Klaus, Alexandru, Dora and Duncan Do Moldavia

St. Stefan, King Stefan, Stefan cel Mare (Steven the Great)


24 October, 2008
The fog was thick in the Northern Carpathians this chilly Friday afternoon, as we climbed above Vatra Dornei into cloud cover at above 1000 m altitude. The road left much to be desired, being a European Highway in designation (E576) only, and still very much under construction. In a curvy section of mud and gravel we come to a stop light. Stopped ahead of us are a tractor-trailer and a straight truck. There is room, so we pull Klaus up alongside, and wait for green. Clearly, this is a construction zone. Yet no traffic comes from the other direction as we wait. When the light turns green, we take the lead down the one-lane newly-laid roadbed stretching around the mountain in a leftward arc. We have gone hardly 100 meters when the oncoming traffic comes into view, a mighty line of lorries and lighter vehicles, making haste directly at us. Hmm. Get right and stop. About all we could do. There ensued a marvelous dance of derring-do, as some cars climbed the bank to the closed lane and sped away, others inched past the oncomers, who in wide trucks risked the deep mud at our far left to pass us without scraping, and Klaus took every opportunity to scoot through to safety and get past the ill-timed second light at the eastward end of the mud. Thus the least of our weekend road-war stories.

Remember the fog? Soon it played an ominous part. After that muddy stretch the road climbed, paved but now narrow and not yet improved to European Road standards. Higher and higher into the clouds it climbed, from which fell a steady drizzle. Now visibility was really poor, though it was mid-morning. The defroster was blasting the windshield to ward off interior condensation, but still each hairpin turn presented a new challenge, for its radius was indeterminable until one was deep into the bend.

We swing a right round an ascendng switchback. The road straightens, and we start to accelerate a bit. From out the fog looms a lane-wide unlit yellow barrier, not 30 meters ahead, across our entire lane. Klaus veers left, executing with sure-footed wet traction an instantaneous lane change into the only available lane, as a washout appears to his right, into which we would have plunged, off a cliff, had he not been so nimble. But before he can gloat, Klaus is braking hard, being slammed into reverse, and going back past the barrier and into his prior lane, as a full sized Semi (TIR, in Romanian jargon) is coming right down the hill from out of the fog. The truck driver is also braking hard, but cannot fully stop before he passes. Klaus moves back out with cautious speed, and clears the short one-lane stretch above the washout before another denizen of the deep fog should appear.

Vatra-Dornei
Lunch pizza came next in Vatra-Dornei, after which Klaus found his way to the magnificently frescoed 16th Century Moldavian monastery at Vatra Moldovi, where his passengers all said prayers of thanks for our morning's deliverance. There was no doubt that day in the Pilgrim mind that God was with us, for we had barely ridden fifteen kilometers toward our second monastery of the afternoon when an oncoming tour bus swang a wide and rapid right turn toward us, only to have his driver's side door(!) swing wide open, and just miss clobbering Klaus's brand new windshield. This time Klaus sashayed to the right, again deftly missing a damaging mishap.

Another beautiful monastery at Suceviţa, and more grateful prayers from the faithful pilgrims.

Biserica Suceviţa

We spent Friday night in Radauţi, where we dined on soup, sniţel,(schnitzel), potatoes, and salad. We were very hungry, aware that we had just lived a special day. The dinner at the National Hotel was excellent. Our lodging, at a cheap pensiune down near the railroad tracks, was fine for the price. We slept like rocks.

25 October, 2008
For Saturday we had planned only our first stop, the famous, large, and architecturally diverse monastery at Putna. To get there we had to drive back to the west for a bit, just south of the Ukraine border. Once there we found no exterior frescoes, but a fine church and many outbuildings that varied at each compass point in roof design, tower design, staircase layout, and exterior trim. It was, for this old student of architecture, a wonderful study both in 15th Century design, and in what clearly came after, in several stages. Built under the aegis of Stefan the Great, a sainted Moldavian king famous both for defendng Moldavia from a succession of invaders and for building a major religious installation after each of his victories, this monastery houses a beautifully kept museum with an awe-inspiring collection of artifacts from St. Stefan's age.

