A Day in the Life

If you read this site regularly you know I am VERY MUCH a slow-travel proponent. But part of this summer's scheme involved interspersing roughly monthlong productive stays with quick-travel. It's a bit faster than I'd like, frankly - anything less than a two-night stay gets me worn out fast - but it means I've seen a lot! Here, to give you a sample of what that nonsense looks like, is my day in Romania last week. After the jump: too many all many things.

Oradea at 6:45 AM, all stately and majestic and fleeting as I ran through it like a maniac.

I'd arrived in Oradea late at night; my AirBnB host picked me up at the airport, her second act of kindness after having picked me up a plug adapter when I left mine in the flat back in Milan.  I started the next day early, leaving around 6 AM to explore Oradea before catching a connection to Timisoara, where I knew I wanted to spend more of the day.

Well and pretty, though SECRETS ALERT this is cleverly framed to obscure the construction site that made it a little less gorgeous in person. Still: WATER AND REFLECTIONS AND ARCHITECTURE AND TREES, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT EVER.

Walking through Oradea's empty streets, particularly as I left the more stolid Soviet-era architecture of the outlying parts and made my way into the Secessionist explosion of glorious architecture in the center, I was struck by how lovely the city was, and also how much renovation was afoot. Nearly half the buildings in the historic core had scaffolding and tarps covering them, clearly a major push afoot to renovate and restore. It was a little bummerish for me, combining with the early Sunday morning hour to make the place feel a little bit like a film set that was 80% complete but not yet ready to shoot. Still, once the renovations are complete it's going to be quite stunning.

I mean, it's plenty stunning as is, but you know, why not go for more stunning when you can.

I made my way up to the train station, where my host had helpfully informed me that my bus to Timisoara would be. After waiting a bit for a bus that was due to arrive at 8:30, I thought I should check the train schedule, to see if the one morning train had left on time. I hit the ticket window, said "Timisoara?" and the woman started shaking her head, pointing at the platforms, and yelling. I couldn't tell if she was saying the train was there, or had left, and didn't know if I could buy a ticket on the train. I raced out to the tracks, where the assigned track was empty; another track had a train idling on it, but in my early pre-coffee brain I just assumed the train I wanted had gone. Later I would realize this was obviously not the case, but oh well. I settled into the waiting area in the train station, pulled out my laptop and started trying to sort out schedules for the train (none more til the end of the day) and busses (a few more on tap). A Roma woman approached, asking a series of questions that I couldn't understand; after explaining I didn't speak Romanian a few times (one of only a handful of phrases I had time to learn), I went back to my work. She stared at me for a while before moving away to feed pigeons.

Side note: American money is depressingly lame compared to literally every other country's currency. Romanian currency has translucent sections to it! I loved it so.

I made my way back to the front of the station, stopping into a coffee shop favored by the taxi touts waiting out front, clumsily ordered coffee and asked in English if they knew where the bus to Timisoara left from; they shook their heads. Finishing my coffee, I noticed that the bus agency's door had opened; I strolled over, asked the proprietor if he spoke English (he waggled his hand "a little bit") and asked if I could get a ticket to Timisoara. He said "Pay on bus" and gestured toward the station. "In front of the station?" "Yes."

An hour passed, then two. I'd looked at the schedule online and knew two busses should have come and gone. A van pulled in, and knowing that sometimes "bus" means "van" in this region, I asked the driver if he was bound for Timisoara. "No, sorry," he said, returning about fifteen minutes later to tell me "those busses pick up down there," gesturing down the road. "On the other side?" "Yes."

Oradea: also a place that reminds you that Soviet architecture and urban planning was not especially lovely.

Crossing the road, I suddenly and stupidly remembered that I had downloaded Google Translate's Romanian language pack onto my phone. I hastily typed out "Do you know where the bus to Timisoara departs?" and started daisy-chaining my way across people waiting for their own busses or trams, all of whom became quickly kind and helpful as they arm-gestured me up the road and around the corner, where I finally saw two vans emblazoned with "ORADEA TIMISOARA." Found it! ...with 90 minutes to go til the next bus left. OKAY.

