Deciding where to stay during my aventurile ieșene had been a bit of a conundrum – three weeks is an awkward sort of timeframe. Had it been shorter, I would have booked a room in a hotel or a B&B or something. Had it been longer, I would have looked for a “proper” short-term rental. Had I been thirty years younger I may even have toyed with the idea of looking for a room in a student house.

But realistically, the only affordable option was going to be found in the holiday rental market which was unfortunate, as I hold real antipathy towards holiday rentals.

Admittedly I had let two of my former homes out to holidaymakers, but both times during a period of transition as I moved from one country to another, which then segued into a brief period of reflection about what to do next, and ended with me selling at just the right time to incur a sizeable loss. ON BOTH OCCASIONS. I may have been translating real estate documents for a living for well over a decade, but that is apparently as close as I will ever get to being a property mogul.

So when it comes to short-term holiday lets that are not my own (wink), I stand shoulder to shoulder with Jaume Collboni, Mayor of Barcelona, who has vowed to outlaw them in his city by 2028. They are ruinous to local housing markets and social fabric, and I imagine they are not doing the hotel industry much good either. In a society where many can barely afford one roof over their heads, hoarding two or more roofs in order to fill your pockets (and push up local property prices) instead of providing local people with an affordable long-term rental, is something I believe should be discouraged.

However, pesky principles having been gagged and hogtied for the purposes of this trip, when the loquacious Uber driver hoofed me out in the centre of Iași I was able to stride into a nearby apartment building like a true ieșeancă (a woman from Iași) as opposed to just a turistă. With my 30kg suitcase, 10kg backpack and overfull tote bag, it certainly looked as if I was there for the long run.

I say stride in, but it actually took me a while to find the door. The building had one street number (plus a “bis” – “again” a planning afterthought similar to the 1a High Street you find nestling inexplicably between 1 High Street and 2 High Street), and four entrances, each with a different letter. And while I could clearly see three of the letters situated above three entrance doors spaced at intervals along the front of the block, my letter was made conspicuous by its absence.

Given that the instructions I had been sent indicated it to be in the “bis” section, I peered around both ends of the building in search for a nestling architectural add-on Nothing. I even wandered over to check the edifices on either side. Still nothing.

It was only upon spotting an extremely small sign extremely high up on a side wall, that I eventually found my “bis”, and subsequently my letter and my door. It was nothing more than the back entrance to the very same block, and had been hiding behind some bins and along a very narrow path I had previously mistaken for a gutter.

Any squeamishness I might have felt about giving in to the lure of a holiday rental was quashed the moment I opened the door (the website photographs had apparently been taken from very optimistic angles). Situated on the lower ground floor – the windows sills level with the pavement – the studio consisted of a largish bedroom, a small dark bathroom strongly perfumed with eau de stagnation, and a tiny galley kitchen with a table that had been ambitiously provided with two chairs. Both the kitchen and the bedroom had reasonably large windows, but in order to prevent pedestrians peering in to watch you lazing around on the bed, or sitting at the kitchen table sipping tea in your pants, the net curtains had to remain closed at all times. And as soon as you were forced to switch on a light, the “proper” curtains had to be drawn over the top for the very same reason.

Strada Cuza Vodă, although not choked with traffic, did offer a steady thrum of cars whisking to and fro. But what really rattled the windows and filled the apartment with dust so fine it even managed to bypass the anti-insect mesh, were the trams.

The fabulous trams of Iași were to become my passion. Despite passing within about 10 metres of my head as I lay in bed each night, their screeches and rattles soon provided a welcome and relaxing soundtrack to my perimenopausal insomnia. They lulled me to sleep at bedtime, greeted me when I popped awake like bloody clockwork an hour and a half later for no bloody reason whatsoever, and kept me company while I failed to get back to sleep until four or five in the bloody morning.

(There are those who age like fine wine, but not me. Nope. I have chosen to whine into enraged decline.)

Other than the little bits of information imparted by Magda, I knew next to nothing about Iași before I arrived in the city. I had poured over no maps, studied no street plans and scrolled through no tourism websites.

Winging it has always been my preferred way to travel. It provides the opportunity to learn a place by experiencing it. By wandering the streets with the sole purpose of absorbing it though sights, sounds, smells, even tactility – I am constantly running my fingers along walls and railings and trees and benches and statues (no need to worry – I make sure to wash them afterwards).

I have no desire to arrive laden with pre-conceived notions or a military-grade plan of conquest for must-see monuments: I want only to amble aimlessly, fold-away street map on hand for emergencies, stopping for regular coffee breaks in order to indulge my life-long people-watching habit. I enjoy coming across interesting or historic areas of a city almost by accident, and even then, I do not always read up about them. What a philistine.

So aside from the accommodation, the only other prior preparations for my stay had been booking languages lessons at Lektor, and making contact with Andreea, a Romanian and German teacher who had answered my Facebook plea for additional language lessons.

I was delighted to discover that Lektor was no more than a three-minute walk from my apartment. A walk that took me past the Filarmonica MOLDOVA Iași on my right – sadly in the process of being refurbished so hidden behind scaffolding – and the OPERA NAȚIONALĂ ROMÂNĂ IAȘI on my left. Had I known all of this before setting off down the road I would certainly have been deprived of that thrilling frisson of joyful excitement at finding myself in such close proximity to two cultural power houses.

At Lektor I met the lovely Madalina, the Romanian teacher faced with the thankless prospect of three weeks attempting to break down the mental blockage preventing my progress in the language. With the lessons duly paid for, and the lesson times booked (hopefully all without embarrassing myself too severely in my enthusiastic but impoverished Romanian), I set out to cross off the next task on my list: the purchase of a Romanian SIM card.

This was struck with the unforeseen complication of my phone already housing two SIM cards: a UK number and an Italian one. Due to a complete absence of any technical competence, I was forced to ask the saleswoman’s assistance in physically swapping the UK card for the Romanian one, as well as activating my new number. I explained that I needed the Italian sim for the purposes of Whatsapp, but, convinced of my cluelessness, she persisted in trying to remove it. Thankfully we eventually reached an understanding, by which time I was red and sweaty from the exertion of explaining, the conviction I was doing it very badly and the humiliation of it all playing out in front of a growing line of curious customers.

Feeling slightly euphoric at having survived such an intense introduction to Romanian language immersion, I had just enough time to enjoy a well-earned coffee and a spot of watching the world go by while I waited for my very first meeting with Andreea.