The Museum at Putna

Raluca Teodora (Dora) and Alexandru (Alex)
at The Monastery at Putna :

From Putna, our targeted destination for the night was the culturally and academically famous city of Iasi ("Yahsh"), close to the eastern border of Romania, where the Prut River and a huge lake of some 30 KM in length separate Romania's Modavian Region from the Republic of Moldova.

There were good roads from Putna down through Suceava and on to Iasi. Or, as the detailed map Alex had brought showed, there was a small road that traced the border, just above the Prut. It would take us to the very Northeastern reaches of Romania, past the long lake, then join with a more substantial road to Iasi. Picture us in the white zone at the upper-right of the map at http://www.turism.ro/harta.php. For some 50 Km Klaus ate dirt. It was a fairly level plain, and the road was not bad as dirt roads through farm country go. Twice the bottom scraped a bit, as Klaus braved the crowned center rather than the more potholed sides. But we maintained a 50 Km/Hr average, and I was told by Alexandru that NO ONE in Romania had EVER driven so fast on such a road. "Don't let the suspension get to the bottom of the holes, and it is a smoother ride," I told him, based on years of driving such roads in New Hampshire.

So, we took the scenic route, and made it down close to Iasi as the sun set. The last twenty KM were on pavement, but as in Maramures two weeks back, it was evening in farm country, and the road was full of cows going home to be milked, and hay wagons heading home for the night. Our final close call of the trip was when both passengers said "Look Out!" as I barely missed hitting an unlit horsecart full of cornstalks randomly piled on it, which in the dark of dusk was completely invisible to me until almost too late. Again, Klaus' handling saved the day, as we cleared the cart by a safe margin.

We found another low rent hostel in downtown Iasi, and had a good dinner at Mama Mia's.
During the night, we learned why the rent was so low. Next door was a night club, and their music played constantly until 6 A.M.

Sunday, 26 October 2008

The ride home was about 450 KM, as our route took us through the Keys of Bicaz, a National Park in a canyon zone in the Carpathian Mountains that rivals some of America's famous canyon parks in the narrowness of its passes, the steepness of its climbs, and in its beauty. I will close this posting with a few more pictures of the ride home from Iasi.

At home in Cluj at last, we shared a pot of peppery bean soup at the apartment, traded thanks for a remarkable adventure, and went our ways in road-tested friendship.

1. The Keys of Bicaz (Cheile Bicazului)
2. A Textured Outcropping of Shale and Slate
3. Metamorphic slate and sedementary shale, both steeply tilted, but note different shear planes.
4. The Keys of Bicaz (2)

Watering the Women?

Still Monday, April 20 (though reported Thursday night from Kansas City)

Klaus' parking having been paid, I returned to the apartment, ate my ovâz with Splenda, milk and cinnamon for breakfast, and went back to sleep for two more hours. I was reasonably sure that Klaus would be neither bothered nor ticketed on a day that was effectively a holiday in Cluj, and I had a leftover deficit of sleep from Sunday's long schedule.

The main mission of the week was to prepare for the ACBSP's April Board of Commissioners' meeting, then fly on Wednesday to Kansas City and attend it. But there were two whole days left to get the reviews finished, and I had already made a good start by reviewing the self-studies of the candidates for accreditation prior to the pre-visit conference calls which occurred in February. So I procrastinated on this bright, warm day.

