Reminisciences 9

City Venture

The next day it took Ben a while to get going. He had some tiredness to work through after such a long train journey, 14 hours over night from Budapest, and the excitable overwhelmedness of meeting head on a new culture.

As he lay semi-conscious in Bed, he had heard the others rummaging around in the flat as they gradually got up and got going on a new day. He had understood that Stefan went to work somewhere or other, but he hadn’t got as far as determining what Florin or Doina did with their time. By the time he eventually prised himself out of bed and ventured beyond his room, the flat was empty.  He took advantage of this to have a leisurely wash and then roam around to inspect the flat by daylight. Even by the unforgiving standards of daylight, the flat looked in good condition. Ben thought to himself that either someone in the family must have a good salary, or maybe they inherited money from a long lost aunt or perhaps, and hopefully not, some funny business had gone on.

Ben didn’t feel too hungry as his stomach was still full with the previous night’s rice. It was a good feeding to say the least and he felt like it would keep him going well into the day. His hosts were obviously well into hospitality because not only had they fed him well and been very welcoming, once they realised who he was, but they also had left a spare key out for him, which he spied sitting on the kitchen table, accompanied by a note:

'Cheie de la apartament. Noi vom fi acasă mai târziu.'

It didn’t take too much to work out what this meant. It was obviously the apartment key, and after checking on the meanings of ‘acasă’ and ‘târziu’, Ben understood that they would be home later. Languages are funny things, Ben mused. So many differences, but yet so many similarities. It wouldn’t take many English speakers long to work out what ‘apartament’ meant, for example, but on the other hand who would have thought that ‘târziu’ meant late. Then there were words like ‘mai’ which meant more. Sort of like English, but not quite. In any case, whatever the reasons for these digressions and congressions, he was determined to make linguistic progress.

Ben gratefully took the key as it gave him a certain freedom to go and come as he please. Very trusting on the host families part, but then they had mumbled something about 100 euros last night, so if this was what he was paying for the room, then he felt entitled to a bit of luxury. Finally, he popped his Romanian-English dictionary into his rucksack, put his shoes on and opened the door, ready to step out into the challenges and, he hoped, opportunities that lay ahead.

The first task was to find his way to the city centre. This didn’t seem like it would be so hard. On the way to the flat the day before he had spied a big M raised up above a passageway leading down into the ground. Maybe this could have been mistaken by the unwitting as some sort of underground fast food restaurant, but Ben was wiser than that. He already knew that in Romanian the underground system was called, 'Metrou' and so by his powers of deduction he reached the conclusion that the big M raised above the ground stood for 'Metrou'. Besides this, it was blue, not yellow.

It didn’t take too much navigating to negotiate his way through the blocks of flats onto the main street and, once there, the blue M stood out like a shining beacon. He moved towards it and took the escalator, when he arrived, down into the underground station. Like much of the rest of the city, the station looked like it hadn’t changed much since communist days. It was kind of drab, but at least it was spacious and relatively clean. The first obstacle was to buy a ticket. The handy pocket-sized Romanian dictionary that he had on him, helped him with this. 'Vă rog, un bilet cu două călătorii', was the appropriate phrase. There were also other tickets on offer, but Ben thought he would play it safe and go for the simplest, which was this two journey ticket, whatever that might be.

The man behind the counter understood what Ben wanted, maybe he was used to dealing with foreigners, and asked for 'un leu, 50 de bani' as the price. The elation of this initial victory of managing to successfully ask for a ticket was quickly subdued as Ben realised that he didn’t have any Romanian money. A silly, but easy mistake to make. On his way to the underground station, he had even seen a Bureau de Change on the street. It wasn’t hard as there seemed to be a number of them about. Slightly embarrassed, he left the kiosk without a word, leaving the ticket salesman a little bemused, but returned rapidly with some Lei in his wallet. Fortunately, due to the quirks of exchange rates, his five twenty pound notes had bought him a good selection of Romanian currency and he was now able to hand the ticket man a green note and a large coin. In return, he received what looked like a ticket from his local multiple storey car park back home. He refrained from making any jokes about not remembering where he had left his car, and instead focused on working out what he was supposed to do with the ticket.

Again, being a man of perception, it wasn’t too hard to realise that you slotted it into the machine adorning the barrier that prevented access to the platform where the trains arrived. He did this, the barrier sprung loose, allowing him to push through and he plucked his ticket back, now with the date and some other information printed on the back.

Straight after passing through the barrier, he came to a staircase that led down to the platform. It was now that another slightly scary thought occurred; he didn’t actually know where he was going!

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