In Budapest, I saw this health warning on a cigar which I bought to reward myself for having run my best result ever in a half marathon:
I don’t speak Hungarian, but the picture of an apple indicated to me that this cigar is extra-healthy, has lots of vitamins and will make me live long and prosper. I knew cigars were good for my health!
I had too much work yesterday to attend the air show in Targu Mures (Romania), but luckily I could observe part of the display from my apartment.
Yes, the house opposite would benefit from a fresh coat of paint.
“Why did you pick Targu Mures?” I am being asked ever since I moved here. Now I can reply with confidence: “Because we are going to win the Romanian football championship.”
And the local team, ASA Tirgu Mures, was only promoted from second to first division in this season. After a surprise victory against Steaua Bucharest last week, ASA now is at the top position of the league, two points ahead of said Bucharest which has already won the Romanian championship 25 times. A small town club wins against the Romanian Bayern Munich and is close to a sensation with only five matches remaining.
Thus, for the first time in my life I attend a first division football match. The ticket booth opens at 5 p.m. the day before the match. The club announced that 2,500 tickets are still available. The stadium has 8,200 seats. Expecting a huge demand, I am in front of the stadium exactly at 5 p.m. and join the long queue. At the other side of the road, the old stadium is rotting away. The “fan shop” is a small wooden stall, askew and closed. Everything is more personable than at the snooty millionaires’ clubs. “This is like under Ceaușescu” a guy in front of me comments on the length of the queue, in which I spot some sports jackets with the names of former county or district league teams in Germany who have probably gone out of business since.
After 30 minutes it’s my turn. Which seats I want to have? Directly behind the goals, a seat is 5 lei (= 1,14 €) and on the side stands it costs 10 lei (= 2,28 €). For a first division match of the league leader! Incredible.
But there are actually still tickets left the next day. The stadium is not sold out, for which the weather may be responsible. It has been raining the whole day, dark clouds hang above the stadium, with the floodlights which have already been switched on for kick-off at 6:30 p.m. looking like four suns. Some of the spectators wear wellingtons and angler’s jackets. Others carry plastic bags against the rain because umbrellas must be deposited at the entrance gate.
Just before admittance time, the kind of fans show up due to whom I have always been skeptical towards football (not to speak of the customary attitude of intellectuals to look down on ball games). About a dozen young men march towards the stadium in step, waving scarves in the club’s colors above their heads and shouting “Mures, Mures, Mures”. When I see these groups of fans, I cannot but associate it with fascist mass gatherings. The uniforms, the shouting, the idolization, the eager deferral of the individual for the sake of the mass, the glorification of fighting and the denigration of opponents.
But the reader expects a report on a football match, not an essay on political philosophy. So we kick off: the most obvious difference between the two teams is their age. The players of ASA Tirgu Mures could be the fathers of those of FC Viitorul Constanta. On the one side are old men with full beards and some beginnings of paunches, on the other side slim and fast teenagers. ASA plays more of a robust fighting game, not exactly delicate. When Constanta are in possession of the ball, they strive forward like a flash, all the way to the home goal where the boys ultimately flounder. Some of the players of ASA Tirgu Mures are in their late thirties, with the experience and calmness that come with it.
The match goes back and forth, with about the same amount of action in both sides of the pitch. No team is dominating. In the 37th minute, one of Constanta’s players is sent off with a red card, although altogether ASA have been the rougher team. The home team’s numerical advantage does not break Constanta’s will and doesn’t seem to tip the match.
The loud scream of a Constanta player pierces through the rain. He goes to the ground. That sounds like genuine pain. Two players crashed their heads together when they both tried to hit the ball, without any malicious intent. The Constanta player lies on the ground motionless, the ASA man doesn’t care and walks away. I am shocked not because of the roughness of the game, but because of the brutal reactions: The spectators are booing at the injured man lying on the pitch. When the medics run onto the field, the verbal hostilities and sneering shouts become louder even. The medics are being insulted. A human being is injured, but the Mures fans in the stadium display the worst side of humankind. Shocking, and now I am back with my initial concerns about football.
