Nothing for Sale
An unexpected meeting brings a town's myths full circle
This time when I walked by, the lights were on. I was hungry, but this seemed like a worthwhile detour, so I walked up the steps. The sign on the door simply read “cadouri unicat” (unique gifts). Gently pushing the door open, I asked in Romanian, “are you open?” A voice called back, as warm as an old friend and as smooth as a used-car salesman: “For you, of course we are.” I rolled my eyes and walked in.
It was my last evening in Băile Herculane. I’d been busy the last few days, hiking and walking with a camera in hand, trying to get a personal feel for the old myths that put this quiet mountain town on the map. Earlier in the afternoon I’d even submitted to a traditional treatment, marinating in the local sulfurous remedy with a handful of strangers. But there was a piece missing, a disconnect between me and the town, something I couldn’t find on my own in the mountains or at the pool with resort-goers.
With the sun setting, it was time to track down one final meal. I wandered down “Strada Complexelor Sanatoriale” (Street of the Sanatorial Complexes), a name with all the warmth of an abandoned hospital corridor.
This shop wasn’t listed anywhere online, and that absence felt deliberate. The sign promised unique gifts, but the glass cases in the window suggested something older. I’d resolved to believe the shop was more than half abandoned, as I was yet to find the door unlocked. This time, though, as I walked nearer, I could see the lights on and the door left ajar.
Near the window, a man moved slowly back and forth in a rocking chair. He had a few gray patches in his beard, but he felt oddly out of place — at least a decade too young for that recline, as if rehearsing for the day he’d belong there. It was his voice that replied to my call moments before. A second man stood near him, clearly in no rush, sipping from a small plastic cup containing amber liquid. His wife perused the display cases, not involved directly in their conversation but not disconnected from it either. They all turned and looked at me as I walked in. I looked up, smiled briefly, and nodded at them, then began making my way around the room.
It was less disorganized than I’d expected; these were clearly ‘curated’ antiques. Everything was meticulously placed and spaced out: crosses, vases, glassware, metal objects. Boxes of jewelry sat at a table in the middle of the room. I noticed that the woman was not shopping. She was organizing these cases, untangling necklaces, and gently placing them back where she found them. Some Orthodox icons sat on the wall in the corner of the room, keeping a watchful eye over us.
Engrossed in the artifacts, I hardly noticed when the others stopped talking and turned to look at me once more. The man sitting in the rocking chair introduced himself as Sebastian and asked “So, where are you from?” still in his used-car-salesman voice.
“Ah, far away,” I said, smiling and not making eye contact, bracing myself against a possible sales pitch.
He leaned forward: “If you’re from so faraway then how do you speak Romanian?”
“Well, I was born in the US, but my parents are Romanian.”
He nodded, pleased with this detail, and continued asking with eerie precision. What did I do for work? Why was I in Herculane? Did I like it here? When was the next financial crisis coming across the ocean from the States?
His comrade stood and watched us talk, occasionally sipping from his cup. I gave only brief answers, pretending to study the jewelry and trying to size Sebastian up in return. This was not just an employee killing time; he was studying me, and I didn’t know to what end.
Sebastian, who claimed he was “around fifty” then began to tell me about himself. He’d studied statistics and became a lecturer elsewhere in Romania. He claimed that he made some “wise investments” around the great financial crisis and had since “retired”.
Smiling wryly, Sebastian said, “After that, I moved to Herculane and became a mountaineer. Antiques are just a passion project — I open when I want to, and close when I don’t.” The more unbelievable his story became, the more convincingly he told it.
Sebastian’s friend walked over to me and poured me a serving or two of the amber liquid from an unlabeled glass bottle, reminding me to sip it slowly. I was suspicious at this self-proclaimed “aged” homebrew, but seeing him drink from the same bottle, I guessed it was safe enough. It was strong but smooth, immediately warming my insides. Sebastian’s friend wasn’t a local, explaining that he and his wife made regular trips from Bucharest, a five-hour drive. To him, there was something special about the energy of Herculane, and he always came by to share a chat with his friend…
We’d return to his musings, but I was intrigued by Sebastian. “So, do you live in Herculane then?”
“No, my friend, I live wherever I want. Herculane, Greece, Croatia, the world is open to me. Last year I spent about half my days away.”
