Two brothers settle old scores in the Balkans
A long time ago there were these two kids, poor things, stuck in the back of the family car on long camping holidays across continental Europe. Their only escape, these kids, the only way they could feel in control of their lives, was to pretend they were actually driving the car. And by the power of the imagination, via the gift of mime and American accents, these two kids dreamed themselves to be in full command of the map, the open road, the snacks, a more sporty vehicle (a vintage TR7) and their own car certainly possessed one cool feature which their parents’ model lacked: cupholders.
Fast forward more than 40 years. The kids have grown into men. They have taken their vision, their childhood dream and manifested it in the form of trans-European bro-trips. They have used cupholders on the road from Toledo to Bilbao, Bilbao to Madrid, Dieppe to Bayeux. I could go on. Now, imagine it is 2023 (it is), imagine the two men (who, remember, are innocent kids at heart) have decided to travel across Romania, imagine the younger of the two men (who goes by the name of Blue) has invited his 50 year old bro (aka Red) to DJ, while he takes the wheel. And you have in mind Bro Trip IV; we called it BROmania.
Not content with the mild caravanning exploits of their parents’ generation, these two kids, now grown, were to eat up the miles and drink up the open road. They were questers from a time of yore, from the 1980s to be exact, in a mustard coloured hire car, a small Peugeot with adequate facility for cold and flavoursome beverages to remain upright and to hand. Even as the satnav directed us, Red took charge of the music. Music guided us equally well as google maps. The trip was characterised by banger after banger, if you can imagine that. The two former kids raced through village and town to the accompaniment of their uplifted voices: ‘Chooooooon!’ they would cry and the locals would look on in admiration despite their love of tradition.
Perhaps they knew. Perhaps those gentle shy men on wooden carts knew. Perhaps those aging babushka types who stared at the former kids simply knew. The secret, which only now we can share with the world, was this: we took this journey to settle scores with one another, to solve a conundrum which has haunted humanity since it first painted animals onto the walls of their caves: what is best? The natural world or the realm of signs? Let’s do this, we said, let’s settle this. Bro Trip ’23: BROmania would be the occasion of humanity’s first Nature vs Culture Smackdown. In the blue corner, there was Blue: a keen ornithologist and dog lover who would walk bravely among bears. In the red corner, there was Red: some kind of self-appointed art afficionado and reader of too many books. By the time the final whistle blew on the UEFA Champions League final, a whistle which, at midnight on our last day in Romania, would echo throughout Europe, we were to have sorted this question out. Once. And. For. All.
It started as a hoot, literally. Blue was at the wheel of his Tesla, en route to Luton airport. Beside him was Red, maintaining a companionable silence since it was too early for tunes. It was, reader, 6am. The roads were empty. The sky was wan. The world was but a ghost. But suddenly they both heard it, like a hallucination planted in their auditory cortexes: “twit twoo-ooo-ooo”. Nature-loving Blue was on the case, scanning the horizon like a sailor who knows that somewhere, over that blue line, is a sweetheart waiting to welcome him home.
Quick as a flash, he spotted it. “Barn owl at 11 O’clock” he shouted with requisite urgency. It was flying parallel to our deserted fenland A-road. “10 O’clock” he cried. “9”. Suddenly this great winged beast lilted in the direction of the car and flew past the Tesla windshield at point blank range. We could make out every feather together with the wise expression in its heart-shaped face. It was quite chilling. Not least for the fact that in the Bromania culture wars it was 1-0 to nature. And we hadn’t even left English soil.
Several hours later we had left that soil behind. We collected our hire car and Blue took the wheel. Red had the more complex task of controlling the playlist that would send us hurtling through Transylvania to the regular cries of ‘Choon!’. The road was long and the satnav was reliable. But then out of nowhere Red cried out. “Pull over! Pull over! Quick”. Blue did as he was told and, having parked safely, calmly said: “Your warm pullover is in your purple case, remember bro?”. “No!” he was told now, in no uncertain terms. “We must stop here to visit Cantacuzino Castle. This is where Little A’s all-time favourite teen gothic drama was filmed, Wednesday. This was Nevermore Academy”. And so it was. We spent half an hour strolling around this impressive, turreted pile in the village of Busteni in Translylvania. We took some photos. We got in back in the car. Solid point to Culture. 1-1.
