The view from my bedroom in the morning:
Well, actually it looks like this,
but I have always had the tendency to look at the bright side of things. It’s a better way to start the day.
Turda is not the most beautiful city in Romania, or maybe my judgement is unfair because I drove through the town on a rainy and grey November day.
But then this one building stood out due to its size and it’s atypical style. It looked like a Far-Eastern palace in the midst of one-storey Transylvanian houses.
It did not appear to be too old, but it had already been deserted. Some of the letters of the sign on the facade had fallen off. Through broken windows, I could see fine tiles adorning the ceiling.
Does anyone know the story behind this house? It is located at the corner of Strada Bicazului and Strada Albinei. Thank you for your help!
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UPDATE: On Twitter, someone pointed out this article, according to which it was the residential house of a Roma family. – And other EU countries are afraid of Romanian welfare seekers. They should take a look at this house (although admittedly not everyone around here lives like this).
UPDATE 2: Thanks to everyone who replied! Several readers mentioned that there are whole villages consisting of palaces like these. I will need to visit Huedin and Buzescu.
The citadel of Rupea in Transylvania in a foggy November night.
Returning from a two-week holiday, I was excited to open my mailbox as soon as I came home. I expected parcels, fan mail, magazines and postcards from around the world.
You can imagine my disappointment when, upon my return from the Balkans in the first week of November, I only found one postcard from an autocratic, right-wing, nationalistic head of government.
And I don’t even live in Hungary!
Maybe I will receive a postcard from Vladimir Putin or Robert Mugabe next.
Four years ago, on a drab winter day, I was sitting in my room in Southwark, an unremarkable part of London, when I decided to set up this blog. I had already published many articles and several books Until then, I had only written some letters to newspapers, some of them published, some of them not, but I wanted to have my own medium, without an editor that you need to bribe with expensive cigars.
Today, while I was out jogging in Târgu Mureș in Romania, where I now live after having lived in three other countries between London and now, my blog crossed the threshold of one million all-time views.
That means that my blog has about 685 views per day on average. It’s shocking how many people are wasting their time like this, and that doesn’t even take into account my blog in German and the many people who print out articles to show them around at the office.
Looking at the posts which have been the all-time hits, there are some expected ones, like legal advice for free, travel advice and of course anything involving boobs. Many of you are shockingly predictable.
However, I don’t understand the popularity of all of these articles. Seriously, how many people had to look up where Lithuania is? And if 7,693 people have looked at my wishlist of books, why haven’t I received that many book presents? Lastly, if 9,630 people have looked at my CV, why haven’t I received a single job offer?
The sad thing from a blogger’s perspective is that many posts into which I put a lot of effort or for which I risk my life (like my video blogs) are not very popular at all.
I could have guessed that you are weird from looking at the search terms that you use to find my blog:
Twice as many people find my blog by searching for “pussy” than are searching for my name. In my four years of blogging, I haven’t had a harsher reality check than this. And I am not even a girl! – I will also never understand the 824 people who simply enter “no” in a search engine.
More uplifting is the international distribution of my readership. Although it is of course skewed towards countries with a lot of people, a lot of internet and a lot of time on their hands, I am still proud that I have had visitors from 220 countries so far. Have a look at the flag banner on the right hand side for the up-to-date figures.
There are however a few countries which really need to catch up (although it’s nice that the Pope checked my blog 6 times already):
If you are the tourism minister of one of these states, I recommend that you invite me to visit your country. That should increase these numbers and it will give you great publicity in the rest of the world.
In Kotor, the most beautiful coastal town in Montenegro, there was an easy (yet still exhausting) way to get to the fortress. And there was a hard way. Guess which one I picked.
Whenever I move to a new town, I look for a beautiful place where I can read, think and smoke a cigar. In Târgu Mureș in Romania, you can find me on one of the benches of this romantic tree-lined boulevard, lost in a novel and puffing clouds of smoke into the sky. Only the many newlyweds who come from all around the world to misappropriate Europe’s most romantic boulevard as a backdrop for their wedding pictures disturb the serenity.
These photos were taken when I moved here in October. By now, the leaves have turned yellow. With every burst of wind, the trees are shedding more of them. Soon, the first snow will fall and it will look particularly romantic at night. Which it already does now.
Whenever I walk up or down this boulevard, I am thinking of my friends in Hollywood because it’s exactly the kind of street they would love to use as a film location.
Oh, you want to know the exact address now? It is Bulevardul Cetăţii, behind the medieval fortress in Târgu Mureș.
“I am Ebola,” he said, extending his hand with rather too much confidence, as if this was a job interview instead of a date.
