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Dan
Weinrich
Dealer in Fine
Mineral Specimens
P.O. Box 425, Grover,
Missouri 63040 USA
Telephone: 314-341-1811
E-Mail:
danweinrich@charter.net
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“THE PROFESSIONALS” – AN
AFTERNOON IN TRESTIA
I was brutally awakened to the convulsive jerking
motion of the small Russian Lada, feeling the spinning, screaming tires beneath me,
hearing the bits of wood and gravel spewing out behind the car. The car was thump-thumping its way up what could
only be described as a road that doubled as a washboard for the local populace. I had been in a deep sleep and at first
could not even remember where I was. The
Hungarian epitaphs coming from Lazlo in the driver’s seat brought me back to reality. Don, in the backseat, replied drolly in my
direction, using his best Queen’s English “well Dan, welcome to the
Carpathians”.
It was now late afternoon and we had left Budapest for
Maramures in Romania at the brutally unfair time of three o’clock the previous
morning, this after spending the previous evening gorging ourselves on wonderful Hungarian
foods and drinking copious quantities of the local brew.
The past twelve hours had been spent cramped up in the stifling hot Lada
listening to Lazlo and Don sing Russian folksongs. Let
us suffice it to say that these two will never receive a recording contract – with
any recording company in the world.
Our ambitious itinerary included very little time for
rest along the way. A most necessary stop was
made at the wonderful little Hungarian village of Tokaj, near the Romanian border with
Hungary, to fill up with a good supply of their famous wines. I was told that hundreds of years ago, all of the
Royal Houses across Europe would mount costly expeditions to this village at least once a
year, simply to get a supply of the local wines. We
obtained some of the finest wine the village had to offer.
I watched amazed as the sweet liquid was drawn from massive oaken casks by a short,
skinny old man (I guessed, perhaps erroneously, that he could have worked as a page in
Napoleon’s army that marched upon Moscow) with a long, white shock of hair, using
long tubes of bulbous glass. These glass
bulbs were then emptied into second hand 2-liter plastic containers of Coke, hopefully
that had been well cleaned and sanitized. The
old man would fill up container after container, proudly holding each one up for all to
see and ceremoniously stating in Hungarian something like “The Wine of Kings, The
King of Wines”. Now I am not
certain that any Kings of times past slugged down their Tokaj out of a reused plastic
container, but then they probably didn’t have the necessity of mentally drowning out
the cacophony of music to which I was being subjected during this drive. Let us just say that the wine was very, very good.
By late morning we had crossed into Romania, having
eaten almost nothing, successfully keeping to our schedule. I listened to the “provided music”,
contenting myself to sip Tokaj and stare out the window at the now numerous large flattish
wooden carts being pulled by horses along the roadsides.
By mid-day we were busy visiting miners in Herja and Baia Sprie, acquiring mineral
specimens. At one stop, upon returning to the
Lada, Lazlo muttered something about now Trestia.
I shrugged my shoulders, sat in the passenger’s seat and quickly fell into an
exhausted sleep not really caring where we were going.
When I was next awake we were lumbering up that steep
mountainside, tires spinning, surrounded on all sides by verdant and tall, stately pine
trees. It seemed almost dark here, with
the thick trees towering over the roadway, and was pleasantly cool. I rolled down my window, taking in the cool breeze
while waiting for Lazlo to finish blessing a particularly nasty section of Carpathian
washboard roadway with choice Hungarian phraseology.
I asked him where we were headed. He
simply said Trestia again. Through
the fog of weariness that clouded my brain it finally came to me – Trestia is the old
Carpathian locality that in times past produced the pretty blue chalcedony pseudomorphs
after cubic fluorite crystals. I had had some
of these in old collections, seen other specimens in museums, but thought this to be an
old and worked out locality. Many of the old
labels I had seen stated “Trestyan, Hungary”, using the old geographical
designation. I was informed that we were now
less than a mile from the village.
It seems that three foreigners arriving in a car is not
an everyday occurrence in Trestia. We stepped
out of the Lada to be immediately surrounded by eight or ten small children, all staring
curiously, standing back just far enough, as if we had just landed in a spaceship and were
arriving from Mars. They seemed to have come
out of nowhere, and they were very unsure what to make of our little party. We stared and smiled at each other for a minute or
so, saying nothing, when Lazlo broke the silence by uttering the word Kremen. That obviously meant something to these children
as they immediately vaporized back to wherever it was that they had come from. By this time other, older, villagers were standing
out in their respective yards staring at us as if we were animals on display in a zoo. Before an adult could make it over to our car, one
of the little children reappeared, again out of nowhere, this time with a large metal
bucket full of attractive blue chalcedony. Lazlo
poured the contents out onto the ground, examining several pieces for quality and color. I immediately started looking for pseudomorphs but
did not see any. All of the stones were
simply attractively banded white and blue massive chalcedony. Lazlo reached into his wallet and produced a
one-dollar bill, holding it out for the child to see.
The child’s eyes lit up, and a big smile appeared on his face. He deftly and quickly snatched the crisp green
one-dollar bill from Lazlo’s hands, disappearing once again into thin air. If it wasn’t for the pile of blue quartz
strewn about the ground at our feet I couldn’t even be sure if the child had been
there at all.
By this time a few of the village elders had approached
the car, motioning for Don and I to follow them. Upon
sensing our hesitation, one of the older men stepped from the crowd and, taking my arm,
led me away and towards one of the homes. Looking
back over my shoulder, to make sure that Don was going to be submitted to whatever folly
that I was going to be submitted to (fair is fair after all!), I could see in the now
increasing distance, another child in front of Lazlo, another bucketful of blue
chalcedony, and most likely another one-dollar bill getting whisked away.
