In the beginning of this note about the trip to Timisoara I'd like to make a small digression concerning some critics my subjective propaganda dedicated web resource received recently. This time they criticized some statements made by me on the site, along with the languages they were published in.

Disclaimer

Not so long ago the English version of the summer nights text was commented in Romanian by someone Gheorghe. After a closer look (by IP address) he turned out to be a vigorous Finnish lady from Bucharest with whom I had a pleasure to have a discussion by e-mail once. I said Finnish because Finland is the country where he currently lives, and it looks like either because of the language barrier or maybe some reasons related to appearance, normal healthy sex is a rare thing in her life. Otherwise why berate Pumpsie so angrily? Interest for politics and to her own national inferiority are most likey to have such a reason. In her comment Gheorghe accused me of libel as well as of publication of different materials depending on the language they're written in. Particularly she felt offended by the statement that the majority of the "Old times" club visitors were virtually living in America. The reason for me to write it was a big American flag I saw under the ceiling there. You can imagine where Baia Mare is situated and where is America, can't you? That's what I meant too.

According to Gheorghe, my guilt is that the statement was published in English, without a translation into Romanian. Well, first of all, I'm quite aware of the fact that there are a lot of Romanians around who are able to comprehend English. Also on the first page of the site there is a list of all the recently written texts, no matter in which language they are. And last but not least, the majority of texts (including this one) are usually written the following way. Originally I write in Russian, and then with a great, almost titanic, effort a text is translated into English. The effort is so big that after applying it I don't feel like translating it into Romanian at all. There are though some specific texts written especially for the Romanian version of the site. Usually they are related to the subjects that are interesting only inside Romania, such as this one where it says about the first 100% Romanian weblogs resource which got launched quickly (in 19 days) after my article on the topic was published in local press.

Thus, there is a message to all of you who sees a conspiracy theory where I don't translate some texts from one language into another. Instead of hating me, piercing a wodoo puppet symbolizing me and throwing my portraits into lavatory pan, just take such a text and translate it yourself. After I make sure everything it says reflects the original thoughts well, the translation will be published. Below the text depending on your will, we can add a name, a photo or anything else you'd like to see there. Besides this, a translator can write several words about him(her) self. Like "single Romanian girl lost in Finnish forests is looking for a handsome Lappis (two, three) to have some pleasures of Platonic, and also oral and anal kinds together". That's it. No problem and everyone's happy.

Now about Timisoara. Since quite a while I wanted to visit the city. They said I would see a neat old houses built during the Austo-Hungarian period, offices furnished in extreme, people shining of prosperity, as well as crowds of jolly students.

Some History

First mentioning about the city is dated 1154 year when an Arab geographer Sarif al Idrisi wrote: "Timisoara is a nice city, offering great riches". Since then a lot of things happened in the place situated near Hungarian and Serbian borders. Like, in 1552 the city was captured by Turks in whose possesion it remained till 1716 when the Austrian prince Eugen de Savoya banished them annexing Timisoara to his own posessions. During the Austrian rule the city suffered two epedemics of plague (1738-1739 and 1762-1763). Then during some time it was trying to get independence from Austro-Hungary, being reannexed every time. In 1918 there was an annex attempt by Serbs, but in 1919 the city got a Romanian administration. In July 1944 Timisoara was bombed by the airforces of the US and the Great Britain, the same year in September the Soviet army entered the city. In December 1989 Timisoara was the first Romanian city free of communism.

The city is also full of traditions. First in Romania it got street illumination with gas (1857), and then first in Europe was illuminated with electricity (1884). The beer factory was built in 1718, and the first tram (first in Romania again, horse-driven) was launched there in 1869. With education it wasn't so great, because the universities were founded quite late: medicine in 1946, and the state university in 1948.

A visit to such a city was going to be an interesting adventure. Of course, it would be impossible to see everything in two days, and I quite realized that. Though I suppose some things I did manage to see.

Way There

The thing I don't like about Baia Mare a lot is its being located on outskirts. That's why getting somewhere from it is a real adventure. To be frank, there are too few things left that I like about the city. With the help of the database at cfr.ro I found out there was only one train going daily to Timisoara from here. It was fast: the distance of 417 kms was done in 7 hours and a half. At the other hand, the time for the train was chosen extremely "properly", for it was night. For those of you who have no idea about what Romanian railways are like, there is some info in brief. There are coaches of 1st and 2nd class, and also two types of sleeping-cars. The 1st class usually means 6 soft sitting places in a compartment, the 2nd means 8. The main difference between the two types of sleeping-cars is the amount of places, too. The one called "cusheta" has 6 places, and "vagon de dormit" -- 2 in every compartment. Once I was going from Iasi to Bucharest with "cusheta", and there were only four people in every compartment, though the amount of places, as I said before, was 6, placed in three rows. I also remember folding bars made especially so that a sleeping passenger doesn't fall down from his shelf. Sincerely, I was glad to see them. Immediately I remembered my first time in a train back in childhood. It was something new, and I insisted that I slept on the upper shelf. So how I was sleeping there curled up in the same figure I fallen down by surprised mom who was sitting below.