At sometime before Wednedsday, Klaus needed to be put away at the Faculty of Letters lot and I figured I would be spending Tuesday grinding out my commission work, so I walked back across the Piaţa, picked Klaus up, and drove him to the Faculty. I parked in front, on Horea Street, and tried to go in the gate, only to find it locked. Fortunately, a student came out from the building, opened the gate, and let me in. I found the guard's office inside the building open, but empty. I continued on out the courtyard door, and walked up the hill to the auto gate to confirm that it was truly locked, and not just closed. The padlock was in place. I would need to find the guard. When I returned to the main hall, the guard was in his office. I asked him to open the gate, told him I would be gone all this week, and indicated that my car was out front. He nodded his understanding, and we parted out the opposite doors, I to the front, he to the rear of the building. After I'd driven around the three blocks that it took to reach the gate on our newly One-Way streets, the guard let us in, and I bedded Klaus down, thanking the guard, and exiting through to Horea, as the front gate was again locked behind me.

I turned toward home and pulled a handkerchief from my pocket to wipe my brow. Peripherally, I caught a flash of white falling from the pocket to my right side. I stopped and looked to see what I had dropped. It was a business card, one of my new ones that Carmen had ordered for me, with my UBB job title and address. I went back a few steps and retrieved it from the sidewalk. A few steps farther on, a man with a familiar face accosted me, pointed back to where I'd picked up my card from the sidewalk, and proceeded to break into tears of emotion.

He is a man of 60-something who frequents this part of Horea Street, and usually appears to be both unemployed (retired?), and drunk. Today, at about 2:00 PM, he seems overly emotional, but not visibly bombed. I ask in English why he is so emotional. He points again back up the sidewalk. I say, "Because I picked this up?" I show him my card. He says "Da," accepting my card and seeing that it reads "Profesor Fulbright," and "Universitatea Babeş-Bolyai." Still weeping, he takes me by the arm and motions me to come with him.

We walk quickly into the entrance to the Brasserie, a luncheon restaurant in a "close" (as it would be called in Edinburgh), a narrow tunnel leading from the street through a building into its courtyard. We come out into the sunlight of the courtyard, turn right, and walk through the open door of a ground floor apartment. Sitting there is a tan-skinned woman of 50-something, and two men, who appear to be enjoying a chat over a cigarette. No signs of anything save a neighborly chat, so I sit at the kitchen chair I am offered.

The one-room apartment is small. There is a half-refrigerator behind me, a double bed on the opposite wall, shielded from the "kitchen" side of the room by a bookcase covered with a posterboard, and walls decorated with posters, pictures, and all manner of brick-a-brack. Not too clean, not filthy, and anything but luxurious. The toilet must have been to the right as we entered the outer door.

I say to the woman, "I am Duncan."

My "escort" opens the fridge and offers me an orange juice. He introduces himself by touching his chest, "Eu Alexandru, Ungariu. Nu vorbesc Engleza."

One man leaves, and the woman says, "He is Hungarian." "You speak English? " I ask her.

She rotates her wrist in the air, "Cum si, Cum sa." "A little?" "Da."

I ask her name. "Vilma," she says, "Sotie (Wife)." "Vilma, Vilma. Fred, Barney, Vilma."

"Da, da," I say, "You are his wife, Wilma."

"Sunt Roma," she says.

"Romanian?" I ask, misunderstanding, thinking she was contrasting herself with his Hungarian ethnicity.

"Nu, nu. Roma. Roma." Then, just as the light turns on in my slow mind, she says, "Gypsy!"

Wilma finds two Easter eggs, and gives them to me. I thank her, "Mulţumesc."

She looks at me. "Roman Catholic?" she asks.

"Protestant," I confess, "but I attended Easter services at Calvary Church last week."

"Oooh, Kalvaria!" comes from Alexandru, with a deep sob and another outpouring.

It is the Hungarian R.C. church. Once his church? Maybe still?

The other visitor says his goodbyes, and leaves. I am alone in their ground-floor studio with Alexandru, his gypsy wife, and a glass of fizzy orange juice. I do not know if it is fizzy by design, or by fermentation. I sip it just a bit. Tastes fine. But I end up leaving the rest.