It wasn’t long before Culture gained another point, or should I say ‘pint’? Yes, reader, these two forgotten kids were now of drinking age. They found their Airbnb, with stunning views across Brasov, with off road parking, with plenty of space, and while Blue unpacked, Red carried out the most important task of all: consulting the guidebook to find a quintessential local bar. We found one. We found a table. We found ourselves in an outdoor courtyard on a balmy June evening in a cosmopolitan city. We ordered Romanian beers from a lengthy menu, and, having said cheers and toasted the bro trip, we each took the first sips which were to signal to our limbic systems that our holidays had begun. I chose a draft pilsner. Blue chose a bottle of ginger and chilli beer. And we looked ahead to a week of adventures. NATURE HAS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THIS! 2-1 to Culture.
Blue knew he was losing. He began to cheat. As a result next day he took us walking in a forested gorge. Between two madly high vertical cliff faces, one of which was knowns as God’s Wall. He insisted we follow the rock-strewn path of a dried-up stream which took us deep into the bear-infested forest. We met two other hikers. The first had a bell. To ward of bears. The second had a pocket siren and a can of mace. To ward off bears. We had nothing of the sort and they wished us good luck, which was nice. And it began to rain. We could see none of the rare mountain goats Blue had promised. This was surely nature at its very worst and I was about to suggest that Blue should lose a point, for being a total loser.
But then something amazing had to inevitably happen. We saw a fluttery shape amidst the crags. A bird known to Blue as a wallcreeper. I was the one to spot it. Eleven O’Clock I cried, giving him location intel in the militaristic language I know he likes. But then I realised that Blue had let me be the one to spot it. He’s good that way, he also checked I brought my pullover. Serious bird spot, mind you, ticked off! 2-2 in the nature/culture wars.
The next point to culture was an open goal. We decided to visit Transylvania’s number one tourist site: a castle with tenuous links to Vlad the Impaler who may or may not have been the inspiration behind the Dracula myth. It cut an imposing shape on the horizon as we both cruised through the surrounding village called Bran. Heads turned to see who these foreign kids were, blasting tunes as they rolled past. We parked up and climbed the steps to Count Dracula’s lair. The castle was an intricately put together network of chambers, courtyards, balconies and hidden staircases. Museum-like displays reminded us to be afraid, to be very afraid, and the point for culture was clinched by the exhibition of a small valise containing garlic, crucifixes, a short stake and a silver hammer: truly a vampire hunting kit if ever there was one. 3-2 to the expressive works of humankind.
It began to feel as if Blue had upped the ante, when he faux casually announced that the next agenda-ed activity was to meet a forest ranger who would drive us back deep into the trees where we would take our places in a hide and wait to witness the arrival of bears. For those cultural folk who don’t know what a hide is, well it’s basically a black box-like viewing space such as you might find showing an artist’s film in a well-curated gallery. Except, in one of these ‘hides’ you merely look at stuff in the outside world. It was wild. Especially when 13 brown bears rocked up. The ranger’s face was disfigured by a scar… once inflicted by a bear. I began to feel quite glad I was safe in the gallery, to use that term loosely. The bears were stealthy, emerging from all directions, before climbing back into the depths of their bosky habitat. And even an effete connoisseur of post-conceptual art like myself, had to recognise the thrill imparted by their power, presence and occasional bursts of speed. 3-3 to nature. Damn!
