Killing Batteries

If you were thinking that buying a car in Romania is a weeks-long ordeal of vague paper-intensive obligations and expensive bureaucratic appeasement, then I compliment you on your astuteness.  I bought my car two weeks ago and I’m still nowhere near officially completing the transaction.  Once you have the car, there are seven (7) different places you need to visit to make it all official, all of which require that you show up in person, during limited business hours, stand in long lines, fending off accomplished line-jumpers and paying a Romanian king’s ransom in fees, while carefully amassing a ream of paperwork that is the only thing standing between you and fines/jail time when you get stopped by the Securitate. To make matters worse, no one you talk to, including these officials, are entirely sure of all the necessary requirements to get the job done.  They only know their one little step in the system (e.g. fill out a scrap of paper, stamp it, collect 30 lei (US$9) from you, never smile).  The insurance lady was the closest thing I found to a helpful person and here’s the breakdown she scratched out for me:

• Get insurance (I already knew that one)
• File a purchase contract, pay a fee
• Change title
• Pay change title tax (different building across town, of course)
• Pay something-something tax that no one has yet to successfully explain to me.
• Visit the RAR (a mysterious agency, that no one understands, located in an unmarked building on a nameless street that few people can give accurate directions to).  Make an appointment.  Go back at appointed time and pay RAR fee.
• Visit the police.  Bring two bottles of cognac (just kidding, you still have to visit the police and pay the Visiting the Police fee, but I’m told that the cognac step of the process was eliminated in 2003).

Again, no one can say with any certainty that this is the extent of my duties, leaving me wide open for arbitrary harassment by the Securitate the first time I get stopped, so I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. If I go more than 36 hours without updating this blog, you can assume I’ve been nicked for not paying the Tax for Tax Management fee or something and you should contact the US Embassy immediately. 

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I got the car washed inside and out yesterday.  It’s a vast improvement.  Prior to this, just a few moments in the car infused one’s clothes and hair in the odour of petrol, oil and dirt, that lasted for days, which was not lending any credibility to my appearance when meeting with hotel general managers.

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Some of you may have noticed that my spelling (and when I remember, my vocab) is not in God Blessed American English, but the Queen’s English.  This is not because I have privately decided to affect an English writing style (and accent, a la Madonna).  Indeed, I am under contract to write this way for LP, as are all authors for European countries.  Accordingly, I have switched my MS Word language setting to “U.K. English” and for the purposes of practise and continuity, I am trying to stay in character, as it were, in this blog.  Rest assured I am not one of those people that spends a few weeks in a foreign country and comes home talking like a native. I cling to my Minnesota accent with all due pride and don’t care what people think (except during this passing moment of self-awareness).

Mock me if you must, but I live and breathe the job people.  It’s dedication like this that will have my bringing in a whooping five-figure freelance writing income some day, living in a studio apartment in Romania to make ends meet.

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Canvassing the region of Moldavia, February 10^th through the 13^th.

I got back from a short, but intense research trip around the region of Moldavia Monday night.  Four very, very trying days.  It was deathly cold, and I’m from Minnesota, so I know what genuine deathly cold feels like.  There was heavy snow each day making driving very slow and perilous, a lot of the rural sights and sleeping places I needed to check were closed, abandoned or manned by bizarre eccentric caretakers with bad teeth and my days were entirely too short, what with the sun going down by 5:00PM and night driving being too risky.  I managed to contract a cold while hoofing it up a snowy mountain to see a (closed) citadel and I was involved in two super-slow, but alarming fender benders due to ice; one with a bank of ice/snow and the other downhill and backwards into an earthmover.  The one hour drive from Iasi to Suceava took four. I drove around in circles for 90 minutes, following conflicting road signs, looking for the North Train Station and a hostel on the outskirts of town whose owner, it turns out, was in Australia and I was splattered from neck to toe with filthy slush/dirt the first time I stepped out of the car by a truck that passed unnecessarily close to me.

Barely resisting the urge to drive off the nearest bridge, I drove to the centre and found deliverance in Chip, a local guide who just happened to be hanging around in the tourism office when I slogged in.  Sensing that I was near meltdown, he took me out for coffee and then dutifully led me to every sight I needed to visit in town, while simultaneously making dozens of phone calls on his mobile to verify information, arrange my accommodations for the night, fix my broken turn signal and connect me with other local tourism movers and shakers.  He turned what would have been 36 hours of wretched pounding the pavement and pathetically banging on the doors of closed hostels into an afternoon of high speed, productive research.  I took him out to dinner and gave him a giant tip.

The next three days were frenetic, driving through heavy snowfall, travelling untold kilometres to closed sights, racing around towns and cities to check hotels, restaurants, clubs, museums, bus stations and scribbling dozens of changes on my LP maps.

At night I slept fitfully.

