Visa day.

The alarm on our phone is kinda cute. It begins with just one little "ding." It's silent for a second, then it goes, "dingdingding," a little bit louder. It waits again, and goes, "dingdingdingdingding,  a little bit louder still. I don't know what it does after that; I've never let it get far enough. What began so innocently has become a noisy clamor, a curse to my tired ears.

The day has begun.

Oh, by the way -- it's 5:10 when the alarm rings. We pull on clothes, use the toilet, eat some bread (not toast, there's no toaster in the apartment) with jam, double check our bag, and we're out the door by five 'til 6:00. We need to take a taxi to a little bus station to catch the 6:30 bus to Deva, the county seat of Hunedoara county, the county in which we will live after April 19. We need to get our visas to stay in Romania, a long but relatively harmless process, so we've been told. But we'll be there all day. It's a 3 1/2 hour ride. We've been in Cluj for the past two days for some really great meetings, but travel takes its toll. We're tired already, and it's 6 am, and we have a long day ahead of us.

We arrive at Autogara Voiajor without problems, and wait for 7 minutes in the cold. The bus comes. It's smaller than a usual inter-city bus, kinda cute some might say. Kelly made the reservation over the phone for our ride, so as we get on, I say "Kelly" to the bus driver, expecting it to be written "Cheli."

It's not there. The driver asks, "Unde mergeți?"

"La Deva." Then I see. We're first on the list, and Kelly has been written "Cheua." What a strange name to Romanian ears, Kelly.

There are two major cities between Târgu Mureș and Deva: Turda and Alba Iulia. We arrive in Turda at about 7:30, and an older gent gets into the seat in front of us. Looking back, I should have smelled the alcohol on his breath, but it really wasn't that strong, and he wasn't breathing in my face. Yet.

30 minutes out of Turda, he turns around, taps my shoulder (I'm reading a collection of Thomas Merton journals), and asks me it the river we can see on our left is the Mureș river. "Yeah, I think so," I say to him, and he then says something, probably explaining that he was just curious. It was too complicated Romanian for me to understand yet. He turns back around, and I keep reading.

Half an hour more passes. We're nearing a 15-minute stop in Alba Iulia, and as we pass the big, concrete sign denoting that we've arrived in the city limits, this guy turns around again, taps Kelly on the shoulder and asks, "Are we in Alba Iulia?"

"Yes, we are."

"Good, good..." and then more Romanian that I didn't catch. Then, he stood up, presumably because he's had quite a bit to drink and this stop will be some sweet relief for him. The bus, being smaller and faster than most buses (cuter, some might say...), was also more agile. As such, our inebriated friend had a lot of trouble balancing and began to get thrown into the passengers alongside him and in front of him. They were 50 or 60-year-old women, the strongest personal and cultural institution existing in Romania, and they were less than amused. We breathed a sigh of relief when we got to the station and got a break.

When Kelly and I got back on the bus, we realized that the girl behind us was speaking on the phone in English with an American accent. As soon as she hung up, we turned around and asked where she was from. She's a Peace Corps volunteer in a very small town, and she was taking a trip to see a friend. As she was telling Kelly about how opposed the Romanians she'd met were to spicy food (the lady our age in the back of the bus was watching -- I'm pretty sure she knew her country was being slightly dissed by an American volunteer), our inebriated friend turned around and told me "Îmi pare rău, n-am știut că ești străin" (I'm sorry, but I didn't realize that you're a foreigner). He was very sorry that he'd assumed that I spoke and understood Romanian.

I said, "No, no, it's fine, I understand you." He still seemed a bit embarrassed that he was trying to speak with me, so I reassured him that there was no harm done and I could speak Romanian alright.

My reassuring worked; his embarrassment disappeared quite quickly. The bus left Alba Iulia at 8:55, and passed through Simeria, the town right before Deva, at 10:00 sharp. For the entire duration of the trip, this guy unloaded himself to me. In Romanian, which he had been so sorry to use at first. Here is what I remember from our conversation: He spoke Hungarian, Romanian, Italian, and I think another language. He worked for an old restaurant owner in Italy for a few years, tending the grass and taking out the trash, etc. His name was Ernest (Ernő in Hungarian -- he showed me his ID). I had a beautiful wife. Is she Romanian? No, she's American. Oh, you're from America? Yes... (I thought I'd already told him that.)  He wondered if I thought Romanian women were beautiful, like that girl sitting in the back! Isn't she beautiful?  Look at her (the same girl who I'd been sure heard the slight cultural diss). No, I'm not going to look at her. Why not? Oh, your wife will get jealous? I'm not going to look at her because I love my wife.  Oh, oh, okay...  Did you know that an army helicopter crashed in this field a few days ago? No, I didn't.  Yeah, it was bad... I'm Hungarian Catholic, how about you?  Reformed. Good, good... you know, Jesus...

