There are a lot of French and Italian travellers here in Romania, plus your typical mix of Americans, Australians and the odd Kiwi. Here's a pick of the more interesting personalities I met in only my first few days there.
Patrick, a New Zealander I met in Cluj Napoca must take some sort of prize for gullibility, nice guy though he was. As he related his story of arrival in Bucharest I couldn't help but cringe a bit inside. Patrick must have been in his late thirties and as such should have known better than to almost be relieved of his money in the Romanian capital.
He had arrived at the train station and was met by a couple of 'really nice locals' who he got to chatting with. After a while they asked him if he knew that the currency in Romania was about to change from Lei to 'Rom'(which is what the currency is often referred to in exchange offices).
Patrick would need to get all his money out of the ATM they said, then exchange his Lei to Rom as soon as possible or he would lose it all . The deadline was imminent. At this stage Patrick thought something smelt fishy. But he still nearly got in their car for a ride to the nearest cash machine! Poor guy, I told him that next time don't speak to anyone unless you want to speak to them, especially not at train stations where such conmen are waiting for us innocent tourists... Patrick headed north from Cluj to rural Maramores. I don't know where he is now. I hope he's okay.
I met Marina at the same hostel. She's a New Yorker in the country for an archeological dig she volunteered for. They were going to dig up an old Roman settlement, but I think she secretly hoped to find a part bat/part human skeleton that would be irrefutable proof of the existence of vampires.
She was doing her PHD in English and lived in Harlem, teaching a class of mostly street savvy black undergrads who she loved but had difficulty understanding at times. They have a language straight from the pages of urbandictionary.com for example 'Why you be beasting Miss?' meaning 'why are you on my back?'. She loved the creativity of their slang and introduces it to her circle of middle class white friends. She even freaks the kids out by using it back to them sometimes. There are some things a grown up European cannot pull off and teen street slang is one of them!
Speaking of slightly absurd use of language sets the scene nicely for me to introduce James from Texas. I met him in Cluj too and he must be one of the most infuriating, entertaining people I have ever met. An almost cartoonish caricature of an ignorant American, he would go on and on for hours spouting his ridiculous opinions and stories. He told two Australians that when they talk to each other it didn't even sound wrong. It was as though they were really speaking English! During dinner one night he professed a dislike for Indian food as 'they put too much curry in that stuff'.
Some other pearls of wisdom included:
How to dance 'Texas Country'*
How to pick up women in Texas country bars
How to pick up women generally...
The first few steps of the later included 'stare at her until she smiles, go over and introduce yourself then immediately ignore her...’
On another occasion he bragged he worked in military intelligence in Iraq and captured the No.7 most wanted at the time. Though this didn't stand up to much scrutiny as it was all 'top secret'. I asked him if the guy was on the 'most wanted playing cards' the US introduced but he couldn't comment.
It was pure theatre.
He was such a tool you couldn't really get angry with him.
He also had the irritating habit of speaking like a 15 year old wannabe hip hop star even though ironically he seemed to exhibit various racial prejudices.
Some favourites...
'Yo you what's the hold up fool'?
'I got game man, check my moves'
'That be banging y'all'
At a nightclub in Cluj we did indeed check his moves and they were almost unbelievably ridiculous. 'Think Walk like an Egyptian' meets an ungainly Michael Jackson with outlandish jerky arm movements. I kept looking around for the hidden cameras. He was either the world's funniest deadpan comic or a hopelessly clueless try-hard. Unfortunately for him I think it's the later. But although it was hard to take him I kind of miss his constant chatter. He was so good for a giggle and he never knew when you were mocking his absurd comments.
On a different note entirely two Romanians I met were fairly interesting characters . Albert, a drunken old farmer I met at a restaurant in beautiful Sighisoara jabbered on about the simple life in Romania and said of New Zealand 'You can have your New Zealand but its not Europe is it? blah blah'. It was actually quite hard to follow what he meant as he flipped immediately from one subject to another. Had he been there I wondered? It was impossible to tell, and he didn't seem to respond to direct questions at least not with answers that had any conceivable relationship to them. He was a German Transylvanian speaking in a thick German accent and went on to say his father was an SS war criminal who burned Jews. He couldn't understand how his own father could do that when he personally 'loved everyone...'
Clearly quite intense dinner conversation.
Michael co-owned the hostel I stayed in at Sighisoara. He was half Romanian and half German and must have been in his mid 30s. I met him over a bottle of wine and it would be fair to say he was feeling a bit down on his luck. He was planning to get way from 'the bitch' he was with and was figuring out how to do so. Interestingly he said his grandfather was also a Nazi war criminal. He confessed he didn’t much like Muslims but it seemed that was mainly because they didn't drink!
He told great stories of how ten years ago the local swimming pools would be full of 'topless goddesses'. But for some unknown reason that had all changed unfortunately. He blamed it on the influence of the European Union. Anyway apart from anything else that spelt the end of the most popular hostel day trip they had ever had! He used to go everyday in summer. All he had left were the memories, and of course some photos...
When I told him I was interested in travelling north to the Moldavian monasteries he was incredulous.
'Why??'
I wasn't particularly religious no, it just sounded interesting I said.
He urged me to go to Brasov, get wasted... meet women.
Pretty sound advice probably. You know what they say once you've seen one monastery you've seen them all!
* It should be noted that if you were ignorant of such terms as 'Texas country' or the more popular 'Texas country' musicians James would become incredulous. How was that possible he wondered.
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