Sensing my confusion, he told me to come with him; we’d just step outside and all would be explained.
He walked across the street to a sleek Mercedes van and pulled the side door open. I paused, peeking inside. The inside was completely converted into a camper — bed, shower, vanity, the works. He liked living by his own rules, he said.
We ran back inside the shop, the cold October wind chasing us back in the door. Sebi’s friend began pouring more pălincă into my cup, but I lifted a hand. “Just a little.” He looked to Sebi who nodded and smiled, saying, “only a little, then. I’d be joining you, but I have to drive to Craiova tonight on business.”
It never occurred to me to leave. Sebastian kept steering our conversation erratically, jumping between the concrete and the cosmic, and I wanted to see where we’d end up. He spoke no English, so whenever I habitually drifted back into it, he would patiently smile and let me finish my thought before asking his friend or I to translate — a gentle courtesy that made him feel like an old friend, not the stranger I’d just met minutes before. He pulled out his phone and proudly showed me a photo of his son — clean haircut and a crisp suit, an investment banking student in London. He then launched into a defense of mathematics and its unique ability to provide concrete clarity in an otherwise unmeasurable world — insisting that I understood this, a kindred spirit who also lived somewhere between art and numbers. Somehow we drifted toward my own paintings, and his tone slid into something like mentorship. I readied my pencil for something profound, but what he delivered was something almost disappointingly practical. “Art was a noble pursuit,” he said, “but you need to follow the numbers intelligently and focus on making things people would really buy.”
Moments later, his friend again nodded vigorously as Sebi turned the conversation back to the intangible “energy” in this part of Romania, speaking as if some ancient frequency bubbled up along with the sulfurous water. “There’s something in the air here. I’m sure you can feel it. That’s why you’re here…” he said, falling quiet.
As Sebastian drifted in and out of these theories, his friend’s wife kept working in silence, untangling pieces of jewelry and letting the words wash past her. I listened along, occasionally nodding or adding a detail or a question, half entertained and half disarmed. To my surprise, another woman appeared from one of the side doors. She said something quietly to Sebastian and he replied that they’d be leaving soon, turning to apologize to us that he must draw our time to a close. “Alright,” I said pointing at the jewelry case, “What can I buy from you?”
Sebastian didn’t even glance over. “Nothing.”
I smiled, thinking he was joking, but his expression didn’t change. “I’d like something to remember this place by,” I insisted.
“I have nothing for you and I don’t need your money. These are all very nice items, but they’re more for tourists.”
I looked up at the austere icons in the corner of the room, still watching over us. Apparently I was no longer just a tourist.
He reached into his pocket and slid a jade ring onto his pinky, reaching out to me like a magician revealing the card I’d selected earlier. “This is what you should buy,” he said. “I do not have one for you, but some day you will find one or have one made, and you will remember.” He studied his own hand in the light and told me he’d worn the ring since his lecturing days — it brought a calming, necessary effect, just like Herculane.
He walked to the back of the store and produced two miniature pewter steins. He handed one to me, and the other to his friend. I reached for my wallet but he immediately refused, saying, “I don’t want your money. Take this home with you.” Then he insisted I save his phone number — because of course I would be back on the continent, and of course I would write. Sebi shook his head when I told him where I planned to go and eat. “You don’t want that. When you leave my door, turn right, and walk until you see the red umbrellas. That’s where the locals go. Tell the chef I sent you.” I thanked him and his friend, finishing off my last sip of the amber liquid, and left.
Outside, I slipped the stein into my jacket, hearing it clink against the sketching pencils in my pocket. It was dark now; over an hour had passed since I first crossed that doorway. The street was empty and quiet, fallen leaves blowing in the wind. I’d spent several days studying Herculane through its mountains, its sulfur, its decay — an interesting but incomplete story. The real myth of Herculane doesn’t just live through those elements; it also lives strongly in its people. People who view this strange, picturesque place as an ancient haven, somewhere they can reinvent themselves and escape the world. People like Sebastian and his friend, who treated a stranger not as another tourist, but like a part of the place itself.
The next day in another town I did find a ring — not jade, and probably not up to Sebastian’s standard. But when I hold it up to the light I’m brought back to that time all the same.