It was Thursday 15.06.2006 at 7 AM. I woke up in the hotel room somewhere outside the city of Baia Mare in the North of the country. The hotel Mogosa is placed in a ski resort, next to a lake. The weather is dull, so is the room and the feeling I am trying.
I woke up feeling that I was being watched, because I had a very strange dream just before waking. I dreamed that I woke up and that I went to the bathroom. When I returned in the room there was family in the bed I just woke up: a woman with a man and a kid. I asked them what are they doing in my bed and the woman said that they checked in last night and because the hotel manager had no free rooms, they were sent to sleep in the same room with me. I knew that they were sleeping all night with me – but only in the morning after coming out of the bathroom I realised that.
After this dream I woke up. No sun rise to greet the day. The sky is cloudy and heavy. The lake is the same.
I made my backpack and hit the road. When I left the hotel it started rain.
The road through the forest was nice. I was enjoying the fresh air. I like rain and forest.
I finally arrive in the city. Is a nice city – I wonder why mom doesn’t want to move here… maybe is just because is hard to leave your roots so far away.
I pick up my colleague and after finishing some other errands we leave Baia Mare to go to Bistrita that is 146km away. I am driving. The feeling is so good when you drive the car. You feel a step closer to freedom…
The sky is still cloudy and is raining softly. The landscape is green and nice. I like when is not very hot. I like this weather.
My colleague is falling asleep on the right seat. I continue driving…. there are about 2 and a half hours to Bistrita. The road is stirring, left right, left right….we are climbing and then going down the hills. Look, there is the traditional wooden gate of Maramures, that is marking the border between the districts. Is placed on the top of a hill and is easy to see it from all around…
We arrive in Bistrita. First I go to the railway station to buy a thicket for the train to Bucharest. They have no place left but they can give me a thicket in the train that leaves from Saratel (the Salty). I buy it, Saratel is not that far away from Bistrita and I can get there with another train from Bistrita.
After finishing my work my colleague suggest to visit the oldest church in Romania. Build in the 13th century in the Romanic style. I say yes. Saratel is anyway close to the city where the church is.
The village where the church is placed is called Herina. It’s a strange name. I am not sure if it means something.
To get to the village (the village is in a valley), we first have to cross quite a tall hill. From the top of this hill you can see all the surroundings. Here is a parking lot with lots of trucks that are waiting. They are waiting because they are loaded above the legal weight, and because they heard that in another village after Herina the police is weighting their lorries. From this hill you can see the church. The church is white and is placed somehow outside the village on a hill overlooking the valley with houses.
We arrive in the village and we climb by car, on some muddy tracks, to the church. The church had been renovated. It is attentively and nicely renovated. The walls are white and the stone from the doors entrance it has been replaced with new one carefully cut.
We can't enter inside, it is closed. We look at it from outside. From here you can see all the areas around. Not too many houses get close to the church. In fact there is only one that is actually the school of the village. Most likely the school is built where the first school of the village was build, close to the Holy Spirit.
We take a couple of pictures. We comment about the church. The church has the left tower build in a more recent style (baroque most likely) than the other one that obviously is original (Romanic style). Maybe the tower, I say, was hit by a lighting and burnt. On such an isolated place it is very likely.
After visiting the church I am feeling very hungry. I had nothing else but some crackers and biscuits all day long, and is 5 PM.
Maybe we can find a place where we can eat traditional food – not the traditionalism that is sold in Bucharest… but the true one. No we can’t find, or we don’t want to stop at the places where it looked like they are having something to eat. The reason: they didn’t look enough traditional.
Then my colleague says that close to Saratel in an another village called Arcalia there is a very nice reservation of trees. We go there. The road there is made of reinforced concrete slabs placed one near another. The car is making a noise similar to a train on railway. The road is long and seems in the middle of nowhere.
We get to the village finally. The park is not big deal. Or it could have been if it wouldn’t have been 3 large dogs accompanying us everywhere, that “They are doing no harm to people…” after the words of the gateman. The dogs are large and they feel like playing. I feel like leaving the park.
The park is now the francophone centre of the region (!!??!?)
and is surrounding a manor that is resembling to the palace of Brighton build by Lord… I don’t know. With the same onion like towers and windows.
After the park we return to Saratel to look for the railway station. No sign for the railway station. The rails are passing though the village but no station. We go up and down. Finaly we ask and we find out that the station is on the same road that leads to Arcalia, where the park was, but it is closer to Saratel on a road that takes right from the concrete one.
We finally get there. A regular, simple railway station that has nothing special. Is in the middle of nowhere. It is dirty and the waiting room smells bad. The sky is still dull, it starts to rain and I need to enter the waiting room. I sit on the edge of a chair. I am starting to read a magazine. The “Lumea” (The World) magazine is coming from the communistic times but nowadays is totally new: has a nice presentation and has good, smart article. The articles are mostly socio-political.
I read an article of a Romanian guy that saved more Jews than Schindler. The story is exciting but when it starts describing the way Jews were treated I start remembering Auschwitz… This railway station I was in, I think, it looked the same then as well. The place is smelling as, I think, Auschwitz would have smelled and probably still is, where the rooms filled with suitcases and shoes and hair are. It smells like people and sweat.
I want to get out in the light. Enough with articles! I want a bit of civilisation. I take out my laptop. But is not working battery let me down.
Slowly the sky was getting darker. To the west it turned out red… from pink to red…. Night is falling… Through the patches of dark clouds you could see a sparkling red light.
I listen to the music trying to get rid of the feeling of emptiness. What is this feeling? The man at the edge of century? The feeling of weakness mankind has proved along centuries?
And I am in the middle of nowhere! Several man are walking on the platform waiting the train. They are quiet. Suddenly some brighter laughs. Two women appear and cross the platform in a lively chit chat. They pass me leaving behind a nice smell. They are dressed better than all the man waiting the train. I think woman played a decisive role in the development of mankind. I wonder if anyone thought of researching on the role of women in the development of mankind. Well, I can suggest this to a feminist group.
I am listening to music and I am dancing. I want to quit this place and I am cold and hungry! I want home!.
Finally the train is arriving. I can hear the signal! I see the light. I check my thicket: bed 46 wagon 7. The wagons that arrives at the platform are the first ones only. I need to run to the rear of the train.
If anyone would have asked me why I am running I would have said that I was afraid that the train will not stay long and I wouldn’t have arrived my wagon in time. But the truth is that I was running to leave that place!
I arrived at the stairs of the wagon. They are so tall! The conductor was waiting me. I give him the thicket while grabbing the door to pull myself up. I arrive in my cabin. Is warm, and comfortable it looked welcoming – my thicket to civilisation!. The room mate was a large guy that was snoring when I entered and woke up long time after I entered. Even from the first lines he told me that he is a lawyer and Pentecostal. He was going to Bucharest to defend a case of someone “of ours”. I jump in the bed above. I was so tired that I felt like crying. It is 22:30
What was this?