Shortly before halftime, ASA Tirgu Mures scores 1-0, more of a relieving than an encouraging intermediate result. During the break, some of the spectators go home, totally soaked and shivering. In the aisles between the rows of seats, the water runs like in the canals in Venice. After the first half, I can’t really blame anyone for leaving. It was not exactly Premier League level. But those who leave now will kick themselves in 45 minutes for having missed the match of the season.
Because the second half begins with Mures scoring 2-0. “Campioni, campioni” the crowd shouts enthusiastically, as if the championship is already in the bag. But ASA Mures cannot allow any blunder in the next four matches, as long as record-holding champions Bucharest are so closely at ASA’s tail.
Then the 3-0, like a copy of the 2-0. ASA dominates, Constanta has folded. Another 25 minutes to go. To celebrate, I light a cigar, because this result cannot be turned around anymore. And indeed the show continues: 4-0. This half reminds me of the World Cup match between Germany and Brazil. 4-1, a small slip, no one cheers for the goal against ASA. Are there even any fans that came from the Black Sea coast? I don’t notice any. 5-1. ASA Tirgu Mures can now play as if Constanta is no longer on the pitch. 6-1. The scoreboard can hardly keep up, as the goals are scored within minutes of each other.
Final whistle. The highest win of the season. Calls of “campioni, campioni”, but the players are too exhausted to dwell on the grass for a long time. Although the rain has stopped, the spectators quickly empty the stadium. I recognize the joy about a football festival, also a certain pride that the hometown is now known all over the country, but I cannot detect much authentic identification with the team.
Some of the attendees tell me that they are still fans of the team from the 1970s that played in the UEFA Cup three times (and never made it beyond the first round), and that the current team has only been purchased together from Brazil and Senegal. They have a point and such a concept is probably not sustainable. If another club offers more, the men (the word “mercenary” is often used when talking about this) are gone.
The whole thing becomes even more dubious when one learns that the football team is financed by the municipality. In front of the city hall in Targu Mures there is a statue of Romulus and Remus in memory of the Roman heritage, but of “panem et circenses” only the circus remains. Meanwhile, the roads are dotted with potholes, old people starve through the winter on a measly pension, public buildings are in decay and a few thousand citizens of Targu Mures live in quarters which can only be described as slums.
It’s all a matter of priorities.
“This guy with the funny hat can do it better than me.”
A friend from Târgu Mureș asked me last Sunday if I felt like “going on a little hike to the hills outside of town”. Of course I felt like it. He wanted to hike to Miercurea Nirajului. I didn’t know exactly where that is.
So I agreed. Then he enlightened me that the destination was 25 km away and that he also wanted to hike back the same day. 50 km altogether (which would ultimately turn into 60 km because of our detours), which is why we already meet at 7 a.m. on Monday morning. I ask Yaniv if he ever hiked such a distance before. “Not in the last couple of years, but once in the Army,” is the reassuring answer.
Already on the first hill up to the zoo we are working up a sweat and gasping for air. Luckily, each of us brought a can of cola, which we empty on the first 500 meters into our endeavor, and even more luckily, it will remain somewhat cloudy the whole day. Bad for taking photos, perfect for hiking. The lush green, the rain-cleansed air and the tranquility of the forest provide us with energy (almost as effective as the cola) and motivation. Work and university, deadlines and exams, all of them are already forgotten.
We stroll along old bridleways from the time of the Romans, as whose legitimate descendants some Romanians regard themselves.
Despite the clouds, one can recognize the mountains in the Szeklerland in the far distance. Somewhere back there is our destination, still many hours away.
But first we get into villages that throw us back by decades. No proper roads, sometimes not even a single car in the whole village. Wooden toilet shacks in the garden. Warped houses, many of them looking like they couldn’t possibly be inhabited; but when I want to take a photo of them, someone steps out of the door in exactly that moment.
The public wells offer plenty of water for hikers, of whom we won’t meet any others throughout the day.
But there is one thing that even the poorest villages have plenty of: churches. Sometimes, there are even three of them next to each other: Catholic, Reform and Orthodox.
Unlike residential houses or schools, the churches are always recently painted and well-maintained. It’s obvious who has money and influence in this country. Even Jesus doesn’t want to look at this misguided choice of priorities.
I do however like the wooden churches, likes this one in Sânișor.
