August
2007
Shrink in the big city I
The middle of July was hellish in Romania, incredibly hot and dry, especially in the southern part. So, naturally, I had to travel to Bucharest.
You see, dear readers, our brain dead minister of Health, mr. Nicolaescu, accepted in his infinite wisdom the request from the Romanian Psychologists’ College that every hospital psychologist, even if she doesn’t have a private practice, should apply, willy-nilly, for a License of Free Practice. Which means that you pay a hefty annual sum and travel every few years to Bucharest , all for the great privilege of… doing exactly what you did until now.
The last days before going to the capital were filled with worried faces and paranoid advices from my entourage. Now you non-transilvanians might not know that, but the average inhabitant of this region bears a deep fear and loathing of the evil place inhabited by “Mitici” as they call the metropolitans. Therefore I was told countless times to “Take care of your money, hide it in a few different places” ” “Never leave your mobile unattended, it will disappear in a second” “Be careful with the thieves in the buses, they are EVERYWHERE and nobody cares if you get robbed” and of course “Don’t ride with a non-corporate cabby, you’ll be conned, beaten and raped, not necessarily in that order”. A few days later, backpack on my back, plenty of water in a bottle and my trusty needlepoint in a bag, I was prepared to go.
The train was an Intercity, luxurious by Romanian standards, except for the fact that ..we didn’t have any air conditioning. Therefore me, Emma and Pelle (the two Swedes I was sharing my compartment with) got the window down, hydrated ourselves as much as we could and started sweating like three Yeltsins in a sauna. We managed to strike a friendship, so by Brasov, where they got out, phone numbers were exchanged and I invited them to our house a few days later. In Brasov a French doc couple replaced them and we spent the rest of the journey happily chatting about the differences between our countries’ hospitals, yours truly ocasionaly sneaking a peek at the guy because he was, girl Pioneer’s honor, the essence of eyecandyness.
I had two friends I phoned constantly while on the road - Ina, who offered transportation, and Anne, who volunteered the shelter. (Sweethearts, both of them.) Ina told me to wait for her at the station’s Micky Dee, and that’s where I stood, a bit touched by Transylvanian paranoia since it was too close to midnight for my liking; all inner eyes on the backpack, all outer eyes on the street kids that occasionally came to ask me for a dime.
But then Ina and the husband came, kisses flew on the cheeks and off we went, occasionally phoning Anne for direction. I looked at the car’s thermometer - there were 33 centigrades. At midnight. Damn.