A Thousand Tiny Photos

I walk away from my Dad just before security in London Luton. It doesn’t feel all that scary though. I mean, I’ve taken planes alone before: the only difference is, this is the first time I’ve gone to a foreign country alone. It isn’t really a huge leap, I guess.

 

You can make up your own mind about the colour scheme. I sit in the lounge, waiting for the queue to die, consuming a hearty cinnamon and apple doughnut and regretting not replying to Alicia’s letter (I WILL, I PROMISE!).

The plane is an Airbus A320 and remarkably plush. I settle down for the flight next to a Romanian couple, and, as I extract my Rough Guide to Romania, I am struck by the lack of long hair on men. A nameless dread engulfs me and for the shortest time I ponder getting a haircut on arrival before realizing that I’ve a) probably already offended them and b) I should stop assuming that the culture is radically different.

The Rough Guide is entertaining, certainly, but I feel it doesn’t explain how to actually bribe someone (they call it “tipping”. To dodge train fares.) Do you sidle up to them and pass the Lei? Do you smile and put into their chest pocket? Do they initiate the exchange with a cough and an outstretched hand?

I’m still reading the language section when the plane begins its approach. There’s a lot of turbulence, and I can’t help but wonder at this being some bizarre method of altitude loss by disrupting lift. Stalling the plane probably isn’t quite the object either but I’m not the only one suffering from unease. The lady next to me laughs nervously and I point to the “basics” section of the language guide and say “Rau” (there’s an accent there; pronounced “roh”) which means “bad”. She agrees and I feel assured that in my last moments I actually did something constructive with my rapidly shortening lifespan!

We applaud the landing. First time I’ve ever done that, but I feel an awesome gratitude for the relief it has lent me. Landing at a speed that you know is too fast necessitating huge amounts of braking is always discombobulating.

Romanian is basically pro-French. It’s kind of easy, (pronunciation is quick to get a hold of, I remembered a lot of the symbols from my study of Egyptian) but it ramps up. I still haven’t got a hold of a grammar but I know it declines and conjugates more thoroughly than French (the only other European/Romance language I know well enough to comment on), and that it has quite a bit of Latin to it, which is pleasant (cald = hot, este = is, este calde “It’s hot!”).

I step off the plane and it’s warm, but for some reason not oppressively so. I wonder if they’ve been acclimatizing us over the flight. The sun is bright in an empty sky. I don my sunglasses and walk grinning down to the coach. Buna ziua!

At immigration the man looks twice, then a third time at me. My hair was longer in the photo, I look a bit more like I should be in a band (a bad band. And fourteen.) than the smiling guy who tried to say “Salut.” Eventually he concedes, swipes the passport and hands it back. I’m slightly disappointed, as I walk to the baggage reclaim, since they probably would have to do some kind of biometric scan or something cool.

My rucksack is on the second trolley. This is my home away from my home away from home, in a quiet corner of the carousel where I repack my passport and shirt into the bag (two layers… yeah, I’m prepared). Note the careful arrangement of objects and do not ask the question why I took this picture.

My hair fears are assuaged by Daniel, the ProjectsAbroad (the people who are running this trip for me) driver, who is definitely beyond a number 2 haircut. He has a friend with him, whose name I don’t catch. He apologizes for his English, I apologize for my Romanian and I already feel pretty welcome. My big rucksack goes into the boot, little one on the backseat beside me. Joining the highway Daniel guns the engine and a horn blares from behind.

“Welcome to Romania!” he observes, and I start to wonder that maybe this nation takes life with the seriousness it deserves. I smile.

“So you’re doing Archaeology?” (Daniel)
“Da... er, sase hores to, er, Cluj.” (me attempting Romanian)
“Ooh, Cluj. Six hours tomorrow, two hours in the car today! Lot of travelling.”
“Yeah, a lot. How long to Brasov? Two or three hours?”
“There’s lots of traffic now, so could be three. Everyone goes on holiday from Bucharest because it’s too warm. 36°. About 28° in Brasov.”

I’m shocked. I know it would reach that temperature but I reasoned that it had passed, the height of the afternoon having dwindled into 1615 hours as I got off the plane. It honestly doesn’t feel anywhere as bad, and I’m even wearing jeans and walking boots.

Romanian weather is infamously variable; hikers are advised to expect sudden, heavy thunderstorms. Not far from Bucharest the clouds gather into this:

We pass a wooden church, a beautiful white one among the greater metropolitan area of Bucharest. I don’t bring my camera to bear quickly enough.

Eventually I fell asleep, somehow, but woke up half an hour later. I didn’t want to miss the mountains.

That cross is 39 metres high. The Romanians call this land Ardeal. It’s a generic term for mountainous forested areas, but they apply it to Transylvania mostly. It makes me think of Arboreal, and it is, rich blankets of trees everywhere. And in the valleys below we take our course.

I manage to grab a picture of a… something. It looks like a church, here:

(lazy picture editing there, sorry. Rotate THEN crop…)

I see other prettier churches. I see them painted, beautiful Orthodox ones in Brasov. I see shrines dotted all over the place, next to carts parked by the road selling melons. There’s a man taking his bull for a walk. There are stray dogs everywhere (Ceausescu's regime bulldozed homes for city re-planning, and owners released their dogs onto the streets. They’re breeding and the population is booming).

These are the thousand tiny photos that I didn’t get with my camera, the ones that fill my mind. I already love them.

In Brasov I met Alex, the desk officer of ProjectsAbroad and my host. He’s only a few years older so we get on pretty well (geeky gamers… but also rather laddish). I’ll tell you more about that some other time, maybe. But yeah, that was my journey here.

It’s a really beautiful country. I want to come camping here, bring a friend. It’s raw and old and new, all at once, and I’m weaving a tapestry with those thousand tiny photos. I’ll hang it in my mind’s eye for a long time to come.