The things you consider when it is snowing and you're bored
In a fit of boredom I have counted all of the pipes that worm their way around my apartment. So far, the tentative count is 12, but that is not including radiator pipes. Everything in Romania is exposed. Pipes, vents, boilers, and strange metal contraptions jump out of the bloc walls unapologetically. It shocked me at first how much of what we would consider the inner workings of a house, here are exposed on the outside. Gas line mains climb the faces of blocs like vines. Heat is piped into my apartment through two pipes, two inches in diameter, which snake along my walls, from room to room. There is something so naked, so basic about the pipes. Every day as I go to the bathroom I stare at the wall length metal radiator and I am reminded that this is where I get my heat. It stands from floor to ceiling 8 feet high. Three metal tubes, five inches in diameter align themselves vertically side by side. Every pipe, radiator and assorted tube is painted to match the wall. There is an attempt to hide the crude intrusion and yet they are unavoidably present. Why hide them? What are we so afraid of? Must we forget where our heat comes from? Is it easier to disregard the sewage that we spew daily, the waste that goes down our drains?