Left Budapest before first light. Long walk to the Keleti train station underneath sherbet skies. I was a little wary but kept seeing other backpackers. Shadows would peel off of buildings and reveal themselves to be nervous travelers trudging the same way I was. When they heard me behind them, they would tense up. I had become the monster. It was like I am Legend.
Awesome crescent moon hung in the sky like a blazing wound.
Lots of statues with sickles in this town. They value work, you see, but every time I see a sickle, I think it's Death. So work equals death!
Got to a more urban area and it was pretty hopping. Buncha scruffers waiting at bus stops to get to their job at the pigeon factory. A few drunks making transactions in doorways. Nothing threatening. They're building some kind of flyover near Keleti, so there was a lot of zigging plus zagging to get into it.
It was 6am, and my train was scheduled to leave at 6:40. Plenty of time for Plenty O'Toole. That's me! Thought there'd be a machine where you could just hit a button and get a ticket, but there was a counter, and a lady and no line.
"I'd like a ticket to..."
She held a paper number up to the window and made a mean face. I looked around for a deli-style number
thing. Found it. Took one and showed it to her - 435.
She hit a button on her counter, and the number "435" lit up on a screen above her.
"I'm 435. I'd like a ticket to..."
There was no one else there.
She said it left at 6:15, which, because of the Number Charade meant I had four minutes. Would it be the right train even? I figured I'd just get on and see. How bad could it be?
Hauled my pork over there, found the platform tucked away in a corner, and jumped on. There was no "all aboard!" but plenty of chugga chugga choo choo.
Plenty of room. Had four seats and a table to myself. Stashed all my shit so someone would have to carve through my body to get it, put my hat over my face and slept.
Woke up to show my ticket every 45 minutes or so. Nobody spoke a lick of English. Bright, beautiful day. Yellow fields of rape flashed past the windows. I snacked on seeds and drank something called Libra Water. Read more You Can't Win (just astonishing) and dozed to the border. Why did the 6:40 train leave at 6:15? Who can say? I was on it. Was it really the right train?
When the dudes checked the ticket, they'd make that insect crawling across a velvet curtain language sound, and it was like, are they saying, "thank you," or "change at Ronkonkama." Adventure!
Chick came by with a battered cart full of snacks. I bought some Paprika Lays to be polite and to get rid of my forints.
At the border, a cop came on with what looked like an organ grinder's case. The case had a giant stamping device in it. When I pulled out my passport, he rolled his eyes and made his younger buddy take it away to an office. There must be some kind of extra process. Young Cop came back to say "Computer slow. two minute."
Interpol assured them I wasn't an infamous Pocky smuggler, Young Cop gave me a smile, returned my passport and we were off again. Across the border -- into Romania.
It was an immediate carnival of color and sensation. It was like the difference between going home for the night or staying and having a fourth drink. Hills dotted with crooked homes, each with their own distinct character.
Even the border guard was different. All smiles. And the ticket takers! Hysterically friendly paunchy avuncular dudes come to life from Breughel paintings. Shirts unbuttoned way too far. Healthy patch of grey chest hair, amazing bright red leather straps holding their ticket bags on their shoulders. When I offered the first one my ticket, he took it with the delighted expression of someone being offered a wooden spoon of homemade sauce.
I was in love at once. At the first stop, families spilled in noisily. Life and chaos. Steely grandmothers, children scanning the universe for candy, and foal-like college girls heading to the University of Cluj. They were cat's claws on my lustful heart. The Romanian air is a weaponized hallucinogen.
The movie outside the window was all gardens, mansions, immaculate churches with majestic spires, curving pipelines, men with skullcaps and mustaches, and swayback horses pulling carts. Everything weather beaten, everything wonderful.
Rotting old wooden trains, crazyquilt patchwork huts made of multicolored corrugated iron salvage. It was total shack porn. Goats, haystacks, wild dogs, fields of brown corn, nuclear reactor towers, clotheslines, and women in headscarves.
Long-haired sheep, speckled roosters flapping proudly, bent old women with slop pails, and white horses sleeping in a field of failed sunflowers. Graveyards and hydroelectric dams.
