Episode 2 - Something has eaten half of my ear

On waking this morning, I fished my fancy individual coffee filters I'd purchased at our recent Summer Fundraiser out of my bag and made myself a rather delicious coffee with the coffee that the miserable woman in the supermarket had sold me last night.  The kettle made a slow start - she's not like my speedy home kettle, 'Petal' (everything should have a name), but she delivered eventually.

As I was leaving the building, I was warmly greeted by a smiley lady wielding a huge pile of towels and a mop.  We chatted about who were are and what we are doing here.  She is from Bangladesh and has lived in Romania for three years.  She has three degrees - a BA and two MAs from universities in Dhaka - and had a scholarship place to go and study in Birmingham, but for some reason I didn't quite understand, she wasn't able to take up the place.  She was delighted to speak English with me and said that she doesn't really understand Romanian.  

I sauntered on towards the Old Town, trying to get my head around the route.  God blessed me with many things, but not a sense of direction.  The Old Town was gently buzzing with place after place to eat and drink, jets of fine mist gently touched those eating in vain attempts to cool the patrons down.  There were plenty of gift shops all selling the same thing at vastly different prices.  

I bumped into two kindly ladies from T'North who may well be reading this! They were enjoying a child-free mini-break in the city for a few days.  They were doing their very own ChatGPT-led walking tour around the city and a gentle automated voice was guiding their way.  They gave me some useful tips about things here including which bits of the Therma Spa place to go to and which taxis are cheaper.  

We said farewell and went our separate ways.  I wandered down a side-street when suddenly I heard a weird buzzing sound by my right ear.  I bashed myself on the ear to usher away the offending insect - not to hurt it, just to discourage it, but I was too late.  It had bitten a chunk out of my ear and my ears are now not symmetrical!

I had my hair cut just before travelling, to maintain my elfin appearance, as it had started to look like live I've been living on a hillside for some months.  And now an angry insect has flown off with a chunk of ear cartilage.  How rude.  Not quite sure how I'm going to problem-solve this one.  People meeting me here will meet me with half an ear.  

I had a hearing test the other day and a overly energetic audiologist stuck a camera in my ear, which was bizarrre, but I saw my own ear drum beating, and some strange light, which apparently is a good thing.  Turns out my hearing is almost totally fine.  So, either people are mumbling or I'm just not listening.  

I enjoyed a traditional Romanian breakfast of sausages, cucumber, cheese and, well, the lighting was a bit funny and the jets of spray were quite intense, so I'm not entirely sure what else I ate, but it was yummy and filled me up for the rest of the day.  

I spent some time reading and resting, then booked myself onto a quirky walking tour of Bucharest.  This was a true 'Helen Walk' as they are known.  More than two hours of history, stories, winding streets, near-death experiences with ubiquitous e-scooters and more.  The guide was incredibly knowledgeable and spoke with great enthusiasm.  

We met by the statue of Romulus and Remus.  I first learnt about them with a history teacher who couldn't pronounce the letter R, so for years I thought they were called Womulus and Wemus - till today actually.  

We went to all sorts of fascinating buildings, some several hundred years old with intense, beautiful architecture; others concrete blocks from relatively recent communist times.  

We went to the church of St Anthony who is - the patron saint of... things we have lost.  But the guide said that this is only on Tuesdays.  Apparently you can queue up and pay homage to him if you have lost things.  But only on Tuesdays.  I should have queued up really, but it would have taken more than a bit of a Tuesday.  

We were guided into some huge wooden multi-layered building where hundreds of people were ordering very fancy meals and drinks, and the upper layers are I think rooms which people can book to stay in.  On the way out we were shown the wooden paving used to protect visitors from the noise of people arriving on horses.  The guide said we could test this by pretending to be a horse.  Naturally I did this.  No-one else did.  

The next stop was the ruin of a Palace.  We were informed that it had been left exactly as they had found it.  There was a KitKat wrapper shoved in a bit of the ruin and I wanted to ask if that was part of the original find.  Maybe someone just needed a break.  

Our party nearly got run over by a LandRover full of people.  The guide told us that the car was driven by nuns who live in the nearby nunnery.  She described them as 'not normal nuns' and proceeded to explain that they drive and have food deliveries.  I think there's a lot more that she didn't explain about what the are nuns are doing there.  I didn't ask, so I'm nun the wiser.

