Each of us counted three different ways at dinner, but we all agreed, we'd been on the road that long!
S2 returned from his morning bike ride after it started to get sweltering. NS and I were still comfortably contained in our air conditioned room. Remember, I said this place was a find! He had a brand new scheme of us taking another over night trip without the car. We'd take the 4-hr public ferry out to the mouth of the delta, with his bicycle. We would stay the night and NS and I would get on the same ferry the next morning for a 7AM departure, while he cycled up River to get on at one of the towns. Using Google Maps and their satellite view, we discovered, there are no connecting roads! If he wanted to ride in the early morning (more bird life) we would need to stay 3 nights! NS called for a Swiss vote (S2 introduced this means of solving disputes while cycling over spring break with some Swiss friends). It never made it to the ballot stage as he adopted the plan as not happening on this trip. I pointed out it would be a great spring or autumn break trip, when we worked at the international school in Bucharest.
So, we packed the car and headed back west. Our next stop ... Dracula's castle.
First, a traffic jam..
Another ferry crossing
And on down the road towards Transylvania!
However, in the foothills of Transylvania is the small village of Alunis. This past school year, I had, for the first time, a child from Romania. His family seemed to understand my fascination and delight with having a student "from behind the Iron Curtain." Truth be told, he was no different than any other student. At the age of six, he was learning three languages (Romanian, English, and German), he loved dinosaurs and Cars and Buzz Light Year, and on the field trip to the apple orchard, he wouldn't help cut the apples because he said his mom told him not to use sharp knives (I like to support anything a child says about their parents). His little sister adored him, and it was clear when school was dismissed that she grew impatient waiting outside for him and pulled her mother inside to find him. The hug she gave him was reminiscent of another little sister with intense feelings for an older brother.
Andy's parents consulted friends of theirs and provided us a list of places to go in Romania. They provided us with the best map of the trip, and loaned us their GPS (we call her Carmen San Diego because NS likes to say 'where in the world are we Carmen San Diego?"). With the map spread out on the tables in my classroom, I asked Andy and his mother where Andy would be with his grandmother. His father was taking him to Romania as his school was finished before his sister's and his parents still had to work. She showed me the village, I circled it on the map, and Andy told me, "it's the yellow house." His mom just grinned and confirmed it was a yellow house.
Can you see where this is going?
Despite Carmen's insistence of u-turns to head back down the mountain, we kept driving up, and reprogramming her until we were less than 10 kms from the village. As we passed the road sign declaring this was now Alunis, we stopped at, yes, the first yellow house. It would have to be a miracle, right??? That is correct, it would have to be a miracle, and it wasn't.
What we did find, however, was a man, who only spoke Romanian, and armed with S2's pictionary page, he rode with us as we drove up this small valley, stopping wherever he told us to, as he proceeded to question anyone who would answer him. From my perspective, it seemed like it probably went something like this... These people teach at an international school in Germany, Hannover. They are looking for a student they had, his grandparents live in this village. The boy's name is Andy, he's about this tall, his sister is Mare, she's about this tall, their mom is named Dana, the family name is Tudora. Can you believe it...they don't have a street name or a telephone number? Oh, and the grandparents live in a yellow house!
The quest was taken seriously by him, and several others, as phone calls were made, doors were knocked on, people gestured and yelled, and we were told countless times....you should have a street address. Call Germany and get a street address!
We took a photo of the Primary school to prove we were here, and our quest leader in front of his yellow house.
And just at the last minute, the son of the neighbor appeared, and he spoke Spanish. S2 rattled off the whole story in Spanish, which enabled everyone to confirm they had the details correct (a crowd gathered whenever we stopped to discuss the situation with anyone). As everyone seemed so sad for us, so disappointed that we couldn't find them, S2 explained in Spanish, 'we knew it would be a miracle if we found it' and tried to reassure everyone that it was fine. Our Romanian thank you's hardly seemed like enough.
NS's sense of humor through all this was incredible. How do you explain to a 16-year old that the world is full of kind-hearted people, just waiting for someone to come along so they can be helpful and kind? You take her traveling, that's what you do.
It was not a failure that we didn't find the yellow house, it was a miracle that we TRIED to find the yellow house. Life is for living, and seeing the miracles in our everyday experiences.
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