Cluj-Napoca vital statistics:
- Population (2011): 324,576 (city proper); 411,379 (metro)
- Latitude & longitude: 46˚ 46′ N, 23˚ 35′ E
- January average temperature: High 0.5˚C (32.9˚F), low -5.7˚C (21.7˚F)
- July average temperature: High 25.9˚C (78.6˚F), low 13.7˚C (56.7˚F)
- Time zone: GMT+3 (7 hours ahead of U.S. EDT)
- Language: Romanian
- Currency: Romanian (new) lei
- Exchange rate: US$1=4.03 lei
- Average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city center: $397.82
It occurs to me now that my European travels might have been a little more meaningful had I taken into account the World Cup. It would be something to watch a World Cup match in some soccer-mad country with all the local fans out in force cheering on their team. Among the countries on my itinerary, Spain, Portugal, and Croatia are in the tournament, and as of tonight (22 June 2018) are all in good position to make it out of the group stage and into the knockout round.
I’ll be in Romania and Czechia for nearly all of the Cup, and neither of those teams made the tournament. My last hope to experience a World Cup game in Europe, surrounded by screaming European fans rooting for their national side, lies with Poland. In the unlikely event (made more so by their loss in their first group stage match) that the Poles make it all the way to the semifinals, I’ll get my wish. So with Team USA sitting out this World Cup, I’ve adopted Poland.
But for now, I’m still in Romania. The TVs in all of the bars and pubs are set to whatever World Cup match is on, but as far as I’ve seen, the Romanians are taking only a passing interest in the tournament.
Regardless of soccer, my travels continue! On Wednesday (I usually travel mid-week, so that I take advantage of the cheapest airfares when I fly), 20 June, once again all packed and ready for my next destination, I hopped on a bus that took me to Brașov’s train station. I had planned on buying lunch on the café car on the train, but then I saw this helpful diagram:
Let’s see… my train is the #1745 toward Baia Mare. Only six cars on this train including the engine, and none of them a café car. I’d better stock up here at the train station, then (20 June 2018).
Luckily, I had plenty of time to buy some snacks at the train station. Then my train arrived and I hopped on board.
My train looked much like this one (20 June 2018).
Although I paid the full adult fare of 72.60 lei ($18.08) for the seven-hour journey to Cluj, I was embarrassed when I entered my compartment of the train to find that my assigned seat was one set aside for children. While it was a window seat, which I prefer, it was only two-thirds the width and height of a regular seat. For the umpteenth time, I thanked my lucky stars that I’m slim and fit! (I felt a little less embarrassed when, later on, another adult passenger boarded and sat in the child seat across from me.)
If the child seat wasn’t indignity enough, the already interminable seven-hour ride ended up taking eight hours and 45 minutes. About two hours in, the train stopped for 20 minutes or so, then slowly reversed for a few miles, then stopped for another half hour or so (or repairs?), and only then continued on its way.
While sitting on the tracks, I noticed this contraption on a parallel stretch of tracks outside my window. I’m sure my nephew Eli knows what this is called and what it does (20 June 2018).
My Lonely Planet guidebook described the Romanian rail system as “slow but reliable.” The first part of that’s true. If the train had run according to schedule, it would have taken seven hours to go 200 miles. Crammed into a child-size seat in a small, stuffy compartment with five other people with no A/C on a hot sunny day, I was not thrilled that the trip would take an extra hour and 45 minutes. I should’ve spent the extra four or five bucks and taken a bus instead. Oh well. I had an audiobook (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; you know you’ll get many, many hours of reading out of any book with “rise and fall” in the title) and my Rick Steves’ Prague guidebook to divert me. And, I was quick to remind myself, it still beat a standing-room-only Sri Lankan train any day of the week.
The scenery was less diverting. Unlike the dramatic hills and mountains of Portugal or Croatia, Romania is fairly flat. I saw plenty of farmland. I also saw actual shepherds with their flocks of sheep for probably the first time in my life. Now I’ve seen enough shepherds that I’ll need two hands to count them. And stopped at two different railroad crossings, I saw men at the reins of horse-driven carts. I get the sense that rural Romania is a land that time forgot.
