uniţi, salvam roşia montana

that night we were going to go leave bucharest in cip's car, but in the end we went round to see cynthia's new garden and ended up staying there with her parent's and her ninety year old grandmother and eating from a table spread with garden salad and something called galuşte cu prune - a speciality of cynthia's father - made by first boiling potatoes, then mashing them, then mixing them with flour, then covering plums with the resultant paste, cooking the resultant plum balls in boiling water and, finally, coating them with fried breadcrumbs and eating them with blueberry jam ay que interesante.

in the end

we heard there were 15, 000 protesters that day who had been marching round the streets of central bucureşti since four pm.  later that evening we cycled there to check it out.  a big central roundabout had been completely occupied by milling grinning young people, some walking around, others sitting down, some playing the bongos, others dancing.   for me, the protest belonged to the new experience of being in bucureşti, which was new in its entirety to me, but cynthia told me how unique such a protest was, how overwhelmed she felt by the fact that so many people had come out to occupy the streets.  it is a protest against the upcoming roşia montana mine, but it is more than that.  it is a gesture of solidarity, connecting the people who do not want to accept whatever the government and the media and the corporate voices say, people who want an alternative way of doing society.  

see how almost everyone is young, desirous of breaking moulds, seekers of alternative ways?  ioana says 80% of the mainstream media is controlled by corporations in romania.  so on the same day the protesters turned out in such large numbers, one news channel made no mention of it, but instead gave half an hour's coverage to the football match that day between hungary and romania.  everybody makes protest plans via facebook.  that sunday it was said that everybody should bring a parent along to the protest.  

the protest.  a novel experience for everyone.  lots of people walking around with cameras, snapping photos left and right, here and there.  people are on the street, playing drums.  the rhythm is bold, unmistakably one of protest.  after a few hours, the rhythm has been internalised, and one nods one's head in time.  one looks at other people shaking plastics bottle filled with pennies, people grin to each other, reinforcing our united stance of wanting to save roşia montana.  sometime after midnight the police surround us and slowly slowly advance, asking us firmly but respectfully - the voice of reason - to move over there a little bit; finally cars begin to circulate again.  to the very end, when all others have all but gone, there remains one ecstatic man standing on the road waving a huge romanian flag in the air, lost in the swaying glee of the task.