Arrival in Reșița and the Internship

The internship took place in the summer of 1964, after my third year at university. I retain very little of the work itself. As with many student placements in those years, we were tolerated observers rather than genuinely useful assistants. Each day we had to report to the department to which we had been assigned, observe, take notes, and conscientiously fill in our training logs; at the end, we had to sit an oral assessment.

What has stayed with me vividly, however, is the journey and my first impression of the place. I travelled alone, carrying the travel documents issued by BTT. The train journey was long and tiring, yet it held some of the excitement of a first real departure from ordinary life. On reaching Reșița, I made my way to the apprentice vocational school where we were to stay. Massive and austere, the building belonged unmistakably to the city’s industrial world and set the tone for that summer from the outset.

Reșița presented itself above all as a city of industrial works. Smoke, noise, the discipline of the timetable, and the severity of the industrial landscape gave it a powerful identity. For the history of the city, its works, the vocational school, and the hydraulic engineering projects in the area, see the separate page Reșița: the City, the Industrial Works, and the Surrounding Area.

Life in the Dormitory

We were lodged in the vocational school. Its long corridors, several classrooms temporarily converted into dormitories, and the whole atmosphere of an industrial boarding school retained something of the discipline for which the building had been designed. One classroom was reserved for the girls, while we boys divided ourselves between two others. Choosing a bed became a small but important decision from the very first day: everyone wanted to be near friends, and the prospect of a whole month together suddenly lent weight to such details.

We ate at the works canteen; the food was edible, though hardly memorable. The centre of Reșița was not far from our dormitory, so we could go out for an evening walk. At weekends we planned excursions to explore the surrounding area; if it rained, we stayed in town, playing cards in the dormitory or going to a nearby restaurant with a garden. A small orchestra played there, and there was dancing—with our few female classmates, naturally, much in demand as partners.

Student Evenings

Our real student life, however, began in the evening. After the day’s journeys, jokes, and fatigue came the songs. Cristi G. would take up his guitar, and in a dormitory room or out in the corridor a small improvised concert would begin: student songs and bawdy ballads, sung with far more enthusiasm than talent. Beer flowed on those evenings, along with Milcov cognac, which then seemed almost indispensable to good spirits. Some songs were cheerful and naïve, others absurd or coarse, and a few mildly obscene; all belonged to the atmosphere of those nights. Three have stayed in my mind. I cannot vouch for their authenticity—my memory is not infallible—nor do I know whether any copyright subsists in them.

Songs from Those Evenings (in the Original Romanian)

I reproduce them as memory has preserved them: as period documents and audible fragments of student life.

I was not used to drinking at all. I became tipsy quickly, and on one of those evenings I was so ill that I vomited. It was a practical lesson, more memorable than anything I learned in the works: from then on, cognac remained inseparable in my mind from that unforgettable nausea. Even today, I cannot drink it without feeling the same revulsion.

Secu and Văliug

I retain almost nothing precise from our outings to Secu and Văliug—only their atmosphere. At that age I had not yet acquired the instinct to fix things in memory, as though I knew that decades later I would try to summon them back. I simply lived in the moment. What remained, therefore, were moods rather than events.

We walked to Secu, which was not far from Reșița; we went to Văliug by bus. The order of those excursions, the words exchanged along the way, and the small incidents have faded. But I remember the contrast clearly. For us, Reșița was the city of the works, the internship, and the discipline imposed by its schedule. That is precisely why the outings to the lakes felt liberating. We needed only to leave the city and draw near the forest, water, and mountains for the atmosphere to change.

I no longer remember whether we lingered at Văliug longer than at Secu, or exactly what we did there. We probably walked, talked, joked, or simply stood looking at the water. Yet it is this very simplicity that makes the memory pleasant. For a few hours, the internship shed its compulsory character and took on something of a holiday. That is why Secu and Văliug remain bound in my memory to that summer in Reșița—not as excursions marked by spectacular events, but as moments of relaxation, light, and respite.

Gallery

The Internship Site

Lake Secu

Lake Văliug

Episodes

• Renate — an encounter that began at a concert in the Palace Hall and continued during the internship in Reșița, including an excursion on Mount Semenic.

Other fragments of that summer may well come to light as more photographs emerge or other associations stir my memory.