Emails from the Edge (32 page)
Read Emails from the Edge Online
Authors: Ken Haley
DAY 527 (2 DECEMBER): SZEGED
My last stop in Hungary brings me within reach of Transylvania.
Szeged is a large town, laid out according to an interesting pattern of concentric boulevards. I buy roasted chestnuts from a stall in the sunken cobblestone square, which has been converted into a Christmas market.
With the temperature perhaps 5°C above zero, I eat them huddled at the ideal distance of two metres from one of the mini-bonfires lit by order of the civic authorities. Much closer and I would share the chestnuts' fate.
ROMANIA: 3â14 DECEMBER
DAY 528 (3 DECEMBER): ARAD
On a rainy day like this, Arad railway station must be one of the most dispiriting places on Earth. People who are obviously dirt-poor, in ragged clothes and many of them wandering round in an alcoholic stupor at ten in the morning, would inspire pity if they didn't make me so concerned for the security of my bags. The contrast with self-possessed, self-confident Hungary couldn't be more marked.
DAY 530 (5 DECEMBER): SIBIU
In this history-punctured neck of the Transylvanian woods, the dread of Dracula cannot be entirely avoided so the best policy is to confront it during daylight hours.
For seven centuries, the Gothic pile now christened the Evangelical Church has been this town's most prominent landmark. Iacob-Lucian Marginean, a young tour guide steeped in its lore, ushers me through a door that is usually padlocked and points to a row of medieval tombstones normally off limits to visitors. Lo and behold, there is the coffin lid that once covered the mortal remains of Dracula's (Vlad Tepes's) son, Prince Mihnea the Bad.
When we get talking and I mention that the lifestyle of the Gypsies (Roma) in today's Romania actually interests me more than tales of vampires past, Lucian offers to introduce me to one of their two contending rulers, both of whom live in this central Romanian town. The Gypsy king (or, if you prefer, Romany emperor) he has in mind is Iulian Radulescu, a distinctly unwell-looking monarch who weighs a staggering 164 kilograms and lives in a mock-Italianate mansion in one of Sibiu's poorer districts. Lucian warns me that Radulescu is seldom home, but we hop into a taxi hailed on the street and trust to luck. When Lucian discovers that King Iulian is not only at home but willing to grant us an audience, he is bug-eyed with amazement.
Surrounded by a rather dishevelled band of courtiers, his majesty dispenses with protocol and chattily informs us that he has visited 220 countries. Both aware that this is a score more nations than actually exist, Lucian and I exchange glances but hold our peace. After all, the pronouncements of a king are above contradiction.
Jolly and beaming, Radulescu spreads further enlightenment by assuring us that since the solar eclipse of August 1999 the Roma have cast aside their old reputation for laziness and become âspiritually mature and not frightened or terrified of any work'.
Our deferential smiles appear to incite even freer speech. Recently, the monarch tells us, he wrote to all (220?) world leaders, asking them to lend his people sums of money, repayment guaranteed after 100 years. Next he divulges a secret of high state that has Lucian and me struggling to contain our astonishment. âBill Clinton is really a Gypsy but he refused to admit it because if he did he was afraid they would make him leave the presidency.'
As you see, King Iulian is an easy figure to ridicule, but over the years he has attended international conferences on indigenous peoples and he speaks affectingly of the need to educate young Roma about their cultural history. The Romany in Romania is still the butt of widespread daily discrimination. In Bucharest back in the mid-'80s I saw one of their number thrown headlong through the plate-glass door of a café (a sight not easily forgotten). In the capital today, of course, things have progressed: now they are thrown bodily out of McDonald's.
As Iulian is keenly aware of his people's low status in the land of their birth, it is hard to remain non-judgmental about his pet project of building a full-scale replica of the Taj Mahal at a cost of A$50 million. I get Lucian to ask him where the money will be coming from.
âWe have fifteen tonnes of gold to pay for it, but that has been confiscated by the Romanian state,' says Radulescu.
Still, he looks very confident about his chances of getting the lucre released. Why? Because the ruling president, Ion Iliescu, is (keep this a secret, won't you?) a Roma himself.
