A letter from Romania

Getting a resident’s permit

“I’ve just come from the Medicine Faculty,” said Diana as she joined me in the queue at the General Inspectorate for Immigration on Strada Andrei Mocioni, Nr. 6. I use queue (k ‘you’) when I want to sound more sophisticated than I feel. Line sounds…so American. Strada, by the way, is the Romanian word for street. And Nr. means number and so Nr. 6 was the building number. We live on Strada Gheorghe Doja, Nr. 40, an address that after two months living in Timișoara has become as familiar as 409 East Water Street.

Diana Pleșca is the International Students’ and Lecturers’ officer in the Department of International Relations at West University in Timișoara. She is the person responsible for shepherding my way through the Romanian bureaucracy toward the holy grail of a resident’s permit that will allow me to stay in Romania beyond the 90 day tourist limit. Without her, I have no chance. With her, as Romanians say, “no problem.”

“What do you mean by Medicine Faculty?” I asked Diana. “It’s my program of study,” she replied, “I am doing a Bachelor of Medicine.” We then talked about how in America the word faculty means a group of teachers or professors. And course is a class and not a field of study, as it is in European universities. Lately I have been feeling like an American in Romania, a bit of a stranger in a strange land. Even the words in English don’t mean quite what I think they should.

Diane’s Medicine Faculty comment reminded me of this as did my walk down Strada Mocioni to Nr. 6. Our time in this wonderful country is fast winding down. Soon we will have only memories. Like the day Diana Pleșca tutored me for three hours on the particularities of the Romanian university system while relentlessly pestering by phone her immigration contact Decebel about our scheduled 10 am resident’s permit interview that took place at 1 pm.

Finding a COVID testing center

“Vorbești engleză?” asked Rebecca. “Nu. Puțin,” said the uniformed man outside a municipal building in Timișoara’s city center. Rebecca had asked if he spoke English and he responded with a shrug, a no and then puțin meaning a little. A few days ago Rebecca and I set out to find the COVID testing center closest to our apartment. We knew we would need a COVID test when we flew back to the USA. We had found an online map of testing centers in Timișoara and the map’s teardrop placed it in the middle of a mass of buildings in the city center, with no street address. We rounded a corner in the general location and spotted the Directia Fiscala a Municipiului tucked into a little alley. Maybe the testing center was inside so we approached the front door.

After “puțin” intrepid Rebecca continued in the Romanian she has been studying for a year, “noi vrem un test pentru COVID unde este COVID clinic?” He smiled, took her arm and walked us to the corner and pointed to the clinic about a block away. He then shook Rebecca’s hand. All this despite the fact we had asked about COVID testing. As Rebecca said afterward, “he did not treat us like pariahs.”

Once inside the clinic, Rebecca works her magic again. Appreciative of her obvious effort to learn Romanian, the staff person behind the protective glass found an English speaking nurse who filled us in on what we could do to get the necessary test.

Living in another country is often hard work. That’s as it should be as it offers experiences to learn that our ways are not the only ways or even the best ways.

What softens this work is the kindness of Romanian strangers. That’s what I will remember most from our time in Romania.