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!