Sunday, September 23, 2012
When we wake up,
toasty warm under the thick covers in our 18th century room, it is
misty and cold outside.
I’m first in the bathroom, which has a plastic shower
cabin unit with curved doors, set in a corner. The shower itself is handheld,
attached to a hook on the wall. When I turn it on I, and the entire bathroom
behind me, are instantly sprayed with cold water, since the shower, I realize,
is facing out. I am now really awake and have to dry to floor, naked and
shivering, while the water gets warm, showerhead prudently laid on the floor of
the unit. I explain all of this to Oswaldo before it’s his turn, but I even so
I hear, “I HATE this kind of shower,” accompanied by the sounds of him banging
into the walls of the tight unit as he tries to close the reluctantly sliding
doors – he says more, but I cannot make out the words over the rushing water.
He too is really awake when he returns, and we head down for breakfast in the
ancient basement, where we share an omelet and a basket of country bread and
have unexpectedly fancy ‘long’ expressos, served everywhere in this part of
rural Romania in elegant red or white cups with matching sugar and cream
containers.
Marinel is waiting
to take our luggage and walk with us across the village square to the museum, where the
lady in charge does not speak English. We are free to look at the collection,
focused on the tools of the Hungarian guilds,
which founded this town, and the heroes
and weaponry of its history. Meanwhile Marinel is subjected to an excited flow
of Romanian, which he looks into space and discretely shifts from one foot to
the other. “You know everything now?” I ask. “Yes many times,” he says, “she
explain many times.”
The high point
is a collection of large dolls dressed in traditional garbs.
Apparently the
town asked 17year old boys and girls to clothe the dolls and to enlist their
mothers’ and grandmothers’ help in the job. The result is moving in all the
details we recognize from the museums we’ve already visited, but also in the
clever way in which these kids were encouraged to resurrect the customs of the
past. http://www.flickr.com/photos/siric/sets/72157631605002167/
The fog is
lifting as we head out of town and resume our eagle watch on the flat open
fields, which stretch on either side. The birds are maddeningly difficult to
get in the frame. The instant we stop the car they glide confidently off.
Easier to
photograph are the sheep, which we now see a lot of in large herds, always guarded
by a shepherd and a couple of purposeful dogs.
Sometimes they flow like a stream of yeasty water across the road and down a bank. I
notice a sheep straggling behind – she’s limping and followed by a dog. Every
time she stops the dog stops also and just waits, looking around.
Soon we reach
the Ozone Hotel, in the middle of a small resort town, surrounded by
pine-covered hills and crystalline air. The hotel is perhaps modern art deco,
with a lot of details in black and grey. It seems pretty empty, except for us,
and very new – no massage in place, nor any spa treatments - but with a large
indoor pool and a Jacuzzi. We take a walk around in the sun, explore a pretty
orthodox church, and continue on vaguely in search of a river we’re sure must
be nearby. We don’t find it, but instead share a beer in a modest place on an
unpaved road, where you get your beer in a little store and have it outside
under a parasol. That’s where I buy two sausages for the strays near our table.
One eats it in one gulp and looks around for more and the other – a mother with
hanging teats – steals off to eat it alone.
We call Marinel
to get us and we head out of town to St. Anne’s s Lake, a sacred lake set in
the mountains. Many legends are connected to this lake, which has no
tributaries and basically consists of very clear rainwater. Getting there is a
bit like driving through the Floresta da Tijuca – with different vegetation, of
course. We are not disappointed when we reach the still lake in the sun with a
couple of ducks floating on it. We take off our shoes and socks and stand in
the cold water. Ahhhh.
Back at the
hotel a massage has been arranged for me at the nearby Tusnad hotel. With our
inability to communicate and with some of the communist era relics we’ve seen
around I’ve been haunted by the Bergman film, The Silence, which I saw when I
was very young. Two women stranded in an unnamed Balkan country. The hotel I now
enter could have been part of the scenery in that movie, dark, with a badly
kept up 50-60s look. I pay 34 lei at the reception and a Romanian receptionist
takes me in a creaky elevator to a floor, where after walking down many
passageways we reach a spa area. She hands me over to a masseuse wearing a
sweater under her uniform. This woman leads me through a series of empty treatment
rooms, wooden contraptions, empty baths with hoses, all vaguely menacing, and
leaves me in a dark wood paneled room with a massage table next to an ancient
blue bathtub. All this in silence. She turns out to be a competent masseuse, if
not very specific. I feel I’m in good hands.
Back at the
hotel it’s time for dinner and the challenge of putting together a vegetarian
meal. The waitress is astonished when we order an appetizer and five side
dishes, and when she disappears down the long empty dining room, we hear the giggles
of several women in the kitchen as they probably contemplate our choices. We
sip an excellent Romanian Sauvignon Blanc while we wait – and wait – but the
meal that comes out is excellent – moist rice, sautéed mushrooms, mixed vegetables
in an egg base, potatoes baked with rosemary, and two fabulous thick slices of
lightly breaded cheese, which burst open with melted cheese when you cut into
them. Dessert is described as “fried dumplings,” but is perhaps beignets, with
dabs of cream and fresh berry conserve. We eat every little bit.
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