The Drunken Anthropologist

We missed the afternoon train to Clejani and took the evening bus. Our grand plan was to go to the village tavern, befriend some locals, meet some members of the Taraf de Haidouks, find a place to sleep or spend the night drinking and then go back to Bucharest the next day. Great plan, huh?

The bus was full of quarelling, singing and drinking Gypsies. A paradise of stereotypes. People got off the bus throughout the villages and at one moment, the driver asked us where were we headed. 'To Clejani'. 'You are in Clejani'. We got off, despite his attempts to learn more about us.

A fellow passenger followed us and we befriended. Local children, still on the streets despite the late hour, yelled something in Romani at him, probably making fun of us. We told him our goal. We didn't want to go to the hotel. Hell no. I'm an anthropologist, I'm with the people, ain't I? So we went to his place and drank. A neighbor came and sang to us by hitting some cups and dishes with two spoons and we danced in that little room. Our host's wife and daughter stayed with us a little. The latter was probably the most beautiful girl we have ever seen. I didn't even dare watch her more than a few seconds and stared obsessively into the opposite corner of the room. My friend nearly came when she just touched his shoulder. Alas, she came and left like a dream. And then another local stopped by with some wine and demonstrated his donjuanesque skills by seducing a 30-year-old mother of 3 children on the phone at about 3 AM. And we drank throughout the night.

As the first neighbor left, we had to pay him for entertaining us. We also paid for the dishes he broke while singing. We had to pay the second neighbor for the wine. We had to pay our host for spending the night in his home. As we ran low on Romanian lei and he threatened to call his cousins, I offered him Moldovan money and explained the exchange rate.

Drunken, tired, saddened by our financial losses, we also found we had no phones. As I asked our host about them, he furiously broke a dish and put a shard to his scarred hand: "You call me a thief?". Beside him, his son: "Do you want daddy to cut himself?". Of course we didn't.

In the end, our host was nice to give us just enough money to bribe the train conductor to get to Bucharest. We left the village drinking and singing, to the amusement and amazement of the matinal locals. Finally, we fell asleep alongside the railway, waiting for the train to take us back to reality.