I woke up at dawn. The train was rolling along smoothly, the teenage girls in the next compartment had finally giggled themselves to sleep, and the sky outside was filling up with light. I got out of bed and looked out the window.
Outside was an absolutely flat plain. Fields of straggly, unhealthy looking corn alternated with fields of sunflowers. Miles away in the distance, at the edge of vision, a line of cypress trees marched against the horizon.
And that was all. There were no roads. No towns. No grain elevators. I looked in all directions but I couldn't see... anything. Just absolutely flat land,
stretching to the horizon. Withered-looking corn, millions of sunflowers. And the cypress trees far, far away.
I wanted to go back to bed -- Bucharest was still a couple of hours away, and I could use the sleep -- but the sight was arresting. I'd never seen such an utterly empty country. Minutes passed, miles went by, nothing changed. It was hypnotic.
Then I saw someone: a man, with a scythe. He was chopping down some of the nondescript plants -- grain? weeds? -- that grew between the corn and the sunflowers. A few yards away, a horse stood in front of a wagon, head down.
The sun slowly pulled itself over the edge of the world. The air filled with a faint haze. More miles passed. I saw another man with a scythe, and then a third. I don't know what they were doing. Every mile looked just like the last one: sunflowers, withered corn, sunflowers. There was no breath of air; no frond of corn rustled, no sunflower nodded. Nothing moving except for the train. There were still no towns, no houses, no roads or cars. No tractors. Just mile after mile of the emptly lands and, very occasionally, perhaps every mile or two, a man with a scythe. And the cypress trees in the farthest distance, painted on the dusty dome of the sky.
Eventually I went back to bed.
Later, in Bucharest, I looked at a map. Sure enough, there's a stretch of flat and empty land to the east of the city: Cimpea Burnazului, the Plain of Burnaz. The name sounds vaguely Biblical, though it's probably Turkish.
At a practical level, it's about the poverty of rural Romania and the aftereffects of Communism. Planned villages in inconvenient locations, and no cars or tractors or paved roads in the countryside. No irrigation canals or sprinklers to lay the dust and give relief to the struggling corn. All very understandable.
And yet it was very like a dream, that absolutely empty land, silent and motionless, with the sunflowers bowing their heads to watch us go by.
Sounds quite a bit like where I live! Except we do have roads and towns. And the wind tends to blow more often than not. But my town of 9,000 people is the biggest for 2 hours in any direction, and it IS pretty flat.
Good luck in Budapest, Doug!
Posted by: Susan Crites at July 31, 2003 08:52 PM"there's a stretch of flat and empty land to the east of the city...". I got the impression this was an observation from the train returning from Belgrade to Bucharest; so the area would be _west_ of Bucharest, not east. There does seem to be a large featureless plain NE of Bucharest. But I don't see how you pass through there en route from Belgrade.
Posted by: Rich Rostrom at August 8, 2003 09:14 AM"poverty of rural Romania and the aftereffects of Communism"
Aftereffects of the Communism are mixing with the effects of "'89 revolution" isn't it?
As far as I know.. before 89 every piece of land was worked by tractors or other machines. After 89.. every people from the country side asked for their land back.. so.. they took it.. they split the fields in smaller ones.. what ever was on those fields became their property.. for example.. irrigation pipes.. So.. they got the land.. but.. ofcourse not every one had the machines.. or money to buy machines to work the land. From the pipes thei made garden fences.. Nowadays.. the people from the country side creates some agricultural organizations (kind of the ones before 89, so calles CAP) and make use of that land. The ones who try to work it on their own.. are the ones to say in the autumn that they lost everything because it did not rain :)