We got off the bus and walked into the dodgiest part of Brasov. Our new Romanian friend wasn’t kidding when he said he lived in the ghetto. We followed him up to his tiny apartment and sat on the bed whilst he yelled at his girlfriend to get up and make us some sandwiches. My heart was going so fast at this point, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. There was no question that this was an entirely stupid move to still be hanging out with these guys.
And then it sort of got amusing. As I’ve mentioned, Romanian culture is just so… giving. Romanian bounced around his flat making us coffee, pouring Fanta, offering food and most importantly, showing us music on his computer. Despite the fact at this point he was wearing checker suspenders on shorts, complete with black Doc Martin boots for the Authentic Skinhead Look, he was possibly the most hospitable skinhead I’ve ever met. Oddly, I began to feel better. Moldovan was telling us about his brother. “He’s nice, blonde, he studies, you like him, he is a good man”.
What barged through the door next was possibly the scariest person I’ve ever seen in my life. Sure, he might of been blonde once, but he had no hair now. He had scars across his face and he just sneered at us. My heart rate was back up to 1000 beats per second. Romanian greeted him by throwing a few punches and they fist fought for a bit, before slapping each other on the back and lighting cigarettes. After a coffee and more cigarettes, we left, with Moldovan promising us cheap accommodation at his brothers University Hall. As I went to leave the flat, another guy who I assumed didn’t speak English, shook my hand. “Be careful here”, he suddenly smiled. “There are ghosts”.
I didn’t know what that meant then and I still don’t know what it means now.
We eventually found the University halls. Moldovan was actually a pretty nice guy. He threw our bags in the corner, found us some slippers, directed us to the showers. “I show you round.” What about his brother? That was the part I was worried about. “Oh no, he’s not coming back here tonight. He’s going back to Sighisoara for the festival.” Marcelo and I relaxed fully at this point. Not 20 minutes later, his brother burst through the door with Romanian at his side. They both were grasping plastic bags of yellow glue. Sort of looked like vomit in a bag. Without saying hi, they sat down and began to huff. Our Moldovan host was very upset. “You don’t need to see this!” He dragged us out the room and downstairs. “Nevermind them, I will show you around beautiful Brasov”. Brasov is indeed beautiful. It was the leaving-glue-sniffers-with-our-bags part that was making me feel ill. “Don’t worry”, Marcelo whispered. “I have all our passports, our money. Everything is going to be ok”.
As I was mentally kissing my Ipod goodbye, we headed into the city centre. We visited the Black Church which is gorgeous place and made our way to the first pub in Romania, called the Britannia, I think. The toilets were amazingly awful. There was actually no bowl, no seat. Instead, the porcelain was on the ground, with grooves for you to stand on. You had to pee standing up, something I’m not exactly practised at. There was no toilet paper. There was no soap. I’d been drinking, I had no choice.
Moldovan found it more and more difficult to speak in English. Fair play to him, he’d been drinking for the last 5 days during his Metallica concert. Marcelo was getting frustrated. “You know, my mother is from Romania. Maybe if you can’t find the word in English, say it in Romanian and I’ll understand”. It wasn’t long before Moldovan figured out that Marcelo knew more than just the odd word. “You speak Romanian?” We couldn’t lie any longer. “OH MY GOD” the Moldovan yelled. “I’ve been busting my balls to speak English to you guys and you speak Romanian! ?Why didn’t you tell me?” Marcelo told me that he told Moldovan that we thought it would be a funny joke, but I’m fairly sure he blamed the whole idea on me.
For the rest of the night, nothing was in English. I followed the boys around, bored and drunk. The night was ok though. We tried Chorba and some other hell awful polenta crap. We stumbled back to our rooms where, to my delight, our bags were totally fine – nothing had been searched through. The Romanians had left their bags of glue there though. Marcelo and I, being drunk and generally retarded, carefully picked one up and sniffed at it.
“Smells like whiteboard markers.”
“How pointless!? What’s so good about this glue that they have to spend so much money on it?”
“Maybe it is special industrial glue?”
Finally we went to bed. The next morning we awoke before Moldovan and I wanted to get the hell outta there.
“We can’t just leave”, Marcelo told me. “He wanted to come out to Castle Bran with us”.
That put me over the edge. No fucking way was I following these guys around, generally being ignored and having to ask for everything to be translated for me. I had actually turned into an irrational psycho bitch, I haven’t had a tantrum like that since highschool. I think I screamed at Marcelo at the same time as giving him the silent treatment, the poor guy was beside himself trying to cheer me up. We stomped around the city trying to find a bottle of Jack Daniels to give Moldovan to say thanks. When we got back, he was still asleep. There was no way he’d be getting up today. I was so relieved I almost cried.
The rest of the day turned out really well. We were sitting at an outdoor cafe when I suddenly had a brainwave. Despite it being ‘normal’ for people to stare at you in Romania, I was getting stared at by EVERYONE. Including groups of school children. I finally figured out what it was.
“Marcelo, have you ever.. seen anyone here with blonde hair? Anyone?”
“No, I told you this before we got here. You’re hot property. I swear you never listen to me!”
Revelation ruined, I took a very green looking Marcelo up on a gondala where he freaked out about heights for a bit. We saw a bit more of the city, then got on a bus out to Castle Bran – Draculas Castle.
Did you take any pictures of the skinheads? I’m loving this story, and I’m so jealous of your adventures.
Heh, no, no photos sadly. My digicam had run out of batteries and we brought a disposable camera the next day. Sorta guttered about it really!
Ha sounds like an awesome time, should had a burn on the rag and can? you so sholda taken more photos, sounds like you coulda got some awesome ones.. Speaking of which took some cool ones recently – check me blog
Dodgey fun is the best fun… especially when you look back afterwards and say, wow, we so could have been bashed/mugged/raped etc. Seem like nice people though, boganometry must be globally recognised :)