Bucharest city tales: Presents from the park

Columnist Eleonore af Schaumburg-Lippe writes in her weekly column about life as an expat in Romania. This week she writes the story about how an unexpected conversation made her day and introduced her to Romania's Martisor festival.

It happened in March, I think. I remember wondering why everyone was carrying flowers and why all the girls had a pin with a red and white ribbon on their blouses. I didn’t really know what was happening, I guessed it was some sort of celebration, something to do with love? I didn't know. I hadn't received anything, no flowers, no little ribbon and pin thing, nothing. So I was a bit grumpy, feeling like a foreigner, feeling left out. Everybody seemed to be celebrating something except me. It was about then when my Irish friend Kathleen called me, she was on her way to the Athenaeum, where a group of Irish people would meet up and sing in a choir, it would be caught on camera and used, as far as I understood, for an event at the Irish embassy. She asked me if I wanted to come along, saying they would be singing in Gaelic in front of the Athenaeum. I don’t sing, and I don’t have a voice for singing, but I decided to say “yes” to be supportive. When I got to the Athenaeum, I saw the group of singers and the camera man in front and I must admit I chickened out and decided to hide for a while. Thinking it would be a bit strange for a Danish girl to end up on the screen singing in Gaelic at an Irish event, I looked around and found there was one bench in the little park that was not totally occupied, however there were what looked to me like two homeless men talking to another homeless man half lying on the bench next to them. Well I had to sit somewhere, since the choir would be at it for at least 20 minutes, so I decided to chance it on the bench. They didn’t seem to mind, in fact they were very polite. I offered them a cigarette each and one of them asked me where I was from, I said “Denmark” and we struck up a conversation. At one point, one of the men found a calendar in his bag with a little map on the back, so we began chatting about the different countries. The third man joined the conversation, and everybody was talking, I think we covered it all; from Romanian singers, political issues, to the climate in Denmark versus Romania. They were speaking in Romanian, and one spoke a little English, I understood most of what they were saying except for one of three, and unfortunately he spoke the most. It was really difficult to understand him, and I only caught a word or two, but I smiled and said da a lot. The time just flew, and I think we all really enjoyed the little break in the day afforded by this conversation about life in Romania versus Denmark. I almost forgot the choir and when I eventually looked over, I could see that some of their faces had this big question mark, like they were thinking “Why are you talking to these homeless people?” But I didn’t care, by now I was no longer grumpy. Kathleen signaled to me that the singing was over and that we should leave. When I stood up to go, the three men also stood up, made a bow, and with big smiles they said thank you very much, searched in their bags and then each handed me a present