Tag: whiteshirtproject

Before 1989 we were taught in school about how the incredibly cruel bourgeois landowners had enslaved and tortured the peasants.
I knew that in the old times grandma had owned some land and a horse. It was therefore hard to imagine the most sweet-natured person I knew mistreat any living being, let alone another fellow human.
After the revolution I learned that grandma had been a lawyer in her youth. A city gal through and through, but in love with nature and horseback riding, she had taken up a credit for a few hectares of land close to Bucharest, bought the aforementioned horse and a pair of oxen and had spent most of her free time riding through the fields.
In January 1948 the bar associations were dismantled and lawyers banned from practicing law under the new regime.
In March 1949 the collectivization of agriculture began: everything was confiscated, nationalized; the animals were put into a collective farm. The horse refused any food and dropped dead after a week.
Until this day I have never met anyone more sweet-natured and serene than my grandma.

Like a snake sheds its skin, I shed my white shirts while writing a series of memories – to be found in this link.

One late autumn day in 1982, two couples spent a night at the Horezu Monastery with their kids. The next morning they were going to gather chestnuts in the woods nearby. But when they woke up, a thick layer of snow had covered everything, blinding white.
So we went for a walk in the woods instead. On the way back, I climbed on a gate to avoid being trampled on by the cows returning to the village in the evening. Clouds of steam from her nostrils. A cow stopped, turned and licked my face.

Every winter on the first day of snow my mind goes back to that morning. The peace of that monastery, the order that seems to come to this world along with the snow.

Like a snake sheds its skin, I shed my white shirts while writing a series of memories – to be found in this link.

2008. On November 27, I got fired. One day after my 30th birthday. It wasn’t even the first time I got “restructured”, but it was a painful one. We had played “happy family” for some time at the office, now we started playing “last in first out”. It taught me that one dreams and grows alone. And the world doesn’t end with that nice job in a cosy architecture office in Zürich.

Like a snake sheds its skin, I shed my white shirts while writing a series of memories – to be found in this link.

2013, November 24. We met again by chance in some bar. We danced like crazy, almost like that first time when you whirled me around, then suddenly lost your balance and let go and I almost landed on my skull.
Outside on the sidewalk, your dreamy smile, “Where should we go now. Somewhere nice.”
“We could go to my place, this time“, I said. “But it’s still under construction, I don’t live there yet.” Let’s.
First time I got to sleep here, on a huge towel in the middle of the room, the silhouette of furniture against the wall, covered in some old sheets. That foggy morning. Housewarming.

Like a snake sheds its skin, I shed my white shirts while writing a series of memories – to be found in this link.

1999, November 22, I left Bucharest.
Excited: I would go to Germany on an Erasmus year. As sweet revenge for having failed the first attempt at high school admission 2 years earlier! Goodbye home of my quarrelsome teenage years, goodbye to all boundaries! Hello world!
I was going to travel and I would discover and I would love and it will all be worth it.
On my road, I shed so many skins. For every skin, I’ll post a shirt (and a memory) – to be found in this link. Come along.