Romania 2025

The bright side of the planet moves toward darkness

And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,

And for me, now as then, it is too much,

There is too much world. 

             - Czeslaw Milosz

 

It began with the delayed flight out of San Francisco. We only had an hour layover in Munich (United/Lufthansa scheduled it, not us) so we missed our flight to Sibiu. They're small planes and only fly out twice a day and since there were four of us, rebooking us wasn't as simple as it otherwise might have been. We arrived in Munich at 10:30 Friday morning local time but couldn't get a flight out until Saturday 11 pm. 
Fortunately, since it wasn't our fault, Lufthansa paid for a very nice hotel, meals, and all transportation so in essence we got a 1.5 day tour of Munich for free. Having never been to Munich, it was an unexpectedly nice twist to what otherwise would have been a huge bummer. So we leaned into touring a brand new city and trying lots of beer though you won't see much of it since, being so early in the trip, my photo-taking skills were still dormant and the shots I got are nothing impressive. Also, it turns out downtown Munich on a sunny Saturday in spring is very, very crowded so most of my photos are just of nameless Germans and tourists going about their business which is interesting for them but not for your viewing. So this is all there is.

And now for a summary of the rest of our trip in which I will provide too many details about our first night and skim through the next three weeks.

Due to the aforementioned missed flight, we arrived in Sibiu at 1:30 am Sunday morning (it's a quick flight but we lost an hour in the time change between Germany and Romania). Ours was the last flight in and we disembarked from the tarmac and directly into baggage claim where we were nearly deafened by the sound of EDM and seemingly hundreds of unseen people cheering.
A trio of uniformed men milled about, displaying no interest in the arriving passengers until suddenly one of them called out above the pounding bass- "Passport check!" Out of the 50 some odd people disembarking, he had singled out me, Mircea, and Madeline for passport inspection. We dutifully handed them over while everyone else continued on their way, uninspected.
There is very specific code of behavior all Eastern European officials employ. It begins with an extensive period of silent, unblinking staring, during which you are assessed and invariably fail to pass the muster. The staring ends with a long-suffering sigh and a shake of the head as if to say that you, smiling capitalist that you are, are tiresome in the extreme. At last eye contact is broken while they examine your passport via a second period of long, unblinking staring at your photo which also disappoints profoundly. The passport is then handed over with a final shake of the head, letting you know how wearisome they find the sum total of you and you documents. 
The experience in the Sibiu International Airport was no different except that there was no plexiglass booth through which to stare, no scanner to which to run our passports, and no stamp to stamp them. The entire airport, baggage claim excluded, had been converted into a local disco for the night. 
And it was at that moment that I knew I had arrived in Romania.
But still, something was missing. There was no mad dash from the Bucharest airport to the transport bus to the Bucharest train station. No stop at the KFC to thaw our frozen hands and gulp down KFC fries while other customers stare at the crazy Americans and their 15 pieces of luggage. No four hour train ride to Craiova with us slumped over our luggage, lulled to sleep by exhaustion and the rhythmic clicky-clack of the rails.
All we had to do was exit the disco/airport and we were met by Nicu, the cabinet maker, who was kind enough to pick us up at that ungodly hour of the night and drive us to Vistea de Jos in the rain. 
Not all of our suitcases fit in the back of his vehicle so the largest had to sit on Mihai's lap. It obscured most of Nicu's view out of the right side of the windshield but Nicu spends more time talking and looking at his passengers than he does watching where he's driving so the obstruction meant nothing to him. 
Nicu had made us a set of beds, Mihai had ordered mattresses and pillows from a local store, and we'd brought the bedding with us in our suitcases but it all had to be removed from the packaging and assembled. So that first night we were four very tired travelers putting together our beds at 3 am before we got to sleep in them.
But we had arrived. We were home, in this new home with no furniture except said beds and a single couch.
It had none of the coziness of Obedin but also none of the mess. What we lacked in tables, chairs and dressers, we made up for in working showers and cleanliness. I could not complain.
Our schedule was a little derailed because of losing the days in Munich so we had to take Silviu back to Craiova and didn't get to spend as much time with him as we would have liked. But he was anxious to get home to his animals. 
We then took a quick trip to Sibiu, went to the meeting in Făgăraș, then dropped off Mircea and Madeline in Sighisoara so she could really begin her sight-seeing. Unfortunately Mircea promptly came down with a flu which lasted six days and curtailed all touring for them during that time. 

Mihai and I took the opportunity to work on the house and shop for furniture. 
All in all, it doesn't make for very interesting photos nor, do I think, it made for a very interesting visit for Madeline but we're confident that this won't be her only trip to Romania. Next time we'll make up for what she missed.
Below are some photos around the house, the village of Viștea de Jos, and a few quick trips we made to Brașov, Castle Bran, and Sibiu once Mircea could handle being away from a toilet for more than an hour.  

On the way to the passport office in Sibiu

Finally got a couch for the large room

Tour through Castle Bran (aka Dracula's Castle)

Early spring days around the house and village

The hall in Făgăraș

A surprise visit from Marian and his mom, Victoria

Walking around the village to soak in the view of the mountains

Maria, one of our neighbors, invited us over for crepes as a sort of  'welcome to the neighborhood' on our second night.

