We began to see the first pointy haystacks that are characteristic of rural Romania. I have never seen haystacks like these anywhere in the world, and I watch for them. There are countless popular sayings involving haystacks. "Timişoara," someone told me, "was the spark over a very dry haystack." With snow on them they looked like the peasants' lambskin hats. They are baled by hand by young people who work singing until way past dusk on long summer days. When the stars come out, they fall exhausted on the hay, and many romances begin that way. By winter the romancers have married, and the hungry cows eat the snowy hay. In the days of the Turkish occupation highwaymen used to hide in the haystacks from the Turkish patrols, which would stab the haystacks at random to see if anyone was there. Angry fathers whose daughters hadn't come home for supper would likewise pitchfork their stacks. Many a curious scar, called the love fork, adorned the young men of rural Romania. I had always loved the touchingly tender way the Romanian haystacks dot the fields, a kind of writing legible only to crows.
                                                                             Andrei Codrescu The Hole in the Flag