The bus gradually filled up, eventually packed with people standing as well as sitting. We made about 3/4 of the trip, then took an extended lunch stop, at which point an older woman getting on decided that she wanted to trade her seat for mine, and enlisted the bus's passengers in communicating this to me. I shrugged and made the change, and we made our last leg into Timisoara. I hopped off the bus and walked to my hostel, a goofy character-heavy spot called Hostel Costel, put in a deposit for a key to my room, took a shower, and headed off into the city.

Hostel Costel has a mustache theme of some sort going, and that is hecka great if you ask me!

Timisoara was gorgeous, its architecture reminding me variously of Habsburg holdings, Secessionist buildings, and even in places (very unexpectedly) Gaudi in his drooping, organic, ornate majesty. The city was also packed with people - families, clusters of young people, kids, all out and strolling on a Sunday afternoon. The city centre is full of the kind of town squares that I love, in Italy or elsewhere, providing a social space for people to see the community on a ramble.

One corner of the massive central square. I'll grant that I'm a sucker for blue skies, but holy moly this area was grand.

I settled into a midafternoon meal, my first of the day, grabbing a streetside table at a recommended pizzeria down the road from an art installation where local DJs were spinning, and then made my way to the National Theatre, where the Romanian National Opera was performing La Traviata. It was an interesting experience - the music direction was phenomenal, with admirable vocal performances and acting from the singers, and a stellar orchestra - but the direction was full of clumsy storytelling and odd, inconsistent miking. Where most singers were unamplified, there were some area mics onstage that would catch random vocalists and boost them unnecessarily, or (more often) would catch the beads on a singer's dress as they grazed the floor, calling to mind Lina's pearls in Singin' in the Rain. I left after the first act - it was a gorgeous night, my only one in town, and I wanted to ramble.

Mind you, $7 tickets to the opera are pretty magical even with the odd grumble about sound issues

I passed a family whose sixish-year-old daughter was throwing a dramatic fit over whatever journey they were taking; we caught eyes and shared a brief smile, her faux-agony giving way to recognition that somebody had clocked her performance. I made my way to a vinyl shop/craft beer bar; one of the co-owners was brewmaster at a local brewery, the other had founded the shop as the city's first vinyl store in the rebirth of that format. We chatted a bit over a beer, and I admired their deep-cuts collection, knowing I couldn't lug anything around with me for the rest of the summer.

Maybe this was the central square in Timisoara? There were multiple gorgeous and cool squares is I guess my point okay.

I headed back as the sun set, skirting the canal ringing the old city center, now beautifully set up as a park of sorts. Couples lounged and made out on the banks and on benches, cyclists zipped along the paths, and just up the hill from the river a series of bars sold drinks to people who weren't just bringing their own to the park. I passed about a half-dozen spots where you could hear bands playing live on temporary stages, at least one spot with ping-pong games going, and was passed by a pirate boat offering rides to little kids.

The colored umbrellas thing ain't new, but I'm a sucker for it every dang time.

Back in the hostel as night fell, I pulled out my by-now well-broken-in and scuffed-from-hiking boots, set to polishing them and sending emails to future hosts to confirm my next few stays; realizing I'd kept a set of keys to my Oradea host's place, I messaged her and made arrangements to mail them back to her the next morning on my way out of Timisoara. Having meant to go to bed early, I stayed up a bit past midnight before finally turning in, exhausted but happy. All told, I'd spend thirty-six hours in Romania: long enough to whet my appetite for more, short enough to feel my inadequate grasp of the place. Who knows if I'll have a life that allows me the time and resources to travel to far-flung corners in the years to come, but... I know I'd sure like to try.

THIS LITTLE GUY WAS ADORABLE OK THAT'S ALL BYE