about buying a dog whistle (would it attract dogs or drive them off?) and ended up deciding to just stay away from them. But what if they were everywhere? I wanted to know!!

They aren't everywhere or even really a factor. Saw plenty loping around in crowded places, but they were servile and submissive. Sweet little beggars.

A canillion years ago in Athens, I was slipping around on marble sidewalks around 4am, and there were a million motorcycles. Vespas, scooters, hogs, every kind. And on the seat of every motorcycle was a cat. It was like they existed for cats to sleep on. They were everywhere. And packs of wild dogs had come out of the hills to avoid the heat and they slept curled up at the wheels of the cycles. This really happened. I really saw this, and part of wanting to see the dogs here was to make up for never taking a picture of the Greek animals.

A man walked by singing that he had something for sale. No idea what it was, but the rise and fall of his voice was beautiful. My eyes filled with tears. It was just suddenly so fucking nice to relax and have some coffee in a courtyard and hear that man sing.

Finished my coffee and made my way to the muster point for the Hop On bus.  I had passed it yesterday, so I knew where it was. And since I was so sure, I figured I'd dip down a side street and see some new things. Got aggressively lost. Like, I turned one corner, and it was like Wile E. Coyote had spun every street sign in crazy directions. It was like Dark City or something. I just kept walking and nothing was where it was supposed to be.

And nothing was interesting to look at. Usually getting lost is pleasurable, but here.. not so much. Like it wasn't scary, it was boring, and that's worse.

I found a big park and stopped to orient myself. Not on the map.

Some folks were walking toward me, and I tried to ask them where I was, and they ignored me. Like, totally blanked me. Didn't even do the "sorry, no English," thing, just parted around me like I was a stray dog's turd and kept on walking. They treated me like a Romanian bible salesman. I mean, whatever, it's not their job. Maybe it's a bad area, and this is a famous con.

Maybe gypsies wave a Lonely Planet guide they found in the trash, ask you where the action is and slowly undo the clasp on your evil eye necklace. Anyway, fuck those people. I went ahead and asked a park employee who was changing the trash. She was like, "Sorry, I have no idea where the Imperial Palace is. Sorry."

I know you've changed the trash there, bitch. There's no way you don't know where the fucking Imperial Palace is. Still, though, she took the time to lie. Those other people. Grrrr. BUT, I've ignored an hundred people in my life, certain they wanted my necklace! So, un-grrr.

I decided it was a bad area if everyone was gonna act like a kuh-reep.

Anyway, weird to have gotten lost. I'd been doing so well. Maybe there was another earthquake while I was at coffee. Eventually just backtracked the whole way. Hansel and Gretel knew their business.

Found the bus, hopped on. The sound system that explains everything was on the fritz. It was like, "To your left GRAAAK and PFFFZZZT" so I just took it off and looked around. Like a person.

Everything looked like this:

Nicolae Chow Chow Pickles really did a number on this place. My guess is if I had more time to, I dunno, get into the rhythm of the city, I might... ah.. who am I kidding. Don't come here.

Bus went its silent, clumsy way to a park, so I hopped off. Park was amazingly beautiful and packed with surprises. Come here. 

Just... leafy serenity. A gorgeous lake, fun statues and weird busts. I bought some corn on the cob and munched my way through a weird skateboard thing for kids, and into the middle of the weirdest circle of giant metal heads you ever saw.

If nothing else, it was an incredibly perfect day weather-wise. Like, a snappy little breeze and perfect light. 

I got lost in the park looking for something called the Zodiac Fountain. Just, totally lost, and the map made no sense. Lost. For the second time in a day. How? Am I not eating enough vegetables? Wandered past geese and a bizarre peacock:

Its wise, winking avian eye told me to just give up. Just lie down, it whispered. Let Bucharest defeat you. No, peacock!! No!

Punched my way through the trees and made it to where the bus lets you hop on. You can't keep me trapped in your circle of heads forever, Herastrau Park!

Passed more of Chatandchew's hard rock follies, and grew weary. The next stop was supposed to be The Museum of the Romanian Peasant, but the bus just blew by it like an aristocrat in a carriage. If there were a mud puddle, the bus would have tried to splash it. You're making it super hard for me to be into you, Bukowski-rest, old buddy. 

Got off at the next stop. Forced the issue by standing next to the driver and wheezing. Got out, headed back to the peasant museum and rolled my ankle in a pothole. 