DAY 532 (7 DECEMBER): PITESTI
Last night I sat in my hotel foyer captivated by the first decent snowfall of the entire crossing. It was dumping down so heavily that after an hour my wheels could barely move through the white crush on the hotel doorstep.
For the first time I realise that over the final stages of this transcontinental trek the intense cold is going to be my greatest handicap. Paralysis has not left me without feeling in my lower extremities and now I discover that, if the temperature outside is 0°C, my feetâwhere the circulation is sluggish at bestâfeel 10 or 20 degrees colder. Extra socks and fur-lined boots are clearly not going to be enough to save me.
DAY 535 (10 DECEMBER): BUCHAREST
Once before I passed this wayâin 1985, at the height of Ceausescu's reign, when he was busy ripping the heart out of old Bucharest. My most vivid memory of that visit is the razor-wire coils in so-called Liberty Park. Today the people have their political liberty, but most find that their economic chains still chafe.
The most durable physical reminder of Ceausescu's days is the gargantuan House of the People, said to be the biggest building in the world after the Pentagon. Seven thousand homes, not to mention seventeen religious buildings of considerable cultural significance, were destroyed by one man's megalomania. I feel no need to visit. Just to know it exists is enoughâtoo much, rather.
Instead, I head to a highly recommended market. My aim: to secure some material protection against the beastly cold. I bargain for a scarf (not a problem).
Fur-lined footwear is a little harder to track down, but I eventually get that also. What I thought would be the easiest purchase of all, thoughâa genuine Russian-style rabbit-fur hat with earflapsâcannot be had for love or money.
A cold head can lead to a head cold, so I scurry back to the warmth of the youth hostel where I'm staying as quickly as my wheels will carry me. A numb-induced headache and feet you would put in a refrigerator to warm up are my punishments for venturing out onto the streets of Bucharest in December.
Come morning, my body temperature is normal again, but I am well aware that the road ahead, with winter's worst blasts still to come, is going to be no picnic.
DAY 538 (13 DECEMBER): IASI
How appropriate that I should arrive in this former capital of Moldavia province just as a blood-red sun is setting over the land of Drac.
The university town of Iasi is not over-endowed with tourist sights, but one I make a point of checking out is the simple wooden memorial to the Iasi students who were killed protesting against Ceausescu's rule thirteen years ago tomorrow.
Another tragic monument can be found in Copou Park. The park was frequented by Romania's most cherished poet, Mihai Eminescu, who wrote many of his verses beneath a spreading linden tree that flourishes still. Among a dozen marble busts resting on oblong plinths are those of Eminescu and his sweetheart, Veronica Micle. Eminescu died in 1889, aged 39. Grief-stricken, Micle killed herself a fortnight laterâand now the lovers are face to face forever.
MOLDOVA: 14â21 DECEMBER
DAY 540 (15 DECEMBER): CHISINAU
The smallest republic in the old Soviet Union, Moldova is a country principally by default. Hardly anyone you meet actually wants it to be a self-governing state, and it continues to fly its own flag because no one can agree whether it should scurry back under Mother Russia's skirts or attach itself to Romania.
Crossing into Moldova yesterday was special, for two reasons. Passing over the gurgling River Prut on the Romanian frontier at Sculeni, I entered the hundredth foreign country visited in my lifeâor, more exactly, in the 22 years since first leaving Australia at the end of 1980.
The manner of my crossing the border also represented a rare victory for the individual over blind bureaucracy. As the driver indicated we would be stuck there for an hour or so while everyone's paperwork was processed, all the passengers got down from the bus to stretch their legs. Conscious that my hundredth international crossing called for a little ceremony, I asked whether it would be OK to push myself across the bridge to Moldova and clamber back on the coach over there. My motivation was to make this entry âunder my own steam' after so many occasions of being ferried across a border together with dozens of fellow passengers as if we were so many cattle.
At first the Romanian and Moldovan immigration officers were adamant this was out of the question as the law requires people to make the crossing in wheeled vehicles. Well, I told them,
this
is a wheeled vehicle, isn't it? They scratched their heads but then, to their credit, radioed their superior officers for special permission. After an awkward pause, back came the word that, while it mightn't be a âwheeled vehicle' within the meaning of their respective immigration acts, it would be safe to let me make my own border crossing just this once, albeit under supervision.
