The Casa Mica at the Village Hotel was a dream. It was so comfortable and relaxing. I arrived on Saturday, intending on leaving for another village along the Ize valley a few days later. That never happened... I spent five wonderful nights in Breb. Maria is the manager of the place, and so cool and fun. She became a good friend during my time there, coming over to the house to chat and joining me for dinner at the neighbors house every night. Lenuza and her family lived next door. She is amazing! Every evening she would make a soup and some kind of big hearty meaty dish, welcoming me into her house with her family. Dinner was a great experience... I would eat until I couldn’t eat anymore, and then Lenuza would try to force ever more food upon me... Maria would try to avoid eating altogether, but Lenuza wouldn’t let that happen... Lenuza would pull up a chair, joining us at the table, Maria doing her best to translate Lenuza’s stories. Lenuza’s husband Iuon would wander in and out, filling my glass with his homemade plum, apple and cherry horinca, a wicked liquor that got the best of me on more than one occasion... Their son, I can’t remember his name, would come in from the logging trees in the forest, scarf down some food, then head over to the laptop to peruse Facebook... he was something of a village Casanova, claiming he had fourteen different girls he was talking with. Finally there was Black Francis, the pure white Village Hotel kitten, a precocious little trouble maker that couldn’t be more than a month old.

A week before my arrival, some guests at the hotel were in the ‘big city’ of Sighet (Sighetu Marmatiei). They heard squealing while walking down the street, and saw a baby kitten at the bottom of a pipe. Heartbroken, the lowered a stick into the pipe, allowing the kitten to climb up. They brought the kitten back to the house and nursed it back to health, then left the cat for Maria to care for. They named the cat Piper for obvious reasons. As much as Maria complains about the cat, I think she really has a soft spot for her...

So one evening after a particularly horinca fueled dinner, Maria and I went back to the house to listen to music and chat. The Pixies were playing. I had never been all that fond of the name Piper, so in my drunken state, I renamed the cat Black Francis, in honor of Frank Black... it didn’t work on any level whatsoever, but I was insistent... and I made Maria promise that she would honor the new name and tell all future guests that Black Francis was in fact the cat’s name.

I found myself in a nice routine for the six days I was there... I would wake up around 8:00 or 9:00. Start a fire. Lay on the couch reading a book or listening to music. Finally around 2:00 I would leave the house to go for a walk in the village or the surrounding hills. I’d come back at 4:30 when it started getting dark. Start a new fire and lay on the couch, eventually falling asleep. Maria would come over before dinner to check that I had everything I needed, then we walk across the lane to have dinner at Lenuza’s house. Iuon would load me up on horinca, I would go home and fall sleep on the couch again, waking up in the middle of the night as the fire began to die, heading up the stairs to bed.