Daniele Somenzi's Romania

Romania

With my blue Fiat 126, which I inherited from my mum — before that I had a Fiat 500 which I sold to a man in the Netherlands — I drove with Sergio to the edge of Romania, entering from Hungary. We had been preparing this trip for a long time, even carrying on the roof of the 126 two Graziella bicycles to give to some Romanian who might need them; here in Versilia we find them next to the rubbish bins, sometimes even in good condition, a lick of paint, a pump of air and off you go. At the border, however, they tell us you have to pay to enter Romania, and since the two of us were going, so to speak, to do charity, it didn't seem right to pay in order to do good. So this time I can't say I've been there, even though when I stopped with the car at the frontier I was on the other side of the 'Romania' sign.

I wanted to mention this episode for Romania, but in reality I really have been to Romania. To mention my shortest trip: I had some air miles about to expire and rather than lose them I invented a touch-and-go. I flew from Pisa to Rome with a connection to Bucharest, the Romanian capital; I arrived and stepped off the MD 80, bought a souvenir, it was raining and the Tarom planes were all lined up in the parking areas. After about half an hour the flight to Rome opened boarding and I got back on; I touched Romanian soil, I visited nothing, it'll be for another time, I wasn't psychologically prepared to stay there a few days. The hostess, seeing me back on board, opened her eyes wide and gave a little laugh after I told her I didn't like Romania and was going back — naturally it was a joke. Count it as if I had carried documents to someone. By evening I was back in Pisa. Bye