I understand this is how LP research generally goes, minus the arctic conditions.  I’ll be sending out countless emails and making dozens of phone calls to account for all of the incomplete information due to closed hostels and sights.

So, I’m a wreak and I’ll be writing a stern author feedback report stating that researching in the winter in Romania is largely futile and unduly dangerous. Meanwhile, I’m juggling my own duties to allow me to put off more road-research until the weather lightens up.

- The Official Trip Stats

• Percentage of closed/abandoned hostels and pensions (“pensiuneas”), both urban and rural:  50%
• Number of notable closed rural sights, some of which I was specifically asked to visit in my brief:  3 (almost 4, it took me two phone calls, three visits and finally a one hour wait to get into the Wooden Synagogue in Piatra Neamt, time that I did not have to waste)
• Number of car accidents:  2
• Number of near fatal accidents involving other cars, animals, people, horse carts and cliffs:  countless
• Number of times I opened the hood of my car to fix something: 9 (though this partly is my fault for buying my low-profile, disposable car)  
• Number of minutes I sat in my car over the course of four days revving the engine waiting for it to warm up enough to drive it:  ~90
• Cities/towns/villages visited in four days:  11 (Suceava, Radauti, Marginea, Sucevita, Gura Humorului, Vama, Campulung Moldovenesc, Vatra Dornei, Durua, Piatra Neamt, Targu Neamt and a potpourri of monasteries, rural pensuineas, natural sites and whatnot). Whew!

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- My ride

For the purposes of my research, I have acquired a 1990 Dacia 1310.  Romanian-made, with all the power and reliably that you would expect from a car manufactured in the second poorest country in Europe.  This car is the ultimate disposable car.  It’s built to die young.  But Romanians can’t afford to buy a new car every 18 months, so everyone that owns a Dacia is forced to become an accomplished mechanic.  The good news is that, unlike virtually all other modern cars, Dacias are simple and built so that any idiot with a screwdriver and no fear of grease can get to any part of the engine and fix it.  There’s no micro-processors, no motherboards and no digital anything.  It’s only equipped with the bare minimum of parts to make it go and that’s it. 

Why did I buy this piece of shit?  For several reasons.  First and foremost, it looks exactly like the 20 million other Dacias in Romania.  These cars are cheap and low-profile, meaning that not even the most desperate thief would consider wasting their time breaking into the thing to steal my backpack, the combined contents of which are more valuable than four 1990 Dacia 1310s. Also, as I mentioned, any dough-head can fix it.  Not necessarily me mind you, but everyone else.  Moreover, the parts and labor will be a pittance.  Finally, being the most popular car in Romania will work in my favor when it comes time to sell it.  There won’t be any need to put an ad in the paper or list it on the Internet.  All I need to do is drive it around town with a ‘for sale’ sign in the window for a few hours and I’ll have plenty of offers. Sorted.

That said, this car needs more care and attention than a newborn baby.  I have to pop the hood and fiddle with the engine virtually every single day.  There’s always a thingy to clean, or a loose wire to wiggle or a smell to investigate. There’s no just starting it and zipping to the store real quick. Every trip requires anywhere from 10-20 minutes prep time.  To start, you have to give it a good once over before something as intense as starting it up can happen.  You begin by walking a slow, full circle around the thing to see what fell off during the night, or what is leaking from where, or which wheel deflated, and so forth. Once you’ve completed this loop, making all due repairs, then you can get in the car.  Particularly in the winter, there is a complex ritual for starting a Dacia.  If it is particularly cold or you haven’t started the car for a few days, your first step is not to put the key in the ignition, but, yes, pop the hood and lean way in there to finger-pump the primer.  Three pumps is recommended.  Then you get back in the car, pull the choke out all the way – that’s right, I said “choke” – stab the key into the ignition, make sure it’s in neutral, pump the gas pedal three times, say the Lord’s prayer and turn the key. 

If you’re lucky the car will make a quiet, pathetic noise (“uuuuuhhhhggg”), at which point you stomp on the gas and it will roar to life.  You must keep you foot on the gas for 10 minutes or so for it to warm up enough so that it will keep running when you lift your foot off the gas, burning a litre of fuel in the process.  After that you’re off.  There are a dozen “unlucky” scenarios, but I’ll spare you those details.  Suffice to say that it’s just best to expect the unexpected.