A day trip to Brasov

      Can I just say that I appreciate how they finally own the fact that this is the Romanian driving experience. 

On a final note: I had no intention of posting anything about this trip--Romania 2025. I thought of it like a port of call, something intermediate where we would offload supplies and assess the tasks needed to finish the new house, this cavernous space that felt aseptic and foreign and not like home.
Where is the familiar creak of the last stair into my bedroom, the smell of damp earth in the root cellar, the view of horses in the fields from my balcony window? Here I stumble my way to the bathroom at night, my sleepy feet and fingers confused and mildly annoyed over the need to create new patterns in the dark. Here there is a new cast of characters to learn. Instead of Giorge, Alex, and Nuta, there are Nicu and Maria.
Here there is no three-story Kingdom Hall with nine different meeting times and congregations of known and beloved friends of to choose from, there is only the unfamiliar Făgăraș. 
Thomas Wolfe asserted that one can never go home again. During the time you were away, both you and the place you came from will inevitably have been transformed, and the experience of life as you knew it is impossible to recreate.
It's a basic truth we all know but pulling it out and examining it in this way infuses it with a particular brand of nostalgia. When we put it into words, it's easy to grow wistful for the joys of days gone by, days that can only be remembered, not relived. 
But while we ache for life on the distant shore of the past, we not only turn our backs on the wide-open sea of the future but more importantly, we forget savor the ambrosial now. This sun-lit morning with the spring grass dotted in wild carrot blossoms and brown feathered wrens, with the pale grey clouds laying low on the eastern horizon, the distant drone of a tractor engine as it lumbers its way down the village road, the faint scent of brewed coffee mixed with toasted bread, the soft tap of my fingers against the keyboard, this is the landscape on which a future me will gaze with longing. 
Unknowingly, I was withholding my attachment to all that is new here until yesterday morning when I woke and watched the sunlight inch its way across the patio tiles. I know that pattern, I suddenly realized, just as I knew the bird that sang outside my window. It's time to stop resisting, time to set aside my longing for Obedin and the life I once had there, it's time embrace Viștea de Jos and all of the wonders life here will offer. Next spring, this will be my home. It's time to begin again.

Istanbul

Istanbul is one of those places I have wanted to visit for as long as I can remember. 

Is this because of the song by They Might Be Giants? ("Istanbul was Constantinople now its Istanbul not Constantinople, why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Turks")

Or was it the scene from A Room with a View where Lucy tells everyone she's going to Constantinople ("Athens, I mean," she says), but insists it has nothing to do with George Emerson?

Maybe it was neither of these things. Maybe it's the fact that whether I read about Byzantium, the Ottomans, World War I, or a myriad of other periods in history, Constantinople/Istanbul is in the center of the action. 

After all that build up, you'd think I would have dozens and dozens of photos and amazing stories to share. But I don't.

In 2012 we planned a four-day trip to Istanbul, but then, for reasons involving Pia's love of cruises, we switched gears and decided to go to Ephesus instead. In 2012, I had a camera and took decent photos for this blog. Now it's 2021 and between masks and hand sanitizer, I have no space for a camera, so you're getting photos from my mobile phone. The best thing I can say about these photos is that they represent my own experiences. 

The next best thing I can say is that there's Pinterest, and Pinterest is full of gorgeous shots of Istanbul and the experiences of strangers. So you can go there, or keep scrolling through my ho-hum shots below. 

The view of the Golden Horn with Haiga Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the Mosque of Suliman across the water.

Scenes of the streets around our apartment in the morning. The rain made for the perfect excuse to spend lots of time in cafes, and at the barber shop so Mihai and Lucian could get a hair cut and a shave.

We went to the Grand Bizarre which ended up being both over, and underwhelming, at the same time.

 

For about a mile leading up to the entrance, the narrow streets are full of stalls selling cheap, disposable trinkets and textiles. If it was a handful of stalls, it would have been one thing, but it was a mile of them, densely compacted. I had the same feeling I get when I'm in a megamall in the U.S, which is to say, it was sort of depressing to see so much inauthentic, hastily made, meaningless stuff. 

My hope was that once we passed through the gate to the Grand Bizarre, the quality of the wares would improve. Sadly, it was more of the same. 

In the end, we bought some loose-leaf tea and then went back across the bridge for a much needed rest with a much-needed, and excellent cup of coffee. 

Istanbul has nearly 30 different districts, it's massive. We were only there for 3 days, so obviously most of it went unexplored due not only to our time frame, but (as usually happens at the end of a long trip) because our energy was flagging. 

So we spent the last day sitting in restaurants and eating excellent food and not taking too many photos because we were preoccupied with eating. It wasn't a bad trade off.

One day I'd like to go back to Istanbul and walk the streets when I've got energy, a good camera, and I'm not preoccupied with all of the changes that await us when we return to the States. 

This coming year, depending on what happens with covid, the Ionescus will probably be limiting their travel adventures to places within the U.S-namely-Oregon and Colorado. 

I suppose it's fitting to end this with Istanbul, since the Istanbul/Constantinople is all about history and the big events of the past, and now it's time to look forward, at what adventures lie ahead.