Not completely, like these sweet high-ankle boots helped me out, but enough to be concerned. It's my weak point since I fucked it up stealing that bookshelf. That fateful night!  My knee has been messing with me lately too. Now you know all my business! Maybe I'll replace this leg with a stick like whats-his-stick back in Cluj.

Decided to go home and make sure it wasn't all chowdered up. I didn't fall, and it didn't... snap, but it didn't feel good, and I'd been doing a lot of extra wandering because of all the getting lost. So, back to Transylvanie Strada!

Took off the shoes, drank some tea, knew darkness, and then I was fine. Decided to ditch the camera and just walk unencumbered and free to the museum. I love documenting the trip in pictures, but it also puts a kind of... pressure on me. Like, this isn't a picturesque place, and I wanted to just give it a chance as a city and not as a photo album.

That worked, I think. Had a nice little limp to The Museum of the Romanian Peasant and boy was it great. Just a dazzling collection of art and wooden machines and clothing and dishes. The colors and... humanity of it was all so... spiritual. The discipline these people had. Awesome, crappy pictures of biblical stories, beautiful because they were so bad. I loved every piece of it. 

Weeeeeeeeiiiird basement with a communist coloring book with pages showing kids that peasants were ignorant, lazy and bad. Just, the creeeepiest propaganda with the straaaangest art. Like, the wicked peasants would be a field of wheat with a face or a sleeping tractor with birds on it with a face. Maybe we fought the Cold War because the commies were fucking weird. 

Bused back to the fancy old town for one more kabab. Fashion models were doing a shoot. Eurotrash everywhere in sunglasses with their sweaters tied around their necks. Lots of lighting equipment. Hard for the girls to walk on the cobblestones in their heels. Tried the kabab with pickles this time. I just adore these Eastern European pickles.

Hearing the man sing his "for sale" song, feeling the breeze in the park, the museum, the kebab with french fries wrapped up in it... these are the things I'm going to remember about this sad, proud city. 

Tomorrow I head back to the hills. Off to Brasov in search of Dracula's Castle!

On the Night Train

I went, I went on long roads
I met happy Roma
O Roma, where do you come from
With tents happy on the road

When I took "the Tour," night trains were a cool way to save on hotels. I would pull into, say, Venice, ramble around for ten hours, then instead of paying a million dollars for one of their aquarium rooms with orca bodyguards, I'd hop on the train and snooze til Prague. The train is a moving hotel!

Less spry this trip and more capable of affording tiny bases, so I'm taking the night trains to cover long distances, so I can max out the daylight hours I'm in places. It's cool to have a place to dump off the backpack of books.

The cab took some twists and turns and I let myself think he was driving me a clubhouse where they pluck American chickens, but the train station was around one of the corners. Even at 1am, the station was packed with folks buying each other hot chocolate, adjusting one another's straps, making out, and sleeping on pillows made of their folded coats. 

I was scheduled to change trains in something called Brasov, so I had to make sure not to sleep through that. Nine hours to Brasov, so few worries. Pathetically, it took me until just then to realize Hungary and Romania are in different time zones. They're so close and one is right on top of the other, but for whatever reason, the time zone blob is gerrymandered to make them different.

My two days in Cluj were in a different time zone, a different time zone!!

Sat on the cold platform and read Boys of My Youth (Jo Ann Beard), a super book of memoir essays about a chick growing up in the Midwest. Quite enjoyed her descriptions of getting ready to go to parties with her cousin and worrying about one another's hair and if their cousin would try to kiss them. 

Then the train came, and I grabbed a seat. Then a whole family crammed themselves in there with me, and it became a nine-hour math problem concerning where to put your legs. Black out the window, so no view. Drifted in and out of sleep. Awoke whenever I kicked someone or they kicked me. 

Mostly a dozy haze until Brasov. At one point they offered me some bagel chips. I ate one. A cover of Alice Cooper's "Poison" leaked through one of the girl's ear buds. I'm hearing all these weird covers, and it's adding to the otherworldliness of the trip. In Europe they eat salad as the last course, and 'Poison' has a female vocalist.  

As the sun came up, I got to see mist curling around beautiful, still little villages, tiny hamlets robed in light fog. 

