HOW BIZARRE

Saturday, as we were bumping along potholed roads through another remote Transylvanian village in our flower-child passenger van, we ran into a traffic jam. I shifted around in my seat, peering around Janos’ van, wondering why we were put-putting through this unremarkable village.

We stopped directly in the middle of the road as the unexpected rush flooded toward us.

It wasn’t a mob of reckless Romanian drivers.

It wasn’t a poky horse pulling a wooden hay cart.

It wasn’t a swarthy old man on his rickety bike or a band of barefoot kids playing in a roadside gutter.

It was a cow stampede.

There was a great shuffling of dirt-clod hooves and some annoyed mooing…and then the whole herd was skirting our three vans, swarming the entire bumpy road, casually claiming its territory as it would any other day of the week. The whole ambling herd seemed mostly unaware of (or indifferent to) our loud-mouthed group--even though we were leaning out of windows, laughing raucously, and blaring “Skater Boy” over the van radio.

I leaned my upper body out of the driver side window, trying to get an up-close shot of a splotchy white and brown cow lumbering close to the van. Breanna pulled at my arm and frantically ordered Jordan to turn the music down; she was afraid the cows would turn their stocky horns toward us and gore us right through the open window. I wasn’t really worried about it.

It was all over in two minutes and then we were zigzagging along again, laughing at the strange episode: the intersection of 90s pop music, a group of rowdy American students, and a herd of cattle in the middle of the Romanian countryside.

How bizarre.