Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Solenoid

became discoloured and gnawed like an old rag. It’s full of mounds caused by the livid germs of the plants below. On the sides of the road there are old merchant houses, as well as several houses built between the wars, little villas once good looking and modern. But howweird! For each of them has a monstrous appendix, or just out of place, a fantasy of an architect who seemed to have designed one part of the edifice in full daylight and the other when he was awoken in the middle of the night, forced to design on the sketch board in the light of the full moon. All the houses here have round windows which burn strongly at sunset. All have wrought iron gates, Art Nouveau stems with

orange, azure and light purple stained glass pieces flickering in between them. They are all plastered with calcio-vecchio blackened by the passing of time. But half the plaster on each façade has fallen down. The wall thus skinned shows its dusty brick. There are gaps among the bricks, there’s mortar missing. Most windows have no glass, they are covered by yellowed newspapers in tatters. Bizarre and rusty ornaments extend from the roofs like the stumps of terrible cripples raised towards the sky in reproach and revolt. Crooked towers and domes, vulgar cement statues with broken faces, clusters of pale pink painted angels which look like a procession of larvae. One of the houses has a rampart,

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