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There were two weekends I went to Romania, the first in 2011 and the second in 2024. The first time I saw very little and went only to meet what should have been the greatest love of my life.
First weekend in Romania for love
We had met online, because she had introduced herself as someone who lived in Bologna, otherwise I would not have considered her. Almost immediately it turned out that this was not really the case. She had friends and relatives 100 km from my house where she would soon return, but at that time she was living 1,600 km away to be near her sick grandfather.
In August she had come to visit me for a week that I rated as idyllic, although to be careful there had been some odd signs, so to speak.
For example, she kept her cell phone unplugged the whole time, while in Romania it rang constantly. Her imminent return to Bologna was postponed for more or less mysterious reasons every week. It would not come true until December and was a catastrophe, but that is another story.
I was exhausted from wanting to see her. For the November 1 bridge she finally agreed that I should go to see her. But not where she lived (small town, people murmur) nor in the interesting but more distant Bucharest over which I flew and barely glimpsed through the cab window.
Real photos/fake photos, like people
In the featured photo is the Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, which I actually saw only on the weekend in Romania in 2024, but it is a metaphor for the story I experienced since 2011.
The palace strongly desired by dictator Ceausescu is one of the largest in the world, and you can see that at first glance. But much is hidden; in fact, the visible part is 84 meters high, but there are another 92 meters underground.
The other photos here were all generated byartificial intelligence, due to privacy concerns.
Weekend in Romania
We met in Craiova, a city in the southwest, not the most renowned. Aside from the excitement of seeing her, mixed with annoyance at her overactive phone and a veil of anguish that was brewing over something I did not understand and would not admit until almost two years later, the only episode to be recounted was what happened to us on our way back from a very alcoholic evening.
The apartment where we slept was located in a suburban area with hundreds of buildings all the same built during the communist regime and very typical of eastern countries.
Nightmare night and not finding accommodation
At that time there was no google maps on the phone. In that suburban neighborhood there were no street names and the house numbers were hidden and confusing. When we got out of the cab we started looking for the right building and entrance; but they all looked the same and there were many of them. The system of opening the gates was rather rudimentary and complicated. Those who were theoretically supposed to act as guides almost didn’t stand.
We tried to get into a small building, failed, but I had my doubts that the problem was that I was unable to open the door more than that I got the door wrong. We wandered in the half-light of dim street lamps, a pack of strays could be heard howling in the distance. There was not a soul, and with some sinister haze it looked like a typical horror movie setting. We tried to stop another cab, which upon seeing us sped up.
Asking a witch for information
After much wandering we met a rather unkempt and creepy old lady, who at that late hour (it must have been 2 a.m.) was sitting on the floor in a landing. Looking like a witch, she gave us directions, we followed her unconvinced, but even that door would not open with our key.
My long-distance girlfriend had always been afraid of big dogs. She had once been attacked, and there are many of them roaming free there.
At one point a small group of them approached, she was trembling and clung even more tightly to me. She was very close to a hysterical fit. Just to say something came out of me: we will tell our children about this mythical night.
We finally passed a couple of guys. They told us that we were already in front of the right doorway, which was just the one where the old woman was before, now gone.
In retrospect, I can say that that weekend in Romania was a disaster; and the episode that seemed like a nightmare at the time (not finding lodging) is the one I remember most fondly now.
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