Beside the Seaside

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In Which I'm Speechless -- But Manage To Write Lots About It

November 9, 2008 by Mike

Isaccea

Route: Constanţa - Mamaia - Istria - Tulcea - Isaccea

Checked out. Went to a bank machine to get some more lev out.

Card in, tap-tap-tap-tap:

YOUR TRANSACTION
IS BEING PROCESSED

And that's where the screen stayed.. and stayed.. while I scratched my head and wondered.. do I stand here until tomorrow morning.. it's Sunday today.. in cold, cold Constanţa, on a quiet side street with newspapers blowing past, no shops open and hardly any people walking past.. just in case the card pops out?

And then, ten very long and unfunny minutes later, ddzzzzhhhht and out came the card. Phew.

I set off this morning not knowing which country I would be in tonight. That's a freedom I've come to cherish besidetheseaside; not knowing what's coming is hugely liberating and, let's face it, in 2008, you're not supposed to live this way. This time, the variables included the weather, the state of the roads and, if I got that far, how slow/ corrupt/ open the frontier crossings of Romania, Moldova, possibly Transnistria and Ukraine might be. Indeed, which crossings I would have to ride to. There are various routes, none of them strictly coastal, and I've read horror stories about most of them, the least svary being that they're simply not open.

In the end, I'm still in Romania tonight, so hopefully that opening paragraph is just a teaser for tomorrow's blo-- I mean diary.

I was in no hurry. Quite the opposite. Together with my family in Norwich and Norway, I spent today remembering my dear old Ma, a year after we lost her. She would have loved the scenery -- clearing blue skies (though she would have appreciated the grey stillness of the early morning, too!) over a vast, melancholy tundra, gently sloping to the sea.

I shared a moment with the big old sky, a plain, solid candle.. and these two, gathering winter feed from the remains of a cornfield across the way.

He called over, gesturing with an unlit cigarette. And here am I, with the lighter I'd bought yesterday to light the candle so, for the first time in two-and-a-half years, I was able to help. I thought I could risk asking for a photo in exchange. He said Yes; she was unsure; but when I showed her the result she insisted a take a picture of their dog as well. I gave them the lighter and we parted best of friends.

At Tulcea, I was only a few miles from the Ukrainian city of Izmail, but those miles are across the delta of the Danube, a marshy jumble. There are dirt (i.e. mud) tracks down to the river, but no crossings. Waiting at a roundabout on the outskirts I was joined by two Romanian motorbikes -- something Japanese and a big, shiny BMW. I haven't seen another motorbike for many days; even the ubiquitous Ero-teenager-on-scooter-that-sounds-like-a-hairdryer is a rare sight here in November.

These beasts stand out in more ways than one. They're probably ten years newer and twenty times more expensive than any other vehicle I've seen today.

Turns out Gabriel and Dan are out for a day's ride. They treat me to the *biggest* kebab you ever did see at a roadside kiosk in Tulcea and we swap war-stories. Or rather, I tell them a bit about the trip, but when I ask them what they do for a living, Dan laughs nervously and says: "Well, I work for the Romanian tax office and Gabriel.. he's.. a... err.. an entrepreneur'."

I know enough not to ask too much about what a Bulgarian 'entrepreneur' does to make big money. But suggesting slyly that "no doubt you pay all your taxes to Dan on time" is met with a laugh so loud it scares birds out of a nearby tree.

We couldn't finish our kebabs. These kids were on hand to devour the leftovers. They looked like they could do with them:

Gabriel and Dan were heading the same way as me but with dusk setting, and so many extra horses in their engines, I insisted they leave me behind if I was too slow for them. We rode out of town together (twice as fast as I had ridden in..) but it wasn't long before they waved and zoomed off. Good, friendly folk.

I got as far as Isaccea before darkness had fallen. I'm a good 60 miles from the coast, but this is the delta of the Danube, remember, as well as the junction of three countries with plenty of mutual suspicion and not much of a road budget.

I'm also half-a-mile from Ukraine, on the opposite bank of the Danube, but it's going to take many miles to get there by bike.

'Thankfully', a little hotel emerged from the gloom. I say 'thankfully' in inverted commas.

Beggars can't be choosers. Let's just say that, in an ideal world, I wouldn't care to spend the night in a hotel room with cracked windows, no curtains, damp streaked across the ceiling, no hot water, unwashed towels, threadbare blankets and a sticky floor.

Particularly not a hotel whose owner, Stelian, has lived in the States for many years, and who tells me -- a week after the Presidential Election, remember:

* Barack Obama's father "came to America to inseminate a white woman"
("Do you mean, 'had a child with his wife'?")
* Obama "went to a strict Muslim school somewhere in the Middle East"
("Do you mean, 'went to school in Indonesia where, after all, he happened to live at the time'?")
* but he also attended a Catholic school "because he is a whore who attends different churches"
("Did he really? Oh my. Do you think that was his decision or his mother's?)
* "She went with a black man. What right did she have to order her son around?"
(".... [speechless]... ")
* Obama's victory "was bought and paid for by the blacks, and they could afford it because they all sell drugs and never pay taxes."
(".... [beyond speechless]... ")

By this stage Stelian had already told me how he escaped from Communist Romania at the age of 20, became a success in Germany, then came back to work in this country where he was arrested, twice imprisoned, beaten and forced to 'donate' his yacht to Ceauşescu's psychopathic son Nicu. How it took 20 years to be allowed to marry his wife because the authorities hated him. How the elite who ran Communist Romania had survived unscathed and now were running 'democratic' Romania into the ground too, while skimming off millions of dollars for themselves.

And.. get this.. how Ceauşescu, destroyer of the country and nearly of Stelian himself, was a disaster for Romania because he was "TOO NICE TO THE PEOPLE".

I was waiting for him to say "At least he made the trains run on time" but the Romanian equivalent appears to be "He killed and he crushed and he was hideously corrupt, sure, but at least he balanced the budget."

Stelian had also shown me the gun he keeps, because if anyone comes to rob him he.. oh, you can guess the rest. Sad, bilious guff. I didn't want to give him a platform for any more of this.. even though I was thinking.. here's my story for Romania.

I retreated to my room and felt rather lonesome.

Comments

By Sergiu | January 12, 2009 9:27 AM

If you ever come back to Romania, please let me know! Maybe we'll ride together and have lots of fun! Take this as a personal invitation!

Beside the Seaside

In Which I'm Speechless -- But Manage To Write Lots About It

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