Despite the Baia Mare-Timisoara train goes over night, there are only 1st and 2nd classes in it. The main difference between them is price, because there would be no comfortable sleeping in any of them. The lack of sleeping-cars upset me, but couldn't cancel the travel. It was already arranged with Vlad who was meant to meet me in the railway station in the morning.

In the train there was a nice fellow traveller who I met back at the railway-station. She was probably the sole young lady among old women with bags and provincial men who were going to their villages situated along the way. In compartment with us there were two old guys and one old lady with a three years old granddaughter. A nice, active and communicative girl called Teodora first was asking everyone if they liked it in train, then said "go sleep or I'll beat you" and finished with the phrase "gonna piss". Actually she was the only one who could sleep well. Neither me nor Magda (that's how my fellow traveller's name was), could sleep no matter how hard we tried to make us comfortable in our chairs. Also we spoke on various topics. Like, there will be no major demographic catastrophies in Romania, because large families are not a rare thing here. Magda told me that her parents had yet 7 children besides her. And when I took up a 2L bottle of "Coca-cola" immediately I was informed on results of a very interesting experiment. One day in order to break her of drinking the aerated imperialism someone left a small piece of meat in a saucer with "Coca-cola". By morning the meat got dissolved completely. It would had sounded ok if not the following conclusion. The lady decided to switch to "Fanta". I assumed that the only difference between the "Fanta" and "Cola" drinks was the taste, while the chemical formula was most likely the same. Obviously, I asked her if she tried to put meat into "Fanta". The lady felt inspired.

After coming at 8:11am Konst looked like a zombie. In such a state he was met by Vlad who now works for the Romanian branch of the "Alcatel" French company. My look was even sombrer because I realized that I made a major negligence during preparations. I totally forgot to take the USB cable for my digital camera. Now it feels much better with a 128Mb flash, but during the trip to Timisoara not having a possibility to download photos to computer I managed to make only 16 shots in 1024x768 resolution. How naive I was hoping that it was the case when I didn't forget anything during my travel preparations!

First Steps

Just after meeting me Vlad said it cheerfully that our schedule for that day was almost put together: we would see the city, visit clubs and see the wet shirts contest if we find it. According to rumours it was meant to happen at one of the shtrands. Shtrand is such a pond in the open air, a very popular Romanian distraction, even in Baia Mare you can find one. As to Timisoara, there are dozens.

Vlad lives on the street called Circumvolatiunii (possessive from Circumvolatiune, a misterious word whose meaning noone knew). Dictating on the phone his address if any, Vlad said Circul Volatiunii (volatiune's cirus) and amused me a lot. I said it must be interesting to live in circus, though you have to be attentive not to get biten by tigers. Overby the block Vlad lived in we had a coffee, at his place I left my gear, had a shower and we went to discover the city, saw the main places of interests: two central squares, and took a picture with a waitress in a cafe where we had our first beer, etc. It's easy to notice Timisoara is a students' city: waitresses at all the places are mainly young and pretty girls, unlike mature and experienced ones in small towns such as Baia Mare.

Won't bother you describing every step, because it wouldn't sound interesting for anyone. Instead, there are some sketchings.

City Geography

As to me, Timisoara consists of the following four parts:

1) Liberty and Unity squares;

2) embankment of the Bega river, along which there are numerous shtrands; also in some places there are cafes in cutters staying on the water;

3) students' complex;

4) the rest.

The latter includes such beautiful places as the park of roses, the central park, and other green tracts. The students' complex is an amazing place. First, the majority of clubs, cafes and other fun places are situated there. Second, the dorms with hundreds of thousands students who came from different locations. Wearing bras is not among habits of the female ones, especially when it's hot outside. That's why thekonst.net decided to decorate Timisoara with the title of the boobiest city of Romania. Having in mind that this country from the very beginning impressed me by immense balconies many girls have here, in Timisoara I just was dazzled. Unfortunatelly, the "westness" of the city, from what I saw, didn't affect the local beauties' mentality, thus they behave just like the ones from the rest of Romania. Becoming acquainted with a girl in a cafe or at a disco is a great luck. As a pure experiment I tried to. Generally I wonder why they come there.

