Even though I’m pretty old and this is a very common activity in my country, I have never been to the seaside with my friends, in like, a gang. I have been to the seaside with a couple of friends in Greece, but never in my home country. As I am a very brave person, or I just enjoy suffering, this year I did the deed, and I kind of regretted it, kind of a lot. The only good thing there was actually the person I was with. But let’s start from the beginning, what I like to call „The Shit-hole Journey”.
First of all, I said it and I will say it again that the 3rd world concept now includes some new countries, like Albania and Romania, and you can only argue with me if you are a citizen of one of those countries. After a 4 hour road with a disgusting train without an air conditioner and only available with 6 seats, very near to each other, nothing compared to the 40 minutes station in the railway station of the second biggest and second most economically relevant city in Romania. I saw horrific things which I thought my country never held. A fat gypsie woman was dragging her two naked sons through the railroad dirt. Garbage was absolutely everywhere. The chairs looked like they were especially designed to carry HIV and homeless people were sleeping on them. This station is no bigger than the smallest supermarket, and still it holds lots of abominable elements. The beggars were everywhere, and in the building the prices were higher than in the seaside resort I was heading to. An old woman got offended when I asked if a single price tag indicates the prices of all the croissants, regardless of the brand and flavour. Of course it did, the price was big enough to even cover the normal price of any product there.
When I went to the nearest market to look for an exchange point, I saw the lord of that place. A fat gipsy man, with long hair and a moustache, wearing a dark green sweater and a dark green dress with black dots was sitting on a bench. He had cane made of a branch and a dirty bag near him. His naked feet were swollen to the point that they were bigger than his head and they were full of ugly bruises. After a quick look, I turned my head and he addressed me with a very feminine voice in which he kept calling me like he was my mother. I was so shocked by this guy that I returned to the station immediately.
In the train in which I got now was even hotter. At least here, they turned on the air conditioner, but so low that we could only felt it right before we arrived in the final station. On this final 1 hour road, I saw a beautiful field. After that, I saw this:
I like to call this picture „The people’s house”, after the name of our Parliament building, which is a close copy of the White House. But really, it can be considered the best metaphor for the childish politicians discussing randomly and picking sides in a ruin of a country. Imagine that we are considered a normal country when, on the road to the seaside, this is one of the train stops, the demolished playground of some forgotten children in a forgotten village. Next stop, the actual resort, Costineşti, the bottom of the Earth. My friend was waiting for me outside the train, which stopped in the middle of the road, yes, they’ve built the train station in the middle of the road, even though, a couple of meters down, there was nothing but weeds. She was the only beautiful thing there, so fragile, so nice smelling, so down to earth. The rest of them, they were like the orcs in LOTR. Hundreds of them in tini tiny spaces, but why do I say orcs ? Because, as I quickly realized, only the worst kinds came to that place. The half-civilized peasants, which combine rural behavior with city like clothes, the half-breeds between the gypsies and the peasants, the scum of the whole country. I felt like I’ve just entered jail. This is the first sight you see as soon as you get out of the train:
Imagine this, only full with people. The garbage you see in the grass is everywhere, more omnipresent than God. Garbage is Costineşti’s God and leit-motif. I can better describe it by calling it a garbage with some clean spots on it than the other way around. And, in case you were wondering, the chilling camp under that tree is a family of beggars taking the afternoon off. The feeling of resentment soon overwhelmed me and it made me feel ashamed and sad towards my friend who had to spend her holiday in this dump because it came as a free trip from the University we study at. If it would be war, the destruction of this place could only make it better, seems like a proper ruin, meant for reconstruction, not vacation. We checked in our room and it seemed ok at first. The place was poorly decorated but clean, and only that mattered to us. Soon we will discover that the humid air was only in the room, and not outside and our clean, unworn clothes got wet just by sitting in that room. The bath towels were never drying and everything started smelling like mold. All good till’ now. But when the night came, we encountered the a true, bigger obstacle than any of the prior ones, and that truly completed the concentration camp we spent our vacation into...