The taxi driver who takes me to the station in Sibiu is huge, sleepy, and kind of grumpy, like a bear coming out from under the influence of a tranquilizer dart. He knows his business, though, cutting through scary traffic circles and eventually leaving me with a lot of time to kill at the station.
I hadn't really stopped to admire Sibiu station when arriving. It has a clean, bare interior, but two of the three front doors are closed and have defuncta signs on them. There are sets of plastic seats bolted to the platforms, but most have the backs snapped off and are otherwise smashed-up. The platforms themselves are buckled and cracked. An old train is rotting away on a stretch of track. It seems to have been left there for nature to take care of, but I'm not sure nature knows what to do with old trains. It's not going to break them down into soil, or have scavengers haul them away.
There were strange tinkling sounds every few seconds. Looking around, I saw that a couple had climbed into the dumpster across the road and were fishing out cans and tossing them over the side. The woman was wearing a neatly-tied apron, and both were respectably dressed. When they were done, they packed up what they'd taken onto a bicycle and started wheeling it away.
The train to Brasov is a little pencil-stub of a train, with two cars altogether. They have sleek, aerodynamic noses, which allows them to make the 100km run to Brasov in an astonishing 3 hours. This type of train is known locally as the Blue Arrow, because they're as quick as an arrow that's riding a slow intercity train across Romania.
I hold a first-class ticket. First class turns out to be exactly like second in every way but two: It's slightly more crowded with old Romanian women; and the seats are red instead of blue. As soon as my ticket's been taken, I go back and find a quiet seat in 2nd.
At every station, a conductor in a smart red cap stands out on the decayed asphalt platform and salutes the train as it goes by. People are out in the fields working with hand tools, sometimes with a horse and cart standing by. We pass a telephone pole dressed in clothes. I think I understand: It might not scare the crows, but it should unsettle them. The troubling thing for the crows would be knowing they're dealing with the kind of maverick who would try something like that.
On the outskirts of towns, there are some gruesome roadside crucifixes and big ramshackle houses with enormous gardens and a few chickens hanging around out front. There are flocks of sheep up on the hills and down by the line. One of them's in between two lines near a junction, just in front of a modern supermarket. One of the shepherds is sitting on one of the country's millions of unidentifiable lumps of old concrete, laughing and cutting up a cheese. Just beyond, two drab old gypsy wagons sit in a parking lot. Off to the right -- to the South -- are the Carpathian mountains, sometimes clearly visible, sometimes just dark patches in fog banks.
The hotel in Brasov is a very nice four-star of vaguely Scandinavian design, with some Romanian flavour added by including a bunch of stuff that doesn't really work. It has heated floors, a huge floor lamp with a shade like the head of a Lego Darth Vader, a square toilet (not because square toilets are better, but because round toilets are so common), and an insane system for controlling the lights that makes me angry and confused.
The hotel also holds a conference centre, which I find when looking for the restaurant. There's a woman frowning at me from behind a registration table, and, beside her, a mime. The mime makes eating motions and points downstairs. I give the mime a wave and leave. According to the sign, it was a conference for some sort of IT company. Don't go to a business meeting in Romania without a mime; you'll look very silly. You need one to conduct negotiations with the other party's mime (by pouting, crying, laughing, and fighting imaginary winds, as appropriate). Also, the mime union, though not the force it was in the communist era, is still very powerful and shouldn't be crossed.
The problem with the hotel is that it's a fair way from the historic centre of Brasov, so I take the bus there. Having read that I need to cancel tickets, I stand in front of the machine on the bus and try over and over again while a busload of people watch me blankly. Eventually, a teenager who speaks some English explains that the bus needs to be running before the machine will work. He's chatty, and wants to know where I'm from and why I've come. "A vacation? In Romania?" Yes. He shakes his head. "It's not a good country." Then he beckons me close, whispers something extremely racist, gives a cheery wave, and gets off.
