The way to dorm XVI

If there’s something famous about Cluj-Napoca, which gets to you before you get to it, it’s the dorm XVI. A ten floor building hosting 2000 boys and only boys. No functioning elevator. Fridges carried up to the 9th floor… If you get down to the 1st floor and forget something in your room at 10th, you realize how high that is…
Parties, big parties… Lots of friends. Food sent from home and vanished in 15 minutes, with the help of your 15 visitors.

My first night in Cluj was not very promising for my future. When I got to dorm XVI, 500 people were waiting to be given their rooms. They stood there till 8 in the morning. In the meanwhile I fell in love with Nightwish in several bars in the campus, along with some old friends from my hometown. When the morning came we were so drinkingly challenged that they actually said YES when I said “Let’s go have a wine at my place in Darabani, right now”.

Later in the morning we rented some rooms in some old woman’s house and we paid good money to share beds. I don’t recall too much of the following day. But I used the day after that in the best possible way: I went to school.

I choose to write this on my blog because one of these days I saw myself again on the same streets I took to get home, to dorm XVI, after school, for the first time, back in 2002. When I did that, I remember I was very confused by the narrow streets, by the trees, by the thousands of students I met. I know it took me more than one hour to cross the little park from the down side of Haşdeu. No matter what street I chose, it was wrong, it took me to another dorm, another building. All these dorms, all these faculties, all these buildings brought all my lack of confidence to light. I was so upset on myself. Why am I not stronger, how can I forget the way to my home, how can’t I find it again, I know no one in this big city, no one knows me, I’m one of the million…

And I remember now how was I not able to tell the truth about me. How much I wanted to be liked by the others. How much of what I was doing was what I was expected to do. How much I wanted to excel in what the others appreciated.

Because i didn’t know what else to do. You know the stories with great heroes? They all have a meaningful road, a trip, a journey… For me, far from being a superhero, it has all started on the way to dorm XVI.

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