It was the year of our lord 2020. Late spring to be more precise. A little something called Covid 19 changed everyone’s life and mostly not for the better. 2 months of government-imposed home isolation had just ended and a lot of us living in the big metropolis of Bucharest were yearning to come back to our lives and be our true selves once again.
My life at that particular moment was about following an idealistic pursuit of making a music band with a buddy of mine. We kept jamming whenever we could and we had a helluva fun with it. I told the guy that we could turn that into a more consistent musical project and eventually make a living from it. That guy didn’t really share the same view and despite my constant persuading I failed to bring this man on the same frequency.
It seemed that my idealistic pursuit was to no avail. Not in the Romanian capital at least. I had a bitter aftertaste and my enthusiasm was plummeting quickly. I didn’t like this. Something spontaneous needed to happen. So I made a spontaneous decision. In that summer I decided to hop on a train and go West. I didn’t even think about it. I just took my backpack with a few basic necessities, my electric guitar and my savings. I didn’t plan any of this and I didn’t know what were the chances of this whole trip to be a complete disaster. I was counting on some connections I had in Germany and the Netherlands. The whole point was for this to be a one-way trip and start something new in the Netherlands, not so far from Amsterdam.
After 10 hours of observing the Romanian country side through the dusty window of my wagon, I arrived at the first stop. The plan was to spend 2 nights in this city which was one hour away from the Hungarian border. I was hosted by a friend whom I met the previous summer in this hippie place lying by the Black Sea. We were still in touch and we spent two days exploring that city where everything was so new to me. It was a refreshing visual experience.
My friend and I parted on good terms and I hopped on a midnight bus that was supposed to get me all the way to Vienna. I had trouble sleeping on this bus because some assholes were watching a movie on their laptop without any headphones. I told the bastards to cut down the noise and right when I thought that the rest of the bus ride would be smooth and quiet, some old lady started making a fuss about how she needed to go to the bathroom. We were on the highway and there wasn’t much to be done about this. My attempts to sleep were constantly crushed by the vicissitudes of that bus ride. The commotion from the stop in Budapest, the passport control at the Austrian border and casual snorings, coughs and sneezes from various passengers simply cancelled all my hopes for a bit of sleep.
I arrived at 7am in Vienna looking like a complete zombie. There was a 3 hour break before the next bus that would get me all the way to Munich. I had one of two choices as I was standing with all my luggage in the bus station’s waiting room. Either sit there for all those 3 hours and hear other passengers chat about their daily problems and how tiresome travelling was or simply take the subway to the city center and explore the streets of what was once the Habsburg capital.
I didn’t need to think much. I put all my luggage in one of those secured lockers and off I went. During that chilly yet sunny morning a junky looking 24 year old eastern European could be seen wandering the central streets of Vienna without any aim or purpose whatsoever. My lack of sleep slowly appeared to be non-existent as I was exploring more of that gorgeous Austrian capital. While walking from the well-known opera to Karl’s church to a weird gritty monument made by the soviets to other corners I couldn’t remember the names of, I absorbed every single architectural detail and imprinted it in a sacred place of my mind destined for all the epic visual memories. The streets were wide and everything seemed to shine. It seemed that the city was pretty damn perfect, from an aesthetic point of view at least.
Now, it’s a well-known fact that whenever a traveler encounters a new city for the first time, only the good parts seem to show up. Everything is simply sugar coated and none of the weird, shabby and rotten details seem to be noticed. It’s like falling in love with a new date. Every single red flag seems to go unnoticed. But as I’m reeling through the years writing this little chapter of my life, the city of Vienna still appears pretty spotless in my memory. I can’t recall seeing any bit of trash or any shady looking character. None of the buildings had any single crack nor any paint missing. All the humans I caught a glimpse of had a taken care of and exquisite outlook, except a weirdo in rags playing the accordion next to a church while wearing a funny horse mask. And of course, there was me passing by, with my untrimmed beard, a haggard face displaying the obvious sleepless night and scruffy long hippie hair. Anyway, back to the story.
The lack of sleep could be ignored but not the lack of food. The demand to fill one’s guts always had a sly way of coming first over everything else. I stopped at a small supermarket to grab a croissant. I paid 5 euros for it. This reminded me how expensive Vienna really was and made me think that it probably wasn’t such a bad idea to make some provisions while back on the cheap Romanian soil.
Soon enough I went back to the same station to take another bus to get me to another border, another city and another friend awaiting me. During those hours of bus riding where I admired the crusty Alps in the distance and the green Bavarian meadows stretching up ahead, I was texting my friend from high school, Ellie, who had been living with her German boyfriend in Munich for over a year. She gave me precise indications of how to get from my point of arrival to her home in the suburbs.