Switched trains at Brasov. Only a few minutes to figure out the platform. I knew the words from the last train station. Linia means "platform," so I looked for which linia would have the train to Bucharest. They have two big boards, color coded to mean "arriving" or "departing." Yellow means departing. White means arriving. Yellow board said Bucharest on Linia 3, so through the tunnel, fool. You have two minutes!

Grabbed a seat and thought, "Every departure is someone else's arrival, man. Think about it! I mean, really get in there and mull it over, man."  

Started reading, and the ticket man didn't speak English, but he made signals that meant, "Wrong seat you. Go your seat." I got my stuff. A group of superdrunk looking weirdos with long mustaches and orange pants made "bye bye" waves at me. A supermodel with braces said in English, "You are in the wrong car." 

Got my stuff, overtook the ticket taker, moved through the car and into the next one. Usually, you buy a class of ticket and can sit in any seat in a car of that class. I figured in my rush to get on, I must have gotten on the wrong class, but those plum-wine soaked haystackers who waved at me weren't first class. Their cranberry bog overalls were so last season.

Grabbed a seat, sat down, started reading. Ticket taker came in, saw me, and made noises that could only mean, "Still wrong seat you. I tell once! I need broom?" Got back up, and I was like, "Sorry, sorry," What can I be doing wrong?

He had roused a whole bunch of folks in both cars he'd visited, and we all trudged like homeless Roma to the next car. I found a seat and stopped again, but I was like, "I've seen this Benny Hill skit. He's going to come back and chase me away. He's like some kind of Romanian Javert. He won't stop chasing me. It's what he does, it's all he does!"

Just kept going through the moving cars along with the procession of the damned. Some of them spoke English, and I heard them say, "I don't know where to go. Where do we go?" The ticket made no sense to me. All I knew was it was a second class ticket, and I couldn't see what was written on the outside of the train cars, since I was in it man. Think about that. Like, really get in there and mull it over, man. Sometimes we get so inside a train, we can't see the outside!

Ran into another ticket taker who walked me to my seat and set me down in it. How did he know? I just knew it was three hours to Brasov, and I wasn't going to get up again.

Two dudes were speaking English in this section. Is that why he put me there? They couldn't have been different. One was a marvelous old man with a backpack, and one was a braggy dude from Las Vegas. 

Old Man: "I try to stay in hostels, since they're very affordable, and you meet so many nice young people. Wait, is this Sibiu? I'm getting off at Sibiu. Of course, staying in hostels has its drawbacks. At 4am, they'll start a pillow fight.  I once asked them to be quiet, and they just handed me a pillow."

Braggy: "I only stay in hotels. I'm from Vegas, and we got hotels there. I don't know if they got any hostels. we had thirty million visitors last year. I don't trust that number, because I think they count some people twice, but it's a lot. There's something called the Convention Board, and they give the official count of the tourists, so they said thirty million."

Pulled the handle of a one-armed bandit and three yawns came up.

The keen eyes of the old man saw I was reading a book in English, and he asked me where I was from. I think he was trying to rescue himself from having to hear more statistics from the Convention Board. I told him Seattle, and he was like, "There's very good sailing there. Do you sail? You have to take it up. Of course, only nice people sail." 

I smiled, because that was funny to me. All the best people sail, you know. It's just what one does when one has kindness to dispense. One gets on the water.

He went on to say, "It's true. Only nice people sail, and the not-nice people use motorboats. Ah ha! Is this Sibiu?"

We had a cool conversation about travel, but Braggy kept interrupting to tell us he was there on business. Owns an apartment in Bucharest. He was pretty weird, and had the energy of a drug user, but I was, I suppose, pretty desperate to have a conversation in English.

Great conversation with the Pillow Fighter about how he had renounced his Dutch citizenship at a young age, and they wouldn't give it back to him. Apparently, with a non-EU passport, you can't travel in the EU for more than three months, and then you have to take three months off. So he keeps having to dip into non-EU for three months. So he wants his Dutch passport back, so he can stay as long as he likes.

I told him it was like working for Microsoft, how they make you take a chunk of the year off after you've finished a contract, and he went off on the distribution of wealth, with much interruption from Braggy about how rich some people are in Vegas. Then Braggy suddenly asked me what I'd seen in Romania so far.