Today I have more pressing concerns than nationalism or bureaucracy, namely keeping my head from turning into an iceberg, and reminding long-distant family and friends that I haven't overlooked what time of year is coming on.
Teeth chattering, I bustle my way through the crowded central market, practising my city-street slalom technique. First hat off the rack is that vital piece of rabbit fur, and it takes less than a minute here to find what a laborious search in the Bucharest market couldn't turn up. Before long, startled shoppers are looking at me as if I were a midget-sized Boris Karloff going through a mid-life crisis.
DAY 544 (19 DECEMBER): CHISINAU
Lunch, and the hour after it, are spent at the Chisinau McDonald's. It looks just like all the others if you can disregard the shifty-eyed soldiers at the front door with rifles slung over their shoulders, not all that casually.
DAY 545 (20 DECEMBER): CHISINAU
The Soviet-era Hotel Chisinau has not exactly moved with the times. I stay there only because it has a lift. But the foyer security officers who operate as pimpsâand one suspects fulfil even seedier rolesâmake you feel you are under constant surveillance, even as a paying guest.
That, at least, remains the status quo in the foyer. Four floors up, there has been a definite post-Soviet shift. Sergei Mifodovski is the type of no-holds-barred capitalist who would thrive in today's Moscow. Here he struggles against conservative local opinion but is confident that interest in his privatised dating agency will pick up once word of it gets about.
Romance, Love and Marriage, as he calls the business, started up just three months ago in Room 440, which he is renting by the month. An English translator with a personal computer and loads of initiative, 30-year-old Mifodovski is anxious to persuade me his business is a legitimate operation.
What does he offer the girls whose charms he has posted on the Internet? Why, romance, love, perhaps even marriage and, if all goes right, the chance to make a new life abroadâwhich may be the most powerful lure of all in dirt-poor Moldova, where the average monthly wage is less than A$100.
Most of the women he has signed up are Russians, which makes sense, given that thousands of Russian men have left the country in recent years. Mifodovski, himself divorced, explains how his business works. âWhen a man responds to one of my girlsâsay, Vikki hereâI write on the Net that this girl was placed by the Moldovan [my] marriage agency. In that case, he must be willing to sign a marriage contract. The fee for that contract is about US$500. The man must provide appropriate medical papers because the girls are afraid of venereal illness. For my part, I also guarantee the girls are healthy, they don't have AIDS and they are not married.'
How can he be certain of any of that?
âOur Moldovan passports are provided with special stamps so we can be sure about marital status,' he replies. And he makes sure the district hospital gives each woman a clean bill of sexual health.
Vikki, a 28-year-old natural blonde, is in no obvious need of an agency to land herself a man. But she tells me a tale of ill use and corruption that is all too credible, this being Moldova. As a qualified gynaecologist, she says, âI am well able to work as a doctor, and I want to, but I can't work in a hospital here without giving a good bribe to the director. And I refuse to do that.'
How much?
â[US] $5000.'
Plus, Vikki is a divorcée with one child, and the stigma for a deserted wife and single mother in this society is hard to shake off.
Vikki appears to regard Mifodovski as a great benefactor, but now she finds herself in a terrible new fix. As he translates, she tells me through brimming tears that she cannot choose between two of the agency's clients. One, a Swiss man, has been emailing her every day for weeks; the other, an American, keeps her in nail-biting suspense. Clearly, she fancies the idea of life in America far more than going to Switzerlandâhence the tussle between head and heart.
Without prompting, she says, âOur men are of very bad quality. They are only interested in appearance, not in the inner qualities.'
Mifodovski, while striving to retain his professional impartiality, cannot resist a little matchmaking as Vikki digs herself in deeper. He breaks off translating to tell me that Vikki speaks French, the language of her Swiss paramour, who, he adds, has embarked on a crash course in Russian.
While telling me all this, Mifodovski moves about the room to make space for a telephone technician who has arrived to install a second line, for incoming international calls. It is on this line that I leave Vikki, perched on the edge of the couch, still awaiting that long-delayed call from the States.