When I arrived in Munich I displayed a proper hobo outlook. I was sweating from the midday heat and I had some big stains on my sweater from some coke I spilled on me while on the bus. My face displayed the same lack of sleep, now combined with the accumulated road tiredness and my hair was scruffier than ever. I took the subway from the bus station and then I took a train to get me to the station where I would find Ellie waiting for me. I followed every single step of her indications the same way a hardcore Christian follows the words from the Holy Bible. My eyes were always glued to the screen displaying the stations in both transports. Ending up in the wrong place and missing the opportunity to sleep for free in my friends’ place would’ve been a big financial blow.
I arrived in a charming Bavarian suburb where Ellie greeted me right on the platform. As she saw me walking towards her she couldn’t resist but laugh at my ragged appearance. I was totally ok with it because I was laughing too. We embraced. It had been a while since our last encounter.
“Back in high school did you ever expect to see me like this one day?” I asked giggling.
“Not at all. You look like shit, haha!” She said. Ellie always said it how it was and I appreciated that.
“Well, shit happens, I guess.”
“It happens indeed. Let’s get you a decent look. We’re meeting Matthias and some others this evening.” Matthias was her sweetheart. The others, I was about to know them.
Ellie was living in this shared house with her boyfriend, this other common friend of ours, Joseph, and a weird junky making music in the attic who, according to what the others heard, had some trouble with police for being a meth dealer or something like that. Joseph was visiting his family in Bucharest at the time so instead of sleeping on the couch from the living room, I had his room all for myself. How lucky could one guy be?
I took a shower which, after all that time on the road, was proven to be one of the most refreshing and redeeming experiences at the time. I felt like I was being part of society once again and after a few hours of real sleep in a real bed I felt that I could go anywhere in that world.
After I woke up it was cycling time. Ellie took her bike and I took Joseph’s. We went through the lovely suburban streets, stopped at a shop to buy beers and snacks, crossed a railway bridge and soon enough we arrived at Olympia Park in Munich. It was called that way because it was basically the site of the Munich 1972 Olympics. Now it was a cozy green space with small hills and paths built all around the Olympic stadium. After a bit of strolling through the park we could see Matthias waving at us from one of the small hills.
As me and Ellie ascended the hill with our bikes the sun was descending into a red sunset. On the top of the hill we were greeted by Matthias and I met 2 other guys: Bruno and Julia. Now that we were all together and the objective of being there on that hill was complete, each of us opened a bottle of Bavarian ale. While rivers of beer were constantly flowing into our delicate bodies, we all started to reel in the years and talk about funny stuff from our high school days. Matthias wasn’t so surprised to find out that one in grade 10 Ellie threatened a girl sitting behind her because the latter wouldn’t keep her mouth shut.
With that occasion I found out some more facts about Munich. For example, no building erected within the city limits was supposed to be higher than the towers of Cathedral of Our Lady. Since it was considered a symbol of the city, this Cathedral had to be seen from every corner of the city.
When it was almost dark me, Elie and Matthias said goodbye to the other 2 and went back to the suburban residence. We had some more beer, watched a movie and had a joint. I obliged once again for their generosity and went to bed thereafter. During the spam of 24 hours I witnessed 3 cities, crossed 2 borders and marveled at the Danube, the Alps and the Munich Olympic stadium. The day started with acute frustration due to lack of sleep and ended in comfortable content summoned by welcoming friends. This whole trip looked promising after all.
The next day was my final day in the pearl of Bavaria and both Ellie and Matthias had to work until the evening. When I went down into the kitchen Ellie was on her way out. She gave me a pair of spare keys and told me I was free to do whatever the hell I wanted as long as I wouldn’t trash the place or get the attention of any local news channel. So there I was, free to wander in any corner of good old Munich.
After I abused the multitude of items that could be found in Ellie’s fridge, I took the bike for a freestyle city ride. I’d been to Munich before so I didn’t have any specific destination in terms of sights to see. The 2 wheels rolled to whatever street, path or corner I deemed interesting to explore. It felt like I was player one in a free roaming GTA server.
