Bob and the Smelly Salami
The following story about Bob and the smelly salami is purely fictional. It in no way has anything to do with the McKinney family travels through Romania. Any similarities would be purely coincidental.
Bob looked up from the bench he was sitting on and shook his head. “Life would be so much easier if people just recognized I was always right and learned to live with it”, he thought to himself.
They had missed their train. They had missed their train because the other three members of the family, Dobbie, Bobbin and Harrah didn’t believe him when he said the train back to the city where their hotel was left at 2:30 and 6:30. They argued that it was scheduled to leave at 4:00 and 7:30, so they had lots of time. Let’s explore the little town they said. We’re hungry they said.… Turns out that yet again, Bob was right and everybody else was WRONG! Now they were stuck here in a wet smelly train station waiting for a couple of hours for their train.
The trip in had been quite the ordeal. The family had decided a few days earlier to do a short excursion from Budapest to visit the Transylvanian Alps and visit the haunts of Dracula. Dobbie had heard that the fall colors were “supposed to be just fabulous. It will be just like New England in the fall, Bob, except without all those rude people in it”. The kids had been all for it, visiting the home of Dracula and everything. Bobbin had sealed the deal as he looked up from the travel brochure and said “Dad, it says here you can get beer for like $0.25 per liter. It’s really cheap there in Romania”. And so stocked up on food, they were off.
They hadn’t counted on the 12 hour train ride to get there; on Romanian trains. That had been an experience they wanted to forget. They had a first class car which was some help, but the miles and miles of what looked like ex-communist waste piles that they had to travel through in order to get to the Transylvannian Alps were shocking.
Half way into the trip, Harrah had begun to squirm. She had held it for about as long as she could but now she had to go. Harrah has a thing about using public washrooms. She just doesn’t like them. This time when she returned however she was shaking and her face was white as a sheet. “Dad, there is just a hole. Like when we go camping”.
“A hole?” Bob responded.
“Yah, A hole. The toilet is a hole through the floor onto the train tracks. You pooh onto the train tracks that are whizzing by”, Harrah declared.
“Cool” shouted Bobbin jumping up and knocking over the packs. “I gotta see this.” Then he sat back down, suddenly remembering all those train tracks he had walked along in the past. “I wonder if all trains are like this or only Romanian trains are” he began to wonder.
On top of the scenery, the duration, and the toilet experience they also had to put up with their fellow travelers. Usually this is not a problem and is often quite enjoyable. They quickly learned however that the traveling Romanians were of a slightly different breed than what they had previously run across. Romanians like Italians are a very passionate people. They also seem to make a competition over how to sneak on board trains and not get caught. Every few minutes or so another confrontation would break out between the conductor and a group of occupants (old women, kids, men, it really didn’t matter) who had decided to occupy a travel compartment without either a ticket or a first class ticket. Then every 15 minutes the conductor would kick out a group of squatters and the screaming would start again. The squatters would head to the back of the train again and the conductor would move on. Ten minutes later the squatters would return hauling all of their belongings back with them and re-establishing possession of the compartment. Five minutes after that the conductor would return and the shouting would start again. Bob would have thought that this was a unique occurrence except for the fact that this went on for hours and hours with different groups as they came and went from the train.
On one particular “2 minute” stop, a family got onto the train. They had been shopping in one of the larger towns and had bags of groceries and stuff to take back with them. They had lots of bags; lots and lots of bags. 52 bags and 15 minutes later this family of 3 had filled up 3 first class compartments. As the train finally left the station they were still shuttling materials down the hallway between the door and compartment next to ours. Then the shouting started again.
“Ah, the conductor must be early for his rounds” observed Dobbie.
Turns out that it wasn’t the conductor after all. The old man with the groceries was in the middle of a large argument with two older women one of which Bob presumed to be his wife. The older wife woman was violently shaking a can of what looked like tomato soup at the old guy. The shouting progressed, and then she started to brain the old guy with the tomato soup can.