Clubs

The first day of my stay in the evening an outing to a club was planned. The place called "The Note" was situated somewhere between the students' complex and beer factory. First we spent some time looking for it. Finally found, I realized it was indeed a pretty club with a nice interior. Probably the best club scenery I'd ever seen in Romania. "Viper" from Iasi was good, but rather small and modest in comparison with "The Note". At the other hand, despite I visited such major cities as Bucharest and Brasov, I had no time to take a walk through clubs there. So who really knows what kind of places they have. Judging from the stand with photos we found on the club's wall, "The Note" was a kind of Mecca, that was visited by all reprezentatives of the Romanian stage. Many of them, starting with rockers and finishing with pop girls, were shown in the club's interior on exposed shots. As you probably know the more quality grows, so does price. Thus, I wasn't surprised too much by the menu. I had "Martini" which cost 48.000 lei ($1.5) for 40 ml. Maybe because of the prices there were not a lot of people, and we decided to move to "Gulliver", another club placed on the entrance to the complex territory.

"Gulliver" was a quite students' place, however very well looking too. Unlike many places in Baia Mare, there were no chairs of plastic which I hate personally. The prices difference comparing to "The Note" wasn't big, and that surprised me. Like, the same portion of "Martini" in "Gulliver" wasn't much cheaper -- 40.000 lei. We took a bottle of 0.7L which cost us 400.000, and then stayed and danced till 2am. As to "Martini", buying bottle is more than just advantageous. 400.000/700 = 571, and 571*40 = 22840 lei instead of 40000 for 40 ml.

Unexpected Similarity

Walking along the city the next days once I caught myself on the thought that everything I was seeing reminded me of something. That twisted asphalt under the feet instead of usual Romanian concrete. River, wide streets, students, the plain instead of hills or mountains.. "God damn me", -- I thought, -- "Kharkov!". As to me, there are quite enough similarities. Crossed by bridges, the Bega river flows through whole the city, just like Lopan' in Kharkov. Crowds of students who fill all the cafes and restaurants in the evening in spite of the session. Life in the dorms district is going on non-stop, day and night. It feels quite well that you came to a real city with developed science, education and culture areas. However, you probably won't like it from the first sight, like Brasov impressed me with its natural beauty last year. You have to walk through Timisoara, look at its streets and buildings, find out something from its history and then the capital of the Romanian Revolution will definitely conquer your heart.

Water Procedures

I cannot say I saw even a half of the city. I walked through whole the downtown and its neighbour areas, also saw the embankment. Attended a swimming pool for what I'd like to say thanks to "Alcatel". Those guys have a total socialism at their company, you know. For 50.000 lei (less than $2) per year a worker gets a subscription for a swimming pool, canteen, language courses, etc. Each of the things for 50.000 lei/year. In addition, you can bring one person with you to the pool, so Vlad made use of it, giving me a possibility to try their swimming place. Wouldn't say it impressed me too much, because it was quite minimalistic. The pool in the house of sports of the Polytechnical University in Kharkov with its automatic boxes for clothes, clock, water temperature indicator on the wall and tribunes was a science fiction in comparison with that one. At the other hand, I wasn't in other swimming pools of Timisoara, and the one where "Alcatel" swam wasn't one of the central ones at all.

We didn't manage to find any wet shirts contest. Anyway, because of the bad amnesy of yours sincerelly we had no chance to take shots of its participants. Second, after we saw all of those shtrands I began to doubt if it such a contest was something actual for Timisoara. You could easily see females taking sun baths with their tits undressed, just like we saw it in Costinesti on the sea-shore last year. So why put on a shirt and wet it? Someone wanna say they haven't seen anything there?

Let's rock

The Western part of Romania was always famous for its rock music traditions. Even in Baia Mare according to the elder locals there was a place called "rockoteca", and several rock-bars. Despite now this direction of the fun industry withered, you still can see long-haired young men wearing black in the streets quite often. So concerning this, I expected to see something absolutely amazing in Timisoara. And I saw it.

Once walking through the junction near the St. Gheorge monument (the city patron, just like his colleague from Moscow he holds a spear and there is a thrown dragon also), I saw a door with the "club rock" inscription. I memorized the place approximatively and in the evening told Vlad about the discovery of mine. So we went there to have some beer. The club was called "Cargo", just like one of the most famous Romanian rock bands. There are a lot of bands, and the both are good :) (the second one is "Iris"). The club inspired very positive impressions. Being used to the stereotype that rock clubs are shabby basements with strong odour of beer, sewage and punks' socks, I was surprised by a nice room firnished with wide black arm-chairs of leather, with guitars and photographs on the walls. In a quality musical centre (it wasn't an old piece of hardware with winamp running on it like in the majority of clubs) was playing "Metallica", and on the wall there was a skeleton dressed in loose overall in natural size, and a picture of some vampiress.