I couldn't follow him at this point. The words were too complicated and I was very quickly losing interest in talking with Ernő, but he kept right on. Kelly remembers him saying something about the first man created being a wolf.  He got my full attention again when he said something about kissing Kelly's hand and everybody on the bus started laughing (they had already giggled that a drunk guy was talking with an American, but had long lost interest).

"Sorry, what did you say? I didn't understand you."

He didn't repeat to me. He tried to pass the joke to the guy across the row from him, and then started talking about his wife to that guy. I slowly returned to Merton. When we got into Deva, Ernő stood up again, but his new conversation companion said, "Nu, nu, stă jos" (Sit down). I replayed Ernő being told to sit down in my head for the rest of the day. He could be limited by someone. Not by me...

We stumbled off the bus in Deva, and Ernő's new companion said to us "Doamne ne ajuta..." (God help you) with a little laugh. At least I had had an hour conversation in a language that I've been learning for only two months. Not so bad... We waited for our FNO companions (they were driving up from Lupeni) in McDonalds. I told Kelly, "I think my social skills are all spent for now." And it was only 10:20.

Ibrain from FNO found us, and we walked to a car containing Grați (the friendly, big-city-girl IMPACT coach), Ionuț (the friendly, quiet IT guy) and Gretchen (the American artist-social worker doing her practicum with FNO). Grați had IMPACT business to do, so we took her spot in the car and headed off to start to get some visas. 

After copying some documents, we walked into the County Police Station, up the stairs, to the window for foreigners. Ibrian took our passports to the guy, and they talked for five minutes or so. Ibrian came back to us, handed us our passports, and said, "I'm sorry, but we can't get you visas today."

What?

"The system has been down for a few days, and they can't enter any new names, so we'll have to come back another day, probably next week."

It was not a pleasant turn of events, but I wasn't very surprised. These things do happen, after all. Ibrian said he was ashamed to be a Romanian when things like this happened. We assured him that it was alright, there was nothing he could have really done, we weren't angry. But the fact remained that it was 11:30 and our bus back to Târgu Mureș came at... 6:00 pm. Oh my.

So, we began the process of what us Americans call "killing time." An awful phrase, really. One cannot "kill time" any more than one can "have time," but it really does seem to us that we're in charge of what we do with the time given us. A terrible mistake.

But nonetheless, we killed ourselves some time. We went to a shopping center to look around. Kelly, Gretchen, and Ionuț went into the tea shop and enjoyed the smells immensely. I got pissy about rampant capitalism, as I am wont to do when I'm in a bad mood and am made to endure a mall.

We went to a little museum next. I had a better attitude about this one. There were some taxidermied local animals (including buffalo), some Austro-Hungarian artifacts, some Dacian artifacts, and some local art. I'd recommend this museum to anyone who takes a trip to Deva, but I cannot remember how to get to it.

Oh, and it was raining most of the day.

The Lupeni crowd left at 2:30, with the promise of seeing us again pretty soon (woo hoo!), and Kelly and I said, "Now what?" We found a semi-fancy Italian restaurant and decided to have a semi-expensive lunch. It was really, really good food. And I was really, really grouchy. And she was really, really tired. When I'm tired, I don't really want to talk, but Kelly hates not talking during meals. An impasse. We talked a bit, but without much heart or conviction. Such are some conversations.

We very slowly walked back to the bus station. It was 4:00. Two hours to go. I sat down and almost instantly fell asleep.

I woke up 40 minutes later to the lady next to Kelly sneezing profusely. She apologized for her nose. I realized that I was in an infinitely better mood than before; the blessed siesta of Deva. Kelly turned to me and said, "Can we leave? The air in here feels sick."

We left, and went to the other bus station, the one our bus back to Târgu Mureș would come to. Kelly took a walk. I read Merton. I tried to find a bathroom, but the door into the station's shop seemed to be closed. I asked some guys my age who had been standing there, "E inchis?"

They shrugged. It must be closed. The one asked me, "Unde mergeți?"

"Târgu Mureș." I had to repeat myself. Our city is hard to pronounce. I asked them where they were going too.

"Sibiu." Another successful conversation, this one not stressful. Kelly came back, and the bus showed up 10 minutes later. It was crowded with students coming home for the weekend, and a little bit cold. There were no drunken conversations happening that I was aware of. There were, however, some guys who all seemed to work together in the back of the bus and they looked to be ignoring or laughing at a darker skinned co-worker. A joke from the day? Or blatant racism? I didn't ask.

The roads back were quite bumpy.  (Kelly says this is an understatement -- she was afraid of losing teeth.)  I think we almost hit a few people walking along the road in the dark (common practice here). We had a few near accidents due to passing vehicles and our "cute" bus avoiding potholes by swerving into the other lane. I stayed in a good mood the whole way back. The blessed siesta sustained me. Kelly watched the landscape in the dark and slept. We arrived in Târgu Mureș at 9:35, waited 15 minutes for a bus, and were back in Otilia's apartment by 10:05. Visa day was over.

We think this was our most "Romanian" day yet. Hopefully next week it'll be just as good.