At some point I couldn’t stop but notice the differences in perception concerning certain materialistic items. The one that struck me the most was the BMW car. Munich was literally the birth place of BMW so the locals owning that brand were the BMW aboriginal people. In the city of Bucharest the BMW cars were seen as a flashy symbol of flexing and were often owned by arrogant and entitled people who believed that the possession of such vehicles was the equivalent of a pass to evade certain traffic laws. In Munich on the other hand, the BMW was a symbol of income stability and success backed by hard work. This theory was backed by simply observing the drivers’ profiles in both cities. In Bucharest the average BMW driver was a muscular fella with flashy sunglasses and a sporty apparel, often having a girl on the passenger seat with a revealing outfit, suspiciously long eye lashes and enough make-up to give a bedroom wall a new outlook. In the Bavarian capital the same car would often have inside a family with 2 kids or simply a guy wearing a casual shirt driving to his accounting, sales or marketing job.
Munich was less than 2 days driving from Bucharest yet some differences between the 2 cities were at 180 degrees. It always puzzled me how the very same thing would have a certain meaning in one part of the world and moving a few countries away the very same thing would spawn completely different opinions.
Later that day I found myself at the famous Odeon square where once upon a time a guy with a funny mustache could be observed preaching peculiar ideas to a huge crowd of people who absorbed every word.
Right before sunset some heavy rain started out of nowhere. I cycled as hard as I could but the cold frequency of those heavy drops was too much of a burden and on top of that it seemed that I had forgotten my way back to Ellie. What I didn’t forget was the name of the train station next to her so I hopped on one of those regional trains completely soaked and eventually found my way back where Ellie once again laughed at my unfortunate condition. That night we played board games and went early to sleep so I could feel rested the next day in a 13 hour bus ride all the way to Amsterdam. It was time to cross a new border.
The road to Amsterdam was gloomy and filled with heavy grey clouds. There was even some drizzling a few times. During all this time I was abusing the bus wifi to reach Jiang, my Chinese friend living in Utrecht which was 40 minutes away from Amsterdam. I told him how I desperately needed a place for spending the night. The timing wasn’t completely right since he was in the middle of his graduation thesis which was due in 2 weeks. He eventually agreed to host me for one night. And obviously, it turned out it would be more than one night.
The hours on the German highway seemed to fly really quick once I knew I would still have a roof above my head for free for at least another night. For some reason, all the gloomy weather disappeared at the exact moment when I crossed the Dutch border. It was some sign from the heavens or whatever one would like to call it. Right in the moment when my phone announced me that we were on Dutch territory a ray of sunlight came right through the clouds and in short time the sky got fully bright. You had to be there to believe it. I reached Amsterdam soon enough and thereafter took the train to Utrecht, my final destination. The sky was still bright.
Arriving back in Utrecht felt like coming once again to a long-missed home. I already knew my way around that city simply because I got lucky Freddy, my close friend from university, who did an internship there. Apparently he was ok with me sleeping on a mattress under his bunk bed for a few months the previous year while working as a delivery guy to raise money for a trip to Brazil. But then Covid happened and my Brazil plans were put on hold.
Walking around Utrecht gave me a weird sense of security and lightness. Maybe it was because I was so familiar with everything. I looked at the people sitting at terraces and bars like they were some neighbors I hadn’t seen in years. I even smiled and greeted some of them. Some responded in a similar manner while some gave me uncomfortable looks like I was an insane creep. It didn’t matter. My state of mind wasn’t shifted for one second. I was on my way to Jiang, who lived really close to the central area and the way to his place was more or less a straight line from my point of arrival. Jiang was one of the people that would show up really often to Freddy’s house, where other interesting humans were living. He came there mostly to hang with this other guy, Greg, and to smoke any dope he could find in site. One time I heard this story about Jiang and Greg spending Christmas in this 2 square meter room just to smoke 7 grams of Kush. They smoked so much that they got a huge headache and in order to get rid of the pain they lit another joint to do the job. And it worked. It was like the fighting fire with fire kind of thing.
One of these humans was a Chinese dude called Jiang who would smoke any dope he could find in site. I mean, one Christmas all he did was stay in a 2 square meter room with another guy and smoke 7 grams of Kush. He smoked so much that he had a huge headache and in order to get rid of the pain he smoked another blunt which did the work done. But enough about Jiang’s habits. This dude agreed to host me on my first night in Utrecht.
Jiang more than pleased to greet me at his door step. He told me that he genuinely believed that he would never see me again. But there I was. We had an authentic celebration with a fat joint on the balcony of the student building where he lived. We admired a purple dusk which set upon the charming skyline of Utrecht. Life seemed to make sense. We smiled.
Jiang told me that he had a lot of shit going on with his graduation thesis and he didn’t even plan to leave his flat so he could get the thing right. He insisted that he would host me only for one night and thereafter I had to figure it out on my own. I reluctantly agreed.
