Daniella (Part 13, iv) -- Romania — Americans Abroad, Hannah's Search for Daniella from multiple perspectives (Spring 2009)

my 2019 novel Daniella

Above: Lake Como 2022

Chapter Four: Sarah in Romania

I was working the hostel desk when Hannah checked in. Hannah had e-mailed the hostel a few days before asking if there was anyone who’d be willing to answer questions about Daniella. I replied that I’d be happy to.

Things had been quieter here for the last several months, ever since Daniella left. It was hard to say if the decline in business was just seasonal - it was late February now, after all - or if it was also aggravated by Daniella’s disappearance. People argued about it. We were still doing our nightly pub crawl, but we weren’t sold out for weeks on-end like last summer.

I liked working in a hostel. I liked meeting people from all over the world. I had a free bed in the dorms in exchange for manning the desk part-time and leading pub crawls every few nights. Over the last eight months, since I’d moved here after finishing studying at Cluj, I had grown used to constantly sharing my space.

I scanned Hannah’s passport and showed her the common area. I liked the common area. It was a comfortable space. It was a living room with couches, armchairs, books, DVD’s, a Nintendo 64, a television, and a couple desktop computers for guests to use. I liked the book - it was a take-one-leave-one system for the backpackers.

“I’ll show you to your room,” I said.

We walked to her dorm room. It was late morning. The pub crawl had gone late last night. Several people were still sleeping on the bunks. I noticed two travelers who’d just arrived separately yesterday was sleeping together on a top bunk. Hannah locked up her valuables in a locker and then followed me back into the common room. I made us both some tea in the connected kitchen. We both sat on the couch with our steaming drinks.

Hannah and I raced through the basic questions. She was from Michigan. I was from California. She was studying for a year in Germany. I was doing remote work translating between English and Romanian for a Romanian company.

“How do you know Romanian?” she asked.

“My family is Romanian,” I said. I told her I’d always wanted to spend time living here. My Romanian as a kid had been no better than intermediate, but it was advanced now.

I asked Hannah about what she was doing. She told me she’d been in Ljubljana, then Prague and Budapest, then Cluj, and now he was here.

“Cluj!” I said, remembering the Romanian university city further east of us. “I studied there at the university.” That made me think of Daniella. I’d met her in Cluj. “By the way, you said you know Daniella from back in America. How?”

“She was my best friend in high school,” Hannah said.

“Wow,” I said. “Well, I was actually very close with her, too.”