Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

The Departure

My comments from last year about the car and the caravan were taken very seriously. The trip was officially declared a Test Run, and a list was made of everything that needed fixing and/or improving. But as with any list for a caravan (or camping in general), it started multiplying on its own, like rabbits: camping accessories, extension cords of every length, supports, plugs, adapters, tools that “will definitely come in handy for something,” a super side tent – made specially for this caravan model (the most useful thing), fans, a big battery, smaller batteries, another set of batteries, mosquito-repellent lamp, leveling kit, three “dedicated” navigation apps, five professional weather apps (or vice versa), sensors, water jerrycans, waste jerrycans (clearly labeled so they don’t get mixed up), a dishwasher (!), three fridges, ropes, bags, a set of small paddles (!), emergency kits, kits for the emergency kits…

The car itself got VIP treatment. Everything worked: sockets, connectors, batteries, headlights. And on top of that, on the roof rack (which already had a very complicated Thule setup), there was now a kayak. Or a canoe. Whatever, a watercraft! Let’s not argue about it now. There is a whole chapter dedicated to it.

True to our Sunday morning plan (because we’re optimists about traffic), an otherworldly apparition made its grand entrance around the corner:

Volvo with a beak

My video cut off abruptly: I left the first load of luggage next to the car and ran for the second load, while Mișu, with all his legendary driving skills, tried to maneuver the car and caravan into an impossibly narrow space to cause as little traffic disruption as possible. No matter how polite and skillful Mișu was, he still managed to annoy four gentlemen who expressed their displeasure with long, loud, furious honking. Luckily it was Sunday and there were only four….

My tragicomic reappearance, running loaded with about six heavy bags tied together, stubbornly repeating “don’t put the potato on top of the tomato, don’t put the potato on top of the tomato – ah, he put it…. Eh, it’ll do for tomato juice”- perfectly completed the picture of what had started as a quiet morning and was now degenerating into chaos.

As usual, my mission consisted of sourcing vegetables, fruit, sheep’s milk, mild cheese – cur de oaie (sheep’s ass cheese), blândă (mild) – and other choice delicacies I saw fit. The comma between “sheep” and “mild” is mandatory because it wasn’t the sheep that was mild (it might have been, but that’s not the subject of this story) but the cheese, which didn’t have as strong an odor as the one from two years ago, and not quite as pungent as Harris’s Limburger (from Three In A Boat), but close.

The Impatience Sensor

A brief parenthesis is needed to understand traffic and the ways drivers express disagreement (I’m limiting this to Bucharest because, in Arizona, it’s somewhat different. Here, people carry guns, and if they think you honked too loud, they shoot you).

A basic study of the narrow street in the video shows cars parked every which way, on the right or left. Bucharest traffic doesn’t follow any Official Rules (they are treated more like friendly suggestions). Instead, it abides by its own rules, passed down orally from generation to generation. From the moment they grab the steering wheel, civilized people in everyday life turn into tenacious participants in a frenetic, barbarian crusade in which the Holy Grail consists of arriving two minutes earlier.

One second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom (per the International System of Units – SI).

One millisecond is the time between a traffic light turning green and the first driver honking – unless the driver has a BMW, and this is a special category. In that case, the impatience sensor is set to 0.5 milliseconds (or even less for an M model, in which case, the driver honks before the light turns green). The moment a human being, regardless of gender, race, or country of origin, buys a BMW (new or used), they sign an annex to the contract, in blood, committing to become an insufferable jackass. So far, I have never met a single BMW driver who has failed to honor that commitment!

In Which Uncle Fane Meets Bulgaria

Unlike last year’s trip to Borsec (a real adventure), the drive to Krapets was completely incident-free: beautiful road, highway, no problems at all. I even recommend the highway toilets – simple but clean. The attendants were two tough-looking guys, the kind you wouldn’t want to be alone with while washing your hands. I expressed my wish to guard the car while my friend Mișu’s bladder demanded emptying. “Come on, Fane, these are the gentlemen who clean up shit – you’re perfectly safe with them.” And that was it – the only problem was one that didn’t exist, and even that was created by me.

As I said, the final destination was Krapets (aka Krapec, Krapetz), “The last peaceful place on the Bulgarian coast” (as Bulgarians say), a village 25-30 km south of Vama Veche (former known as “The last peaceful place on the Romanian coast”). Many Romanian “Krapetsians” (former Vama Veche regulars) love it because it reminds them of Vama before it became the super-touristy, crowded, kitschy resort it is today. I was told at least five times: “Man, it’s like Vama back in the day…” What can I say? For me, “Vama back in the day” was something completely different. Of course, I have a post about that too, but let’s not digress, so no link.

The first photos were taken after the initial frenzy of putting up the side tent and unloading the car. Mișu had parked on the promenade, a spot that was accessible because it was off-season. Otherwise…

Right in the last five minutes, when I wanted to take one more photo, some three locals were dragging the lifeguard tower along the beach, getting it ready for winter. It was also a “last five minutes” situation with the much-praised restaurants, all of which had closed just moments before. All of them!

(Next – Chapter 3)