So I spent 4 days at Jiang’s browsing through apartment and room advertisements on the Dutch Craig’s list. One of the guys there answered the same day and we scheduled a view for a room the very next day. It was an old guy who lived alone and had an extra room upstairs. I went to his place and was greeted by a short dude with a warm smile, blue eyes and a T-shirt with exotic patterns. It had parrots and palm tree leaves. I vibed with that outlook. He showed me the room upstairs and then we sat in his living room where we had an ample conversation.
This old fella was delightful to talk to. We shared various anecdotes about religion and philosophy. We both talked about our travelling experiences and we soon found out we were both devotees of solo travelling. He told me how the previous year he was going by himself through Columbia and how he played his ukulele in various cities just for fun. He was studying Spanish whenever he found the time for it and was looking forward to the end of all the Covid business so he would hit the road again. The guy also had a motorbike that he would ride to Amsterdam every now and then. He was doing all these things at 67. It got me thinking about what the average 67 year old was doing in Romania. Probably not so jolly and not so curious about the world while stuck into some mundane endeavors, while being spiteful and resentful towards the newer generations.
He also told me about this place called “Language Café” where people gathered to practice various languages. One would just show up there, sit at a table with a certain flag and tried to the best of their ability to have a conversation with the others in the language of that flag. Our conversation was really outgoing.
“How old are you?” He asked.
“Well, I’m 24.”
“Wow, only 24? You’re so young!”
“I think so, haha.”
“At 24 you only need to do two things: breath and eat!”
The instant he said that my whole mental coordinates changed. To this day I still remember those words and tell them to many people when I have the chance. It was one of those moments where a mere sentence had the colossal power of a thousand canons destined to wipe out all my worries and send them into oblivion. Soon after the old man said that magic sentence we ended our talk and parted on good terms. He would tell me the other day about his decision with the room.
I walked out of the old man’s house as dumbstruck. I didn’t stop walking until the central area where Jiang lived. I still carried those simple words. All the stress, the pressure and the anxiety simply faded out. Life seemed so easy and effortless. I just knew that everything would be alright and I needn’t put too much pressure on myself because all the problems had their answers and were on their way to melt like lemon drops. My stay in the Netherlands would be secured and I wouldn’t have to turn around. I simply knew it. My soul felt light.
The next morning I got a message from the old man. He asked me about my sexual orientation and then told me that he was gay. He also asked whether or not I had any problem with him being gay. I answered that it made no difference to me and that I was straight. A few hours later he texted me again, telling me that he found someone better suited to live with him and wished me best of luck with my pursuit of escaping homelessness.
It was pretty plain to see that the old queer found someone of his own kind and I didn’t hold any grudges. Everyone sticks to their own kind at the end of the day.
My soul didn’t feel so light anymore. I still knew that things would be alright but before that things had to suck for a bit. I went back to Jiang and he looked really stressed. He told me to go somewhere else because he really needed to concentrate and get his shit together with that thesis. There was not much I could do about it so I packed my stuff, took Jiang’s bike that he didn’t need since he was too busy to even leave the building, and went to Greg, who lived in this suburb 10km from Utrecht. Greg was Russian yet he didn’t drink like a Russian. He compensated with smoking pot, though.
Greg lived in a student housing building which previously used to be a facility for mentally retarded kids. The question now was where were those kids? To this day, nobody knows the answer. What mattered was that Greg agreed to host me a few days. It was funny because I was sleeping on this couch from the shared kitchen of that whole dormitory. Not many people used that kitchen but sometimes I would wake up to the sound of someone frying something or taking something from the fridge. I would wake up and have a quick eye contact with another individual who would observe me with a look that would deliver both bewilderment and disgust. But before any further interaction would happen that certain individual would leave the kitchen and I would resume my sleep. We both had more important matters to dedicate our attention to.
So those days at Greg oscillated between looking for housing adverts, cycling randomly through the green surroundings of that suburb and smoking joints with Greg while watching psychedelic cartoons. Finding a place in the area of Utrecht proved to be a more challenging quest than I expected. This was mainly because a lot of the landlords were pretty particular about who they would give permission to live in their property. Many of the adverts were either meant for students of any sort, people working on their PhD or career-oriented individuals that had a stable income and were really focused on a certain aim. I didn’t fit in any of those descriptions. I was basically a freshly graduated jobless hippie who refused to step in line and work in his business major. I came all that way to the Netherlands without any arrangement to blindly pursue an idealistic fantasy. I was living like a bum off the generosity of a few people I knew in that part of Europe and the chances of me liquidizing all my financial assets and coming back to Romania feeling like a total loser while sliding into an acute depressive state didn’t seem so low at that moment anymore.
