The Worrier is Unfortunately Vindicated
Disclaimer: The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or the Peace Corps. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing with the trains, I'm just saying...

I'll say at the beginning that this story has a happy ending...

I spent the weekend in the villiage again. On the whole it was a great weekend. A bunch of volunteers got together. We got to watch a movie and have a knitting night and on Saturday we went to two schools to adjudicate the middle school and high school english monologue contests - watching students perform their original english monologues. It was fun. Then we made tacos. As I said, it was a great weekend, with great food and great company.

Except I left my kitten alone. For the second weekend in a row. Last weekend I was in the villiage coaching the villiage students for the monologue contest and when I came home on sunday after leaving Friday afternoon I found that Bella had done a number on the kitchen. This time I did a better job kitten - proofing the apartment. No dishes in the dishrack, nothing on the stove that could be knocked down, no way to knock over the empty trash can and fresh sticky tape on the kitchen windowsill. Still, it was hard for me to leave her for the second weekend in a row. Circumstances led me to reconsider this decision and I almost at the last minute decided to take her with me but since we would be A) knitting, and B) gone from the villiage all day Saturday and she'd be alone in someone else's apartment anyway I thought Why disturb her with a two hour train ride. This second-guessing though caused me to spend most of the time on the train picturining terrible situations that could occur as a result of my decison to leave her alone. Throughout the weekend I was given to muttering "I hope Bella is ok." My concern was always quickly met with a "She's fine."

Things started to go downhill Sunday when I got on the Personel train. Personel trains are the cheapest and slowest because they stop at all the little villiages. They are a great inexpensive way to get around. Usually. I suddenly discovered that the price of a ticket had more than doubled since my outgoing trip on Friday. Usually the return ticket is just a touch more expensive since I have to purchase it on the train from the Controler and sometimes they try to charge you a tax for not having a ticket or finding the Controler right away and explaining your need to purchase a ticket. This wasn't that. This was three Controlers showing me a chart with kilometers on it and explaining in a very official way that my ticket was more than double the usual price - if I moved to second class because I had accidentally sat in the first class seats on the Personel train. Feeling like I didn't have a let to stand on with an arguement I gave them more than half of my money and insisted I didn't have any more. I did. But I was only 1 leu short of the price they were telling me was the new cost of a ticket.

Then I had to go to the bathroom. It was my goal to never go to the bathroom on the Personel train for as long as I am in Romania. But I had two cups of tea that morning and another hour to go on the train. All I will say is even on the nicer trains if you find soap, water and toliet paper all in the same place at the same time you should take a picture because you won't see it very often. usually people become acustomed to traveling with their own toliet paper but for some reason I've been flirting with irresponsibility lately. All I will say is It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Then the nightmare sencario: coming home to a kitten who's been alone for two whole days makes the walk between the station and my apartment forever. I literally can't get there fast enough. Right as I'm turning the last corner who do I run into but my neighbor who immiedately begins telling me "you left your kitchen window open and your cat got out."
"Really? Where is she? I didn't leave the window open. It was closed when I left."
"The window was open and the cat got out"

There followed a lot of shouting and a lot of stuff that I didn't understand. What I grasped was this - my kitchen window, which doesn't have a screen, and doesn't close completely came open. Bella went out on the little landing above the door to the apartment building. I have let her go out there twice and always I'm watching her like a hawk. She can't jump to the ground or to a tree from there - but that doesn't mean she won't try. The worst she could do would be to cross the landing get into someone else's window box and possibly if the window is open - get into their kitchen.
Which is what she did.

I was saying Will you help me? Do you know where she is? No. Is she in that woman's kitchen? No. Apparently after breaking and entering Bella was identified as my cat, turned out into the hallway with chicken and milk and bread provided in front of my door. She went to the bottom of the stairwell and crawled under a big electrical box and when my neighbor urged me to look for her there I called her and she came running. Stupid cat! Moreover - stupid window that I can't close.

My neighbor followed me into my apartment admonishing me for leaving the window open even after I explained that I didnt' and it doesn't stay closed. Theives could break in to your apartment, she said. Why is your backpack so big? What's in it? -Clothes and blankets. -Blankets? Why blankets? You went to Baru Mare? -Yes my collegues there don't have extra beds so I had to sleep on the floor? - You have blankets? - Yes, for sleeping on the floor. At this point my neighbor crossed herself because there is a belief in Romania that walking on the cold floor barefoot or without slippers will make you sterile. Sitting on the floor will make you sterile, and sitting on something cold or washing with cold water will give you an infection.

I don't know if my neighbor is as much as master of non sequiturs as she seems or it's my lack of understanding, but I think she is. She kept talking to me about I don't know what but eventually she left after I gave her a hug. Greatful just to have found my cat again - after fearing the worst.

So now Bella home and fine except that I had to leave my apartment today and she was eyeing the pigeons on the landing this morning. So we'll see.

On the plus side she didn't leave last night when I went to see the movie Stardust that's playing in Deva for the weekend. Maybe it was the culumination of a lot of stress, but you know I'm prone to have big reactions to things when I'm in movie theatres. When Robert DeNiro the gay pirate captain is outed to his crew and they respond by making him tea and saying "We already knew. And you'll always be our captain." I burst into tears.