God hookers ...

and God's prostitutes.

It's the sort of thing you'd expect clean shaven, short haired, All-American youth to be doing.

As I innocently sat listening to my mp3 player, basking in the sun (no comparison to beached elephant walruses allowed) on one of the red park benches by the side of the Bega, two elderly gentlemen approached - I'd noticed them as I arrived and had them dismissed as innocents out for the air in their gentle decline to '... sans everything .'

Then I spotted the leaflets - secretly rolled, but ominously healthy apple green, curled, serpent-like, in a liver-spot-speckled hand. The owner of the claw looked to the other man who quickly started on the subject of the glorious sun ...

For those unused to being pounced on in this fashion, the sun is a sure give away - in whatever training camp for God-pushers these two had trained, they'd obviously taken the short course ... 'Start with the Sun - everyone likes the sun ...'.

But they'd misjudged their Eve!

"Sorry," - innocence itself said - "I don't speak Romanian ..."

Training camp came to the fore, ... he continued .. 'glorious day', 'wonderful sun' ...

I gave the puzzled look of the well practised foreigner, "?"

Mr Claw, cracked - "He's speaking foreign .."

Silence.

They looked at each other, hesitated - training camp I am sure had said don't give in so easy, but nationalism and a deep ethnic insecurity bites deeper - they toddled off, side by side, upstream to search for a more reliable punter.

On a normal day, I'd have not smiled (almost chuckled) at the discomfort of the elderly - but it really was a glorious day . and the soundtrack to this 'God-experience' foreplay was Dunstable ... Quam Pulcara es.

I am, in case you haven't guessed, as deep-dyed-in-the-wool an atheist as it is possible to get: I have the 'spirituality' of a stone and the only sole I posses is under my feet. But if anything would hook me to the smallest smidgeon of belief in deity, it would be the music of the Mediaeval cathedrals and monasteries.

Technorati Tags: Timisoara, God, Hookers, Early Music, Romania