The conductor showed up just as the old lady was winding up for braining number two and decided to join in the shouting. This was an especially long shouting match but it turns out that they had found a way to beat the system. They simply had too much stuff to move before they got to their exit stop and the conductor let them stay. The old guy was made to go sit in one of the other compartments on the other side of us along with all the other bags, leaving us sandwiched between the two screaming parties for the next hour or so. Turns out that the group (husband, wife, wife’s sister) had been on a quarterly shopping trip to stock up on supplies for their small grocery store back in their village. The husband had incorrectly purchased 42 cans of tomato soup instead of canned tomatoes, hence the beaning.
As long as the trip was however, and as bad as the bathrooms and the shouting and the bag carrying gypsies were they were nothing compared to the smells that Bob had to experience on the trip down. Bob liked garlic. He liked it a lot, but even he couldn’t stand the strong smell that seemed to permeate through the pores of virtually everybody he came close to. It totally dominated every other smell around. It crushed the bad cigarette smoke and obliterated the smells of the toxic waste dumps outside. “How could such rude smells get inside a still living body”, Bob wondered. The kids had speculated that it was probably because they had to breed a super strong version of garlic in the region to fend off vampires and werewolves. They pointed out that over the course of hundreds of years these monsters had probably built up quite a tolerance to the standard stuff. It was merely an evolutionary response. “Too much science homework” muttered Bob in response as he was knocked back into his seat, eyes stinging as the smell of another passenger wafted by.
They had finally arrived at their final destination and Bob had to admit that Transylvania was beautiful, and that once removed from the trains the people of the region were extraordinarily friendly and polite, and the beer was only $0.25 per liter. Things weren’t all bad. They had spent a day wandering the streets of the medieval village of Sigishoara. That morning they caught a 3 hour train to the town of Brasov where they toured “Dracula’s Castle” which had brought them up to the present.
Having been there and done that in Transylvania, Bob was ready to move on. The only thing holding him from starting his journey had been his family’s inexplicable need to see one more shop in the town square. Now they had a multi-hour wait on their hands for the next train.
“We’re hungry, we need to find some food” explained Dobbie as the crew emerged from a small shop and approached Bob.
“But you just had lunch” countered Bob, “you can’t possibly be hungry already!”
“That was 2 hours ago. Besides we need to buy some food for the train trip tomorrow. You can’t do an 12 hour trip with nothing to eat” sniffed Dobbie. She had caught a cold a few days earlier and her sinuses were well and truly plugged up.
“Your right” conceded Bob. “I’ll grab some fruit and bread. You go into that deli shop over there and grab some meat. Salami or something” said Bob, pointing to a small dark shop on the corner of the street.
Bob finished his shopping quickly and was standing outside the shop with the kids when Dobbie emerged.
The smell that preceded her was like a physical force, causing Bobbin to take a step back. “What’s that smell?!!” he and Harrah shouted in unison.
“What smell?” queried Dobbie.
“That horrific smell that is following you around like a pair of Bobbin’s old socks” Bob replied.
“Oh my god! It must be the salami!” blurted Dobbie. “The clerk didn’t speak English so when it was my turn, I just pointed to the one the guy in front of me took. The clerk tried to get me to take another one, but it was going to cost another $0.25 cents. And you know how stuck up you are on the budget Bob. That’s all you ever talk about. Budget, budget, budget. Bob you must realize that if we have stinky salami, it really is your fault. I was just thinking of you.”
Bob sat back in shock. How this could be his fault given he didn’t even want to purchase the food in the first place was beyond his comprehension. That said, something had to be done. “The answer is simple. We will just have to throw it out.” Bob said.
“No Bob that would be wasting. Besides it isn’t so bad. I can hardly smell it” Dobbie replied.
“But mom, you can’t smell ANYTHING with your plugged nose and all.” Bobbin countered.
