There’s a world of difference between a Saturday morning in Romania and one in the United States.

Generally speaking, the American Saturday is enjoyed as one of two days where you can catch a couple hours of rest without fear of being derelict in one’s daily responsibilities. There are exceptions, of course, for workaholics and those with toddlers. A bachelor not unlike myself can normally look forward to blissful slumber in relative peace.

Things get a bit livelier here in Romania, however. Take, for example, acesta dimineaţa which greeted me with a consequence well-deserved for leaving one’s window open overnight to escape the heat. I was awoken at an ungodly hour by a full chorus of eardrum-jarring auditory missives.

There was the standard sounds of people talking and sometimes yelling, to which I’ve mostly become accustomed, as well as the unmuffled rattletrap vehicles screaming down the streets in first gear. Mixed in were the summertime cries of Roma fruit vendors soliciting sales at high volume much like the towncriers of yore. Manele was generously being shared with the neighborhood by some energized bloc apartment dweller.

Additionally, I was lucky enough to be invited as a witness to the traditional Romanian wedding caravan. A long parade of Dacias who had somehow survived birth under Ceauşescu were aimlessly streaming down the small alley immediately outside my window completely undeterred by it’s no-exit, cul-de-sac status. No, they were all too happy to continuously blare their horns at long intervals in order to announce the joyful occassion to everyone within a 3 mile radius of the honking.

Indeed, as the drivers carefully attempted to turn around several vehicles at once in a space of road big enough for a single bicycle and maybe an orange, the front seat passenger clearly took over the duty of tootmaster so no one would be disappointed by a small measure of anticlimatic silence. Fortunately, it took them several minutes to reorganize the chain which meant I had plenty of time to enjoy their enthusiasm before I was saddened to see them traipse off to some other collection of bloc apartments they didn’t live near.

And then there was this guy, clearly inspired by the other musicians, who was playing the required covor-based instrument without which no Romanian neighborhood sound collection could possibly be complete.

The highlight of the cacophony was something you would probably never find in Stateside: city repairs on a weekend!

They’d been making their way slowly down the street in order to make sure everyone got plenty of chances to sample their special high-bpm contribution to the morning’s orchestral passions.

Impossibly, next were the loudest sounds of all. Rising like a tsunami over a placid beach were the shrill peaks intermittently eminating from a game referree’s whistle less then a hundred yards from my ears. I suspect he must have had one of those new electrically powered models to police the ensuing fotbal game, judging by its impressive ability to singularly stand out from all other noise threatening to crash down my early hour sanity into dust.

Last, but not least, were the distant rumblings of thunder and flashes of lightning which belied an otherwise sunny summer morning. The baritone claps echoed off the nearby mountainside valleys, creating something of a forceful if inconsistent rhythm. The sparsely gathered faithful were already making their exit.

And, indeed, the rain did come as a kind of outro.

But not without the Prescon concrete company’s trucks signaling an end to the overture with the chiming of their rather loudish, industrial sized horns.

Yet, the brave FC Braşov players continued to dominate their opponents even as the desperately cold, wet, and blustery weather caused slippings. A bit of frustration built up and a few players turned to violence, allowing the whistletrumpeters to again accompany the handing out of several yellow cards in a row. Nonplussed, the forward strikers of FC Braşov popped in several goals as I began to realize I was now actually quite awake.

It turns out I wasn’t the only local watching from a high-rise apartment balcony as FC Braşov utterly wrecked their opponent.

Heck, even Avril Lavigne showed up outide the stadium bar.

By my unofficial and meal-distracted account, FC Braşov was dismantling the other team some 27 to 0. But the official scoreboard and clock seem to have been untouched since the 1989 “revolution.”

Ultimately, the visiting club was soundly defeated. And with the end of the game, came the end of the rain — and noise. As the bus drove off, it was only then I learned the boys in white were SC Municipal from Ramnicu Valcea, where I’ve met some folks I’m highly partial to.

Moral: There’s just no sleeping in, Sambata.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 5th, 2006 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.