I told him Cluj was beautiful, and that I'd loved the countryside from the trains. When I said I saw a fascinating gypsy enclave, he got super hostile. He was like, "They're not from here! They're from Pakistan! Just look at their skin, look at how brown it is! They call themselves Roma, and so when I tell people I'm from Romania, they say, 'oh, you're a Romy,' and I get mad and tell them I'm not a gypsy!"

Romy!

It was kind of hostile. Like, I get it. I'm a tourist who's doing the equivalent of saying, "Oh, I saw some beautiful wallets down at the Seminole Indian reservation, just stunning craftsmanship. Those people are so clever." Like, there's definitely a remove between visiting a place and living there. Or, in this guy's case, living in Vegas and being unable to ditch his prejudice. I'm sure his grandmother raised him to hate gypsies. I'm sure he used gypsies to make himself feel like he wasn't the lowest guy on the totem pole. I'm sure many people do.

Later in the day, (Spoiler warning, I make it to Bucharest), I saw one gypsy girl helping another into a trash can. She boosted her up, and then held her legs so she didn't fall in. They were smiling and laughing the whole time. I saw them camping in fountains and fishing in the muddy Danube on a highway overpass. Always laughing and smiling. It's like the cities exist just for them to hunt in. It's like the city is their forest, full of things to make a life with.

I guess the difference between them and, I guess, homeless people in the US seems to be this is their culture. The kids are cracking each other up while they're begging on the corner. These girls seemed to be having the best time. Like, I'm completely naive. These are my unconsidered, first-blush unfiltered opinions. I'm sure someone with some knowledge would call me an asshole, but it feels like this living off the city is an actual culture they embrace, as opposed to the US where begging is constant shame.

I've never seen a bum smile while he looks through the trash. When you see children forced to beg in the US, they look miserable. We pity them and don't hide our disgust, and they hate themselves for it, because they feel like they could be or should be us. The gypsies don't care if you hate them. What does it matter what some City Person thinks? Might as well ask the opinion of the mudskipper I just dragged out of the riverbed.

I saw a gypsy woman feeding her kid with some bread sticks she had hidden in a cinder block. Why buy a Coach bag, when there are so many stone purses just lying around? It just seems like a total freedom from possessions and bullshit. Ugh, I'm ridiculous. I'm sure I'm "noble savaging" them, but that's going to be the focus of my reading when I get back. I want to know more about urban gypsies. The end. 

Anyway, the punchline to the train story is the ticket guy showed up again, and threw Pillow Fight and Braggy out! They were in the wrong seat! Both of them protested that they couldn't understand their tickets until they were out of my hearing. Just... so funny.

They were replaced by a scholarly looking Romanian dude reading an Orhan Pamuk novel in the original Klingon.

Bought some berries from a dude offering cups of berries to each cabin. There were fat sweet blackberries on the top of the cup, but as I got down, it was small bitter berries. Ah, the old Big Berry/Small Berry trick.

At Sibiu, there was a slap on the window. It was a piece of paper with something scrawled on it, and I heard Pillow Fight yell, "AT HOTMAIL!!" as the train pulled away. I didn't even get close to making out what it said on the paper, and that is a cat-poster type shame, because I quite liked him. Wish we'd thought to exchange info earlier.

Got to Bucharest, figured out how to get to the apartment and walked there. Cool, beautiful day. Really lucked out with the weather on this trip. 

Hilariously, it's on Transylvanie Street. "Funky" place with crazy tiles and curtains. Nice girl, Patricia, let me in, showed me where the tea pot was. I thanked her and crashed. Just drooled all over myself catching up on the bad train sleep. 

Woke up around 5pm and figured I had two hours of light to get to the Lipscani area, the old part of town. Traced it on the map, old-school Magellan style, and found a massively popular, twisting, thriving area with stone streets and endless cafes. People laughing, people drinking and planning. I bought a kebab with french fries wrapped up in it (when in Romania...), and watched stray dogs submit themselves to one another. 

You Mustn't Believe the Legends

Cluj, Part Duexj

The apartment was a little bit away from the action, so I did a lot of walking in Cluj. Long stretches of… nothing. Endless blocks of thirty-story towers, clothes hanging from the balconies. Discount grocery stores with daughters and fathers. "Can we afford this" in his face, "May I have this" in hers.