Outside of that village, we finally discover bear tracks, which we celebrate with a picnic on a nearby hill. We try to attract the bear with the smell of bacon and meatballs, but are too impatient and devour our rations faster than the brown bear can sniff us out.
We have been walking for four hours already and our schedule begins to unravel. But the views are too beautiful to not sit down on the grass, linger and enjoy the silence.
While emptying a bottle of wine, Yaniv comes out with the reason for his sudden interest in hiking: Two days ago, it was his birthday, and now he feels extremely old and on the descending branch of life. Out of this crisis, the wish was born to check the level of his physical fitness in a long-distance walking manner.
In some of the villages we pass through, there are newly erected buildings serving as congregation halls for the Jehova Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists or other obscure religions. That’s all that Romanians needed after a long life, full of deprivation and having survived World Wars and communism, in a small village without even a corner shop. I am happy that we are cutting across the country through forests and fields and thus hardly bump into any human beings, because two friendly young men talking away in English correspond to the stereotype of Christian missionaries who have been expanding eastward since the fall of the Iron Curtain. But we don’t want to spread any fear of crusades or exorcisms.
We continue past reclusive farms with sheep, horses, cows and dogs. Normally most terrified of dogs, I am slowly developing a sense for which dogs are aggressive and which are more sedate. Instead of the bears that we had been hoping for, we spot only deer.
Around 2 p.m., one and a half hours later than planned, we finally reach Miercurea Nirajului. Never was anyone as happy about such a small hamlet as our exhausted legs. We still carry ourselves to the center of town and sit down in the park. Half-time.
Our pride in what we have already accomplished is visible. We have covered about 30 km, and we have already made one decision: We will also return on foot. We refuse the services of the bus that dashes from here to Târgu Mureș every half an hour. There actually used to be a railroad line between the two towns. Why has the line been discontinued? Probably it was faster to walk the distance. Even nowadays, the Romanian trains are so slow that you can overtake them on a bicycle.
Miercurea Nirajului was actually once an important place. Until the 18th century it was one of the Szekler seats until Târgu Mureș took over that role. Today, the small town with 5,500 people is stagnating without a thought for tomorrow. In the town square we find a restaurant, but no goulash on the menu, which is why we specifically ask for it. The waitress misunderstands our question for the availability of goulash and responds by listing the ingredients of goulash. My mouth is watering increasingly. We order two portions, but soon thereafter we are shocked by the message conveyed from the kitchen that there is no more goulash for today. It’s already 2:30 p.m. We were too slow. Well, then we will have a soup instead.
While we are waiting for the soup, I can finally get a few words about the region through which we have been hiking off my chest: the Szeklerland. It is part of Transylvania and thus of Romania, but the majority of people who live here are Hungarian-speaking Szeklers. The region changed hands between Austro-Hungary, Romania, Hungary, Romania again and so on. I could get into this subject more deeply, but to the readers’ reprieve, here comes the pot with soup. So this is what we hiked 30 km for and will hike another 30 km back: a pot of soup. And then we even forget to take a photo of it. But it tasted good!
In the discussion about which way back to choose, there are two factions: I am for cross-country, Yaniv wants to follow the road. He is probably afraid of bears or at least of the combination of a falling night and bears. In case of a tie, the rule is “safety first”, so I yield. There is not really that much traffic on the roads here anyway, so it won’t make that much of a difference.
Because I spoke about the Szeklers, this is their flag with the sun and the moon (the space pioneer Hermann Oberth is from Transylvania, but that is a completely unrelated fact),
and this is the overly nationalistic Romanian neighbor who tricolorized even the handcart and the chicken coop.
This way people provoke each other, instigated by speeches about history, nation, flags, language and anthems, yet they all suffer equally from unemployment, bad infrastructure and neglect of the rural areas, all of which they find no time to deal with because they are so busy with their nationalism. (Admittedly, most people in both ethnic groups do not comply with this description at all, but are very friendly and often speak both languages.)