Staying in such a club felt nice. There were not a lot of people, probably because the next day was a work day, at the counter there was a beatiful girl with a good shape dressed in clothes that accentuated all of her advantages. Quickly, she brought us beer. The music was conductive to talks about rock, and so we did. A small excess had place: a clear hip-hop started playing, and when I protested the nice bar-girl told me the following: "how come "kid rock" is not a rock music?". I had to explain that if tomorrow "Backstreet boys" change their name to "Rock forever niggaz", leaving the same repertoire, it ought not mean they must be included into the scale of a club positioning itself as a place devoted to rock.

The evening didn't finish quickly. We had more beer at a non-stop summer cafe overby Vlad's house. There I asked the waitress how to play the "Tuborg" action and was inviting her to take a ride on a freshly won "Mercedes" cars the next day. She didn't look much against the idea. Also we saw a policemen who came after barman's documents. The point was that a pensioner who lived in a block on the other side of the road (I suppose so, because there were no live blocks on the cafe's side) complained about music being too loud. The policeman busily came to the barman and demanded his id. Having took it he left and the oldie was walking among the tables with a victorious look. The guy then phoned his boss and told him about the happening.

I definitely like the Romanians for their composure when communicating with officials. You can notice it at the both sides. I had an occasion to deal with police here and I know what I'm talking about. But the best example would be the story told me buy a colleague from the Republic of Moldova. The following scene he saw in Bucharest several years ago and it sounded quite trustworthy to me. It was in a bus. A policeman in his uniform was sitting somewhere near entrance. An absolutely drunk guy entered the bus on a stop. He stood exactly near the bobby, the bus went further and the guy was hardly standing on his feet. It looked like a bit more and he would fall down on the policeman. However, the latter stood up, talking to the drunk: "please, take a seat". Himself he stood aside. I'm almost sure that somewhere in the former USSR the guy would had earned a couple of strokes in his head for sure. But what for? I know, in Ukraine there is the article 172 of the administrative code (as far as I remember it), the 2nd paragraph.. But who can swear he would never drink too much, that he wouldn't get drunk.. So why beat such a person?

Torture by TV

Vlad is a happy owner of a box with luminous pictures. TV-set, speaking simply. Being the one who voluntary renounced on this comfort of civilization (or scourge of the mandkind), I decided to take a look. First we watched "pokemons", an absolutely genial crap created, as far as I understood, by someone who ate too much hallcinogenic mushrooms. Then there were music channels. I concluded that the Romanian band called "Hara" would never have a chance to give a concert in Israel. The point is that "hara" means "shit" in Hebrew. At the other hand, this word is probably the best description of their music. There also was a Hungarian channel. A band which I had a pleasure to see, consisted of two typical office-cleaner girls and one guy, who dreamed of becoming a pilot in childhood and because of that falled many times from the height. For some reason, the way he looked reminded of Mr. Bean.

Way Back

The train schedule on the Timisoara-Baia Mare route is made up extremely clever on the both directions. The train back leaves at 3:15pm, thus the day is lost anyway. But not having other options such as personal car (which is most likely my shortcoming, and not CFR's ;), at 3:15pm I left to Baia Mare. My fellow traveller this time was a girl of about 16, who was going to Satu Mare. I won't sin against the truth too much if I say that the majority of young ladies in Romania smoke. Yes, I consider that horrible, unhealthy and definitely has a negative influence on the health of future generations, but it's so. All my friends took note of it here. Coming to Ukraine, they just like myself notice the difference. Let's say in Ukraine a half of young people smoke. But hey, half is not 90%. My young fellow traveller called Roxana was having a cigarette every 10 minutes. Besides her, there was quite a lot of people in the compartment, all the 8 places were occupied. Like, there was a boy who read the "goods" word on one of coaches and said it in loud voice thoughtfully: "goods.. goods.. tons of goods". However, the most interesting character was a silent guy of about 30 years old. He was reading computers literature all the way. Literally he had all the recent issues of all Romanian computers related editorials, such as "PC World", "CHIP", "The portal".. The culmination was when it was the turn of "PC Magazine" in which he read my article about personal web sites and weblogs attentively. In such moments I understand the power of own printed word more than usual.

But tonight my words are electronic. Of course, you can materialize them by printing out this text and putting it above your desk or cleaning your ass with it, for the text's volume (with the condition it's printed out as a whole) quite allows to eliminate consequences of the most evil diarrhea. Myself I finish here, so that soon to get started on another report, this time about Chisinau where I was a week later. Be well.