More bafflement

Back by popular demand, the continuation of the alphabet of baffling things about Romania. I suspect it will go slowly, and possibly never get past J, but what the hell.

F is for Flu. In particular bird flu, which we have had longer than everyone else in Europe because Romania sets the trends that rest of Europe aspires to follow. First numa numa yay, now gripa aviara. Well, a couple of weeks ago, bird flu reached Covasna county, which is just south of us in Harghita (it’s the other majority Hungarian county). I hadn’t really paid much attention to it since we were moving. But on my way to the airport on Friday I drove past the first physical evidence of the presence of H5N1 on my doorstep. The decontamination teams. We passed one on the other side of the road as we left Tusnad, at the county border. They were pulling everyone driving north over to spray the wheels of their cars with disinfectant and, I dunno, checking that they weren’t transporting chickens out of the county in the hope that they wouldn’t be culled.

Between Sfantu Gheorghe and Brasov we passed another one. At the southern border to the county. I say passed, because this too was on the other side of the road checking people coming into the county. Have you spotted the flaw in this system? Bizarre, innit? Presumably (unless the all clear has been sounded by then) on my way home I will be disinfected twice. Still, it looked very impressive with all the white suited blokes flagging down cars in the middle of the night. It certainly looked like a really strong response to the disease. Shame really that they had not coordinated the direction of traffic that was to be disinfected.

I’ll come up with a “G” soon.