Alexei and his son showed up with duffle bags slung over their shoulders, and off we went to the rec-center of the Universiatea de Stat din Moldova (USM to locals.) Once there, Alexei and Daniel changed into tee-shirts, shorts and tennis shoes in the vestiar (sort of like a locker room, but without lockers... a changing room.) Then we hit the courts.
The rec-center has a multi-use gymnasium, with two parallel basketball courts that double as either two volleyball courts or can be used across the width for indoor soccer. When we arrived, one of the courts was in use for volleyball, and the other was split into 3 badminton courts (I forgot to mention that the gym also accomodates badminton...) So we grabbed a volleyball and a soccer ball and putzed around in a little bit of free-space. We bump-set-spiked the volleyball between the three of us until the badminton players were finished, and then we cleared the nets away and took shots on goal with the soccerball. Futbol is Alexei's passion, and his energy level is as entertaining on the court as it is in the classroom.
It turned out that Alexei meets a group of 9 other men each saturday to get in a few volleyball matches. The originators of this group have been meeting every Saturday for 12 years; Alexei joined up with them 8 years ago. Daniel and I continued to bump-set-spike, and also spent a fare share of time watching the matches.
-
Bump! (Alexei is the gentleman in the foreground, white shirt...)
-
-
Tracking down the ball for a spike (ball is up near the right-most light)
-
-
After volleyball, it was time for a quick sauna (which is also the Romanian word for it) and shower before hitting the pool...
-
The pool entrance from the locker room.
-
The pool entrance from the locker room.
-
An outdoor view...
-
And "Hello America!" from Alexei and Daniel
-
-
After an hour in the pool, it was off to have beer with the guys. We took a short jaunt down to a bar, where Stefan ordered up some grapes, peanuts, tea and beer for the group. I would tell you the name of the bar, but as Valeriu explained to me, they had been coming to this bar for 12 years and never found out its name. To them it is "the gas-station bar" (because it is next-door to a gas-station.) What's in a name, anyway? For these guys it is just the perfect place to finish off a perfect day of fitness.
We toasted cognac to one of the men's mother (her 76th birthday was on Friday,) later toasting to three more as-yet-unidentified occasions (I'm pretty sure it was just to shoot more cognac)... and after four shots of cognac, a beer and some fine Moldovan cuisine, I was off to home for the Michigan game against the Indiana Hoosiers. It was a great day, and some great insight into how similar Moldovan and American men really are.
Sounds like an awesome day, Barbu! One question though: to enter the pool, did you have to jump in from inside the locker and then swim out to the pool? It looked very cavey in the picture.
ReplyDelete