Teaching a Fish to Play Basketball - The Romania Story

Johanna, Jesse, and I in the salt mine's lake. I rowed badly. 

A Weekend Back in Time - Transylvania and All it Has to Offer

When I say going to Romania is kind of like jumping into a time machine, I'm not pulling your leg. That's the complete truth. It's both good and bad, but this blog is going to focus on the GOOD of that! And some of the crazy up and down adventures we as a group (And I especially, of course) had in Transylvania. Which, for those of you unaware, is in fact a real place. And no, the people aren't all deahtly pale, and there aren't vampires in every town, and people do NOT nail garlic to the door to ward off vampires. Although I'm sure they'd have valid reason to. Transylvania is in the Carpathian Mountains, and so there are lots of peaks and valleys, and I'm not surprised the vampire legends originated from his region. And yes, I still have a pulse, and I don't suck blood. So you can actually get out of Transylvania alive.

Last Thursday, we took off for Transylvania at the crack of dawn. Like, literally. The bus fired up at 6 AM and took off at 6:30 AM for a day long trip into Transylvania. Immediately upon crossing the Romanian border, it feels like you traveled back in time about twenty to thirty years. There are some positives of that (An Old World Charm) and some negatives (It is clear these people do not live very well. But nonetheless they manage). The small Hungarian communities are small, everyone knows everyone's name, and many people are self-sufficient. They have to be, because they have no true way to get into the main hubs of the cities without a long commute (Sometimes five or six hours). The Carpathians in fall are breathtaking, by the way. Take a look! 

Scenery of Transylvania

Before we reached our final destination, we stopped in the market village. There is a large week-long open air market where the Romanians can simply buy everything they need basically for the next year. There was, quite literally, everything under the sun at this market. Take a look for yourself:

Plates, furniture, nonperishable food, golden clocks, and many trinkets of all shapes, sizes, and qualities were on sale at this outdoor Romanian market. We made two trips to it. 

We then arrived into Kalotaszentkiraly, the village in Romania we were doing homestays at. The house mother I got assigned to was named Kati. She was extremely kind, and I really enjoyed the homestays because the families only spoke Hungarian, so it was an opportunity to really speak Hungarian and not be able to use my English. They fed us substantial meals, and also got us rather drunk. They had their own home made Palinka, which I drank healthily the first night. I had six shots, and it was twice as strong as normal Palinka, so it was like drinking twelve shots. With the amount of food I ate...Big mistake.

The next day, we got treated to another large meal, this time a breakfast. The breakfast was a lot of typical stuff. Eggs, sausage, etc. But one thing that WAS special was this jam. It was, I kid you not, pig's blood jam. Yeah. That's right. Pig's blood. I had some on my bread. Big mistake. It actually tasted surprisingly good. But with my heavy drinking night, and the ingestion of a completely foreign substance, my body started to react adversely. I didn't feel right at all from the second I finished trying the jam. I knew things would go south at some point on this Friday. But I wanted to go to Torda and see the salt mine, and also hike with the group, so I forced myself to soldier on.

Arriving into Torda, we were given a tour of their vast salt mine. There was enough salt in this mine to supply the rest of the world with salt. And I'm not just saying that because they claimed it. The validity of that was immedaitely questionable because why wouldn't they claim that? But no. They were serious. Dead. Fucking. Serious. I've never seen so much of any substance just lining every wall, lining even the crevices in the walls, and so on. It was nuts. The coolest thing, though, awaited us at the bottom of the mine.

A 92-Meter salt waterfall.

No. The 92-meter waterfall-looking thing of salt was NOT the coolest thing. At the bottom of this mine, was a lake.

Yeah. A lake.

Yeah. A lake. With boats. This looks like Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, does it not? You get those vibes, too? GOOD.

Naturally, every single one of us wanted to take a pleasure cruise on this Romanian lake at the bottom of the salt mine. I was no exception. The boats costs 10 Lei (The Romanian currency) to rent out. I wound up finding close friends Johanna and Jesse, who wanted to ride but had no Lei, and so I paid for them. It's a good thing I did, because if I didn't, I'm pretty sure I'd still be stuck out there in Romania, never to return.

The boats were not motorized, they were simple rowboats. Now, for those of you who DON'T know. I live in Arizona. There's like, no water there, okay? I added it up...Prior to this experience, I had been in a non-motorized boat twice in my life. I had been in a boat that needed to be rowed once. And that wasn't even a boat. It was a piece of cardboard that my dad and I basically duct-taped together, gave me an oar, and was told "DON'T DROWN!" for a science project in eight grade. Jesse and Johanna, my rowboat mates, were a former boat crew member and a former camp counselor, who knew all rowing positions, respectively. 

My first thought was, "I cannot row this boat. One of them needs to." However, upon sitting in the back of the boat, and Johanna getting in the middle, the boat nearly sunk. The Romanian boat master person, speaking limited English, basically yelled at me to get my oversized ass into the middle of the boat before I sunk as all. I did as instructed. Jesse and Jo got in on either side of me. And off we went, ever so slowly.

Now, this is where the title of my blog post comes into play. I explain to Jesse and Jo, apologetically, that I don't know the first thing about rowing. They start trying to explain it to me, but I still can't do it right. I nearly hit a few other boats, sometimes move us back towards the dock, then this way, then sideways, while trying to go forward. It was bad. Half the time, I'd start rowing with the technique Jesse showed me, only to have one oar in the water, and one rowing air. I'm sure that internally, Jo and Jesse were simultaneously rolling on the floor in laughter as the poor desert boy had to row, while also wanting to facepalm multiple times over as I steered us on a crash course with disaster. 

This photo was taken by Paige a few minutes after we got away from the dock. I already posted it, but please take a look at it again, and pay attention mainly to Johnana's expression. It is timeless and priceless (She is the girl in the blue jacket.)

I could only imagine the things going through my friend Johanna's mind as this was snapped.

Seriously. I want to pause this entire blog post for a second and just analyze her expression.

Seriously, her face is a wonderful mix between the following emotions:

"Oh my God! I'm in Romania!"

"But holy shit! The desert boy is rowing! I'm in Romania and this is probably where I'll stay!"

"YAY! We're NOT wet!"

"We're still afloat. I consider this a victory."

"YAY! We're not dead!" 

"The fish is playing basketball! It's a miracle!" 

"Not wet!"

"GO US WOOT!"

"LOL"
"YAY! We're going...nowhere. If only Peter could row!"

"WOOT! Thumbs up! My phone still works!"

And I'm sure some other emotions along the lines of "Is this real life?" and "TROLOLO" mixed in.

We continued to flirt with disaster as I hit the wall a few times, and nearly got us stuck in a shallow pot of water. Eventually, poor Jesse had to take over because I was going to lead us straight to our deaths if things continued as they were! Things worked out okay, though. And this is something I will remember for the rest of my life. I mean, who else can say they got to row a boat? Sure, lots of people. But who else can say they got to row a boat in a salt mine? In Romania? Yeah, thought so, bitches! ^_^

Unfortunately, things went downhill fast from this high point, as my stomach caught up with the rest of my body, and I spend the last day and a half of the excursion rather ill and unable to participate in the traditional Hungarian dance on Saturday night or the hike up to a castle. But we saw many gorgeous Churches and got to meet some wonderful people and have some wonderful experiences. But nothing will top the salt mine. Nothing.

The fish played basketball. It wasn't pretty, but he did it.

Now this weekend I take a solo trip to Vienna. Things are coming up roses here in the final chapter of the greatest year of my life.

Molly, Gaby, and I in one of my rare out-of-bed appearances after the salt mine.