The guide explained the significance of the symbols of Bucharest - it was a metal plate and doubled as a drain cover.  Bizarre.

The modern history was fascinating - I'd lost track of how recently communism ceased here after the Revolution - it was in 1989.  Thousands lost their lives and we were shown a giant memorial of all the names of those who died.  

Romania has developed in some ways, having joined NATO and the EU, but the guide said that many are leaving if they can, for more opportunities elsewhere, and that people are arriving from south-east Asia to work here.  This world is a fascinating place.  

'That was really interesting', I complimented the guide at the end, 'you have really great knowledge'.

'Well, it's my paid job, I'm paid to have great knowledge', came the terse reply.  

Nice.

Awkwardly the tour ended miles away from where it had started, so I had no idea where I was.  I walked until I found somewhere to have some yummy dinner and a nice cold Romanian beer.  Nearby, there was a violinist playing familiar tunes over a backing track, from everything Ed Sheeran, to 'My Heart Will Go On', to 'Memory' and I thought that would be a pleasant sound to accompany my dinner.  Unfortunately just after I'd ordered, the restaurant started pumping out electronic hip-hop versions of all sorts of indeterminable songs, creating a terrible cacophony in my brain.  I was also people-watching a couple who seemed to have run out of conversation.  I so nearly went over to give them some ideas for conversation starters.      

'Please could I have some tap water?' I asked the waiter politely, as I was ordering my dinner at the restaurant.

'No, we have only bottles'.

'You don't have a tap, with water in it?'

'No'.

Goodnight friends.

Episode 1 - Airport adventures

There I was, adventure-bound, on a Thameslink train, direct from Plumstead to Luton Airport.  The Tannoy kept telling me to message 61016 if I saw anything unusual - most of the general public look fairly unusual, but God loves them all.  

On arrival at Luton Airport, expecting to be ushered straight to a check-in desk, I had to jump on something called the Luton Dart.  It was shaped like a Japanese bullet train, the Luton version.

'Is this free?' I asked the attendant. 

'No', but you can use your card.

'What, my Oyster card?'

'No, this is not London'.

'Well I know that'.

'Your bank card is fine'.

'Great'.

I jumped aboard and sat right at the front - I thought I'd be next to the the driver but there wasn't a driver.  So I was basically driving a Japanese bullet train, in Luton.  My trusty Revolut card (which still won't authenticate me despite me twice having the friendly phone shop pixies fix my phone camera) informed me that I had spent £1.50 on this journey.  It took 4 minutes.  It should really be shaped like a giant cow, a cash cow.  

I was perturbed already as the app I'd booked the flight through had decided to check me in automatically the day before! There I was, lovingly watering my thriving kitchen garden - am intent on living off the land, rather than off Tesco - when I got a message saying I was all checked in! Faithful readers will know how I object to online check-in, on the basis that Jesus might come back in the interim.  I hadn't even decided to definitely go on this little sabbatical but I was already checked-in.  Great.  

Purple was still adorned with her orange ribbon from the last Guide adventure I led - thirty of us went to Cape Verde in May.  It is very odd travelling by oneself when one is used to taking a crowd.  The sound-off is very lonely - 'Sound off - one! Yay!'

Poor Purple, despite being the ultimate woman's fitted adventuring rucksack, she is not usually allowed with the regular baggage, so she's quite used to being taken instead to 'oversized baggage'.  Abdul on check-in assured me that she'd be much happier with the other oversized bags and he knows because he used to work in baggage.

So Purple and I trundled along, following the 'Oversize Baggage' signs, where the kindly supervising lady and I shared a few thoughts on the breakdown of society and the phasing out of paper and pens, before I said farewell to Purple.  

I happened upon the Prayer Room, so thought I pop in for a few quite moments before embedding myself back with the general public.  There I fell into conversation with Lesley and Malcolm who are part of the friendly chaplaincy team who do great pastoral work supporting people across the airport.  In December, local schoolchildren gather at the airport to sing Christmas songs to travellers.  Always a good time to do so.