Brasov's old centre is like Sibiu's, but with heavier car traffic. At one end of its main square, a sporting event is underway, with rock music, an announcer, and a maximum of razzle-dazzle generally. It's a bicycle-handling contest for children. Contestants -- athletes -- have to manoeuvre a mountain bike around a series of pylons while coping with the bemused and disappointed stares of the spectators. The next day, and just around the corner, there's a wood-chopping contest: Two or three enormous white logs, and a couple of dozen competitors in orange bibs sheltering from the rain under a blue tent. Life for a sports fan in Brasov must be like a series of baffling dreams.
I go to the city museum, and the woman at the counter seems startled: You want to visit the museum? She goes to fetch someone. Because it's been raining, I have to put on a pair of bright blue shoe covers. I swish around the museum in them, and it's beautifully done; but I'm the only visitor. On the way out, I ask for a washroom and am shown a secret one through an unmarked door. At the sink, there's a cracked bar of soap and a bottle of rubbing alcohol with a sexy nurse on it. The museum is stuffed with interesting artifacts, but what I'll remember is: In Romania, sexy nurses are used to sell rubbing alcohol.
I walk back to the hotel. An upcoming Richard Clayderman concert is being promoted with a heavy postering campaign. I take a break in a park, and a dishevelled man approaches me and wants to know my origin (not where I'm from, but my origin). Then he cries "liberty!" and strikes a pose. He talks in a mix of languages about Germany, saying a lot of things I'm grateful I can't understand, and then moves on to the next bench, where he starts again at the beginning.
The main road leading from the station to the rest of the town is a grand boulevard given over to car traffic. Along one side of it are eight identical concrete high-rises, spaced about fifty metres apart, each with an abstract mosaic on the street side. Most mosaics are missing a few patches of tiles, giving the buildings kind of a mangy look.
To cross these major streets, there are underpasses, and the underpasses are lined with strange little kiosks. Tiny restaurants, counters where hair products are laid out but no one seems around to sell them, a betting parlour or bookie's office with 5 slot machines and a desk holding some papers and an ashtray. By the stairs of one underpass, there's a sinister man dressed as an orthodox priest holding open a binder to a page that says "donati" (donate). He looks a bit like Rasputin, but more crazy-eyed and less trustworthy.
I hadn't really stopped to admire Sibiu station when arriving. It has a clean, bare interior, but two of the three front doors are closed and have defuncta signs on them. There are sets of plastic seats bolted to the platforms, but most have the backs snapped off and are otherwise smashed-up. The platforms themselves are buckled and cracked. An old train is rotting away on a stretch of track. It seems to have been left there for nature to take care of, but I'm not sure nature knows what to do with old trains. It's not going to break them down into soil, or have scavengers haul them away.
There were strange tinkling sounds every few seconds. Looking around, I saw that a couple had climbed into the dumpster across the road and were fishing out cans and tossing them over the side. The woman was wearing a neatly-tied apron, and both were respectably dressed. When they were done, they packed up what they'd taken onto a bicycle and started wheeling it away.
The train to Brasov is a little pencil-stub of a train, with two cars altogether. They have sleek, aerodynamic noses, which allows them to make the 100km run to Brasov in an astonishing 3 hours. This type of train is known locally as the Blue Arrow, because they're as quick as an arrow that's riding a slow intercity train across Romania.
I hold a first-class ticket. First class turns out to be exactly like second in every way but two: It's slightly more crowded with old Romanian women; and the seats are red instead of blue. As soon as my ticket's been taken, I go back and find a quiet seat in 2nd.
At every station, a conductor in a smart red cap stands out on the decayed asphalt platform and salutes the train as it goes by. People are out in the fields working with hand tools, sometimes with a horse and cart standing by. We pass a telephone pole dressed in clothes. I think I understand: It might not scare the crows, but it should unsettle them. The troubling thing for the crows would be knowing they're dealing with the kind of maverick who would try something like that.