Try as they might the family could not convince Dobbie that the only reasonable course of action was to dispose of the stinky salami as quickly as possible. There was nothing left to do but head for the train station.
Climbing into the back of what passed for a cab to take them to station, Bob got his first exposure as to how bad the situation really was. Closing the door, the driver was suddenly very very still. He sniffed, and sniffed again. “Grenton Grabon!” he muttered quietly shaking has head as he pulled away from the curb. Bob just knew that the tiny tears starting to well up in the driver’s eyes were not because a close family member had passed away.
Entering the station, Bob noticed it was very crowded. Spotting a bench with two open seats, Bob parked Dobbin and Harrah down. Soon after, the benches were all cleared and the family had a corner of the station all to themselves.
“Well at least the beggars and gypsies aren’t bothering us any more” spouted Bobbin. “It’s like the salami is kind of a beggar repellant!”
And so it went. The train finally arrived and the Bob and crew managed to clear out an entire car. Arriving at the hotel, the people in reception gave them a wide berth. “Grenton Grabon!” they would mutter. It wasn’t until they were finally in their own room with the salami locked away in the air tight refrigerator that Bob finally felt secure.
The next morning as they were departing for the train to take them back to Budapest, Bob tried once more to get rid of the smelly salami. The ensuing argument was won by Dobbie who with her still plugged nose continued to insist that all was well. “Besides”, she elaborated, “we are only going to have it with us for another couple of hours. Then we will be eating it.”
An hour later in the heat of the train, Bob was convinced that the Salami was only ripening further. His worst fears were confirmed when the conductor came to the door to take their tickets. “Grenton Grabin!” the conductor now blurted out as he took a step back into the hall. He couldn’t even enter the cabin. By this time Bob just knew that the “Grenton Grabin” that he kept hearing everyone muttering must be some kind of Romanian expletive.
Finally it was time for lunch. Dobbie with her stuffed nose was elected to dissect the salami and make the sandwiches. The salami itself was very oily but despite this and the smell it was surprisingly tasty, and went well with the heavy Romanian bread Dobbie had purchased the day before.
Quickly finishing lunch off to get rid of the smell, Bob was finally able to relax. The smelly salami had been destroyed. It could no longer haunt them as it had for the previous day and a half. Several hours later the train finally crossed back into Hungary, and the customs and immigration officers boarded the train to check the passengers.
As the Hungarian customs officer opened the door to the car, she took a sudden step back. “Grenton Grob!” she exclaimed. Passports and all other questions were promptly ignored. “You have Grenton Grob here?” she asked with surprisingly clear English.
“But what is this Grenton Grob everybody keeps talking about? Bob asked, truly puzzled now.
“Grenton Grob! Grenton Grob!” the customs officer repeated. “The smelly stick. The Sa La Mi! It is restricted, to bring any Romanian meat or vegetable products into Hungary. If you have Genton Grob you must throw it away now!” she instructed.
“Oh we can’t do that” said Dobbie. “We have eaten it all for lunch. There is none left.”, at which point the lady customs agent started to shake her head and let out a loud chuckle. Finally stamping our passports to allow us entry back into Hungary she explained slowly and patiently.
“Grenton Grob” means the “smelly stick” or smelly salami. The salami, its smell stays very strong with you for a very very long time. Its smell comes out your pores, out your skin. In summer time Romanian farmers cure the salami with much garlic and other spices. They do it special to keep mosquitoes away. Enjoy your stay in Hungary” she chuckled shaking her head and backing out the door.
Turning to her fellow officer in the corridor, Bob saw her say something to her fellow official and heard the words “Grenton Grob” followed by sharp laughter. Bob settled back for what he knew was going to be a very long and very embarrassing next couple of days. “Why?” he muttered for the thousandth and first time, “Why don’t people just recognize that I am always right and learn to live with it?”
“Did you say something dear?” sniffed Dobbie as she looked up smiling.