The eyes of Sibiu followed me like the dead, like they follow everyone wandering under their watchful roofs. I felt their weight more keenly, maybe, as the tension in the world coiled and crept along borders, as though they were waiting for my answer.
I changed my plans for the first time in Sibiu. Or for the fiftieth, maybe, but the first time as the specter of that spring began nipping at my heels. I stayed a few extra days, watching the news, chewing my fingernails. I lingered.
I’ll skip Braşov, I said to myself, nodding decisively. Straight to Bucharest. Things will make more sense. I think I went to McDonald’s, because it, too, made sense.
The streets grew quieter, footsteps muted on the worn cobblestones; I caught murmurs of half-understood conversations among merchants in the Piața Mare, the Grand Square, and I tried not to listen.
My plans changed again and again, a frantic transfer through the capital, a weekend in Bulgaria, across London, flights cancelled and hotels emptied while 30,000 feet over the Atlantic. But I remember my last night in Sibiu, standing on the Bridge of Lies between the upper city and the lower, and I wondered what would collapse the ground under me.