Late in the afternoon, the train finally reached destination #12: Cluj-Napoca. (Actually everyone calls it just Cluj. Pronounced just as it’s spelled. In 1974, the communist city government added “Napoca” to the city’s name, in honor of an ancient Roman settlement that briefly existed on roughly the same site as Cluj, hoping to stir Romanian nationalist sentiment with the Roman connection.) I quickly figured out how to buy a city bus ticket and in 15 minutes reached my destination, a tiny Airbnb basement studio apartment.
The apartment is tucked in an inner courtyard. Cluj, like Zagreb, features many such courtyards, lots of which shelter beer gardens, bars, or dance clubs. This one is more about dumpsters and parked cars (22 June 2018).
But credit where credit is due — once you get past the entrance to the courtyard, it features flowers and a tidy lawn (22 June 2018).
I thought I’d seen the extreme limit of tiny studio apartments in Rijeka and Zagreb, but my Cluj lodging truly takes the cake. I like cozy little self-sufficient studios, but this one straddles the line between cozy and claustrophobic.
Using a piece of paper, I measured the place just now. 11′ x 10′. That’s 110 square feet. Makes my 400-sq-ft studio back in D.C. seem downright cavernous (21 June 2018).
But, it has the fastest wi-fi of anyplace I’ve stayed yet, plenty of hot water for my shower, and with no windows, it’s quiet and pitch-black at night — perfect for a good night’s sleep. I just need to make sure I get out of here enough during the day so I don’t get cabin fever. Today (22 June), a gray, rainy day, I’m spending more time in here than I really prefer, and it’s making me decidedly antsy.
With the train delays, I only really had time my first evening here (20 June) to check out Cluj’s nearby main square, Piața Unirii, and, given the nice sunny weather, to find an outdoor café to eat dinner at. Check, and check.
St. Michael’s Church, the second-largest Gothic church in Romania (after the Black Church in Brașov), sits in the middle of Piața Unirii. Naturally, this being Romania, the square isn’t entirely pedestrianized. Note the parking lot in front of the church (20 June 2018).
The training wheels are off! Unlike in Brașov, where all of the menus I saw were at least bilingual, here in non-touristy Cluj, it’s almost all Romanian (or Romanian and Hungarian). Time to pull up Google Translate on my smartphone (20 June 2018).
The church and the square make a lovely backdrop for my meal (20 June 2018).
Tuesday (19 June), my last night in Brașov, I switched on the TV (my apartment there had only sporadic wi-fi and hot water, but all three TVs worked) to take a gander at Romanian TV. I was mildly concerned to see a news broadcast of a protest happening in Cluj. I wasn’t worried about civil unrest, but I was anxious about traffic getting snarled, knowing I had a local bus ride in Cluj in my near future. And when I arrived at Piața Unirii in Cluj the following day, I said to myself, “Oh! That scene on TV was from this very square. And the protesters are still here.” While I was eating dinner, the protesters, who took up much of the south half of the square, gradually filed out in an orderly march along the main drag behind me, waving banners and chanting slogans. Naturally, after dinner, I decided to take a closer look.
Today I researched what this was all about. On the night of 18 June, the Romanian parliament passed a bill that the protesters fear will make it harder to prosecute high-level corrupt officials. And this ignited protests all over the country the following day (although I didn’t see any in Brașov). The protests, obviously, continued on Wednesday. The parliament definitely goofed by passing that law now, with classes at the universities out for the summer. These students have plenty of time on their hands to join demonstrations (20 June 2018).
It’s one thing to join a protest march on a warm, sunny day. This handful of protesters camping out here on Piața Unirii on a chilly, dank afternoon two days later, they’re for real (22 June 2018).
And I think I’ll leave off there. More Cluj to come.