In the early morning of July 12, 2006, after an uncomfortable night spent on a broken-down train from Sophia, Kay and I arrived in Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
It was our first visit, and we didn’t stay long since our destination was the Transylvanian city of Braşov, a comfortable two-and-a-half-hour ride north in a modern train. In Braşov’s train station, while I was in the ticket office arranging for our ongoing travel, Kay was approached by a man and uncharacteristically agreed for us to stay in an apartment that had belonged to the man’s late parents.