Romania
2003
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Newsletter Six
Date: Friday 15 August 2003.
| I got home at about midnight on Wednesday after the camp finished. Early on Thursday Adi Foto and I drove to the camp again to collect the pack-up team. 12 hours later we were back in Timisoara but we still had to go to Stei (it's pronounced "Shtey") to drop off the cooks. Cue lots of Stei jokes like "Can't the cooks shtay in Timisoara for a couple of nights?" We got back home at 4:30am on Friday. I REALLY had to light my gas water heater so I got to bed after 5am. (International Teams missionary) Steve woke me up with a phone call at 8:51am (!) and we were off to Budapest, Hungary to take the Scottish camp team to the airport. Got home at 12:30am Saturday morning after the biggest search at the border that Steve has ever had and my first (and hopefully last) Romanian speeding ticket. |
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Coming back across the border the Hungarian customs officer must have been bored or something (no pun intended), or maybe just knew that there was a queue on the Romanian side, so he looked through pretty much everything. I couldn't open the back door of the van so I let him in through the side door, and the very serious looking guy waded through empty and partly full plastic soft drink and mineral water bottles to take a look around the back of the van. I'm not quite sure where all the bottles come from - maybe they just breed back there. The officer then wanted Steve to get out of his passenger seat, and Steve dropped his partly full Coke Light bottle getting out. After more adventures with plastic bottles and checking out my TWO chap sticks and single rubber glove (in the same pocket of my bag) the officer had eventually seen enough (after sniffing the chap stick and the van's unlabeled bag of Tylenol tablets). |
However when I opened the driver's door again my own partly full Schweppes Orange bottle fell out. This was a bit of a pity because I immediately had the thought "Ha! What we're actually doing is smuggling PET bottles!" And naturally that thought was very nearly enough for me to lose my composure completely. I was almost crying trying to keep from laughing before we drove over to the Romanian side. (Remember we really were very sleep-deprived. Maybe you had to be there.)
I know I've said it before but the roads in Hungary really are much better than the roads here. Cruising the autobahn at 130km/hr (legally) was quite fun too - especially when we wound the windows down. (No, none of our empty bottles were sucked out.)
| Petrol stations here [in Romania] sell a huge amount of alcohol (?!?) and a wide range of other goods and services. Translating the sign below, this one has petrol, diesel, combustible fuel, a restaurant and ... ummm... a striptease, a hotel and a 24 hour truckwash. OK, right. |
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So anyway, I'm "home" again and there are a few changes. For example:
- The water in Timisoara (even filtered) no longer tastes OK. I think
I was spoiled by the clean fresh water we piped into our campsite.
- Some bread I abandoned when I hurriedly left for the camp setup had
at least 7 different types of mould growing on it.
- Taxi prices have almost doubled. From 5,000 lei/km to 9,000 lei/km. Ow.
The New Zealand "missionary" family I'm house-sitting for here are taking a two month holiday in New Zealand. (I was staying with them for the first five weeks of my stay in Romania but they decided that was all they could take of me and packed off back to NZ. Huh.) Anyway, they've found out that the pacemaker in their (almost?) 9 year old son has a broken wire so doesn't actually do anything. The little guy is having tests at the moment to find out if he needs a new one. Please pray for that.
I may have mentioned it before, but if anyone is interested in checking the weather for Timisoara, look at http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/15247.html
And one last pic, when even Virgil had had enough (see the tag line of the last newsletter if you don't get it):
Good night, all. God bless.
--
Ian.
8 )
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/ianman/
Said while panting: "Sorry, dinner's going to be a little late because I had trouble catching the chicken."
- From a friend's visit to Lipova (a nearby town).
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