I wanted to write more about Vienna, to which I think I was unjust. Yet I find more important to mention my first impressions of ‘Romanity’ (not in the ancient Roman but in the contemporary Romanian meaning). I cannot be other but subjective on the land I was born plus the people among whom I lived many years. When I was at the University studying idealistic stuff in a concrete world, we used to laugh: ‘beautiful country, what a shame it’s already inhabited’, such was the badness, the moral deprivation at the end of the communist era and the years that followed. I personally got sick of it and I migrated to New Zealand last century. But now a full circle might have passed, a new generation has grown up, many I hope untouched by the corruption and the other plagues of the old. I’m on board this Blue Air flight from Austria to Romania and the guys and girls who are serving us would have been toddlers when the dictatorship ended. I don’t know how good they are but I can see and hear and watch how they manage this flight. They are young and funny, yet respectful whilst casual. It’s an empty plane, perhaps 35 passengers in a new Boeing 737-B00.
The only thing that’s free in this budget flight is… Water! Romania’s got plenty of pure and mineral sorts. How would you feel having to make on the speaker system an announcement like that: ‘we won’t be serving a meal during this flight, the only thing free thing on board is water, however, we invite you to buy our other stuff’? They did it well and we bought some little things. I was bloody asleep when the plane took of because I have lost already two New Zealand time zone night with this travel, but when I heard and saw how the job is done here, I woke up and decided to write this. I hope their boss, owner, whoever that is, reads the mockoblog. He’s got great stuff, not perfect, not even so good, but so different and so human compared cu what I came across lately. Descending now into the winter bellow, the end of my trip up to Europe by plane(s) from down under. And very bloody steep and bumpy, too.
What means the words in the title? ‘very cool’ in Romanian slang!