- The (Lack of) Rules of the Road

I’ve done a decent amount of driving in Romania now and I’d like to impart some valuable lessons to you. Until recently, it wasn’t uncommon for drivers in Romania to acquire their license with a small bribe, a bottle of cognac and a wink, rather than training and testing.  Seeing their driving skills, I often wonder if anyone was trained. There isn’t a single driver in Romania who has any sense of their own mortality.  All driving is done at a frenetic, almost maniacal pace, even just to go to church.  Though the speed limit on the motorways is 100-110KPH, anyone going slower than 130 draws the ire of all but the horse-drawn carts and the older, ailing Dacias (like mine).  Even a few seconds behind a slower car is enough to drive a Romanian driver into a frothing rage.  With the horn blaring, high-beams flashing and middle finger at high salute, they will execute violent, high-risk passes on blind curves in bad weather, coming within inches of clipping other cars, horse carts and people (Romanians have this strange compulsion to walk in the road, even in the city where sidewalks are plentiful) in order to get past you and your sorry excuse for a car.  Essentially, the mentality of the Romanian driver is this:  If you’re not the fastest vehicle on the road, you’re not really trying. According to my own Lonely Planet, driving regulations are officially this:  “In Romania, there is a 0% blood-alcohol tolerance limit, seat belts are compulsory in the front and back seats (if fitted), and children under 12 are forbidden to sit in the front seat. Speed limits are indicated, but are usually 90km/h on major roads, 100-110km/h on motorways, and 50km/h inside cities. Having a standard first-aid kit is also compulsory. Honking unnecessarily is prohibited, and headlights need not be turned on in the daytime.”

Unofficially, there is no law.  I am the only person that I’ve ever seen wear a seat belt, and indeed, if you strap yourself in while in someone else’s car, the driver will be deeply offended, even if you pathetically try to explain that if you are involved in a car accident and you are not wearing your seatbelt, your insurance will not cover you by evacuating you to a reputable hospital in Germany.  Speed limits and stop lights are ritually ignored and those who try to adhere to basic road conventions are considered a menace. The average Romanian driver uses the horn more than the brakes, whether it’s to signal that you are in his way or the red light is taking too long for his liking or your shoe is untied or he has arrived outside your apartment block at 2:30AM and that you should come out to speak with him. Drunk driving is a matter of course on the weekends in the city and all winter long in the countryside.

In recent years, as nicer cars have made their way into Romania due to the advent of personal bank loans and television teaching Romanians to live beyond their means, an ugly, unwritten road hierarchy has developed.  That being, the person with the nicer car has the right-of-way.  This applies to stop sign intersections, passing slow trucks, snatching parking spots and line-jumping at the car wash.  Example, if there is a slow truck, followed by three Dacias and then a BMW, the BMW driver will take the first opportunity to pass the entire parade in one swoop (or weave in and out of the line to avoid oncoming cars, wholly expecting the Dacias to slow and make space for him) and if one of the leading Dacias should attempt to pass the truck during this interval, there’ll be hell to pay. A warning to all Romanian drivers visiting America: If you exhibit this behavior while driving anywhere in the US, particularly Los Angeles or Texas, you will involved in gun-play within the hour of your arrival.

I’ve heard a bit of hearsay about police targeting expensive cars and, in particular, cars with non-Romanian license plates for bribe shakedowns.  Whether or not this is true, I imagine this type of thing will become more and more rare as anti-corruption pressure bears down and more locals start driving Mercedes.  As is more and more common, once an individual has sunk his life savings into the expensive car, there’s literally no money left to appease opportunist cops (or even to eat a reasonable meal), and the authorities have already figured this out. Whatever the case, as a foreigner, being on your best driving behavior is advised, even if it means being the goat to every other vehicle on the road.

By the way, if an oncoming car flashes its high-beams at you, there’s a cop up ahead and you should immediately move to the far right of the road and slow to an appropriate groveling crawl, so as not to give him any excuse to pull you over and torment you for arbitrary offences (“Your car is too dirty”).

- Winter Driving

Take the white-knuckle, lawless nature described above, quadruple it and that’s driving in Romania in the winter.  While there is small fleet of plows with a passing dedication for clearing the roads, there is no countermeasure in place for dealing with ice.  No sand or salt and certainly no adjustment on the part of Romanian drivers to account for the conditions.  Accidents are frequent.  And it’s not just the maniacs taking high speed, blind turns on black ice.  Within four days of acquiring my car, I was involved in two minor, yet alarming super-slow, ice related accidents.  Once drifting into a bank of ice and snow during a U-turn, shattering my front-right turn signal (repaired in six minutes for US$3) and once downhill and backwards, with foot and parking brakes applied, into a parked earthmover.  Whether it be a dangerously steep street or a busy national road, ice is left to sit and cause havoc until it melts in the spring.

While Romania’s roads are normally a heart-quickening moonscape of potholes and ruptures, requiring total vigilance at all times, winter adds to the excitement with snow camouflaging these impediments.  You don’t know they’re there until the car bottoms out in a hole the size of a cow, which you’re helpless to avoid anyway as a quick evasive swerve would send you spinning off into a corn field.  It’s because of these conditions/accidents that I have suspended the bulk of my driving-related research until March.

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