Monday, September 29, 2008

Turdafest or how I learned to stop worrying and love the onion

Many exciting events were planed for the weekend of which none actually came to fruition, though time still managed to throw me into the participation of a world record attempt for the longest strand of onions (5241 meters), discussions of Romanian identity at a Hungarian dance party, and the loss of my left sock in the line of ‘duty’.

The plan was for all us teachers to drive up to Cluj and watch the football game Friday night. Marius, the P.E coach, the only person who has ever given me a welt from a ping-pong ball, regaled me with lavish stories of his favorite team, CFR Cluj, and how much fun life is when watching a live match. Plans fell through at the last minute, the tickets turned out to be too expensive, so instead I bought a log of Toblerone and drank coffee until the wee hours of the morning making a wallet out of The Declaration of Independence. We received a package from the American Embassy a couple of days earlier with all types of propaganda for the youth center including these sweet pocket sized books of The Constitution, so naturally I thought ‘wallet’.

Lately I have been brushing my teeth with my left hand. This will be day number 7 and its not getting any easier. I read somewhere that it helps memory to do things I normally wouldn’t do, like eating cereal with my left hand or volunteering at an onion festival. The festival was held in Turda, three hours northeast of Abrud, and half way into the bus trip I discovered that all my money was in my new wallet that I left on the table next to my cell phone. So much for brushing with the left hand. The bus zoomed through green winding hills as we made are way to Turdafest. Out my window kids played kickball in cornfields with scarecrows and I thought to myself how soberly pragmatic names like ‘kickball’ and ‘scarecrow’ really are.

We arrived before the festival was to begin and old ladies in their Babushkas were still laying out their hand crafted spoons and jars of jam and honey. Turda is an absolutely beautiful city with long streams of sherbet maisonettes bordering spacious cobblestone streets, one of which held the festival. Our job was to grab cord after cord of onions and line them up in the center of town then snake them all the way back to the church parking lot where the cords of onions would continue until the parking lot was completely filled. For two hours we looked liked prisoners on an onion chain gang as we moved our ripe sections of a world record length sting of onions. Why Onions, I can’t say, but apparently the Germans broke Turdas original World Record strand last year, taking the only thing Turda had going for itself. Other Peace Corps volunteers began to show up and soon most managed to abscond into the beer tents, but since help would still be needed through out the night we decided to drink to the point where our services would be of no use to any person or vegetable.

As the day went on the streets teemed with excitement and onions; people were dressed in traditional white and black garbs, children danced in circles holding hands to the sound of synthesized accordions, and venders sprang out from booths scaring you with their wooden dolls for sale. It all seemed like some fantastically twisted scene from a fairytale and I wandered off, getting lost in a crowd of puffy shirts and bowl shaped hats.

I regained consciousness in mid-conversation with an old man as we were sitting on the brick steps of a church. He was a philosopher who had grown tired of experience and mentioned how the truths of beauty and happiness depended on constant change, which could never be understood through the senses. An old lady soon came and carried him away; this would be around the time my stomach began to give me troubles and I hurdled into a rickety church bathroom before all was lost. Unfortunately the little boy’s room lacked all essentials and I returned to the beer tent with one sock missing.

That night as the crowd reached its zenith and the world record length of onions had been measured and confirmed we had reason to celebrate. The Germans had been beaten, the food was free, and we won the onion fight against the local Romanian gypsies. Some Romanians who considered themselves to be Hungarians joined in our onion fight and afterward invited us to a local dance party. This was located a block from town center in a little room with a kitchen. As the techno music played in the main room we were in the kitchen explaining to a full crowd about sub-prime mortgages, globalization, and ethnic minorities. Our audience was Romanian but they were educated and brought up as Hungarians by their parents. Some wanted their children to know only Romanian so that they would feel apart of the culture and have more job opportunities, others refused to give up their heritage for such things. Just a bit of history, following WWI Transylvania became unified with Romania, the Hungarian language was expunged from official life, and all place-names were Romanianized. Territories were taken and given back through out the years and identities redefined along the way. I wonder how I would feel if Washington became part of Canada, eh?

Anyway, the night seemed to never end and by morning I was ready to be back in my little town without any world records to speak of, though it might have a record for the most amount of drunken old men before 6 am, I will have to check. Still having no money I hitched a ride from a teenager who was driving through my town. I saw the cornfields one more time as we whizzed past gypsies on their horse drawn carts. They were sitting on a pile on onions.

1 comment:

Kale Iverson said...

This is so unbelievable. If you weren't actually living this I would say that you really have weird dreams.

I love how the old lady dragged the philosopher away...typical.

And about your class, one weird thing about teaching is that your worst days and best days often come back to back leaving you bewildered and confused.

Hope you're enjoying teaching, its such a weird life isn't it?!