The real face of Ligota

Lately, my neighborhood here in Kato, Ligota, started to resemble Vama Veche. For the non-Romanian readers out there, check this out first.

Vama Veche is / was (this “is / was” thing is one of the endless debates, which you can hear back in Ro once spring starts and everybody plans going to the seaside. Is VV still what it used to be? is it still worth going there? Is the spirit still alive? I dunno and at this moment I don’t care, for this debate is leading nowhere and also it has little relevance for my theory) a small village down by the sea, which started off as a hip-hippie-anti-establishment meeting/melting pot back in the 70s and has pretty much remained a meeting/melting pot, there’s still some hippies around, young and old, and for the rest of it people of al musical / sexual / political orientations.

The best part about VV is this: you get out of your house (if you’re renting a room somewhere), of your tent (camping on the beach is illegal, but that never stopped anyone) or your sleeping bag (if you decide to fully enjoy nature and spend the night out), take a few steps, and you’re on some terrace. Without a doubt, you’ll see some familiar faces. And stop with them for a beer. You take a walk on the shore, you run into some other people you’ve met at some point in your life (even if you don’t exactly remember when and where) or, on the contrary, into your best friend who just decided overnight to show up in the little village, so you sit down at the next terrace and have another beer. Another few steps towards the Bulgarian border, another 10 ex/future/potential friends. Theoretically, it shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to walk from one end of the village to the other. But it can take up your entire day without even knowing it. And of course, the terraces are open until morning, so you do have the option to dance & drink in the sand 'till sunrise.

Ligota doesn’t have a sea, but it does have a lake and a pool, and it doesn’t have sand, but it has the forest. And of course it has the pubs. Not only the tent, but also Panorama (if you’re hungry, that’s about the only place that can solve the problem), Kompresor (which pretty much looks like grandma’s yard, if grandma sold beer) and Lesniciowka (the newest, and one of the prettiest). And everybody knows everybody. You can’t just go out to have a beer without running into someone who’s had the same idea, at about the same time. And from one beer to the next, you can lose track of time and figure out it’s night already, so it’s time to grab your friends and go out for a beer. Or join the Spanish students who are barbecuing in the small park in front of the akademik.

Not bad, come to think about. The only thing that worries me is that both Vama Veche and Ligota induce a holiday-like behavior, which can pretty much kill the intellectual / proactive / energetic buzz. That’s why lately life has become a struggle with yielding to temptations.