Entering Romania and meeting some kids
1/8/07
By Dan


Since the trip began we've been on Czech and Hungarian TV stations and a few Hungarian news stations.
The message must be out because on the way to Romania, we were recognised twice at petrol stations by middle aged Hungarians who’d seen us on TV. One of them, wearing the smallest shorts east of the Danube delta, helped us negotiate for petrol in Romania after we foolishly ran out of gas without any local currency or knowledge of the exchange rate.

Entering Romania from Hungary felt like entering another world. The border town we drove through was dusty, windswept and dilapidated. Full of beggars, chancers and street children. Every building seemed to be crumbling, with the main features broken windows and flaking paint.

But as we got into the countryside, the scenery, and my opinion, slowly shifted.

Driving through the Carpathian Mountains, there is a real Alpine feel. Tall evergreens cover the hillsides, with streams, rivers and dams along narrow valleys. But the houses are different – less of the sturdy looking log cabins preferred by the French, more rickety wooden shacks.

The old women here in the countryside genuinely look like storybook gypsies – sturdily built, leathered faces, large bosoms and shawls wrapped around their heads. They always seem to be carrying a wicker basket, child or animal.
The old men too have a comic appearance, often wearing worn old fedora hats on top of tanned, wrinkled faces which lift into a gurn when they offer a gummy grin at our passing cars.

We are getting a lot of attention as we pass through. Cameras snap us at petrol stations and kids wave along the route. Older folk stop and stare as if to ask whatever next will come through their country. Street dogs bark as we pass, and plump, ripe cows show scant regard for road safety, standing casually in the road to admire our paintwork. You can’t outstare a cow.
Even on the manicured main roads locals ride horse and cart alongside a mix of up-to-date Western, and clapped-out Soviet vehicles.

Romania truly feels like Europe’s frontier. People in the countryside have been living the same way for hundreds of years –tending their flocks or walking the harvest across their fields. In the towns you can see more clearly how Soviet rule and the subsequent capitalist incursion has affected life.
Women wearing traditional headdress and Reebok tracksuit trousers hang carpets out to beat. Young kids wearing baggy jeans and pumps queue for the bus alongside old men in waistcoats carrying chickens.
Grand, bold, concrete, Soviet buildings sit and crumble next to sharply painted, stainless steel, panelled malls.

We visited our first charity in Bacau on Thursday (August 2, 2007). It is basically a hostel for children who live on the street. Nine kids live there pretty much permanently, and others turn up for the day centre.
I brought a football along, thinking the best way to bond with the kids would be the beautiful game- but I wasn’t prepared for the reception. The kids were crazy, full of all the energy you’d expect of excitable 10, 11 and 12-year-olds.

We had a high-energy kick about and then took them for a spin in the cars. They loved it, screaming, squealing, grabbing the wheel and honking the horn.

mrdanmurdoch@gmail.com

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