She hardly had time to sit down before he continued: “I am currently the most feared virus in the world. I have virtually shut down the Western part of Africa, with more than 5,700 confirmed deaths. I kill more than 50% of my victims, and lately I was even a hot topic in the US election campaign.”
“People all around the world are really scared of me,” he added after a pause which was too obviously planned for its effect. She could imagine him practicing it in front of the mirror.
As he rambled on about infections, symptoms, the lack of vaccines, the fear of medical staff and closed airports, she was no longer listening, checking out other people at the bar instead. It had been a mistake to agree on a date with a guy much younger than herself.
Relief was her first reaction when, after the most boring 45 minutes of her life, he said: “Hey, I am sorry I need to run, but there are more people to be infected.” His faced turned into a big winking smiley, which despite its fakeness invited one to punch him for real.
“That was a very cute story,” she said, knowing that he would hate that word. Her smile was authentic, if scoffing. “My name is the Plague, but I am retired now.” It didn’t seem to register.
As she walked home, alone underneath the misty moon, for the first time in centuries she contemplated making a comeback. Just to put these overeager youngsters in their place.
Silence has fallen over the minibus. The last conversations and the radio have died down while the driver concentrates on the winding road cutting through the mountains. The passengers’ gaze falls into deep canyons, on the fall-colored forests and on the mountains in the distance which, together with the sinister clouds, exude a menacing aura.
In Nikšić we had to change from a normal-size bus to a minibus. The roads on the way to the Durmitor mountains in Montenegro are too winding and the incline is too steep for regular coaches. Maybe the bus company also tries to limit its financial risk, if ever a bus would stray from the road and crash unsavably into one of the canyons.
A woman gets off the bus in the nowhere, carrying several shopping bags. I don’t see any house around, nor any settlement. On the map, the next village is 10 km away. Close to the pass summit, there is a sofa next to the road. Relatively new, but without any discernible use at this forlorn place.
It keeps getting darker. The clouds are heavy and hanging so deep that it’s impossible to tell where they stop and where the fog begins. The sun is not cognizable. It isn’t night, it isn’t yet dusk, but it doesn’t feel like daytime either. It’s like an unidentifiable time of day which was created for this place alone. Every five or ten kilometers, someone steps off the bus. Nobody has gotten on since Nikšić.
Around two hours later, a high plateau opens up with wide meadows, a few cows, sporadic houses, half of them decayed, the other half warped by the wind. A rough, barren landscape. The few houses are far apart from each other. The scene looks like the painting of someone who didn’t want to waste the dirty residue colors in the paint-box and therefore quickly scribbled something in grey, black, brown and sallow dark-green. Faded color photos from World War II look exactly like this. Or the Scotland scene in Skyfall.
It doesn’t rain, it doesn’t storm, it doesn’t thunder, as if the dark, close clouds are satisfied with posing the constant threat of severe weather. The heating on the bus warms my feet, but my upper body is freezing. Some of the passengers have put on their caps. Still no word is uttered. It’s a feeling like on a ride into the dangerous unknown, as if winter will break out in the next few days and we will be trapped up here for a few months. Žabljak lies at an altitude of 1,455 m (4,773 ft) and is the highest town in the Balkans. The airport ceased to operate long ago.
At this moment, I cannot imagine that summer would ever find its way here. The grey mountains stand to the sides of the wide valley like curses that became stone, as if they would want to keep out anything happy, colorful, lively. They would cast dark shadows on the withered meadows, if only the sun got through the fog and if the bleached grass was receptive for shadows.
Here is a video in which you can already recognize the first houses of the town of Žabljak:
Addendum: For the sake of fairness, I should mention that after two days of foggy murk, the sun broke through and it became very beautiful indeed. Due to this contrast, the Durmitor mountains have taken up a special place in my travel memories.
Addendum 2: The mood which I experienced and described is depicted very well in a film by National Geographic. I didn’t run into the old lady with the rifle unfortunately.
“You can’t smoke in here! This is a hospital” the nurse snapped at me, although I hadn’t even lit the cigar.
“And?” I asked. “You don’t seem to have read ‘The Magic Mountain‘?”
The gruff reply “We have a strict anti-smoking policy!” did not respond to my question in any recognizable way, hence I decided to abort the discussion before it had properly begun. A smug smile was the only reward I could muster for the lack of literary education of the medical staff, before striding away through the long corridor, in the direction of the far too small garden of the far too prohibitive hospital.
There I recognized what the sad creatures in wheelchairs, grey blankets, and with tubes leading out of them and back into them needed. Tomorrow I would bring a whole box of cigars.
The Happy Hermit 