On the outskirts of towns, there are some gruesome roadside crucifixes and big ramshackle houses with enormous gardens and a few chickens hanging around out front. There are flocks of sheep up on the hills and down by the line. One of them's in between two lines near a junction, just in front of a modern supermarket. One of the shepherds is sitting on one of the country's millions of unidentifiable lumps of old concrete, laughing and cutting up a cheese. Just beyond, two drab old gypsy wagons sit in a parking lot. Off to the right -- to the South -- are the Carpathian mountains, sometimes clearly visible, sometimes just dark patches in fog banks.
The hotel in Brasov is a very nice four-star of vaguely Scandinavian design, with some Romanian flavour added by including a bunch of stuff that doesn't really work. It has heated floors, a huge floor lamp with a shade like the head of a Lego Darth Vader, a square toilet (not because square toilets are better, but because round toilets are so common), and an insane system for controlling the lights that makes me angry and confused.
The hotel also holds a conference centre, which I find when looking for the restaurant. There's a woman frowning at me from behind a registration table, and, beside her, a mime. The mime makes eating motions and points downstairs. I give the mime a wave and leave. According to the sign, it was a conference for some sort of IT company. Don't go to a business meeting in Romania without a mime; you'll look very silly. You need one to conduct negotiations with the other party's mime (by pouting, crying, laughing, and fighting imaginary winds, as appropriate). Also, the mime union, though not the force it was in the communist era, is still very powerful and shouldn't be crossed.
The problem with the hotel is that it's a fair way from the historic centre of Brasov, so I take the bus there. Having read that I need to cancel tickets, I stand in front of the machine on the bus and try over and over again while a busload of people watch me blankly. Eventually, a teenager who speaks some English explains that the bus needs to be running before the machine will work. He's chatty, and wants to know where I'm from and why I've come. "A vacation? In Romania?" Yes. He shakes his head. "It's not a good country." Then he beckons me close, whispers something extremely racist, gives a cheery wave, and gets off.
Brasov's old centre is like Sibiu's, but with heavier car traffic. At one end of its main square, a sporting event is underway, with rock music, an announcer, and a maximum of razzle-dazzle generally. It's a bicycle-handling contest for children. Contestants -- athletes -- have to manoeuvre a mountain bike around a series of pylons while coping with the bemused and disappointed stares of the spectators. The next day, and just around the corner, there's a wood-chopping contest: Two or three enormous white logs, and a couple of dozen competitors in orange bibs sheltering from the rain under a blue tent. Life for a sports fan in Brasov must be like a series of baffling dreams.
I go to the city museum, and the woman at the counter seems startled: You want to visit the museum? She goes to fetch someone. Because it's been raining, I have to put on a pair of bright blue shoe covers. I swish around the museum in them, and it's beautifully done; but I'm the only visitor. On the way out, I ask for a washroom and am shown a secret one through an unmarked door. At the sink, there's a cracked bar of soap and a bottle of rubbing alcohol with a sexy nurse on it. The museum is stuffed with interesting artifacts, but what I'll remember is: In Romania, sexy nurses are used to sell rubbing alcohol.
I walk back to the hotel. An upcoming Richard Clayderman concert is being promoted with a heavy postering campaign. I take a break in a park, and a dishevelled man approaches me and wants to know my origin (not where I'm from, but my origin). Then he cries "liberty!" and strikes a pose. He talks in a mix of languages about Germany, saying a lot of things I'm grateful I can't understand, and then moves on to the next bench, where he starts again at the beginning.
The main road leading from the station to the rest of the town is a grand boulevard given over to car traffic. Along one side of it are eight identical concrete high-rises, spaced about fifty metres apart, each with an abstract mosaic on the street side. Most mosaics are missing a few patches of tiles, giving the buildings kind of a mangy look.
To cross these major streets, there are underpasses, and the underpasses are lined with strange little kiosks. Tiny restaurants, counters where hair products are laid out but no one seems around to sell them, a betting parlour or bookie's office with 5 slot machines and a desk holding some papers and an ashtray. By the stairs of one underpass, there's a sinister man dressed as an orthodox priest holding open a binder to a page that says "donati" (donate). He looks a bit like Rasputin, but more crazy-eyed and less trustworthy.
