Back to Cudalbi

My train finally pulled into the Tecuci train station at 3:40am. Tecuci represents a familiar locale. Not only was it the nearest train station to my village – thus my portal to the rest of Romania – but it was also home to fellow Peace Corps volunteer and Hello English co-star Arnie Swoboda.  The Crihana family kindly met me at the station, and we waited another hour for daughter Anca to board a train headed towards the Carpathian Mountains to celebrate her birthday with friends.

To say that Tecuci’s train station is not Romania’s finest constitutes zero hyperbole. The building itself, which houses the ticketing office, stands as a quickly deteriorating Communist-era cinderblock of unpainted concrete. Overgrown weeds hide the tracks.  Stray dogs roam in search of food scraps. Even the seat I where I sat snapped in half when I leaned back upon it.

Tecuci's train station simply cannot be surpassed in its beauty or its number of stray dogs.

Perched there, operating under the influence of little sleep and culture shock, I contemplated the wisdom of my return visit. It had taken so long to acclimate to the local culture and, later, so long to re-acclimate to American society.  I had my life here and my life there.  Never had to the two intermingled – until now. Was a three-week visit to the Romanian countryside an overly ambitious misadventure?

After sleeping for seven hours, the world felt different in the light of day. The village was as I remembered it. The people were as I remembered them.  Soon my grasp of the language flooded back. Granted, I was no master of it, but never had I been.

As a coincidence of fate, Doru Crihana shares the same birthday as his sister but is two year’s her junior. My first day in the village coincided with the celebration of his 18th birthday. He invited two classmates from Galati, a large city an hour to the south where he attends high school, as well as the Priest’s son, Emi, over to commemorate the day.

Doru, his parents, and his friends. Let the birthday festivities commence!

Later, I meet up with George Istrate – a now 25-year-old who speaks great English and enjoys American humor.  We grew close during my time in the village but lost touch until about three months before my return. George and I visited his parents. We ate. We drank. We talked the night away.

Frosa Istrate bakes a cake.

Late that night, as I walked back to the Crihana house, I looked up into the night sky at the thousands of bright stars whose shine was not encumbered by any lights on the ground. I listened to the chuckling chickens, the crowing roosters, the squealing pigs, and the barking dogs. And, I felt in that moment as if I’d never really left the village. I’d just had taken a short trip back to the States.