My last stop in Hungary brings me within reach of Transylvania.
Szeged is a large town, laid out according to an interesting pattern of concentric boulevards. I buy roasted chestnuts from a stall in the sunken cobblestone square, which has been converted into a Christmas market.
With the temperature perhaps 5°C above zero, I eat them huddled at the ideal distance of two metres from one of the mini-bonfires lit by order of the civic authorities. Much closer and I would share the chestnuts' fate.
ROMANIA: 3â14 DECEMBER
DAY 528 (3 DECEMBER): ARAD
On a rainy day like this, Arad railway station must be one of the most dispiriting places on Earth. People who are obviously dirt-poor, in ragged clothes and many of them wandering round in an alcoholic stupor at ten in the morning, would inspire pity if they didn't make me so concerned for the security of my bags. The contrast with self-possessed, self-confident Hungary couldn't be more marked.
DAY 530 (5 DECEMBER): SIBIU
In this history-punctured neck of the Transylvanian woods, the dread of Dracula cannot be entirely avoided so the best policy is to confront it during daylight hours.
For seven centuries, the Gothic pile now christened the Evangelical Church has been this town's most prominent landmark. Iacob-Lucian Marginean, a young tour guide steeped in its lore, ushers me through a door that is usually padlocked and points to a row of medieval tombstones normally off limits to visitors. Lo and behold, there is the coffin lid that once covered the mortal remains of Dracula's (Vlad Tepes's) son, Prince Mihnea the Bad.
When we get talking and I mention that the lifestyle of the Gypsies (Roma) in today's Romania actually interests me more than tales of vampires past, Lucian offers to introduce me to one of their two contending rulers, both of whom live in this central Romanian town. The Gypsy king (or, if you prefer, Romany emperor) he has in mind is Iulian Radulescu, a distinctly unwell-looking monarch who weighs a staggering 164 kilograms and lives in a mock-Italianate mansion in one of Sibiu's poorer districts. Lucian warns me that Radulescu is seldom home, but we hop into a taxi hailed on the street and trust to luck. When Lucian discovers that King Iulian is not only at home but willing to grant us an audience, he is bug-eyed with amazement.
Surrounded by a rather dishevelled band of courtiers, his majesty dispenses with protocol and chattily informs us that he has visited 220 countries. Both aware that this is a score more nations than actually exist, Lucian and I exchange glances but hold our peace. After all, the pronouncements of a king are above contradiction.
Jolly and beaming, Radulescu spreads further enlightenment by assuring us that since the solar eclipse of August 1999 the Roma have cast aside their old reputation for laziness and become âspiritually mature and not frightened or terrified of any work'.
Our deferential smiles appear to incite even freer speech. Recently, the monarch tells us, he wrote to all (220?) world leaders, asking them to lend his people sums of money, repayment guaranteed after 100 years. Next he divulges a secret of high state that has Lucian and me struggling to contain our astonishment. âBill Clinton is really a Gypsy but he refused to admit it because if he did he was afraid they would make him leave the presidency.'
As you see, King Iulian is an easy figure to ridicule, but over the years he has attended international conferences on indigenous peoples and he speaks affectingly of the need to educate young Roma about their cultural history. The Romany in Romania is still the butt of widespread daily discrimination. In Bucharest back in the mid-'80s I saw one of their number thrown headlong through the plate-glass door of a café (a sight not easily forgotten). In the capital today, of course, things have progressed: now they are thrown bodily out of McDonald's.
As Iulian is keenly aware of his people's low status in the land of their birth, it is hard to remain non-judgmental about his pet project of building a full-scale replica of the Taj Mahal at a cost of A$50 million. I get Lucian to ask him where the money will be coming from.
âWe have fifteen tonnes of gold to pay for it, but that has been confiscated by the Romanian state,' says Radulescu.
Still, he looks very confident about his chances of getting the lucre released. Why? Because the ruling president, Ion Iliescu, is (keep this a secret, won't you?) a Roma himself.
