Running around Romaina

Cluj and Brasov, as opposing anchors of Transilvania, are not exactly neighbors. The train ride from one to the other is a scheduled 5.5 hours with a usual half hour added bonus. Yet I've found myself on this 6 hour train ride several times in the past few weeks.

Two weeks ago, I went to Cluj for a presentation on U.S. study. This was possibly the most intense 24 hours I've yet experienced in Romania. Mihaela, the woman who runs the Fulbright Educational Advising Center, apparently lives this intensely every day. After checking into my hotel room, I met her at 7pm to head to dinner. The first thing she asked was whether I minded walking fast. Of course not, I love walking fast. But she meant really really fast. Like practically running. I should have taken a hint from her speed walking - the next 27 hours went equally fast.

The workshop was for high school students considering applying for U.S. colleges. All six hours of the workshop were held in the American Corner in Cluj, which is such a beautiful space. I shed a few internal tears as I contemplated everything Brasov misses out on without an American Corner. In addition to the workshop, we had a meeting with the head of the library, a press conference with newspaper journalists, a radio interview at the station, and dinner at a food-sickness-inducing Romanian restaurant. After finishing my salad and half a glass of wine,
I was whisked off to the train station by the library director's driver. My 22:03 train chugged its way into the station, and I climbed into my 6-seat compartment with all the old men making the overnight journey through Romania.

This week, I again boarded a train in Cluj, but this time five hours earlier (but still half an hour late to arrive). Rather than a private car, my ride to the station this time was what the Lonely Planet calls a "con artist taxi driver." LP goes on to say that people like him "unfortunately give Romanians a tainted name across the region." After using up my few words of Romanian, he realized I wasn't from the area and slyly changed the meter dial to reflect a 6,99 RON/KM rate. It's usually in the 1,99 range, or the 2,50 he had posted on the car door. When we pulled into the train station he asked for his 89 RON. That's just under 40 USD, for a taxi ride that usually comes to 6 or 7 USD (15 RON). We yelled at each other for awhile and eventually I got my bag in exchange for 40 RON. This was just 3 lei less than my train ticket to Brasov. Damnit.

But on the train I met a Romanian student who's been studying in Cologne, and our discussions helped to pass the time. She is an economics student, taking her classes in German, but also learning Spanish in Germany because all of her Erasmus friends there are Spanish. So she learns Spanish in order to hang out with them. It was really interesting to hear her perspective on Romania developing - everything from cutting the pig's neck to Germany's excessive recycling to the kids from her home town - basically she thinks it will take 100 years for Romania to be like Germany and Holland. Meaning ridiculously clean and efficient.

She's not someone who wants to escape Romania by going to Western Europe, but she loves being a student in Germany because her professors are approachable and she's learning for the first time in her schooling years. She also pointed out that she can make the same amount working one night at the Irish pub in Cologne as her friends in Medias make working at a bar for a month.

Also, something that suggests Romania is smaller than you might think: She knows my Romanian tutor, as they are from the same town. Our conversation was enjoyable and her stories of the international student scene in Cologne brought back memories of my time in Amsterdam. But my favorite thing that she said was that when she is at home in Medias, her friends call her "European" when she wraps her chewed gum in paper and throws it in the trash rather than simply spitting it out.

There's nothing quite like climbing onto the 51 or #4 bus to pull out of the train station and make my way back to the center of Brasov. I like coming home.