I’m back to Târgu Mureş ready to leave tomorrow at 6. I’ll have to catch the shuttle to the airport at 4 – not much sleep, then. In the afternoon I visit the sights that consist of a couple of interesting secessionist style buildings, which introduce me to this architectural current of the early 1900’s that wanted to own nothing to historical influence.

At night I ask the guesthouse landlord to give me a hand and call the driver who’s supposed to take me to the airport tomorrow, as I booked the service online over a month ago. The man answers and confirms, I am at ease. Still the night is troubled, I wriggle in the bed and at 1 am I am wide awake. I go to the meeting point, but there is nobody to wait. Just a bare minimum of activity in the town’s central square; no taxi for me, apart from the ones that take Saturday night revellers back home. When half an hour is gone and no answer comes to my repeated calls on his mobile, I decide to invest my last leis into a taxi ride to the airport.

I get there in time, but it all looks very funny: nobody around, the waiting room deserted. It all looks like the typical journey nightmare. It doesn’t take me long to know for sure that something has turned wrong, but it’s over half an hour before a security guard comes down and tells me the airport is closed for maintenance. On the coming trip I had been diverted to this town instead of Cluj, because it was Cluj that was undergoing works then. Obviously the diversion was not valid for the return journey and I didn’t take note.

I make a quick scan of the situation: no local money, still pitch dark, no bus to get back to town, I’m freezing, literally shivering from cold, next flight who knows when and at what cost… rather a bleak outlook. At least the guard says I’ll be able to go with them when they knock off the shift at 7. There’s still some hope. Besides I never panic, I even chuckle to myself thinking at the absurd situation I’ve once more managed to get myself into.

I manage to get a flight for tomorrow, not without difficulties because the only 24/7 cybercafé in town won’t let me stay, alleging the connection is down, but I implore them saying it’s really urgent. I finally get a bus to Cluj and land at the old hostel by mid afternoon.

It will have come at a price, but these last hours in Romania are jolly good. It’s like coming back home, the hostel staff are great, very welcoming and sincere. To make myself comfortable I cook myself polenta with Sighişoara’s cheese. I enjoy this place, the comfy bed, the people, my reading.

I pop into the Orthodox Cathedral to observe a part of Sunday service. Choir singers standing at the front fill the large hall with an impressive chorus of low men’s voices in polyphony. This is not so ornate a cathedral as the one in Târgu Mureş, but the revival of the Orthodox church is evident from the large standing congregation. I feel too a magnetic force of attraction as if it were exerted by the symbols of power that form part of the enormous chandelier hanging from the dome: the orb and the crown; the priest wearing a rich cassock embroidered in gold. As I remember witnessing last Sunday’s service in that countryside wooden church, I symbolically close the circle of my Romanian adventure. I am now ready and free to go home.

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