A Really Gray Day in the Romanian Countryside
Gray, gray, my life is gray
It was foggy gray darkness when I left Timisoara at 6.15 am. At daybreak, it became a gray lifeless day matching my gray mood which deteriorated as the hours passed. I was tired, irritable, uncomfortable and annoyed at myself for choosing a bus instead of a train. I began to regret my decision more and more. I wish I’d taken the train.
The skies would have still been gray but I would have felt cosier looking out at the grayness from the safety of a second-class carriage.
As we passed slowly though villages, I saw dilapidated, derelict, decaying, deteriorating, deserted buildings: houses, barns, stables. I wasn’t quite sure what some of them were. Did people once live here or just their farm animals: cows, dogs, cats, chickens? I saw no signs of life.
They were so fallen apart, roofless, overgrown and open to the elements, neglected to the point of being left a shell, it was difficult to surmise what they had once been.
Our host told me that younger couples who had only known life in a city apartment were moving back to their family’s village, renovating and setting up their home as an airbnb or farm stay. I didn’t see any evidence of this on the highway to Brasov but that’s not to say it’s not happening. I hope it is.
You would think there would have been clues had people still been living here. Cars parked nearby, clothes on the line, smoke from the chimney or curtains on the windows. But all I saw were lifeless remains of a bygone era.
The decaying, rundown villages only magnify my sadness on this gray day.
Krasi Shapkarova’s story of Shiroka Laka will take you back in time to a simpler life.
Bell Dae’s story a a wet day in Porto reminds me of the time I endured cyclonic conditions in Porto and lived to tell the tale. Porto is beautiful in rain or shine.
