We had heard the stories about Romania ~ roaming bands of gypsy children sticking their fingers down your pants, being held up at knife point if you happened to wander down the wrong road and probably the worst, being sold fake perfume at a steep discount. After being in Romania for a few days, we decided that these stories were not true.
Now that I’ve time to digest my experiences in the country, I think that our times in Romania were more dangerous than I originally realized. It’s not that there are roving bands of gypsies out there trying to steal your soul, it’s that the Romanian people, men in particular, are a bit rowdy, especially when drunk.
When at the beach-side bar in Vama Veche, I remember that there was a fight between someone that was very drunk and someone resembling a biker. There were actually a couple of biker guys there. When not passing around a couple of drunk girls that would sit on their laps and make out with them, the biker guys, dressed in jeans and vests with banners on the bottom, seemed to be keeping the peace. It’s almost as if they were there to prevent fights.
Enter the drunk guy. I remember him coming out of the bathroom and his friends were trying to console him in one way or another ~ you could tell they were attempting to persuade him to go to bed. He sat down on a bench, which he promptly fell off of. He got up and, unperturbed by his lack of success, tried to sit on the bench again. He promptly feel over backwards, knocking the bench he was sitting on and the table directly behind him over.
Next thing you know he was unsuccessfully explaining his case to one of the biker guys, who was pushing him backwards in one of those shows of bravado, which can be best exemplified by watching two male lizards go at it on the Discovery Channel. As you can imagine, this didn’t go well for the drunk Romanian.
The biker shoved him hard and he fell onto the beach. He sat there for a few seconds with a look of confusion on his face, obviously having no recollection of how he ended up there. We were all secretly hoping that the guy had learned his lesson, which was a futile thought because he got up and started poking the biker. The biker thoroughly kicked his ass, not by throwing punches but by simply wresting him into submission.
And, that was it for the drunk guy. I didn’t see him again. But, it wasn’t the normal bar fight where bouncers were involved. No one was man-handled out of the establishment and thrown on the street. No, it was more of a show for the other patrons ~ no one got hurt, but you didn’t want to push your luck.
During this fracas, I never felt in danger. A little while later, there was another drunk guy hovering near our table. Unlike the first, this one seemed to have a menacing temperament (presence). And, he wasn’t looking at us. Rather, his face was directed towards us, but his eyes were facing the ground off to an angle.
And, the guy looked pissed ~ both in a drunk sense and in his general mood. It looked like he was stammering around, trying to build up the nerve to do something…. something that was going to be directed at us. In this moment, I was a little worried. I thought my friend and I could handle our own with this guy, but I didn’t know about his friends or the bikers. As he was building his gusto, someone came up to him, said “NO” and seemed to be reasoning with him and eventually drug him away.
Of course, this experience, when jumbled in with all the others that happened in Romania wasn’t that big of a deal, but we were probably within a hare’s breath of having a seriously unpleasant experience on that beach ~ an experience that can swing the pendulum of a vacation from good to bad in a heart beat.