The farmer's market on the first day was a revelation. Endless rows of women in white coats selling identical cheeses. Each of them wielding knives with samples, each of them forcing the sample off of the blade with their thumbs. It was all incredible. Salty, firm but soft. Creamy and marvelous. It made me dizzy. I bought entirely too much. I bought a loaf of fresh bread and had myself a party on the side of the road.

Drunk on it, I headed for the spires in the distance and walked along sidewalks dotted with watermelons. More watermelons than all of Cluj could eat. I was staring at a massive pile of them when it moved. A flock of greenish/brownish sparrows had been resting there, and they all took flight at once.    

Is it the most beautiful thing I've ever seen? Probably. What did it for me was not knowing what I was looking at. Like, my senses had to adjust, and the pleasure of feeling them come alive and do their job, was almost overwhelming. Our senses are so lazy, (mine are, anyway,)  and when something happens to jolt them, to make you see or feel… I like not knowing what I'm looking at and then figuring it out. 

Why were the watermelons moving? Were they alive like Audrey II, was the stack falling…it's birds. My god, birds! Hundreds of sparrows!

When I'm traveling, my senses have to be a little more aware because it's unknown country, and then when something truly special happens, it's magnified.We're a species that loves to be surprised.

That same day, I had seen a little cat tripping along the side of the road across from me. No collar. Was he wild? He was black but had grey ears. I fumbled for the camera, but he dipped into a little hedge. He seemed very sure that was the exact spot of the hedge meant for him.

A block later, I saw a sign on a telephone pole with that cat's picture. I couldn't read it, but it was the universal "Have you seen this cat" style poster. I HAD seen it. I didn't have a phone and don't speak Romanian. There was no one around to tell. It was sort of sad, but I was also glad the cat was still alive. It gave me hope that the owner would find it.

Maybe I would see it again today.

Not him. A different one I saw later

Slow plan today. There were some streets I hadn't seen, some views I hadn't explored. I was glad I'd taken an extra day here if only to rest and explore slowly.  The original plan had me blazing toward Bucharest like a sleepless comet with a tail of frozen ink.

Ducked under a bridge where I found some decent street art. The majority in both countries so far has been political stencil art. Not too stirring. Here, at last, were some cool murals. It occurred to me after a few shots that I was standing in mud under a highway bridge and might run afoul of a dog or a gypsy. I might be forced to drink coffee out of a tin can! I might be made to find the queen in a crooked game of cards! I saw dog prints in the mud and skipped to my leu out of there.

Currency joke!

Moved ever spireward to the city center. The garbagey guidebook suggested there was something called The Cock Church way on the outskirts, and I wanted to see it. I really wanted an "I pray at the cock church" t-shirt. Apparently, it's supposed to be covered in roosters to represent how that no good Peter denied Christ three times before the cock crew. Yeah, that no good Peter was out to save his own skin for sure.

Better than being the hangman's handmaiden like Mr. Kiss Kiss Silver Coins, though.

Love "crew" as past tense of crow.

  

OH! I saw a weird-ass black and grey crow that cawed with an accent. It was definitely a two-syllable caw. Messed up! So weird to think animals speak foreign languages. Really pretty. Looked like any old crow from Seattle wearing a sporty grey cardigan.

Passed a hospital where a woman swept the courtyard with a broom made of fresh branches.

It started to rain, and I was like, "Romania? More like Mo' rainy-uh" to myself and then out loud. Probably kept this up way too long. Probably pictured myself making a girlfriend laugh with it. Thought about the differences between traveling alone and with a girl.

I think I would have been more stressed out about catching trains and things going right. I think I would have felt more pressure. I know that's all mental poison, though. I bet I can banish it now. I have to give them the benefit of the doubt I give myself -- that they can handle anything.

Except dogs.

Sure I'll be a better co-traveler in the future. A million years ago, a guy in the bar where I DJ'ed, older guy, told me that every girl he'd ever had terrible, awkward, disappointing sex with was still his good friend, and how every girl he pleased just right hated his guts.

He said he didn't know why that was, and I said, "Probably all for the same reason, because you're not having sex with them anymore."

He laughed at that with the kind of laugh that comes from loving yourself. I was still at the age where I was too proud of myself for saying something people liked, so I repeated it to him the next time I saw him and then again on another night with diminishing returns.

 "I was like, "the ones you sucked with are happy you're not putting them in that position anymore, and the ones who liked it are mad they're not getting it. Right?"

