Pompous title, isn't it? Well, I couldn't find a better one, not for this thimg I want to share. A small disclaimer, there won't really be photos for this one, since they would only take away from the stuff I want to convey.
Every two weeks I come back to my home town of Targoviste (partial reason for "not a vampire"), but I don't really take the time to go around and take in the city. Usually, I am in one of three places: my mom's home, my grandma's home or out in the Old Town with my dad. That changed today, when due to unimportant circumstances, I walked home instead of being driven home by my dad. This weird feeling of nostalgia came over me, reminiscing aout little things from the past, while in Targoviste.
I passed by numerous stores on this very main street I used as a hook in the title, and at first there was just a small inkling of a feeling somewhere in the back of my mind, not really noticeable. Funnily, it cranked up exponentially in one particular place: a small building with half of its front wall of windows renovated. This place was a bakery called Yellow Paty when I was very young, maybe second grade. Next to it was a keymaker kiosk, which my mind accepts as being there forever, even if the reality of it may be a lot more mundane. Now, the partially renovated ex-bakery is a clothes store, the renovated part being a door so you can actually enter the building, since the bakery was window serving.
This small detail pushed that unknowable feeling from the back of my mind to the forefront of my mind, changing it into a burning idea: even though the reality of places is that they are ever changing, ever evolving, we only perceive them as fleeting snapshots stored as foggy details in our memory. From this moment on, I felt like I awoke to a new reality, seemingly connected to the spirit of the city, and I made a consious effort of looking around and reminiscing about everything around me, how it either changed or stood defiantly unchanged, seemingly taunting the passage of time itself.
Moving bag to the location of Yellow Paty, I mentioned that keymaker. That small building, attached like a wart to the ex-bakery seems like it was locked down in history, is unremarkable in itself. It is a small metal kiosk, maybe 1.5 meters wide, stood a few meters in front of an oblique fence, leading to the courtyard of a house. Me and my mother actually employed the services of the person running this kiosk, but their face is blank, I can only see them as an old man with glasses. Moving on by a few paces is Flax, a local electronics store, from which me, two kids I was friends with and my grandma bought a gift for another kid's birthday. It was a webcam disguised as a plushie, I believe it was a penguin. My only other interactions with this store was looking through the window in passing whenever I had to go past it, and buying a laptop backpack while in high school and meeting a pair of twins from my class. I still call them friends, even if we haven't talked in years. Nearby, there is an inconspicuous street, leading to the apartment building where one of my favourite people: my Maths tutor outside of school, mr. Liviu Petre (I cannot not call him by his full name). I would go over to his place every Saturday.
As if conferred soul by my reminiscing, I went forward on the street, on the way to my home, but the purpose of it felt a lot less mundane, as if I was chasing down a ghost, not of a person, but of a city which came to life around me. At this point I was near the market of the city, 1 Mai it's called. Still on the main street, I went past a betting parlor. In another snapshot my mind took of Targoviste, this place was a pharmacy, but the consistent aspect between all of the fleeting moments I remember is a flower shop without any obvious name, tucked away around the corner. It is another one of those ever present monuments of the city, going unseen in the grand scheme of things, but being a bastion of the old, seemingly never to go away. Still, in the same vecinity, there is a kiosk selling magazines and newspapers. This is where I was buying video game magazines while in high school. Those kiosks are designed to be moved easily and a lot of them simply vanished, but this one persisted.
This area still has more poser over my memory. On the other side of the street is the apartment building of another one of my favourite professors, Ms. Ungureanu, my English tutor, who I would visit every Friday. Also on this side of the road is the hairdresser's where I got my first haircut. It's still there, still with the same name, Ciufulici. My grandma took me there and I cried a lot during the procedure, and also after it.
I'll do a big jump here, towards the end of the street, where we have a dairy factory, called Natura, right next to a paint factory, Turnir. They are also there since times immemorial to me, but one event punctuated my memory of them, leaving a very vivid snapshot. A warehouse of Turnir somehow caught fire and this fire extended to the roof of Natura, leaving behind a smoke column whoch I could clearly see from home. The fire was stopped pretty soon and those two places got back to business as usual pretty fast, as if the snapshot I had of them in my brain was strong enough to will their immutability into existence.
There are many other anecdotes relating to stuff on this street and even more relating to different places in town, but I should stop here, since I thing I made my point. You may think all these little stories are a disjointed mess, and indeed they are since they represent vivid aspects of my life in Targoviste which pop up by simply looking at a building.
In the end, I wanted to share these little moments to get a moment of introspection, but to also show off that every nook and cranny of a place holds some personal history, whether you are aware of it or not. Places change al the time, but under the surface there are still aspects which bring their history to the surface. I guess, just take a stroll and try to look around you, you may awaken something inside.
Image: taken from balcony.
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