The next morning Red accepted Blue’s critical mission: to rise at 4am, kit ourselves out with binoculars, cameras and zoom lenses and then drive to a secret location in which we would hide the car and proceed on foot to the side of a private local lake…ALL BEFORE DAWN! Blue had tried to put Red off. It will be boring he said. But hey, there is nothing boring about parking in total darkness on the side of a dirt road and then trespassing on the grounds of a fish farm in a strange country 2,500km from home. I’ll admit it. I was nervous. But then the miracle occurred. An eerie orange light began to bleed upwards from the horizon and form hypnotic luminous tracery around clouds low in the morning sky. Blue was blasé. Back in Cambridge he carries out missions like this all.the.freaking.time. But Red literally could not remember seeing his last sunrise and had certainly never seen one quite like this. The light revealed the far side of the lake, the trees yonder, the silhouettes of swimming birds and the occasional motion blur of a jumping fish. Those fish were monsters. No wonder it was not long before a Romanian in a four by four appeared to evict us from his land.
Blue thought quickly. There were birds to be seen. What could this local fish farm manager possibly want? How did one say ‘please! I am an ornithologist’ in Romanian. Before I knew what was happening Blue was handing over money to the fish farm doorperson. It turns out he spoke the international language of money, which, of course, Blue speaks better than almost anyone else. The man drove off, leaving us free to observe a rollcall of fine feathered friends. Blue was able to verify the following: pygmy cormorants, an osprey, a lesser spotted eagle, herons (grey, squacco, purple and night), plus coots, terns. It was really something. In fact the herons were everywhere; it seemed as we walked the boundaries of this endless fish farm that every twenty paces we would disturb yet another and watch it fly across the water. They roosted together as if in a diorama of a natural history museum. This mission may have been outside Red’s comfort zone, but he felt compelled to hand it to Blue: your guys rock. I award this adventure one point for the sunrise, and one point for the diorama. The car was where we left it. 5-3 to nature.
Red was flagging. There were red flags everywhere. Face it, I thought, this is a beautiful corner of the (natural) world. There are snow capped peaks on seemingly all sides. The forests are dense and steeped in mystery. The fish farms are impressively stocked and Romanians are so blasé about their birdlife there wasn’t one of those so-called hides in sight. That’s when I decided to play a trick on Blue. I pranked him. In fact I punk’d him.
Blue, I said, or words to that effect. Why don’t we play a board game later? What you should know about Blue is that he loves board games almost as much as the avian world. He couldn’t resist. That evening we opened a bottle of white wine and convened over a deck of cards to play a game which Blue assured Red was simply called Mind. It was kind of fun, actually, and required vast amounts of intuition, collaboration, calculation and trust. Neither of us came out the winner because the object was to win or lose as a single team. We lost the warm up. But won our first proper game. That’s very rare, apparently, as rare as a wallcreeper! Get in! 5-4, culture was catching up with nature.
When I tell you that the following afternoon we met an AirBnB host called Ovid, named for a Latin poet, you might already be able to guess that the next point was to level the scores for Red and Blue. Ovid, however, was not a poet; he was a judge – albeit at the tender age of 36. But he was a very welcoming judge, directing us to our summer house, bringing us local alcoholic concoctions, and re-appearing at one point with a scythe in order to cut down the long grass which, until this point, was hiding our feet and ankles from him. He also talked, mainly of his dislike for Bulgarians. We were getting along famously until he observed, with calm appreciations, “I think you two are pretty conservative guys.” “No, No,” we protested, “We voted for Corbyn”. But, sadly, it transpired that Ovid would have preferred us to be as traditional as he was, with his wife indoors tending to the many kids, while he ventured out into the world to pass judgements. He cooked, warming through polenta in a cauldron over the fire, while hacking to pieces three huge blocks of cheese which were for melting in the boiled grain. It was, as Ovid told us repeatedly, the food of Romanian shepherds. And we were sheep, he seemed to indicate, governed by the woke left wing mind blob. 5-5.
