The City of Floresti

City of Floresti

Each workday I travel from our apartment in the Manastur district of Cluj down to the edge of the city and there find a rogue taxi to ride out to the village of Luna de Sus, a total trip of around 12 kilometers. Between Cluj and Luna there sits an area called Floresti. It’s bigger than a village or town, but has no center so is not really a small city. It lies on the main east-west highway between Cluj and Oradea and there is heavy traffic along it’s main thoroughfare.

The highway is dusty and smoky from the inefficient burning of fossil fuels by the steady stream of trucks, buses and cars. Floresti is a long, thin jurisdiction, most of the houses spread out along the main highway. There are a few concrete apartment blocks in the place but mostly it is small houses each with a private courtyard.

The name Floresti means place of flowers. Upon first impression, the name doesn’t match, but if you sit up high enough and look over the metal gates and cement walls, you’ll see a very high proportion of yards with interesting collections of seasonal flowers. It’s as if people take the name of their town seriously.

Romanians, generally, take a great pride in their private spaces. They have a tendency to let the public spaces fall to ruin, but their private spaces are well maintained. Every day, on my way to and from work, I strain to see over the barriers between garden and roadway. Currently phlox and holly hocks are blooming. The former mostly white but occasionally other colors as well; the latter in shades of red and pink. Window boxes are filled with ivy geraniums. Inside the courtyards what grass exists is trimmed and neat. Occasionally a brave gardener will try and extend their flowers beyond their private confines to the area between roadway and gate, but the dust and dirt from the traffic makes that a task doomed to failure.

My own area in front of the apartment block here in Cluj is planted with impatiens and a few begonias. The area is heavily shaded and just about any other flowing plant would stretch and become scraggily. There are some perennial sedum and hosta in the bed that have filled in green. It’s not up to the standards of Floresti, but our neighbors in our block smile at my indulgences and seem to like the idea of an American out pulling up weeds in front of the apartment.