But when are we going on a trip?

It could be any year of the 80s. Finally, a new exciting morning: the green backpack with the brown strips was taken out of the cupboard, we were going on a trip! Mom prepared the bacon and the onion, dad brought the hatchet, yesterday’s daily paper Megyei Tükör and the matches.

Shortly after waiting for the bus at Háromrózsa, at auntie Kató, we were going to Șugaș-Băi. The sight of the bus impressed me, with its huge gas tanks on top, like a Soviet spaceship. I only saw something similar in Misa, last week in the kindergarten. I wouldn’t be Gagarin that day, I thought, but at least we were going to pick mushrooms. I was only interested in parasol mushrooms, but only in those that came into my view. I could select them, because there were many mushrooms between the Szármány heath and the Gurgău.

If one asked the driver – which wasn’t a problem back then –, the bus stopped at the top. We had already passed Szármány, and the road to the Gyertyános well got steeper and steeper. I wasn’t interested in mushrooms anymore, I was tired but, most importantly, hungry. All of my senses were filled with the magic of the brown fat of fried bacon, as if I saw it coating the loaf of bread, with the onion, too, drenched in it. The five of us were walking in silence, but the imaginary smell of bacon didn’t leave us. I couldn’t resist it any longer: “Dad, when are we going on a trip?”