SOME TIME IN TIMISOARA

I arrived in Timisoara thinking it would be more or less a den of thieves, and worried about being conspicuously Western (even though my three years in Budapest ought to mean I've become "Central") and the rickety railway station, with a few down-on-their-luck-looking characters hanging about, confirmed my prejudice that I was now in the Wild East.

Admittedly, the train journey wasn't fun, as I had to fight a particularly grumpy Hungarian woman for the privilege to open the window, which she immediately closed, then, seeing I wasn't about to give way, proceeded to scowl and sigh about, casting exasperated glances to win support from our fellow compartmentees. They all looked sullen and ugly - probably I did too - and I'd been warned not too fall asleep in case I lost all my belongings. But doze off I - inevitably - did. Luckily, all my stuff was present and correct on waking. The countyside as you cross the border is particularly grim-looking; a chemical pipeling, miles long with the lagging peeling away goes right through people's gardens below head height. You notice that all the buildings are either depressing blocks with the paint peeling, or else industrial plants.

So much for (what I saw of) the countryside. Timosoara is different altogether. In the centre are impressive squares, the prettiest of which is cobbled and surrounded by the usual kind of Imperial buildings in the style of Christmas cards, with geometric arched facades painted in pastel colours, and high-angled rooftops. Many are in a state of advanced decrepitude, some still cratered by war, but the elegance stubbornly remains. Much of the square itself is now shaded by the parasols of terrace cafes. Here, the waitresses carefully squirt dilute blue detergent on to the paper tissue placed in each ash tray.

What surprised me the most was the amount of wealth here. Of course, leaving the centre, there are the usual Communist blocks which a few of the owners have beautified with flowers on the balconies. (Flowers are really popular here - a large section of the central market is given over to dozens of flower stalls.) Just beyond, it was easy to locate the enormous Julius Mall, which dwarfs the buildings around it. With four floors, it's the biggest I've seen, a mall-as-city on an American scale. And it's busy. People are drinking beer and coffee (at inflated prices) in the perimeter cafes, and the car park is full of cars. While I drank my beer, four wedding parties went in - is there a registry office in there, perhaps, or are they just topping up on flowers? The cutomers are mostly loaded with the expected plastic bags, and everyone is sporting sunglasses and clothes in the latest styles (long shorts, short tops, etc) - including the children. It doesn't look like a poor country from where I'm sitting.

A final mystery is the rich Roma families. No one quite knows how they get their money. I was told "don't ask", but I did, and the stories you get are uniformly nasty - it's begging, at best, or selling their children in the West. Well, I once saw a Roma woman in Budapest doing the hard-sell with pairs of socks in Budapest - this wouldn't be enough to fund the kind of palaces these families are building near my school. These are ostentatious, in the very grandest of styles - conical pinnacles of towers, balconies with pillars, often roughly finished. They're similar to the Western mock-gothic, except with a definite Oriental twist that makes me think of the Arabian Nights and the Golden Horde. (My architectural vocabulary isn't wide enough to do them justice; I'd call them "Sultanic".) Everyone says they're tasteless, but the cones and pinnacles aren't so different to my eyes from those of the magnificent Orthodox cathedral in the town centre.


Some of these buildings could fuel urban vampre fantasies. I bought a bottle of Transylvanian "V" wine. With a drop of blood dripping from the logo, it boasted the fact that it was made from the "grapes of immortality". In small print underneath, it turned out that V drinks are a company from that well-known haunt of the undead, Cardiff!