Cluj (in)fusion
Maddened by the clatter of ads and predictable (?) opinions from the non-stop radio I am tapping this like an sos before being zombified on an orange Fany bus to Baia.
Cluj has been gently uplifting, full of curious details and intellectually inviting. Like the man selling Hungarian chimney cake from a stall on the corner of Strada Potaissa and Strada Universitatii. He was still there after dark in this freezing November, keeping himself warm with his brazier. Presumably he spent the nights in the neat yellow shed on wheels that was parked up alongside. And opposite him, there are the mellow college buildings, discreetly old (some 17th century?) in their crumbly blond stone, and offering courses in medicine and philology, European languages, theology, business studies and much besides (the university is clustered in several places around the city but this is its heart). Each stone entrance is wide enough for a horse-drawn coach, and most of the fortress-like wooden gates are open, revealing (today) sunlit inner courtyards that must have once provided real protection, physical as well as moral.
Then there are the bookshops – yes, they still exist! – and I fell for Libraria din Colts, close to the seductive Piazzetta cafe with its glass roof and medieval balconies. Lured upstairs by the bookshop’s welcoming atmosphere I found tiered shelves full of fascinating titles, and choosing one about the history of violence in the Romanian language, followed a drift of browsing customers to a room with sofas where I sat and mopped up 20 well written pages. They were all about the provocative phraseology in Romania’s patriotic poet and essayist, Mihai Eminescu, and how his inflammatory expressions were fuel for demagogues like the Iron Guard’s terribly misguided leader, Codreanu. After the recent political mud-chucking by Donald Trump, reading this dispassionate analysis of another consummate manipulator was balm to the tormented brow. How good it would be to study here, if you had the means.
Cluj is a lovely city but graffiti artists have been out in force, spraying pretty facades like randy cats. Their messages are ugly to look at and so mixed that I couldn’t interpret them – are they aggressive or humorous or both?
The bus station is like a thumbnail of another kind of Romania: a hub of nervous expectation for the modest traveller, rather down at heal and devoid of romanticism unless you think buses are beautiful. If you do, you can begin with the dreams. Pinned to lampposts, there were (to me) notices of new destinations, promising wider horizons.
Today I saw one announcing the timetable for a bus to Chisinau. Three years ago in another unprepossessing autogara I had seen one to Alep – Aleppo. Was the bus going to swim?
There was dream potential in the people too: what sort of aspirations could you read in the faces of the guys shouldering anonymous, boulster-shaped parcels, or in the bulging suitcases bound with string?
What drives the imaginations of the casual young people zipped up in tight puff jackets (the girls made up, manicured and coiffed to perfection), or the braided Roma maiden touting something in a slim blue cardboard box (is it scent or a pregnancy test?), or the Maramures countrywomen in their village gear of full, knee-length skirts and thick black tights, matching headscarves and fake fur waistcoats, or the middle-aged women in black slacks and sharp jackets, the comfortable older men in flat caps, or even the poor old chap who was sitting in the waiting room, bundled up against the cold and talking to himself? He had a blind stick and when he got up and began blundering around trying to find the exit, a motherly woman in a red woollen hat left her luggage to guide him out. Momentarily ashamed because I hadn’t ‘got’ his blindness straight away and thought he was demented, I too got up and left.
And half an hour later, we’re off to Baia Mare in the Fany omnicharger (country bus). With the radio, it’s a case of like it or lump it, so I decide to get used to the chattering, letting it morph into an artficial heartbeat, while snuggling into my seat and letting my mind drift under the mackerel sky.
In a gnat’s hop (so much for romance) we have left the city and its shouting roadside clutter behind, and there are incidental bulrushes, wasteland-grazing cows (are they small or far away?), an elaborate wooden wayside crucifix that looks lost despite its nifty roof and beyond them all, keeping pace with us, the chalky, winter-petrified hills.
And now (11.52) we are further along the road and the thrill of this quick passage north kicks in. Curious details catch my eye. There is the dark blue shirt hanging from a tall pole outside a humble farmstead. Half hidden by a clump of willows, it seems to have grown from the trees. Is it an expression of mad, artistic will or a sign that someone has died?