The days kept rolling that way and I still had no answers. Eventually, the dreaded moment came and Greg told me he’d had enough of my shit too, just like Jiang.
I once again packed my stuff and went to Wuppertal, Germany, to this Romanian friend, George, whom I hadn’t seen in 5 years. I spent almost a week there. We had Cuba Libre with our breakfast pretty much every morning and had various beers with our other meals and inbetween those meals, sometimes with some friends of his. One afternoon we had nothing better to do than to take magic mushrooms in a forest nearby. Despite these habits I kept checking adverts all this time and a young lady eventually answered me. We scheduled a meeting the very same week. I felt lucky. It was one of those “now or never” moments. My cash was pretty diminished at that point and that one trip back to Utrecht would be pretty much my final shot at ending my homelessness.
I packed everything once again and took a FlixBus to the promised city. Even today, I dearly remember this bus trip. No sooner had I hopped in the bus then this dude came around and told me I had a cool vibe and looked like some guy from a music video. He was a guy born in the Serbian part of Bosnia and was working at a beer factory in Essen. He had a small group of people and introduced me to all of them. There was this one dude in the group who didn’t say much and was less gregarious compared to the others.
“My friend here doesn’t really speak English, because he’s stupid haha! But he’s a cool guy. I love him.” The Serbian said.
He was happy to hear that I was Romanian and we talked about plenty of things. He was very warm and friendly. He asked me if I wanted a drink. He gave me a bottle of coke and I refused.
“I don’t need no coke, I’m good.”
“That’s not just coke, brother. There’s rum there too. You have Cuba Libre there.”
“In that case give me some of that!”
So it went like that. We were like the funny group in a school trip that sat in the back of the bus. This whole atmosphere was like reliving that experience. I wasn’t 24 anymore. I was 13 and I was surrounded by a bunch of other school mates with the same goal of making the most out of that trip. The bus was going somewhere in the mountains so we could check a monastery and walk through a cave. But none of those places mattered. What mattered was that we were all together riding that wave which would eventually break once our school days were over. But our school days were far from being over. There was always some prank on someone that would trigger hysterical kicks from all directions. But that was fine because the prankster would in turn get pranked too and we all took comfort in that. Things were in perfect balance as the general frequency was laughter and for some reason we all couldn’t wait for the sacred stop at McDonald’s on our way back from the trip.
Those few hours on the road to the Netherlands went on just like that and I enjoyed every minute of it. Our Serbian guy was the soul of that little party.
“Hey, chief!” He yelled at the driver in the front. “Can you stop for a small cigarette break?”
We were on the fucking freeway and this guy wanted to stop the whole bus so he could have a smoke. You couldn’t get mad at him. Of course the driver pretended he hadn’t heard him.
After enough Cuba Libre you want to befriend everyone in sight when you’re in the bus and the Serbian dude reached that point of confidence. He took a seat next to this shy boy who didn’t speak much English. All he knew was French. But none of that mattered.
“You need a lot of money if you want to be rich, man. Otherwise you’re garbage, dude! That’s how fucked up this world is. It’s all about money.” The Serb said. The shy boy simply agreed with everything this dude said.
Soon enough we reached Utrecht and I said goodbye to all this group that made me a part of for the duration of that trip. The others didn’t stop until Amsterdam.
Once back I went straight to the place where I would meet my potential future owner. There was a very charming lady with her baby daughter who stared at me with bewildered confusion. She showed me the room and I was pretty happy with it. Minimalistic, yet homely and comfortable. She smiled and told me she would give me an answer soon enough, the next day the latest.
There comes a time when you feel you scored what you wanted. Some energy or compelling force simply tells you: “You got it, man. This one’s for you. Just relax and let everything sort itself. The world shall welcome you.” I had a smile on my face and my soul felt light once again. I left my stuff at Jiang once again but promised him that I would spend only one night there and I really meant it. I took some beers and some sweets and went to this park in one of the coolest areas in the city. I picked my stuff and started consuming my little stash. It was as if the sky, the trees, the grass, the sun and the bikes passing by were all smiling at me and welcomed me into this sacred realm.
I had spent a good deal of time in this euphoria when I got a text. The lady told me I’d got the place. The room was mine. My homelessness ended after around 3 weeks and I could finally settle. The funny thing was that I was genuinely sure about it.