Alexandru the Hungarian proceeds to tell me his life story. He tells me he had been a barber, first showing me his kit, which he pulled out from the shelves behind the posterboard. It contains a shaving brush, straight razor, shears, and an electric clipper. I guess that wasn't all that long ago. He pulls out a small notebook, leather-bound, and opens it, showing me a list of names. "A duke from Czechoslovakia," he says as he points at one name. "General _____," pointing at another. I get the picture. He once had a distinguished clientele. His tears flow like rain, recalling past glory. He then tells the story of his three former wives, all now dead, weeping over each as he does so. And about meeting Wilma, with whom he has lived many years, but, tapping his ring finger, never has formally married. I sit and listen, gleaning what I can from his Romanian-Hungarian tale. I must have listened for fifteen minutes or more.

Finally, looking toward me, Wilma says, "Om bun." I look her in the eye and say nothing. She says it again. I nod my thanks, "I am learning what I can," I say.

Wilma then gets out a legal-looking document, wrapped in a plastic sheet protector, and brings it over to me. It indicates something about her medical condition. She lifts the waist of her blouse to show me several scars from abdominal operations.

Then, she shows me another legal document, and I am able to read something about its source. Some government agency for social services and housing. "Nu home," she said. "August. Nu home." She was mixing languages, as I so often do over here. I try to read the document. It appears to give them the right to live there, and its terminal month is August, 2009. The contract is in the name "UNGARIU Alexandru." So Ungariu was his name, not an Ethnic adjective.

Now I guessed she was asking for money, or letting me know of the need, at least. Alexandru again took my arm, and asked me to come with him. We go out into the courtyard, and turn left through the door he opened into the next room. Inside lies a person under a blanket. I cannot tell if it is a man or a woman. The hair is long, there is no beard, but the face is masculine looking. Clearly, he or she is a deathbed case.

We go back to the apartment. Wilma makes me understand that they are that person's caretakers. Now, finally, Alexandru decides that he wants me to really understand. He goes out and comes back with a young (30-something) man in a black shirt and black trousers. When he enters, the young man says, "Hello."

I reply, giving my name.

"Lawrence," he says. "We own the restaurant."

"Nice place," I tell him. "I have had lunch there."

"You should be somewhat careful," Lawrence says.

"I am aware of that," I reply. "I am a big boy."

"Money is a problem for them," he says, "But drinking is his main problem."

"That one I fully understand," I said. "I will leave a few lei, and meet you in the tunnel."

By that time Alexandru sat at another small surface, and, rocking back and forth tearfully, is scrawling an inscription on the back of a black and white photo of himself and Wilma, perhaps thirty years before. In the picture, he is in uniform. I ask, "Romanian Army?" "Da."

I accept the picture and its inscription, leave 20 de Lei on the table next to my orange juice, and as Wilma praises Jesus, I say good bye, and leave.

Lawrence is waiting in the tunnel. "Who is in the next room, a man or a woman?" I ask.

"It is a man."

Then Lawrence thinks for a minute, and asks, "What is the word for the head of a town? Not governor?"

"Mayor?" I suggest.

"Yes, mayor!" says Lawrence, as his wife Cristina joins us from the stairwell that leads upstairs. "The mayor of Cluj is paying."

"Paying?" I ask.

"He is letting them live here and paying them to watch the old man. They feed him and clean him."

"I see," I say. "And after August, he will be dead, and they will be homeless?"

"Probably."

I thank Lawrence for interpreting, and for breaking the spell that had kept me most of an hour in that apartment. I exit the tunnel, and turn south toward home.

Once home, I finally get my Easter Monday chance to water three women. But that is yet another story.

