Maxi-taxin' it
I had a really nice weekend in Tirgoviste. It was Josh’s birthday this weekend and he was having a party. Katherine and I took an assortment of maxi-taxi’s to get there. It has been a long time since I have tasted the maxi-taxi system, well over five months to be exact. I had forgotten the crowd, the pushing, and fortunately the smell. We had to catch such a ride from Pitesti to Gaiesti and then to Tirgoviste. Getting on was it’s usual hassle. When we arrived to the Autogara in Pitesti a few people stood milling about, waiting for the next mini-bus, but as it pulled up to the curb suddenly a mob materialized.
There is no line consciousness in Romania. I call it the bread line syndrome. It doesn’t matter whether there are three people waiting for twenty seats or twenty people waiting for three, there is always a desperate pushing and shoving routine towards the door. People are determined to get their due. This phenomenon not only occurs while waiting for the bus, but wherever a queue is likely to form, the post office, at the supermarket and now most recently the Banc Post ATM. Usually the main instigators are pushy bunica’s wearing babushkas and muddy, leather, work boots. They are unforgivably sneaky at cutting into the line. They slyly pretend to ask a question of someone toward the front and wedge their way in one elbow at a time. No one seems to mind (or notice) their armpit in your eye or their breath on your neck as you take out cash from the ATM. This used to annoy me to no end (sometimes it still does). Mainly, it is an issue of personal space and justice.
We Americans are very hestitant about giving up our own precious personal space. We work hard to maintain it, we cross sidewalks to avoid others, we are conscious to never make eye contact on public transport. There practically exists an entire bible of unspoken spatial rules and regulations. Included in the bible are clear rules regarding queuing. Americans line up in an orderly fashion. What begins as an elementary school habit has transformed our culture into one which depends upon the custom of waiting your turn. The line is in fact very much symbolic of the American attitude. There is a perfect sense of justice in the line. If you respect your turn and your fellow queuer’s turn, so will your space be guaranteed. How many times have we casually asked strangers to “kindly hold our place in line,” with no thought that they wouldn't oblige or worse yet steal your place.
Now this does not mean that there aren’t the occasional line cutters. Though, they never last long. Peer pressure quickly puts them in their places which becomes the back of the line. Oddly our queue ritual is vaguely communist. Every man in line is presented the same opportunity and likewise, order is maintained by the people, for the people. Akin to this train of thought the counter-revolutionary line-cutter is quickly put in his place. In vain I have tried to abide by the same line laws here in Romania. To line cutters I have given the evil eye, I’ve coughed and made snide comments in English, I’ve rolled my eyes at them, but nothing will translate the sheer annoyance that line cutting and cutters make me feel.
In Romania, waiting in “line” is a virtual football tackle. It is every man for himself, the antithesis of communism. Perhaps queuing is exactly that, a revolt against the forced communist “holding your comrade’s place in line (or should I say society).” Years of forced lines have left a bad taste in Romanian mouths. It is the same with recycling I am told. For years, kids were forced to bring used paper to school. They actually had a recycling quota to maintain. Now recycling is seen as a burden of communism. To exert freedom, they have sadly stopped recycling. Volunteerism has the same stigma. While I have not given up my thoughts about the importance of recycling and volunteerism, I have unfortunately succumb to the unwieldy line cutters. I have started to subscribe to the “If you can’t beat them, join them,” philosophy. I am no longer afraid of pushing and shoving. I have my mother’s dangerous elbows.
Anyways, on the way to Gaiesti I was lucky enough to get a seat of the maxi-taxi but standing over my seat swayed a drunk man in his late forties. His eyes watered from too much tuica, and his clothes were covered in the grime of too many nights spent in the village pub. But what impressed me most other than his smell of toasted corn and body odor, were his hands. His hands looked the antithesis of mine. A film of brown dirt coated his palms, under his fingernails there was crust from ten years of corn harvests. He had gnarled and scared fingers and the nail on his thumb was yellow and split to his cuticle. He had farmer’s hands. I snatched quick peaks at his face. It matched his hands. Deep wrinkles broke around his eyes and forged down his face towards his mouth like tributaries to the big dam. He may not have been as old as forty but he looked well past fifty. The creases stood out, highlighted by the same film of grime that covered his hands. He tumbled into me as we bumbled along, dodging pot holes the size of small craters. His friend behind him, a little, weasly man, grinned at me with a mouth full of gold fillings. His mustache twitched and I re-focused my attention forward toward the road and held my breath from the stench.
Finally we got off in Gaiesti and caught a hitch with a nice man in a Dacia pick-up. He picked up Katherine, I and two twenty-something police officers. The driver was a nice man, somebody’s father. His fur hat (with ear flaps) was perched high upon his head like a crown. As we pulled from the curb he popped in a tape. It was not manele, ( loud and repetitive mix of Turkish/ Gypsy trills and Eminem style lyrics in Romanian) but a collection of Romanian easy-listening and he drove us at a fatherly pace toward Tirgoviste. He overcharged us by ten thousand a piece but it was worth the manele-less drive.
We made it into Tirgoviste in record time (four hours).