I drank it all in, a wild feast.
A young girl who I had seen texting on her iPhone earlier came and sat next to me. She was just suddenly there. She asked me what I was writing. She asked me what I was reading. Her name was Alexandra, and she asked me if I were Christian, and she offered me "Romanian plums" from her garden.
They were delicious.
We spent the next four hours talking. She spoke excellent English. When I told her this she said, "hearing this is like having stone removed from my heart!"
She told me all about the Roma people (she's "half gypsy") and she explained much of what I was seeing to me. The clumps of shacks were "gypsy communes" and the half-finished buildings with beautiful roofs and unfinished walls were "gypsy palaces for celebration."
"The silver material is very cheap. Gypsies like shiny things no matter their worth."
It was the perfect travel experience. Two strangers, she was also alone, comparing notes on their civilizations. They don't have Amazon in Romania, but she had heard of it. All her friends wished they could order from it. They joked about starting their own gypsy version. I suggested the name Romazon.
She said she knew I wasn't from Romania, because they don't sell Libra Water there.
It was the friendliest, most unguarded, fun four hours, eating plums and laughing. I drew a map of the US to show her where Seattle was, and she said my version of the US looked like a dinosaur bone. She showed me interesting cities to visit on the map.
I bored her with some pictures of Budapest. She showed me some pictures of her dog. A few of them were of her embracing it naked. "Forget these," she said. She wants to be a force for social change and help as many people possible. She was traveling to Cluj as part of a conference of student leaders. Later this month, she's going to Berlin on a scholarship for a course on how to teach diversity studies. Her father is a politician who helps gypsies get cabinet positions.
She said most young Romanians move away. If they marry a foreigner, they move to that person's country where ever it is. She said when she finds a husband, she will ask him to stay in Romania and help her fix it.
At the very end, she called my host in Romania to make sure he took good care of me and to ensure I had the proper directions. Just outstanding random friendship.
We said good-bye at the train station.
The cab driver was fucking hysterical. I got in, showed him the address, and he was off. "What is with your man Obama? He is a man alone on Syria! Everyone is telling him no! Do YOU think he will do it?"
Funny middle-aged dude with giant sunglasses.
I was like, "I hope not. I don't think anyone wants him to."
Outside, a sweet little valley town rushed by. Shops, towering apartment complexes, bright walls. Giant churches (because Europe).
I gave him the bill that came out of the ATM. It was a 100 leu bill. I want you to leu to me, just for tonight.
A little easier to do the math with this currency. It's, like 3 leu to a dollar, so a 100 is like a $33 bill. Anyway, when he saw it, he was like, "You are all so rich. My god," and he meant it. The cab ride, which has been pretty long was only 9 leu. I got back a giant's fist full of change.
"There's no oil in Syria, so I don't think you will go," he shouted after me. Then he said, "I have gone to this pizza place from time to time!" and he pointed to a place and drove off.
My apartment here is nice with a good view of the Carpathian foothills! The landlord, Cristian, was pleasant and businesslike. Incredibly fancy, brand-new building for professionals. I think Cluj has some money. I think it's the tech-center of Romania.
He showed me where everything was, encouraged me to stay an extra day and headed out. Nice view from the window.
I had planned on sleeping on the train a little more than I did, but I Alexandraed instead, so I was pretty tired, but I was like, "fuck it," grabbed the camera and went out.
The immediate difference is that the streets here are wide, so I could really see everything. Bright, clean, bustling. Soft pretzels everywhere for 1 leu. This is the cheap Eastern European paradise I dreamed of in my youth. Lanky, beautiful boys and girls lounged in straw seats in outdoor cafes. Thin, edgy, beautiful people drinking and looking at one another casually but with knowledge. With plans.
I don't want to be the guy who goes on and on about the sheep's cheese he bought at a farmer's market and moans and smacks his lips at the memory of it. I don't want to be that insufferable guy who wistfully rhapsodizes about the fresh food he bought in a foreign country, but oh my fucking god, did I get some goddamn sheep's cheese to murder over. With plans.
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