COVID | ROMANIA | FULBRIGHT SCHOLARS
Getting COVID in Romania Was My Own Damn Fault
Both Jimmy Buffet & Rebecca were right
That’s my partner Rebecca in the bright blue coat on the left. I’m the guy in the cap next to her. We’re with a group of Fulbright Scholars in Romania in the fall of 2021. Dwarfing us was Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s white elephant Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest. We are all in Bucharest at a Fulbright orientation.
After this weekend, we would spread out around Romania.
I taught American Politics at the West University of Timișoara. Rebecca used the Romanian she learned from two years of intensive study on Duolingo to help us maneuver around this beautiful country.
Below is the first photo I took on our Romanian adventure.
Rebecca weighed a ginger root at Kaufland’s supermarket, a two-mile walk from our apartment. The scale’s directions were in Romanian. Brutal, the first time, even without a mask. The N95 fit snugly around her nose and cheeks. Rebecca’s son Jonathan, a nurse practitioner, had kindly sent her a package of state-of-the-art covers. She could have been Anthony Fauci’s poster woman for proper masking.
Me? Well, this was my story.
The Slow Train to Suceava
On Monday, November 1, 2021, I joined 16,000 others in Romania who tested positive for COVID-19. Romania was smack-dab in the middle of its 4th COVID wave, with 500 deaths every day in this country of 19 million. I felt lousy for a few days, so we went to a Romanian doctor who one of my University of West colleagues recommended.
When she texted the positive diagnosis the next day, I was shocked.
How could this be? I’m vaccinated and wear a mask. “I know this is somebody's fault,” sings Jimmy Buffet early in Margaritaville. I thought the same thing. In Romania, where 63% were not vaccinated, blame was easy to find.
I likely got COVID on a train trip from Timișoara to Suceava. But back to Mr. Buffet and his signature song. At first, he agrees with others that a “woman is to blame” for his troubles.
On the Timișoara to Cluj train — the first arrow in the map — there was a young woman and child minus masks. But three male maskless loggers also got on the Cluj to Suceava train — the second arrow — and hung around for a few stops in the aisle about twenty feet from us.
Eventually, Buffet gives up the search for blame, accepts it, and concedes, “It's my own damn fault.” In the song, his wisdom comes from a therapist. For me, it came from Rebecca.
“You’ve been wearing that cloth mask that doesn’t protect you.” And “I’ve been telling you that for over a year.”
This was a Margaritaville moment for me. For months, Rebecca had worn masks that fit snugly. Here’s another photo where her face cover fits better than the coat she tried on at Ilius Town shopping mall. She is protecting herself, me, and others.
In contrast, I was always sloppy, settling for comfortable cloth covers and letting them slide down my nose. On the slow trains to Suceava, my armor was a cloth mask halfway down my nose. I was feeling smug with my two vaccine jabs. On the many trips, I took down the aisles to the bathrooms.
You’ve been waiting for this moment. Here’s the default me.
Rebecca was mad
We’d been in Timișoara for a month and established a routine. We walked the four miles to and from Kaufland’s every week with our two bags. And we discovered a farmer’s market. That’s Rebecca filling one of our bags.
And we loved our late afternoon happy hours at an outdoor bar in Timișoara’s four beautiful Piatas (squares). Or along the enchanting Bega River. Two reasons why it was named a European City of Culture in 2023.
All our outdoor together times were put on hold for two weeks. I could not leave the apartment. And Rebecca would have to lug shopping bags back from Kaufland’s and the market. You get the picture.
Fortunately, our apartment had two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Below is the main bedroom. If you look closely, you can see the top mattress is misshapen.
That’s because we laid two twins from the other bedroom on top of the queen mattress, which was too hard. Below is the additional bedroom sans mattresses.
I know what you’re thinking. Did Rebecca make me sleep on the slats?
What we did
The Romanian government took Covid seriously. My students told me stories of how the Timișoara police would contact each tested-positive person. A squad car would stop by daily, expecting the sick person to wave from the window.
I couldn’t cheat.
My symptoms were fever, fatigue, congestion, and no smell. Our apartment refrigerator offered the perfect smell test. We had tried everything to get rid of its odor. I poked my maskless head into it the day I was diagnosed, and nothing. Eerie.
I pulled the twin mattress into the spare bedroom for my two-week sentence.
Rebecca’s anger was clean, pure, and short-lived. It’s always been that way. Later the first day, we sat across from each other at our little dinner table.
She spoke, and I listened.
The next day, for lunch, she walked to a restaurant she had wanted to try, enjoyed a noon-time glass of wine, and wandered around Timișoara’s city center.
I prepared for my Saturday online classes.
On the 4th day, my fever died. On the 5th day, I stuck my nose on the bottom refrigerator door shelf sniffing for that disgusting smell. And I caught just a whiff: mildly sickening but wonderful.
Rebecca shopped at Kauflands and the farmer’s market lugging home two heavy bags each time.
On the 14th day, we walked through the city center to one of our favorite restaurants.
Each with our N95s snugly around our noses.
Me constantly looking over my shoulder, expecting a friendly tap from a Romanian officer. That never came.
Nor did COVID to Rebecca.
Below are three different stories about our Romanian adventure.
