exchange

The day began auspiciously enough. Before I had as much as walked down the road outside my house, I saw two BT vans going by, purposefully, it seemed to me. Around the corner and still within shouting distance of home, I saw a BT engineer kneeling before a small roadside cabinet not unlike the wayside shrines you see in Catholic countries. The man wasn't praying, though. He was up to his elbows in a dense tangle of wires that spilled through the open doors of the cabinet, unplugging and reconnecting the sockets that were visible behind. Was that the exchange that the Orange service guys kept talking about? I admit that I have only a vague idea of a telephone exchange, one colored by personal experience from many years ago.

In the summer of 1996, two friends and I spent three weeks in Romania, walking and hiking in places that were not simply off the beaten path but squarely off the map. The country had come out of the dark ages of Ceaușescu and then gone through six years of confusion that went unnoticed by the outside world. Spending our summer there was a plunge into the unknown for the three of us, a true adventure.

The first week we spent walking through the countryside of Transylvania, connecting, by a chain of footsteps, villages that had, only ten years earlier, been home to families of German descent that had lived there for generations. They settled there as early as the 12th century, some dropping out of the Crusades to lead a quiet life in the countryside, others actively recruited by the King of Hungary. Their presence at the fringes of the Western world became an important security concern. The threat of the Ottoman Empire was looming over centuries. The Transylvanian Saxons, as they were known, found safety by encircling their churches with up to three defensive walls, turning them into veritable fortresses that could shelter the entire village for weeks and stall the progress of armies from the east.

By the time we got there, most ethnic Germans were gone, thanks to a law allowing anyone claiming German descent to gain German citizenship. But a few were left, and with the help of sketchy directions, we searched them out. Every time, we were welcomed, sheltered and fed with the warmth and generosity that come with true poverty.

In the village of Biertan, famous for having the mightiest fortified church of all, our rural walk was nearly over. The next day, we'd see a town for the first time in a week. While my friends improvised an evacuation hospital and treated, like true heroes, the blisters on their feet with sewing needles, I decided to call my dad and reassure him that we were still alive, not evident at a time when the evening news in Germany were dominated by Romanian organized crime.

I stepped into the post office and communicated my wish. No problem. The lady behind the counter swiveled in her chair until she faced a cupboard. She opened its doors, put a headset on and began to plug cables into gleaming sockets. The setup in front of her looked rock-solid. Beside the brass sockets and heavily snaking cables were wooden knobs and enameled plaques. Early in the 20th century, Romania rolled out was then the most advanced telephone system in the world. In 1996, I understood the concept of quality and durability.

The lady talked to the next lady down the line (names of cities were the only thing I could understand) and adjusted the position of the cables in front of her according to what the person at the other end, sitting in front of similar kit, was saying. Over the next forty-five minutes, the lady swung from exchange to exchange, stringing together the segments that would build my connection. Even if I hadn't talked to my dad in the end, watching her work the magic of telecommunications (before it had become entirely black-box) would have been worth it.

So – and this is quite a mental leap – maybe the guy on his knees was fixing my line. But I didn't care. I as said yesterday, I wasn't going to pursue the matter any further. Too much time and money have been wasted already. But then in the afternoon I missed a call from Belfast and then, a second later, got another, from the same number. It was Stephen from Orange. He wanted to follow up on the fault report.

Things were looking up, he said. The problem had been fixed. The evidence? He was calling me on my landline. My reminder that all my calls are forwarded to my cell phone put a bit of a dent in his good mood, but he stayed optimistic. "Please check that you have a dial tone tonight. I'll call back tomorrow to see if we can close this fault."

I opened my door with considerable anticipation tonight. I tiptoed into my living room and carefully approached the long-neglected phone. I picked it up. I pressed redial and then the green call button. There was a moment of silence. I held my breath. The moment stretched. The silence only broke when I slammed the phone back into its cradle. Nothing had been fixed. Ten minutes later I realized that my internet is now also gone, and with it my second line. This is not the last post on the subject.