A Severe Case of Gnome

Christmas markets abound, as do their mascots (Yeomen? Guardians? Sentries?)

I’m happy to say, Timisoara delivered. There is much to love in the city that has been called “Little Vienna.” It’s located in the Banat Region of Western Romania, and has been home to Austrians, Germans, Jews, Serbians and Hungarians. Little fun facts: the founder of Illy coffee was born here; he also developed the Illetta, which is the precursor to the modern espresso machine. (So much gratitude!) Timisoara has six large public squares. It was the first city in Europe – second in the world, after New York – to illuminate its streets with electricity. The Secessionist and Art Nouveau architecture is consistently stunning. I spent a great day with students and then walking around with professors Loredana and Cristina. The central area has been transformed into an extended Christmas market. I am a sucker for a ferris wheel, and this one was sporting changing, multicolor lights. I also like pop-up retail, vin fiert (mulled wine), and stands that sell pastries that look like donut holes doused in some delicious sauce.

The buildings in Timisoara deserve pictures; two are provided. As everywhere in Romania, there are some run-down buildings, but Timisoara seems to have suffered less at the destructive hands of Ceaucescu. Apparently, he did not particularly like Timisoara. The revolution started here, which makes me like it even more. There are three synagogues currently, though only one in use; we walked by the Sinagoga Cetate (Central Synagogue), which apparently resembles the synagogue in Oran, Algeria. It’s splendid, as are all the major synagogues in Romanian towns, though the smaller ones are often quite modest. My friends told me they are obsessed with the Great Synagogue, called the “Fabric Synagogue,” (Fabric was an historic district in Timisoara) apparently one of the most beautiful buildings in the city, which is closed. The churches are, needless to say, stunning and towering over all else, full of paintings and stained glass and vaults that your camera can barely capture. I’m also a fan of town squares – I think it comes from visiting my brother at the University of Michigan when I was a child and walking through the law quad. Honestly, as we were walking, I was plotting my return: two-week visiting Erasmus professor? Would Fulbright pony up? I do love my Iasi, but Timisoara has a different feel – a hub-and-spoke city like Paris and Washington, D.C., and of course, Detroit. If I had planned a little better (a lot better), I’d had jumped a plane to Budapest from here; it’s not far.

Now I am in Brasov, which I will talk about at length at a later date, because I’m also enamored of it, here. Great art, food, buildings, people. (Romanian artist, Roman Tolici: stunning oil paintings.) I’m staying at the Casa Chitic Balescu, which seems to be down the street from the Casa Chitic where Eric and I stayed. The hotel’s layout is idiosyncratic. You need a gate code to enter; the hotel registration, while not hidden, is not exactly neon. Check-in was easy and I was given room 15, which is up the stairs. There are two rooms up the stairs: 15 and 16. And then you’re done. No more stairs. Other rooms are entered elsewhere in the courtyard, and the restaurant that provides “mic dejun” (breakfast) is downstairs, to the right, in a room with purposeful and extensive exposed brick. The other hotel I stayed in here has the same layout, the same exposed brick. It’s always a bit unsettling to see fragments of drywall, but the visual is sort of appealing, like you’re eating in a cleaned-up and organized archaeological site. I have become immune to hotel breakfasts here. I cherish the coffee machines, with which I can have as many espressos as I like (too many) and some sliced cucumbers and an egg over-easy. I know I sound like an ascetic, but breakfast out here, with the exception of the really fabulous ones (Marmarosch) can be skipped. What I really need is the coffee and several glasses of water, as I was reminded by Gabriel, my hair person, in Iasi. He asked me: how much water do you drink? Of course, I lied, a little. Of course, right now I am chugging water (not lying) to make up for it. By the time I leave here this morning, I will be hydrated and awake.

For some reason, I have decided to sit with my back to the small, elevated television, as though I am a member of the Cosa Nostra/five families, etc., and need to apprise my surroundings at all times. The people-watching aspect of my time here does excel, especially when it accompanies listening to numerous languages foreign to me. Brasov probably offers more tourists than anywhere else I have gone, due to the Transylvania/Vlad Dracula connection. Since I touched down with that experience, thankfully, before my lecture today I will find other aspects of Brasov to explore. I will say that with my back to the television, I can hear but not see the news, which, for many Romanians, is perplexing and alarming. Their initial election brought a genuine Nazi-sympathizer to the forefront, through the use of Russian money funneled into Tiktok. (This is reductive.) Their supreme court ended up annulling the election. People are both relieved and confused. This candidate is clearly in Putin’s pocket, and one friend was telling me they hope for his elimination from the election on charges related to collusion, treason, etc. I think they find the legislative processes unsatisfying and are angry at their government agencies who have known about this candidate and his strategies for months, but ignored them. I won’t go farther down the rabbit hole of another country’s politics with which I am only cursorily familiar, but I will say, I am relieved that they acknowledge the problem with TikTok-flooded information and its ilk, as segments of the U.S. population seem only too willing to listen to sexy soundbits and whatever article or inept legacy organization that spouts dangerous nonsense.

Let me just say: coat three (long black puffer) is the coat every other Romanian woman has. If I never opened my mouth and could stop managing to look a little lost, I could pass. A woman I met today at an art gallery told me that the five words I have sound really good. I have my father’s narrow face and dark hair, which seem to be dominant traits here. The issue of passing.... challenging for Jews. I have friends who have been told they “don’t look Jewish,” yes, here and now, well into the 21^st century. For all who wonder: I consider that an insult.

I have reconciled that Romania is one constant tonal shift for me, in terms of how and what I think about. I walk around, looking for wonder, for beauty, looking for strange little marvels, as is my general disposition. I find them everywhere. By now you know, if you have been reading this for the past two months, small things thrill me. I see a great pair of shoes. I see a balcony, an architectural fillip, a painting, a section of a painting. Mamaliga (polenta). Chicken soup. And then I look for and find a synagogue, often beautiful, often closed, sometimes abandoned, which inspires me, saddens me, angers me, engages me on numerous levels. There were 800,000 Jews here in 1930. Now there are 8,000. They did not “decide to leave” for greener pastures. Some did leave, but because their “pastures” were forcibly taken, or they read the writing on the wall. My family, the Saubermans-Soubermans-Sobermans-Zubermans turned Seyburns-Silvermans-Soburns-Schwartzes (the last name new to the mix, in Minneapolis, of all places) read that writing. How could I ever thank you, Chaim and Sara, my great-grandfather and great-grandmother. There is no possible way.

This serves to explain, incompletely, the tonal and subject shifts in my writing. I am thrilled to be here. I’m also getting ready to head home. I will take this back, but at moments, I feel willing to go any meeting at all at my synagogue, even the most tedious. Really, I will take this back, but for the moment, it’s how I feel. No, I won’t be president again.

Poets know that titles are a challenge; numerous books now offer poems with no titles or the same title. Their justifications for this always relate to content, the efficacy of repetition (meaning, there is no real repetition, and this is true in music because you can and will and should never play a repeat the same in terms of various dynamics – speed, tone, warmth, color), but an added benefit of this decision is that titles are difficult. My title was going to be something related to the preponderance of Christmas markets in my life this week, which is a little ironic for a Jewish girl, but so be it. They are gorgeous and festive. Breakfast, however, brought the muse: in this hotel, everywhere, a gnome. Lots of gnomes. A tremendous amount of gnomes. (Yes, I am referencing “Love and Death” when Woody Allen is talking about wheat.) So I must dedicate this entry to the gnomes. I have two on my porch at home. They are rabbis. They are shalom-gnomes. Here is my favorite Romanian gnome, and he has a friend.