Klaus' Friends

Klaus wouldn't start this morning. When I parked him Saturday night at the Piaţa lot after returning from Colţeşti, I had left on the ceiling light, which I'd been using to look for the GPS pouch in the glove box. I didn't find it, because Shirl had stuck it under her seat with the mount. Over the weekend, the battery had gone flat as a pancake. I opened the hood, and couldn't find the battery. I called Melinda, but she was about to teach a class. I called Alexandru and woke him up, and he agreed to go to a parts store, buy jumper cables, and come to my aid. He is a fine friend, indeed. An old Dacia pickup pulled into the adjacent space. The man got out, went to pay for the parking spot, then returned to ask me my problem. Then another man (Marc) joined him. Before long, half the men in the Piata M.V. were gathered at my car, a set of cables appeared, and I called Alex just in time to save him an unnecessary rescue mission. To make a long story short, we found the battery under the rear seat, Klaus came to life, and I bought some good men some Pepsis. See why I love Romania?

Fluorescent Thursday

Is there a gremlin in this apartment? When I returned home yesterday, I again found the locks needed only one turn to open, while, as faithful readers know, I was instructed by Florin Moldovan to give them two turns, and have faithfully obeyed. No new appliances yesterday, so who had been here?

Later, I was just leaving the bedroom when I saw the bathroom light go out. I paused. It came back on, and then flashed off and on again. Whew, just a dying fluorescent tube.

This morning I rose, dressed, and headed for the bus stop at 7:30, 40 minutes before my first class. I waited for the "Walk" light to turn green at our busy intersection, then crossed in the southbound direction, and stood waiting to cross eastbound. "Will the bus get me there on time?" I wondered. Thinking a taxi might be more prudent, I patted my pocket, and discovered no wallet. This time I suspected no gremlin, knowing that it was merely a sequel to the computer story, "The Return of the Absent-Minded Professor."

I reversed course, waited again to cross back to our side of the Piata, and then climbed back up to our top-floor apartment. Now starting to sweat, I took my wallet from yesterday's leather coat, and departed once again for the office. It was now 7:40. Taxi, or bus? I chose bus, knowing I could call Melinda to start the class if I were to be a few minutes late, and wanting to find out if I could make it to the Faculty of Economics on the east side of town by bus in 30 minutes. As I approached the bus stop, I saw two #25 busses depart in my direction. Those were my rides. But the public transportation here is excellent, and I knew another bus, #24, would also get me where I was going, albeit by a somewhat slower route. Along came #24, and I boarded, arriving at the FSEGA (Faculty of Economics and Business Administration) stop at 8:03. I walked calmly into class precisely on time, noting the faithful presence of Teodora, Alexandru and Andrei, three students who have attended classes punctually. The remainde straggled in over the next ten minutes or so.

The day's lecture/seminar session went well. Again, about half the registered students showed up, and participated actively.

I returned home in my usual post-teaching state of emotional exhaustion, stripped, donned fatigues (jeans and a t-shirt, because it was a warm day), removed the dying fluorescent tube, and went searching for a bec (bulb) and new starter. After striking out at the downtown mall called "Central," I showed the bulb to a road repair worker outside the mall building. He perceived immediately my need, and guided me, in Romanian, to a small and obscure hardware store just off the Piata Mihai Viteazul, kitty-corner from our building. Neat little find, that store. I had not noticed it before, but have a hunch I'll be needing to go back there before the next eight months are over.

So, tonight I will bathe in the light, whereas this morning I showered by flashlight. And I have no morning commitments, so a good night's sleep should follow my soothing bath.

This weekend I will be staying in Cluj, resting Klaus (as I have dubbed my BMW), and attending some sessions of an international Globalization, Integration and Economic (Something... Cooperation?) Conference at our Faculty.

Also this weekend, I hope to meet up with Kerry Glamsch, the playwright and Fulbright Scholar based in Craiova. Kerry will be in Cluj for an Experimental Theatre Festival to be held here for the coming week. I hope to find time to enjoy at least one of the experimental productions. (Kerry is keeping a wonderful blog of his Romanian Fulbright and Thespian adventures at http://glamschinromania.blogspot.com/.)