AN ASTRAL 40-YEAR MEETING

Text and photos Andrei Dorian Gheorghe
Design Florin Alexandru Stancu

In 2019 May
a former colleague of high school, Doinita Florea,
sent me a picture from 1973,
representing the young team of swimmers of Bucharest Sportive School No. 2
during a sportive camp in Mamaia, at the Black Sea.

The picture (in which I am the last on the right, up)
includes three personalities:

-Vlad Hagiu (the first on the left;
later he became the best ever Romanian player of water polo:
thus, he marked over 1000 goals for Romania’s selected team,
decisively contributing to the 4th place at an European Championship
and the 1st place at a World University Championship;
as the captain of Dinamo Bucuresti,
he led his club to the 3rd place in the Champions Cup
and the 2nd place in the Cup Winners’ Cup;
in the 2000s he also was the coach of the Romanian national team,
obtaining the 4th place at the European Championship
and the 6th place at the World Championship,
the World League and the World Cup);

-Ion Codreanu (somewhere on the right, the unique adult man;
an excellent teacher of swimming;
after the Romanian Anticommunist Revolution - 1989 -,
he became for a while the director
of the Emil Racovita National Sportive College);

-Dragos Nanul (the first on the left, on the second row;
later, a national medalist for swimming as junior,
a rugby player as student in Medicine
and, after graduation, the doctor of the famous Grivita Rosie rugby club
and of the national rugby youth team;
after the Romanian Anticommunist Revolution - 1989 -,
he emigrated to the USA, where today he is a physician
and, occasionally, a coach for swimming and rugby).

One year later, in 1974,
Vlad, Ion, Dragos and I moved
to the Emil Racovita National Sportive College,
Dragos Nanul and I becoming colleagues
in the same special class of swimmers,
which we graduated in 1979.

And now, in 2019 May
Dragos announced a short visit to Romania,
an excellent occasion for a 40-year anniversary.

*

Awaiting the visit of Dragos Nanul to Romania,
I caught a few sequences of the sky
in between 2019 May 12 and 2019 May 22.

I also caught Jupiter on the right of the Moon
(the pre-morning of 2019 May 22)
and Saturn and Jupiter (in a tree!) also on the right of the Moon,
almost on the same line (the pre-morning of 2019 May 24).

Our first meeting took place on the evening of 2019 May 24
in a very good restaurant placed in a beautiful old hotel,
close to the North Railroad Station,
near the older building of the Polytechnic University.

Unfortunately, only five of the former twenty five high school colleagues
could be present (almost a half living in other countries today,
and those remained in Romania having other problems).

From left to right they were (except for the photographer):

-Karl Anton Doser (a national medalist for swimming as junior;
a few years ago he defeated a cancer and began to swim again,
obtaining, in the last years,
the 14th place at the European Swimming Veteran Championships in London
and the 12th place at the World Swimming Veteran Championships in Budapest,
and right in 2019
the 11th place at the World Swimming Veterans Championships in Seoul);

-Alexandru Grozescu (a national medalist for swimming as junior;
later he graduated the Academy of Sports
and returned to the Emil Racovita National Sportive College as a teacher,
where he created a national junior team of modern pentathlon
which he led to the 5th place at an European Championship;
then he opened a center of fitness);

-Doinita Florea (a very good swimmer as junior
and a woman with a great soul);

-and Dragos Nanul.

After I caught the sunset, later on that night I went further,
catching the star Arcturus
(in the central zone of the image, among the clouds).

The emotion of that meeting with so many memories made me,
one day later,
to go to see the current aspect of our old high school.

The Emil Racovita College
(named after one of the most famous Romanian scientists,
who made the first biological researches in the Arctic zone)
has assumed the past of a school founded in the 1840s.

The new building of this institution
(conceived by an important Romanian architect, Horia Creanga)
was inaugurated in 1941 with the participation of King Mihai I.

One of those who graduated this college in 1964 was even
the most famous popularizer of astronomy in Romania after World War II,
Dr. Harald Alexandrescu,
whose official teacher of mathematics and unofficial teacher of astronomy
was Zigmund Tauberg.

In 1974 this college became national sportive,
and many personalities in this fields
(athletics, swimming, water polo, basketball, gymnastics,
tennis, trampoline jumps etc.) studied here,
culminating with the genial gymnast Nadia Comaneci.

The unanimous joy of that meeting was so big that
we met again after two days,
in the courtyard of Karl Anton Doser.

On that afternoon, going to the Dristor quarter,
I remarked a bakery from the 18th century
and, surprisingly, a short street with the name of a constellation,
Capricornus (the Horn of the She-Goat or “Cornul Caprei” in Romanian).

Going further, another astral surprise,
which made me believe that
our 40-year celebration was blessed from the heights:
a solar halo over Saint Fanurie Church (made in the 1930s).

And the last surprise was the appearance, among us,
of our former teacher of mathematics,
Zigmund Tauberg (age 91 and 7 months),
the most longevous astropoet in the world
and a champion of pedagogical astropoetry
(the last picture of the next series, with Mr. Tauberg and me,
was taken by… Doinita Florea).

He launched in our reduced group
his new booklet, “Of Love”.

Finally, I chose the next excerpt from a poem
named “Birds of Dream”:

“I looked for a dream bird
through abstract universes,
discreet mathematic crowds
and compact connections,
but I delayed to the appointment,
I found out only a few leathers
and I tried to make wings from them
and to fly at least toward the first star…
but I couldn’t arrive too far!”
(Zigmund Tauberg,
English translation by Andrei Dorian Gheorghe)

All I could astropoetically do was
to reply through the next quatrain:

If now we cannot go
to the first star, sometimes
she comes to us
through a halo.