Changing seasons, currency confusion and a moment of connection

I have a lot of moments here which make me feel happy to be alive - perhaps it's the natural beauty of the place, the genuine people I come into contact with or just simply doing something I enjoy in life. I have completely enjoyed watching the seasons change here too - the colours of autumn were awesome (we miss out on those in tropical Queensland!) and now we have had our first real heavy snow fall the place has been transformed into a true winter wonderland - thought you might like some of the photos!

I also have a lot of moments that make me chuckle, and there is never a shortage of chuckles when I have to interact with shopkeepers! In the past couple of years Romania decided to simplify its currency and delete off four zero’s so that 10,000 Lei became a simpler 1 Lei. It seemed to make very good sense. However, the system is faltering a little in that people are having a hard time letting go of the old system and will still refer to things in the multiple of thousands but only specifying the multiple…for example, something that costs 1 Lei (in new money) will be described as costing 10 Lei (because in the old system it would have been 10 thousand Lei). Now, you can imagine as a foreigner who really doesn’t have a complete grasp on exactly how much things can cost, it gets rather confusing when people are telling me things are 10 Lei, but in actual fact they only cost 1 Lei …because lets face it - they are telling me this in Romanian too so I am having to concentrate enough trying to make sure I understand the number in the first place! When all else fails I have to admit defeat and just surrender and hold up a bunch of notes and indicate with that pathetically confused foreigner look to give me a helping hand and take what money is required!

It seems as though coins are also an unnecessary part of the currency in some of these remote Romanian village shops as a few times now my change will consist not of the 10 or 50 bani coin I am owed, but a couple of individually wrapped sweets or once I was even given a piece of cheese - I kid you not! I haven’t even bothered querying it because really, it seems an ideal solution as how often do people curse the inconvenience of their pockets being weighed down by piles of coins…I like to think that the Romanians are perhaps progressively addressing the problem by providing what they see as more useful or beneficial to their customer. Ha ha ha :-)

One thing that may seem surprising as well is battling peak hour on the bus back from town. Anyone that has battled London Underground during peak hour knows it's every man and woman for themselves…having endured that battleground for two years I am amazed to admit I felt intimidated when I looked at the jammed packed bus one afternoon and was directed to get on at the rear doors - dear god, how I was going to fit?? Solution came in the form of an old, loud abusive Romanian woman yelling something at me and prodding me up the steps (actually, prod is quite a subtle adjective to use - it was more like a gigantic shove) and I no choice but to throw myself on the mercy of everybody else as this woman pushed us both up the stairs.

So I was trundling along in this jam packed bus and then it happened - a young girl in preparation to get off the bus found herself with nothing to hold onto so she grabbed a hold of me. And it wasn’t a “bus hit a bump and I have to get of hold of something really quickly” kind of grab; it was more a “okay I can’t reach any of the seats to hold to perhaps I will just use this person standing here”. It struck me that not once in all the years on the London Underground had a stranger used me (nor I) to steady my stance - it would have been unthinkable! What a shame we have disconnected ourselves so much from one another. So as we both bounced along in that cramped bus through the Romanian countryside I was once again reminded how sometimes “progress” means losing the opportunity for those connected moments in the more individualistic, modern societies of the West. And it was in this simple moment that my heart swelled with gratitude for my return back here and cemented my love for this wonderful country and its people. I am really going to miss it here…

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