During our first hitchhiking experience, Lemonmouse and I had travelled west of Braşov on highway DN1 which goes to Sibiu. Along the way, we passed the towns of Coldea and Fagaraş along with countless villages, open stretches of land, and highway repair projects. Somewhere around 130 kilometers in all.

We climbed out of the cab and found ourselves in the midst of a dust storm kicked up by all the vehicles zooming past our desolate location at the intersection where DN1 dumps into the north-south DN7 in a T.

We were in front of a no-name restaurant with a manele kiosk on the northeast corner of the roundabout. The southeast corner is home to a Petrom gas station with its Noroc mini-market, both situated adjacent to a hotel (presumably Petrom-owned).

The north side of the DN7 was a collection of semi-trucks, drunk old men at tiny beer kiosks, some Roma, and all manner of garbage strewn about the desert edge of the highway. In the distance, rolling green hills.

Passing us were a collection of nervous motorists unsure of how to handle the roundabout, tired truckers attempting not to kill anyone, and speedy luxury sports sedans sliding in and out of lanes without regard for other travellers (other than to look out in surprise at the sign of a heavily-bebackpacked American).

Let us take this moment to agree. Roundabouts are a travesty for dealing with intersections. For drivers not used to them, roundabouts can be downright deadly. When approaching a roundabout, the traffic never stops from any of the directions — be they three, as in this case, or five directions intermixing as I’ve personally driven through elsewhere.

Of course, it’s easy to see how they come to be. Roundabouts are archaic holdovers from one hundred years ago, when cars were a rare sight and the dangers of collision were quite limited as you were unlikely to pass anyone at all. As time has progressed, the roundabouts were foisted by the British onto their historical enemies as a clever population reduction scheme.

Drivers have often been able to adapt to the non-stop intersections even with the increasing number of automobiles on the road throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. At some point, it was no longer the newly-initiated driver who became freaked out by the dozens of cars all gunning full speed toward a swirling mess of snarled traffic. It’s a holdover from a bygone era that needs to go away.

While Americans may not do everything right, we do have one of the better systems of public traffic. Intersections are logically governed by red and green lights, regulating a safe taking of turns based on traffic pattern timing and/or the addition of weight and motion sensors. It’s surprisingly effective and stress-free.

It was time to navigate our way across the multipoint ebb and flow of traffic. Ears and eyes alert, we skulked close to our targeted crossing point and scampered across like two stray dogs as soon as a momentary break in traffic exposed itself. Now, all that was left was to pick a spot ideally situated where traffic from two directions could see us at the same time.

Another tip for hitchhikers in Romania: be sensitive to the needs of your would be rescuers. Not only do you have to position yourself according to where town meets country, but you must take extra care to assess the stopability of would-be hosts.

If you pick an area that’s got no place to pull over, your odds of nabbing a ride are limited — especially in high traffic spots. Also, try to make sure the roadside section is long enough for a slow-stopping semi-truck to adequately be able to pull over.

Here, it was easy. Without much for commerce or housing development, there were long stretches of trash-covered dust for any vehicle to be able to pull over. Out came the bottle of water and a couple more apples. I hastily scribbled “VL” shorthand for Ramnicu Valcea as large as I could it onto a corner of the cardboard with a ballpoint pen. Lame, but it would have to do.

Ten or fifteen minutes of sweating like a pig under the scorching sun-on-blacktop heatwaves yielded a rough-and-tumble Dacia wagon. The car had a little difficulty stopping because it was loaded with dozens of boxes filled with heavy, mysterious items and its brakes hadn’t seen mechanical maintenance since 1974.

We trotted through the blowing desert toward the silver oasis humming in the distance. Lemonmouse threw open the backdoor and asked, “ce preţ la Valcea?” The driver replied that money wasn’t important, just as the last kindly driver had done.

We climbed inside the back, jostling our collection of bags around in a hurry so the driver could get back on the road to resume his trip. Another round of salut and mulţumim to keep up with polite protocol. There was a minute or two of uneasy silence before we settled in and ventured a conversation.

“Eşti din Valcea?”

“Nu. Slatina.”

Great news! Now I could ask him about the upcoming festival happening next weekend. I’d heard some vagaries about Calusul Romanesc and wanted to know more. Da, da. There’s an annual festival that’s very popular.

“In fact,” he explained, “it’s been recognized by Guinness World Records.” Supposedly, thousands joined in and put Slatina on the map. I’ve not been able to independently corroborate his description, however.