And finally, he was like, "I got it the first time, and it's my life we're talking about, not some Dorothy Parker drinking game. And quips are better when you don’t' explain them, and go play some songs, kid."

Long walk to the house of holy chickens, and the neighborhood was getting a little seedier, but this paid off because seedy nabes are where cities stuff their second-hand shops. Replaced my shredded wheat shirts with some cool hand-me-downs.  Fun little jacket with a German flag on the shoulder. They're just mad for Germany here.

Finally found the church, and it was cock-a-doodle closed.  Nice spire. Fence had a chicken theme. Guess this excursion….laid an egg. Hee haw. What's that Ms. Parker? You would like me to leave the table? Understood.

Happy little ramble back to the main square where they have a big church and statue of the Raven King, Matthias Corvinus. He's the king of Hungary that Romania loves too! Got fliered by a college kid for some kind of protest.

He thought I was French and approached me speaking that language. Was it the German patch on my shoulder? What gives? I made the signals that mean "Not French. No talk that. I English. English talk me."

He was like, "You have to come to this protest tonight. The government is letting a shitty company move a village off of a mountain because it has gold in it. They use cyanide to get the gold out, and if the villagers come back after, the land is ruined. There are laws against this, but the government has made exceptions for this company. They want the gold!"

I think this is the plot of the song One Tin Soldier.

I wanted to take pictures of a Romanian protest, so I decided to stick around. Got some coffee and a hamburger and read more You Can't Win (very long, oversized book, but compelling) and got some Campari and Orange juice. It made the orange taste like grapefruit!

Then I messed around on a few more streets, came back and planted myself in the plaza for two hours just reading and enjoying the sun. Finished the book. I've brought this thing on three separate trips and never made a dent in it. Take that!

I was approached by several folks trying to sell me bibles. I was like, "Not bible. No read that. No buy."

One dude charged at me saying in English, "Moneymoneycigarettecigarette" which was funny. I gave him nothingnothing. Thought about buying a pack of cigs to fend off bums with, though. I don't smoke, so I won't mind giving them away.

Rain cleared up, and it was just a gorgeous two hours of reading in a wide plaza under deep blue skies with enormous clouds. 

The protest was very quiet. A few drums, lots of flags. No yelling. A camera crew was covering it, interviewing some of the kids. I liked that the big statue in the square showed soldiers holding flags too. It made the protest seem historic.

Grabbed a cab before King Midas and the cops showed up swinging gold batons.

The driver asked me if I were in Romania to look for vampires. I told him no, and then he was like, "Is just legends, you know this, right?" and I was like, "Yes, just stories," and he was like, "You mustn't believe it!" and he seemed upset. Like, dude, you brought it up.

I can see a native being worried about the outside world thinking the only thing cool about your country is monsters. We drove in silence, and then he made a disgusted noise. A teenager was crossing in front of the car very slowly. He wore a braided metal belt and was rolling his hips in a provocative way. I though the cab driver was angry that he was seeing a ladyboy.

Like, in his mind it was like, "Ach, I JUST got the American to forget about vampires, and now he's going to think the country is full of these people! I can't win!"

Of course, I wanted to see the ladyboy, so I turned back, and… it was just a normal boy with a fucking stick for a leg. His hips rolled because that's how you walk when you have not a leg but instead have a thin metal pole. It was… horrible. I made the same noise as the driver and then we were friends.

Then I paid him and we were even better friends.

Went upstairs and packed. Booked a 1:30am night train to Bucharest. It was around 8pm. Should I sleep? Would I make the train if I did? I ate some toasted bread and sheep's cheese and dozed off.

Woke up in time. Geared up, shoved the keys in the mailbox and went out into the Romanian night. Women giggled from a balcony unseen. Cars went by. Cabs? Nope. I gave myself an hour in case I had to walk, but sure wanted a cab.

Walked to the gas station.  Passed the telephone pole where the cat poster was, but the poster was gone, torn down.  I was sure I was at the same telephone pole. Had my seeing the cat coincided with others seeing it? Had someone just torn it to be mean? Was it old? When I saw the cat, had it already been back home a long time? Was there a missing leg poster for stickboy? Cluj, the classic detective game.

Waited on a cold corner in the dark for a cab. Would a traveling companion have liked this? I didn't. But I accepted it. I bet she would too. I want to be with other people like I am with myself.

I was sure a cab would come, and one did.

Made it to the night train!