But even more suffer those who have neither flag nor anthem: the Romani. My readers in San Francisco or Sydney will already have winced in light of the poverty which the photographs of idyllic villages above could not hide. In the communities of the Romani, neglected by the state and anything from ignored to despised by their fellow men (and here Romanians and Szeklers/Hungarians agree again), it looks worse. The readers won’t see the worst of the worst because in front of almost every house, families were bustling, poor in material terms, but enriched with many children, whom I did not want to take a photograph of without a prior conversation (for which we lacked time and linguistic knowledge).
Yes, this – and much worse – is how people live in the European Union in 2015. But the billions flow to tax-dodging owners of second holiday homes in Greece. Because help doesn’t go where it is needed the most, but where the whining is the loudest. And whining is not for Eastern Europeans.
Whining is not for us either, while we plod on, kilometer by kilometer.
Our last proper break is near the village of Maiad. After hiking around 45 km, we are still in good spirits and optimistic. It’s remarkable what positive emotional effects such a day in nature has. Try it yourself, folks!
We still have two and a half hours until sunset. Now it happens increasingly often that we have to pause because my colleague is running out of breath. Again and again I push us to hurry up because the sun won’t work overtime just for us two hobos. Another 15 km. “When I will be at your age, I want to be as fit as you,” Yaniv finally admits. I am 39. He has just turned 24.
And indeed it is getting dusky during our last kilometers and darkness falls just as we reach the city limits of Târgu Mureș.
I am surprised how relatively easy it was for us to walk 60 km and how fast we progressed at times. My legs are a bit tired, but I am not yet really exhausted. We have both been bitten by the hiking bug and are already talking about walking all the way to Sighișoara or Cluj-Napoca next. When we say good-bye at the bus stop, I am not patient enough to wait for the bus. The remaining 5 km to my home, I am jogging.
Coincidentally meeting a bear in the wild while jogging or hiking is one of my hitherto unfulfilled dreams that made me move to Romania.
Yesterday, during a long hike from Târgu Mureș to Miercurea Nirajului, I came as close to this goal as never before. While climbing a steep hill outside the village of Sânișor, I found bear tracks.
Potentially even tracks of more than one bear.
For the purpose of comparison, here are two human feet.
(Yes, the shoe with holes is mine. And yes, I know that I should buy a new pair eventually.)
Size and shape of the tracks did not leave any doubt: Bears had been here.
We followed the tracks to the top of the hill, where they got lost in the grass, and picked the spot for a picnic. Unfortunately, even our bacon sandwiches and tasty meatballs did not manage to attract the bear(s). – I will have to return to that hill with more foodstuff soon and lie on lookout. Does anyone know what bears like to eat most? (Except humans, of course.)
Tonight in Targu Mures, Romania: The Unitarian Church on Bulevardul 1848 blocking an otherwise wonderful view from my bedroom.
The world’s attention was directed at Nepal after the devastating earthquake. Until a woman gave birth to her second child.
As one Twitter user put it succinctly:
Beyond showing that the world and most media have an attention span shorter than a 3-year old child, these two news didn’t seem to bear any connection.
But I hope that they will be connected again in the future, when this princess will grow up and follow the example of Nepalese Crown Prince Dipendra. On 1 June 2001, he was fed up with the old-fashioned monarchical system and celebrated the beginning of a new millennium by killing King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya, seven other members of the Royal family and ultimately – because he really was a die-hard anti-monarchist- himself.
I hope Prince William and Camilla or whatever his wife’s name is will allow the little girl to watch “Kill Bill” as often as she wants. If we are lucky, the British monarchy will be finished off before the end of the century. To avoid that brutal fate, they can of course still abdicate in due time.
Sitting by the river, the girl moves a bit closer to me as she begins to speak:
“Oh Andreas, isn’t this the most beautiful sunset? I am so glad we came here to enjoy this moment together.”
We both continue to stare into the distance, most likely harboring similar thoughts.
But then I cannot resist:
“Honey, it’s actually not a sunset. The sun doesn’t set or rise. We are the ones moving, as our planet orbits around the sun and rotates around its own axis. This creates the impression of the sun moving, when in reality it is the fixed point in our solar system.”
Another pause, after which I add, maybe with too much hauteur in my voice:
“But I thought everybody knew that.”
A few seconds pass before she looks at me with sad eyes, gets up and walks away, never to be seen or heard of again.
These stupid sunsets ruin everything.
Links:
