Letter from Romania

Routine

Almost awake, I can almost feel it before I hear it. It begins as a rumble, almost mellow, and finishes its work for me as a whispered thrum. And if I am not quite ready to get up, its twin will come by in a few minutes. The twin is from the other side of the tracks, boisterous, with an insistent clack as it passes our apartment building. I don’t need to set this alarm as I know the men and women who drive Timișoara Trams start work around 4 am.

In Decorah, early morning truck-traffic on Water Street is my alarm signal. We live on a quieter street in Clarinda and so it’s the early bird after that first worm. When we were co-directors of Luther’s semester program in Malta in 2018, outside our 3rd floor flat some guy across the street would start his 15 year old car every morning around 3:30 AM and so for four months a vroom started my day. Except for when we traveled with our students for a week in Morocco and then it was the 4 am Muslim call to prayer from a loud speaker on minaret somewhere in Fez, Rabat and Marrakech.

I am not a natural, traveler that is. Some take to the road or air or tracks with nothing but adventure on their minds. I fret and tighten up as the departure date nears. I did not take my first trip outside the United States until I was 37, in 1986, to England. Since then I have visited or lived in Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Malta, Morocco, France, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, and Romania.

It is 4:45 am as I finish this blog. Rebecca will be up in an hour or so. I have coffee ready for her in an insulated carafe. And then we are off by train to Cluj and a day later to Suceava to see the painted churches of Bucovina.