The next day, after dreaming of visitors with scythes, we drove to Curtea de Arges. Ovid met us in town, on a break from judging, and directed us to the town’s two most notable sights. These were both places of worship, in which we could imagine him asking God to forgive us both. The first, Curtea de Arges Cathedral, had twisty columns that made the whole edifice appear unstable. The interior was coated with a tonne of gold leaf: many men with haloes gazed down on us. As paranoid as I was by now, Blue noticed Jesus, gazing down at us from the ceiling above the apse. We moved on. The second church we saw, St Nicholas, dated back to the 14th century. It too was painted wall to wall. Gregorian chanting was piped around the pillars as we both drifted around and got our fill of saints and bible stories. At one point I noticed Blue praying that his stock options would give him a maximum return on investment. Both of these Greek Orthodox were quite literally byzantine, and although I hate to hand it to Ovid, they were both sombre and wondrous. 6-5 to culture.
Red still had some weapons-grade culture in store. For in the nearby city of Târgu Jiu, which was, after all, the final destination of this Bro Trip, were a constellation of monumental outdoor sculptures by the peerless master of simplified form, Constantin Brâncusi. After checking into our hotel (parking the mustard Peugeot right outside, like the rock stars we knew ourselves to be) we found food and then wandered through a park towards a stone table surrounded by hour-glass shaped stools. This was the Table of Silence. It was lit up like a picture postcard. I sat there briefly, observing silence. But I was admonished by a 24-hour security guard, before I could take out a picnic. We wandered on. We saw a henge-like arch. This was the Gate of the Kiss: a popular spot for wedding photos. Then walking further and further along this axis of great art, we came to Endless Column. We passed a church and a railway line which, apparently, Brancusi had asked the city to relocate in order to preserve the integrity of his commissioned plan. His column of ‘rhomboidal modules’ (I cribbed that term from Wikipedia; thank you Jimmy Wales), rose some 30m high. Circling it in a park, at night, we could imagine it piercing the canopy of stars. Revisiting the monuments by day, the next morning, Endless Column came to a somewhat more abrupt end. 7-5 to culture, I would say.
Red was walking away with the crown, as he always does following an intense round of business deals with Blue. But then something happened. Our hotel receptionist had given us a piece of paper with a proposed itinerary for our final day. On this document was the name of a local cave: Polovragi. It must be said, we were both a little jaded. It was getting late in the week and, while money is no object for serious dealmakers, we were worried that waiting to join an expensive guided tour would be a bad deal. However, it was cheap. And the guy in the kiosk, just waved us in. We were left to explore. Spotlights revealed wonders of geology. Signage illuminated the facts behind the grotto’s numerous features. Our spelunking experience called for scrambling, ducking, traversing, and at one point I jumped off a rock, like a six year old might have done. This cave was totally amazing and I was only too happy to award Blue a further point. 7-6 to culture.
That evening we dined and drank. The warm weather, which had helped make the trip so memorable, afforded us the chance to sit at a table outside a bar and reflect on the joys of Bromania. I had a beer. Blue had a cocktail. I had another beer. Blue asked to see the cocktail menu again. When the (young, female) waitress came back to serve us, Blue had made his decision. “I’ll have an Orgasm,” he said. She didn’t understand English too well. “Give me an Org-Asm,” he said, helpfully. She didn’t understand. “I just want an Orgasm,” Blue said, raising his voice in the time-honoured fashion of an Englishman abroad. Heads turned. In the end he had to point to the item on the menu before she understood. The misunderstanding seemed to have gone on for ever. I was, of course, laughing. I told Blue that his ‘orgasm’ experience was one of the highlights of my trip and would need to score a point in the nature/culture war. Shamefacedly, he agreed. “8-6 to culture?” he asked, with an air of defeat. No, I assured him. His quest for an orgasm, even though it arrived in the form of a snowy white drink, was PURE NATURE. Final verdict (which one day I would love to have Ovid himself ratify): 7-7 to nature and to culture. The jury is still out, as perhaps it should be. Fangs, Blue, for the memories!
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