Your prison is walking through this world all alone

When we arrived back in Mahmudia, there was no point in riding any further that day, so we stopped by our babushka to ask if we could stay another night. She was sitting in the garden with her friend, another Russian babuschka, both dressed in colorful dresses and head scarves. It was like a scene out of revolution-era Russia. Babushka was very happy to see us and started cooking almost right away. Over a dinner of salad, bread, fried potatoes, chili peppers and homemade wine, she told us her story.

She was born in 1944, which was a shock because I would have guessed 20 years earlier. In any case, she was born in 1944 and attended school until the 4^th class, which was taught completely in the Russian language with one hour of Romanian as a foreign language per day. She was only 14 years of age when her mother died, leaving 5 daughters to be raised by the father, who had managed to create a relatively prosperous family farm. Problem was that shortly thereafter the new pro-Soviet government collectivized all the farms and the father lost everything that he had

worked to attain. This was too much for him because he had some sort of breakdown and disappeared for three years. The five girls had no idea what had happened to him. Only three years later did they learn that he was alive and living in Bucharest. In the meantime the girls worked on the collective farm and all married early. Our babushka married at 18 but the marriage lasted only 3 years because her husband drank too much. She married again thereafter, had children and a happy life, a lot of which was made possible, she says, by the great system and country that Nicolae Ceaucescu created. Besides the sadness she showed when she talked about how unjust it was that he was executed in 1989, the entire time we were there she was always smiling and happy a pleasure to be with.

That morning we headed west toward Tulcea. Tat had a train back to the big city at 1500 and after that I would carry on alone toward my destination of Odessa. The outskirts were comprised of gypsy villages but the center of Tulcea turned out to be quite nice. It was a bloody hot day so when we arrived we sat in the shade and drank a cold one, then walked around the town square and visited the stalls selling hand-made goods from around the country. There was a Danube festival in the town that weekend and there was a lot going on.

At the station we bump into Alex and Ina again, which is a pleasant coincidence. They are heading south as well and so Tat will have company on the train. I however, am alone again and quite sad about it. Many years ago I chose to leave the environment in which I lived and set out on my own in order to change the course of my miserable existence and remove myself from the bad influences that defined my life. The result of choosing to live far away from everything I knew was that I did and still do spend a great deal of time alone. Frankly I am used to it and not bothered by it, until I have spent long periods of time with others. Then I realise the alone-ness and the loneliness. Here I was in a part of the world that I did not yet know, was again alone and for the next few hours was feeling quite down. It made me think of a passage in the book Rad Ab by Peter Smolka, a courageous man who several years ago rode his bicycle alone around the world. He told of when his brother joined him for a few weeks of riding in Africa and how alone he felt when his brother returned home. What I am doing is nothing like the great adventure he undertook, but I could in that moment relate to that feeling.

I spend the afternoon and early evening riding west of Tulcea in the direction of Galati. The countryside is made up of light hills and golden wheat and corn fields and is beautiful. Near sunset I arrive in a village and begin seeking a place to sleep. Stopping at a few houses I am unable to get a corner of a garden in which to place my tent. Knowing or perhaps feeling that I will find something, I continue on unconcerned. The road climbs a hill as it enters the village and to the left a dirt road branches off to a collection of houses. To the right of the main road the hill drops off toward the Danube delta so that there is a brilliant view over the delta and the sunset. At the first house three elderly people are sitting outside, overlooking the delta and the sunset, and I begin talking to them about the evening, the route, etc. In time I raise the issue of a place to sleep and they offer me their garden. This house must the local meeting place because as the evening progressed and the sun fell closer to the horizon, about a dozen people of all ages had turned up to hang out on the steps before the house. As they turned up they would talk with their friends and then slip in a “who is this guy?”. Then the conversation would start again about my trip, my bike, the Delta, etc. The view over the delta and the sunset were so spectacular that an apartment in my country with such a view would cost at least 10’000 per sqm.

I remembered that I had a half bottle of red wine in one of my panniers and I broke it out and we passed the bottle around. Some people I know would really be annoyed with me for drinking out of the same bottle as those people in the village but fuck it, I did not think it would do any harm and it made for a nice moment. When the sun had disappeared the local hang-out closed down, we went inside, the old lady made dinner for me and then I rolled out my iso-matt and sleeping bag and slept outside under the porch. By 600 in the morning I was on my way and heading toward Ukraine.