He went on to tell of how Slatina has only one-way streets downtown, which he complained was highly inefficient. To demonstrate, he told of the one time he just needed to go down the block a bit, so he ignored the direction and just did it.

Once inside the store, he was busy shopping when his kid tugged on his sleeve: Tati, there’s some people outside touching the car. Pissed off, he went outside to find local authorities writing him a ticket and affixing a boot to his wheel. Rather than argue with those insensitive jerks, he simply went back to shopping. You see, that’s why things were better under communism.

Ce zice?

Ba da! Cu siguranţa, things were much better under Ceauşescu. Since those traitors murdered our presidente, everything has really gone to the dogs. They’ve destroyed the entire nation and stole everything from the people. The ones who murdered Ceauşescu should be shot for treason. Romania is ruined now.

Adevarat, just like that the mood turned twistedly dark. Lemonmouse and I looked at one another in disbelief and silently acknowledged our realization that this old clunker was moving really slow. We shifted our bags around a bit and prepared for a l-o-n-g ride.

What you kids don’t understand is that all your complaining about the Romanian economy won’t do anything. See, under Ceauşescu everything was much better. Ceauşescu made sure everyone had a job. Ceauşescu made sure we all got to eat. Without Ceauşescu, the country is ruined.

The criminals who shot Ceauşescu need to be tried and punished. Then we can re-estabilish communism in Romania. Finally, all the young people will be much happier with guaranteed jobs and the nation can begin to repair itself back into something we can all be proud of.

I looked out the window to see the dark green forestry on the steep mountains cradling us along the Olt River in the valley below. We were passing beautiful monasteries and fortress ruins. Lemonmouse tried several times to pause him, so the information could be translated into engleza.

Despite my rough understanding, he wasn’t interested in my reception of knowledge. He simply talked over the top and directed all his argumentation to an uncomfortably squirming Lemonmouse. Sunt chiar straine. No doubt a filthy capitalist and there’s no reasoning with the bourgeois dogs. No, this was a Romanian-to-Romanian conversation about the future of our countrymen.

After they assassinated Ceauşescu, the traitors destroyed all the powerful national industries which plunged Romania from a mighty economic force into the doldrums of bankruptcy. What little they didn’t destroy, the stole and sold off to the foreigners. Now, there is nothing left for the Romanians. We’re slaves.

Slaves to the foreigners because the traitors destroyed Romania after they shot Ceauşescu and sold our powerful resources to non-Romanians. Ceauşescu would never do that. He provided jobs, food, and national pride. You know, that’s what we’re missing these days, right? National pride.

Now, mind you, he didn’t want to be racist. He doesn’t care about other ethnic groups one way or the other. But the young people of Romania have no pride in themselves because the communism is gone. Ceauşescu gave us pride and taught us who we were as a people. Now, everyone wants to speak Hungarian.

And what is it with these Hungarians anyway? They live here in our country and, under Ceauşescu, benefitted from the progress of communism all those years. But, they’re so ungrateful. They never bothered to learn Romanian. That’s the language of Romania and they should not be allowed to set up all these Hungarian schools. No other country would do that.

I forced my way into the frontseat broadcast by talking loudly. I wanted him to know I actually thought he had an interesting point to make there. In the United States, we seem to have social confrontations over the large population of immigrant Mexicans who don’t bother to learn English although it’s the language of our nation.

Now, I think it’s fine if they want to learn things like math and science in their native language, if they feel that makes learning easier for them and a school exists to provide that education. However, I also feel they should be required to study and master a high level of English language competency because it will help them better integrate and succeed in an English-speaking society.

Perhaps it is analogous to the Romanian situation with the significant Hungarian populations in Transylvania?

Heh. I got the impression that he had to fight back an aneurysm to keep himself from tearing my head off. His neck visibly stiffened and the knuckles around the steering wheel turned white. Impertinent foreign capitalist dog! With a deep inhalation, he ignored my translated contribution entirely.

Because under Ceauşescu… Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Eventually, we made it to Calimaneşti after more re-education and convinced him this was our real destination, not Valcea some kilometers away. His mood changed and he happily pointed out the various famous landmarks like the “beautiful” communist hotel constructed to give workers vacations at spa resorts or the national treasure of Calimaneşti’s natural spring water that was a favorite of Napolean III.

When it was time to exit the car, I decided to forego a photo opportunity lest I reveal my capitalist wealth. Instead, we gave him our hearty thanks and got ready to close the doors.

Just then, he broke into a huge smile and extended his open palm to indicate his willingness to receive 15 RON as payment for services…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 11:44 pm and is filed under Living, Society, Travel Tips. 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.