It’s spring. It’s quite cold for early March, but let’s blame it on being a “mountain area”. After a stroll along the boulevard full of stalls with flowers and mărțișoare that make you wonder “If I can barely stand this cold, how can the salespeople?”, you arrive near St Nicoară park.

You want to go up to the ruins, but three girls catch your eye on one of the benches. They’re laughing too loudly, but you can tell they don’t care. They eat ICECREAM and you say to yourself, again, “Is it me?”.

It’s summer. It’s been a few months and now the weather is perfect for a walk so you can enjoy the smell of the linden trees. This time nothing distracts you, you climb straight up to St. Nicoară. When you reach the ruins, three familiar laughs disturb the silence of the place. They seem to belong here, they’re always here. Curiosity urges you to take a look inside the ruins, but you don’t want to interrupt them, so you move on.

It’s autumn. You know what they say, third time’s the charm. You hope that this time you’ll visit the entire ruin. And you do. When you come down, you notice them. Of course they’re still there. They are taking photos among the leaves, to be in tune with everyone else on Insta.

It’s winter. You don’t need an introduction, you know they’re there even without checking. They’re exchanging Christmas presents on the same bench.

You let more time pass. It’s autumn again. But there’s a change. There are only two girls now. You wonder what happened to the third.

You know we miss her, but we’ll see her again in the summer. And if you come back in a year, the bench will be empty. In ten, we’ll come back as “tourists with memories” and I’ll want to go back in time, to sit on that bench with my two friends.

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Mărțișor (Romanian pronunciation: [mərt͡siˈʃor]) is a tradition celebrated at the beginning of spring in March in Romania and Moldova, involving an intertwined red and white string with hanging tassels and a small token or trinket attached. The modern tradition involves wearing a small object on the chest, such as a brooch or a pin, during the first part of the month, starting on the 1st of March. Its name is a diminutive of "Martie", the Romanian word for March, and means "little March".