Don and I were herded into the doorway of, as we
learned a little later, the mayor’s home. We
were surrounded on all sides by grizzled old men, most of them looking at us with a
twinkle in their eyes. There was much
discussion amongst the group, with a lot of laughing.
Don and I could move in no direction and, not speaking Romanian was not quite sure
what was going on. Just when I thought that
they perhaps had decided that Don was much too skinny to eat, but that I would be perfect
basted over a small fire, one of the old men produced two plastic 2-liter bottles with a
clear, colorless transparent liquid. This
produced quite a sensation amongst our hosts. The
man with the bottles slowly unscrewed the plastic lids, holding the bottles out to us,
making gestures for us to take a drink. By
this time Lazlo had appeared in the background, obviously satisfying the economic desires
of Trestia’s youth for another day, shaking his head violently, waving his arms and
telling us not to drink from the bottle. I
think that he was saying something about our regretting this action for the rest of our
perhaps now shortened lives. We, of course,
did not listen. As our hosts stared on with
expectation, we each took a hearty swallow. There
was a sudden sensation of burning in my throat, my stomach, and nostrils. The liquid was none other than pure Romanian moonshine,
loosely called palinka. After
our swallows the men just stared at us, not saying anything, studying us to see how we
would react. Not knowing what else to do we
started to take another drink. This
additional action set them off with laughing, general commotion, smiles and much goodwill
in our direction. We were now “one of
them”. Seeing this reaction, Don calmly
turned to me, stating nonchalantly “well Dan, I guess they have never been around professional
drinkers”.
We were now instant celebrities and allowed into the
house. Chairs were arranged in a circle in
the main living room. Our party consisted of
the Mayor, his father, and a few other local dignitaries.
Another bottle of palinka appeared; this was passed around the circle
in a clockwise direction. The Mayor was
perhaps in his mid-thirties age-wise, with a dark black mustache and close-cropped
jet-black hair. He spoke quite passable
English and we conversed on many different subjects.
His father was maybe sixty-five years of age, tall and stately with grayish
hair and a sharp mustache. He sat up primly,
on a tall stool, and only drank from the bottle of palinka every other time it went
around our circle. He spoke no English, but
each time, before taking a drink from the bottle, he would look straight at me, hold the
bottle high, and say in a loud voice “CLEEN-TON” (referring to our President
Clinton), giving me a “thumbs up” sign with his free hand. It was apparent that we had found the head of the
Maramures’ section of the American Democratic Party.
After a number of drinks his toast altered to “CLEEN-TON, GOOD
MAN”. When my turn came I, not having
any clue which man was running Romania at the time, toasted the Romanian national soccer
team. This seemed to satisfy all who were
present. During our discussions I was able to
ask the mayor about the blue pseudomorphs, and if many were found yet today. He stood up, went into a back room, returning with
two very nice specimens. These I promptly
bought from him for something like three dollars. This
appeared to be all that he had.
To say that we drank a lot would be a gross
understatement. We had really gotten drunk,
professional drinkers or not. We had not
eaten anything substantial since the previous night.
The mayor’s wife had brought out some snacks.
They were brownish, soft, strange looking morsels rolled up in long tube-like
structures. They smelled quite strangely like
cat food and I decided I wasn’t hungry enough yet.
Fifteen minutes later I noticed that Don had ingested the whole plate of food. This was an action that he would come to regret
much later when, at 3 in the morning, he was crawling across the floor of a home in Baia
Sprie, on all fours, praying that he will make it to the bathroom in time to violently get
ill. We never did figure out what that food
was but I wonder if the cats of Trestia did not go hungry that night.
It had gotten late and Lazlo was ready to get back down
the mountains to Baia Sprie where we were staying for the night. We bade farewell to our new found friends, got in
one last CLEEN-TON, staggering out the door into the fading daylight, making our way
towards the car. Looking in the open trunk I
noticed that Lazlo had acquired almost 120 pounds of blue chalcedony; yes, there was
definitely an economic boom amongst the youth of Trestia that day.
It had been a very satisfying afternoon and evening. Traveling to a seldom visited and classic
locality, actually acquiring a few specimens, enjoying ourselves with the locals. Upon arriving in Baia Sprie we were in good
spirits. We pulled into a driveway, opening
the trunk to get our belongings. Wanting to
see my specimens from Trestia again I searched for the small box into which I had packed
them. Then I searched some more. I am still searching to this day. I was so intoxicated upon leaving the mayor’s
home that I had completely forgotten the reason I went there. I forgot my mineral specimens!
I
have not been back to Trestia since. I often
wonder about the people in the village, the mayor and his father. I wonder if the father is still as satisfied with
Mr. Cleen-ton today as he was during our visit. I
wonder if the kids are still digging chalcedony (and if there is a potential to find many
good pseudomorphs in the future). I often
wonder what it really was that Don had eaten!
I wonder why any person with an IQ that registers above 5 would even
consider drinking that rocket-fuel called Palinka (or does prolonged drinking of
the stuff reduce one’s IQ to 5?). I
wonder if my time in this world has been shortened ten years because of that afternoon. Most of all I wonder if my two specimens are still
nicely and safely wrapped and boxed, waiting for the two “Professional Drinkers”
to return and claim them.
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Quartz after Fluorite - Trestia,
Maramures, Romania; 6.5 x 9 cm |
Close up photo with crystals to 2 mm on
edge |
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