I bumbled my way through security where they seemed to have to do an entire body search which took quite a while; fortunately I didn't have 30 children waiting for me as usual, so it didn't really matter.

I was sitting down, contemplating opening one of the multitude of books I have with me, when I heard a lady in her 80s behind me ask the man opposite if he could help her with something.  I'm not sure if he understood, but he declined.  She looked at me and I said 'are you ok? Do you need something?'

'Well yes, I need someone to put my socks on.  I can't do it myself.'

'Right', I hesitated, feeling sad that she had no one with her to help her.  Could I help a complete stranger with her socks, in the middle of an airport waiting area? I asked the lady next to who had a small child on her lap to whom she was reading a pink Fairy Magic book if she could keep an eye on my stuff.  She agreed.  

The older lady gave me some gloves and I proceeded to haul a giant angry compression sock with a mind of its own onto her foot and eventually into the shoe.  Whilst I was doing this, she said that she was thinking of getting a cat, to which I said would be a nice thing as they are good company, but that I preferred dogs.  But she said "No, a tat, that's what they call tattoos these days".  

She then, whilst I was wrestling with a giant angry compression sock, continued to tell me that she can't get a tat (not a cat) because of what it says in the Old Testament about tattoos.  I suggested that perhaps that reflected the nature of when the Old Testament was written, to which she said "could you do the other sock please?"

A man turned up.  "That's my husband", she said; "Thanks for doing my socks".  And off they hobbled.     

The lady reading the pink Fairy Magic book had gone now, and been replaced by another lady similar to my age, with a man and two sons.  She said she was looking forward to reading books by the poolside whilst the family were in the pool.  She said, 'I struggle to see the letters though, I have to use this'; she produced a piece of tired plastic - 'I got this in Sainsbury's - it's really helpful for magnifying the words'. 

"That's good", I chirped.

"I should sort it out really, for work", she said.

"What do you do?" I enquired.

"I'm an optician", came the reply.  

The time came for me to advance to the gate.  There was an anxious French lady trying to wake a potentially dead man who would not stir, at the edge of the corridor.  

"Are you with him?", I asked her.

"No but he is not waking", she replied.

Mutually agreeing that we needed to do something, I headed to the first person I saw in uniform - I like to think that you can generally trust them but usually first check that they are not on their way to a fancy dress party, as I've made that mistake before - but this was an international airport, so that was unlikely.  However, it was a Krispy Kreme Donut uniform.  

"Sorry, there's a man over there and he looks a bit, well, dead".

"I can't really do much", said the man in the Krispy Kreme Donut uniform.

"Well, you work here, so you can probably tell someone".

"Right", he said, thought for a moment, then picked up a radio.

"Sorry I'm not buying a doughnut" I apologised.

"That's ok".

Boarding seemed to take a long time, but I'd lost all concept of time, so I didn't really matter.  I slept almost the entire way, then made an origami crane for a small child who I hope will take good care of it, though I fear she may have left it on the plane.  I just hope it ends up in the recycling rather than in landfill.    

Queuing up at border control at Bucharest, I fell into conversation with a group of friends who are all A&E Nurses at Kettering General, here for a few happy days together.  Probably best to take a lot of care if you live in Kettering over the next few days.

I looked at my hostel reservation and it said something about re-confirm 24 hours before - well, I hadn't done that and I was already in the country! I have various, fairly tenuous links to Romania, ok very tenuous, so hoped the reservation was in some system somewhere.  I was surprised a rogue app hadn't already checked me in whilst I'd been watering the vegetables.  Then the hostel manager guy, Alex, messaged me and all was well.  I have three relatives called Alex so think you can generally trust an Alex, with some exceptions.  

I had been warned about airport taxi scams and all sorts, but needn't have been.  I think it's more lucrative to scam people online these days.  I confidently followed signs to the bus stops and jumped on the no. 100 bus into central Bucharest.  The journey lasted about forty minutes and cost 50p. I like buses, just like Andy.     

I checked into my little budget hostel, found some dinner nearby and made friends with the kindly Sri Lankan staff.  Then I found a supermarket and stocked up on milk and coffee.  The supermarket lady didn't seem to be having a very good day, or maybe that is her regular expression, it's hard to know.

Thanks for reading, sleep well all.