Bine aţi venit!: Severin - Svinita - Say hi to the elephants, and hope the weather improves

September 20, 2012

Bine aţi venit!: Severin - Svinita

MY FRIEND MIKE, with whom I rode in England earlier this year, is fascinated by the Romanian language. It is hard to stop him talking about it.

One of the things he told me is that classical Latin had been long dead when the Romans invaded Britain and that it had collapsed into dialects. Had the largest of these dialects survived, it would have been Romanian. Except that it is unique among the Romance languages - it's in the name, really, isn't it? - to have been corrupted by the Slavic languages to which it is neighbour. So the article comes not before the noun, as in English, but attached to the end.

When I asked for an example, he said that the word for "wolf" was lup. Pretty easy so far because it's like the English word "lupine." But "the wolf" is lupul and "of the wolf", or the possessive, is lupulei. But only with masculine nouns. It's different in the female.

Roadside memorial to teenage friends. A photo on the right shows an 18-year-old beside his car. The smaller memorial is to his 17-year-old friend.

Well, you can imagine how fascinated I was and I can sense that you are, too. If you want to try this newly acquired expertise in Romanian, practise saying Buna scumpo to every Romanian girl you meet. It's quite innocent and she won't be offended. Although she may be intrigued how you got to know the Romanian for "Hi, babe."

Which brings me back to the title, "Bine aţi venit", which are the words you see in welcome at the entrance to every village before seeing "Drum bun" (Droom boon) for "Have a good journey", or "Good road", as you leave. That is one of many things I like about Romania.

I also like the friendliness of the people. This afternoon, following the Danube against the wind and into the rain beneath a lead sky, I was frustrated in my search for a camping spot by the cliff walls that lined the other side of the road. When I did spot a mud road leading towards trees, I took it gratefully.

The murky weather makes the Danube grey rather than blue. It's still pretty, though, until...

...you look down at your feet. Romanians still have a lot to learn.

I'd hoped to get up there unnoticed. But out from the right came an aggressively barking dog followed by a slow-walking farmer in a cap. I had to explain.

I pointed to my tent. He replied "tent" in Romanian. I made signs of putting it up and sleeping and waved my arm towards the surrounding country, anywhere but where he lived. He smiled and shook my hand. He waved to the small orchard in a grass area beside his house and told me to set up wherever I liked, even helping hold the tent in the wind.

We talked as best we could. I discovered he was 73 and that he was Serbian rather than Romanian but that he hadn't lived on the other side of the river for decades. He wrote the year of his birth - 1940 - as 01940. I'd never seen that before.

I invited him to sit in the porch of the tent, the best hospitality I could offer. He declined and said he had to take in the vacă, a patient coffee-and-cream beast that had to be urged not to eat the fruit trees. At the other end of the garden a dozen brown hens importantly went about their henly business.

I was glad about the vacă. You never want to camp beside one because they are stupid enough to trample a tent and not notice. When the cow had been led away at the end of a rope, the man returned with a small glass. Remembering the way coffee and tea were served in Turkey, I accepted but explained that I already had a coffee on the go, lifting my blue plastic mug to demonstrate.

Another tranquil moment on Romania's country byways...

"It's not coffee," he said.

"Tea, then?"

"No. Go on, try it."

It was as clear as water and as strong as brandy.

The man rose and walked four paces to the nearest fruit tree. He peeled off a thumbnail's length of bark and showed it to me before flicking it away and letting it vanish in the wind. That was how he made it, from tree bark.

I took a sip. It was like cognac, which was the word he also used. He grinned in pleasure, regathered the glass and its white saucer without a word and walked off with a wave. Two minutes later he returned with a blue bowl of sliced, home-made bread, a plate of cheese and a large green vegetable like a gherkin. Again he smiled, content with the simple pleasure of helping a stranger.

You see now why I like Romania?

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