Postage Stamps on a Lampshade

And a taxi driver singing opera in Romania

I am in Romania because of a postage stamp on a lampshade. It’s a true story. It was Christmas Eve, and I was determined to spend it anywhere but “home.” On a whim, I flew to New York City that night. It felt like the right kind of escape.

There, I met my Russian friend at a pub, and we decided we would figure out where to fly for Christmas the following day. Because why not?

We couldn’t agree. I wanted sun and beaches; she was imagining ski destinations in quaint little European towns. Finally, she took off her hat and suggested a game. We would each write down five places we wanted to go, drop them into her hat, and draw our fate.

We grabbed the paper menus and started tearing and writing. Jimi Hendrix was playing in the background. Honestly, I can’t remember what I wrote, because while we were doing that, I noticed the lampshade at the end of the bar. Someone had glued postage stamps all over it. Every single one said Romania.

We looked at each other. The menus went into the trash. The hat stayed empty. We pulled out our phones and booked tickets to leave the following day.

P.S. I know NOTHING about Romania.

The next day.

It’s colder here than in Pennsylvania, where I’m from, which feels ironic to me because I’ve landed in another “Vania”—Transylvania. There’s a stoicism to the people. Faces look hard, challenged, shaped by endurance. I feel like I fit in for some reason, and for another, not at all.

I’m eager to get on this train that will take me through the Carpathian Mountains so I can personally challenge garlic myths and vampires. I scan the woods as the train paces a steady pulse along the tracks and through the trees. I’m hoping to spot a bear. Or a werewolf. I do this for the entire two-and-a-half-hour train ride.

The further north we go, the more I realize I was crazy to do this. I have no idea what I’m doing here. I don’t speak the language. I don’t know the customs or even the layout of the land. I briefly begin to panic at my own adventurous spirit, but I’m interrupted by the train stopping.

We pull into the station of a small town. The railings are green. The hanging pots are red. Everything is covered in snow. There are five people on the platform. We are paused now, nestled inside the Carpathian Mountains. Snow falls lightly, and it looks like a fairytale land. It feels like a fairytale land.

I drift into a wistful story in my own mind where I am dressed as a witch, performing some witchy woo-woo ceremony to leave all negativity behind. Romania can handle it. There’s a dark spirit here; we’re transmuting energy at the cauldron.

I’m jolted back to reality as another train rushes by outside the window. My reflection appears and disappears in the glass between the passing cars. I think: this is life. All the layers. One passes over the other, revealing the self differently depending on what’s moving behind you. The only thing we all continue to share is the speed at which time passes. We are all present for that—until we are not.

In a few minutes, I’ll see the caboose pass my window, and I’ll be looking at that same platform, now empty. I’ll still see my reflection in the glass. I’ll continue through the mountains until I reach my next stop. When I get there, I’ll take only what’s in my small backpack and walk toward cobblestone streets, into another vortex of life.

In Brașov, I’ll exchange glances with strangers who will never become my friends. I’ll share seats, rides, language barriers, and frustrations with them, but we’ll never know each other beyond that moment.

I make a promise to myself right then. One I won’t tell anyone. One I’ll keep tucked among the bits of life I’ve left behind between the seats of rental cars I’ve returned. Because I know secrets—real promises—are unreachable in those spaces. They live in the bottomless pits where hands and vacuums can’t reach, next to old French fries from previous owners.

It’s something I’ve never had the courage to share with more than two people. A secret I live with that tears me apart. And right there, in Romania, a piece of me falls to the hotel floor. I’m disappearing, or perhaps reinventing. I am broken.

My friend looks at me in disbelief. She can’t believe I’ve endured this alongside losing my husband, and being treated so poorly by he-who-shall-not-be-named. She tells me I’m the strongest person she knows.

I don’t want to be.