DAY 532 (7 DECEMBER): PITESTI
Last night I sat in my hotel foyer captivated by the first decent snowfall of the entire crossing. It was dumping down so heavily that after an hour my wheels could barely move through the white crush on the hotel doorstep.
For the first time I realise that over the final stages of this transcontinental trek the intense cold is going to be my greatest handicap. Paralysis has not left me without feeling in my lower extremities and now I discover that, if the temperature outside is 0°C, my feetâwhere the circulation is sluggish at bestâfeel 10 or 20 degrees colder. Extra socks and fur-lined boots are clearly not going to be enough to save me.
DAY 535 (10 DECEMBER): BUCHAREST
Once before I passed this wayâin 1985, at the height of Ceausescu's reign, when he was busy ripping the heart out of old Bucharest. My most vivid memory of that visit is the razor-wire coils in so-called Liberty Park. Today the people have their political liberty, but most find that their economic chains still chafe.
The most durable physical reminder of Ceausescu's days is the gargantuan House of the People, said to be the biggest building in the world after the Pentagon. Seven thousand homes, not to mention seventeen religious buildings of considerable cultural significance, were destroyed by one man's megalomania. I feel no need to visit. Just to know it exists is enoughâtoo much, rather.
Instead, I head to a highly recommended market. My aim: to secure some material protection against the beastly cold. I bargain for a scarf (not a problem).
Fur-lined footwear is a little harder to track down, but I eventually get that also. What I thought would be the easiest purchase of all, thoughâa genuine Russian-style rabbit-fur hat with earflapsâcannot be had for love or money.
A cold head can lead to a head cold, so I scurry back to the warmth of the youth hostel where I'm staying as quickly as my wheels will carry me. A numb-induced headache and feet you would put in a refrigerator to warm up are my punishments for venturing out onto the streets of Bucharest in December.
Come morning, my body temperature is normal again, but I am well aware that the road ahead, with winter's worst blasts still to come, is going to be no picnic.
DAY 538 (13 DECEMBER): IASI
How appropriate that I should arrive in this former capital of Moldavia province just as a blood-red sun is setting over the land of Drac.
The university town of Iasi is not over-endowed with tourist sights, but one I make a point of checking out is the simple wooden memorial to the Iasi students who were killed protesting against Ceausescu's rule thirteen years ago tomorrow.
Another tragic monument can be found in Copou Park. The park was frequented by Romania's most cherished poet, Mihai Eminescu, who wrote many of his verses beneath a spreading linden tree that flourishes still. Among a dozen marble busts resting on oblong plinths are those of Eminescu and his sweetheart, Veronica Micle. Eminescu died in 1889, aged 39. Grief-stricken, Micle killed herself a fortnight laterâand now the lovers are face to face forever.
MOLDOVA: 14â21 DECEMBER
DAY 540 (15 DECEMBER): CHISINAU
The smallest republic in the old Soviet Union, Moldova is a country principally by default. Hardly anyone you meet actually wants it to be a self-governing state, and it continues to fly its own flag because no one can agree whether it should scurry back under Mother Russia's skirts or attach itself to Romania.
Crossing into Moldova yesterday was special, for two reasons. Passing over the gurgling River Prut on the Romanian frontier at Sculeni, I entered the hundredth foreign country visited in my lifeâor, more exactly, in the 22 years since first leaving Australia at the end of 1980.
The manner of my crossing the border also represented a rare victory for the individual over blind bureaucracy. As the driver indicated we would be stuck there for an hour or so while everyone's paperwork was processed, all the passengers got down from the bus to stretch their legs. Conscious that my hundredth international crossing called for a little ceremony, I asked whether it would be OK to push myself across the bridge to Moldova and clamber back on the coach over there. My motivation was to make this entry âunder my own steam' after so many occasions of being ferried across a border together with dozens of fellow passengers as if we were so many cattle.
At first the Romanian and Moldovan immigration officers were adamant this was out of the question as the law requires people to make the crossing in wheeled vehicles. Well, I told them,
this
is a wheeled vehicle, isn't it? They scratched their heads but then, to their credit, radioed their superior officers for special permission. After an awkward pause, back came the word that, while it mightn't be a âwheeled vehicle' within the meaning of their respective immigration acts, it would be safe to let me make my own border crossing just this once, albeit under supervision.
