A Desperate Situation

So there we were (have you noticed that all crazy stories begin this way?)...



So there we were, trapped in a small hot room, awaiting the end. We were destitute, only 15 Turkish kurus between us, not enough even to buy a snack (a kuru is worth about half a cent, so I'm talking about 7 cents here). We had subsisted on bread and water for a day, but the bread wasn't filling and terribly dry, and the water was almost gone. It was a desperate situation. Desperate acts were thought of.



Finally, we could bare it no more.



"I need to get out of here," I thought. "I want to be able to stand on the good earth again and feel the sun on my face after going so long without."



The second hand crept forward slowly. "When will this torture end?"



Minutes later, there was a knock at the locked door. Was this it? Was my sentence over? The voice on the other side said something in Romanian. I didn't understand. Surely this was it? The moment I had waited for for solong?



The door was opened and I stepped through squinting in the bright light of the sun. The same voice from earlier announced our arrival. "Bucuresti" (pronounced Bookooresht). Backpack on my shoulders, I carefully climbed down the train steps.



I had arrived. I was in this land where gypsies still roam in their covered wagon caravans and horses still plow the fields and women in head scarves stoop in the fields harvesting crops.

I was in... Romania.