Bacau- Romania

 In the unbearable heat and after 24 hours with no food and no sleep all six of us are exhausted. We travel to our hotel, through wide streets lined with dilapidated high- rise flats and boarded corner shops. Lines of washed linen wrap themselves around outer banisters, collecting shredded particles of decomposing paint. Men sit on stalls outside local produce stands smoking cigarettes and drinking Ciuc beer, whilst vagrant children pick leftover polenta chips and chicken from bins.

We dump our bags in the hotel reception and proceed to Bacau square where a food and music festival is about to begin. The smell of meat infiltrates the square. Lines of Frigăruis, and Cârnaţis-dried sausage and cured meats- hang lifelessly above packet after packet of Walkers cheddar cheese crisps, filled pastries and barrels of draught beer. The congealing scents of cheese, oil, garlic and onion form a thick smog above the sandy ground as we walk over the remnants of someone’s blood stained sandwich. It appears that processed meat is a speciality here in Romania. So, this is Bacau and these are just five of the people I am to spend the next month with; Holly from Milton Keynes; Niamh from Nottingham University; Padraig and Aine, Irish cousins from London, and Thato from Reading. All of us from different parts of England, but all united in expectation.

It is 15.30 Romania time, 13.30 English time, and we are perched on rusty, wooden benches taking refuge in the shade. Drinking cold pints and discussing our anxieties fill the next two hours. We talk about what we envisage Romania to be like, both the landscape and the people. Women in long, bohemian dresses stroll past eyeing the pockets of obvious travellers such as ourselves. Their magenta, emerald and submarine yellow gowns are embellished with plastic diamonds and golden thread weaved into intricate patterns. It is evident that they are not the poverty stricken victims they pretend to be. Whilst they sit, tactically huddled in the centre of the square, their children run laps gathering as much food and items as they can lay their hands on.

Two young girls approach us. It is obvious they are sisters. I notice that the face of the younger girl, who couldn’t be more than 8 years old, is covered in red blotches and small, scar like wounds. Her sister points desperately at her face, whilst she looks at us in self-pity. They hold out their hands. The eldest starts to plea with us ‘please, please’ and points directly at our purses that lay oblivious on the table. I turn away, but Thato opens her purse and hands them a 5 leu note. They notice that her purse is full of Romanian leu and gesture for more. They run without thanks to their mothers in the middle, drop off their findings and pursue the hunt. We carry on eating and drinking into the early evening, but are stopped every few minutes by a new child, a poorer child, a hungrier child, a sicker child. They come in a continuous flow begging for money, food, clothes, anything that could make their mothers a profit. It reaches 17.30 and we are scheduled to be back at the hotel by 18.00. Ina, who refers to herself as our ‘Romanian mother’, is taking us to an Italian restaurant in a slightly nicer district of Bacau. We stand to leave. Thato discards her exceedingly long, grease coated, gherkin-like sausage in the metal bin to the right of us. She is unaware of the horde of children gathering like flies.