Today I have more pressing concerns than nationalism or bureaucracy, namely keeping my head from turning into an iceberg, and reminding long-distant family and friends that I haven't overlooked what time of year is coming on.
Teeth chattering, I bustle my way through the crowded central market, practising my city-street slalom technique. First hat off the rack is that vital piece of rabbit fur, and it takes less than a minute here to find what a laborious search in the Bucharest market couldn't turn up. Before long, startled shoppers are looking at me as if I were a midget-sized Boris Karloff going through a mid-life crisis.
DAY 544 (19 DECEMBER): CHISINAU
Lunch, and the hour after it, are spent at the Chisinau McDonald's. It looks just like all the others if you can disregard the shifty-eyed soldiers at the front door with rifles slung over their shoulders, not all that casually.
DAY 545 (20 DECEMBER): CHISINAU
The Soviet-era Hotel Chisinau has not exactly moved with the times. I stay there only because it has a lift. But the foyer security officers who operate as pimpsâand one suspects fulfil even seedier rolesâmake you feel you are under constant surveillance, even as a paying guest.
That, at least, remains the status quo in the foyer. Four floors up, there has been a definite post-Soviet shift. Sergei Mifodovski is the type of no-holds-barred capitalist who would thrive in today's Moscow. Here he struggles against conservative local opinion but is confident that interest in his privatised dating agency will pick up once word of it gets about.
Romance, Love and Marriage, as he calls the business, started up just three months ago in Room 440, which he is renting by the month. An English translator with a personal computer and loads of initiative, 30-year-old Mifodovski is anxious to persuade me his business is a legitimate operation.
What does he offer the girls whose charms he has posted on the Internet? Why, romance, love, perhaps even marriage and, if all goes right, the chance to make a new life abroadâwhich may be the most powerful lure of all in dirt-poor Moldova, where the average monthly wage is less than A$100.
Most of the women he has signed up are Russians, which makes sense, given that thousands of Russian men have left the country in recent years. Mifodovski, himself divorced, explains how his business works. âWhen a man responds to one of my girlsâsay, Vikki hereâI write on the Net that this girl was placed by the Moldovan [my] marriage agency. In that case, he must be willing to sign a marriage contract. The fee for that contract is about US$500. The man must provide appropriate medical papers because the girls are afraid of venereal illness. For my part, I also guarantee the girls are healthy, they don't have AIDS and they are not married.'
How can he be certain of any of that?
âOur Moldovan passports are provided with special stamps so we can be sure about marital status,' he replies. And he makes sure the district hospital gives each woman a clean bill of sexual health.
Vikki, a 28-year-old natural blonde, is in no obvious need of an agency to land herself a man. But she tells me a tale of ill use and corruption that is all too credible, this being Moldova. As a qualified gynaecologist, she says, âI am well able to work as a doctor, and I want to, but I can't work in a hospital here without giving a good bribe to the director. And I refuse to do that.'
How much?
â[US] $5000.'
Plus, Vikki is a divorcée with one child, and the stigma for a deserted wife and single mother in this society is hard to shake off.
Vikki appears to regard Mifodovski as a great benefactor, but now she finds herself in a terrible new fix. As he translates, she tells me through brimming tears that she cannot choose between two of the agency's clients. One, a Swiss man, has been emailing her every day for weeks; the other, an American, keeps her in nail-biting suspense. Clearly, she fancies the idea of life in America far more than going to Switzerlandâhence the tussle between head and heart.
Without prompting, she says, âOur men are of very bad quality. They are only interested in appearance, not in the inner qualities.'
Mifodovski, while striving to retain his professional impartiality, cannot resist a little matchmaking as Vikki digs herself in deeper. He breaks off translating to tell me that Vikki speaks French, the language of her Swiss paramour, who, he adds, has embarked on a crash course in Russian.
While telling me all this, Mifodovski moves about the room to make space for a telephone technician who has arrived to install a second line, for incoming international calls. It is on this line that I leave Vikki, perched on the edge of the couch, still awaiting that long-delayed call from the States.
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