The Great Leap Forward

Why am I not posting about anything interesting lately?  Er...

The most interesting thing I've done this past week is clean the toilet bowl.  Really?  Really.  Unless you think watering plants is more interesting than cleaning toilet bowls.  In that case, I change my answer to: watering plants.

Household chores offer a respite from conjugating verbs.  Romanian verbs.  I have a tutor.  It's a good thing.  She's a good tutor.  By now its universally acknowledged that I need to start being forced to speak Romanian so I can make the Great Leap Forward into total fluency instead of this half-baked sort of partial understanding but still talking like a four year old kind of thing that I'm doing now.  Problem is, everyone tells me this in English.  I can't quite wrap my head around the absurdity of that part.  I'm thinking about getting t-shirts printed up: Do not speak to me in English.  But then the back would have to say Do not bring a translator either.  Cause that's what happens.  Really.  I showed up at my tutor's house and there was a translator there.  And then we all sat around for about 30 minutes and discussed how important it is for me to be forced to speak Romanian.  How necessary it is that I be shielded from English.  My tutor understands English quite well and I understand Romanian well enough that the two of us would get along PERFECTLY.  Because what would it force me to do?  Uh...would the answer to that be "speak in Romanian?"  I'll take that category for $200 Mr. Trebeck.

I'm not denying that I seem to lack the mental capacity to make the Great Leap Forward.  Yes, my deficit of quality grey matter is certainly a problem.  But there's this other hindrance which is that no one wants to be the one to slow down and speak clearly for any length of time so that I can converse.  I get it.  It's a drag to have to enunciate every word and rephrase, to not drop endings and use nonsensical slang.  It's like cleaning the toilet bowls: everyone knows it needs to be done but they wait for someone else to pick up the brush and start swirling.  In the meantime the nasty stuff grows and I am spoken to either in English or through Mihai.

Sometimes folks get irritated with the lack of progress so they just start ramming Romanian down our throats.  It's about as helpful as when you tell someone you're thirsty and they try to solve the problem by turning a fire hose on you.

You know who was awesome to speak with?  Danuţ.  I miss him.

The meetings are a fantastic resource of course.  I always feel as if I have made great strides when I leave.  Except in the heat it's tough.  My head lolls around and the sweat drips down my sides and every once in a while a breeze will come through the open window and wake me up.  "Huh?  Whaaa...?  Where are we?  Paragraph 15?"  And there stands poor Marin Baboş wishing someone would wake up from their heat-induced stupor and answer.  Anyone except the four brothers from the "old generation".  The Ceauşescu era. They're made of far sterner stuff than are the rest of us who wilt and sag in our comfortable chairs, roofs over our heads, glossy magazines on every lap.  How can they stand us I wonder?

The older generation speak no English.  Its good.  It forces me to progress.  The younger generation do (speak English that is) but they are shy about approaching us and even after all this time we haven't quite broken through yet.  Probably has something to do with our attendance at Gara Nord being sporadic since we have so many options of times and days and we disloyally go wherever it's the most convenient for us.  Shame.

But also there is just that inherent shyness that comes with speaking a foreign language.  It makes me laugh.  I want to say "Are you listening to my Romanian?  How can your English possibly be any worse?"  But the reluctance persists.

Excuses, excuses, I know.  Just like the smoker or the alcoholic I tell myself that I can quit speaking English any time I want.  And I'm going to start on Monday.  Right after I finish cleaning those toilet bowls.

(The Sleep of Reason Sui Jianguo. I saw this original piece at SFMOMA a few years ago.  The rivers and trees are made out of plastic dinosaurs.  It was so fantastic it gave me chills.)

Dog Days of Summer

A few posts ago did I say something about us having an unseasonably cool summer?
The mercury riseth.

But its okay, we adjust.  Wake up in the pre-dawn hours to get a few things done (like anything requiring the use of the oven) then lay around all afternoon in a heat-induced stupor, alternately dozing and sweating.  This latest heat-wave has coincided nicely with a reading spurt I'm going through.  End result: 11 books, 4 magazines so far.  I made it through the entire Hunger Games trilogy in four days.  Okay, admittedly that was a bit much.

Nearing the end of August, most folks will tell you that summer is winding down but anyone who has ever lived in California knows that in that piece of the globe, things are just starting to get good.  I'm California born and raised so I'm thinking of the heat.  And I'm worried.  But I have to remind myself that we're not in California, there is no early autumn heat wave expected in these parts.  So can I confidently count down the days of brutal temperatures?  I think so.  I hope so.
In the meantime I rely on the fan which serves multiple purposes: to circulate the hot air and to soften the noise of the barking dogs with its low frequency hum.

Humans aren't the only creatures that sleep during the heat of the day.  Dogs do too.  But dogs don't have books to read at night.  They bark.  And bark.  And bark.  Is it the dog version of a 10-keg rager or a white trash street brawl going on out there at 1 o'clock in the morning?  I really don't know.  Does the hedgehog that putters through our garden honestly deserve such a cacophony at 3 a.m?  I think not but then again, I'm not a dog so what do I know?  I don't really care what they do in the darkness so long as they are quiet about it.  But they have another agenda.

During the day I like our dogs.  Azor with his arthritis and grumpy disposition; Grivei who is by far the most attractive of the three but suffers from some sort of canine variety of Asperger's Syndrome and Fetiţa who belongs to the neighbors but she thinks its more fun on our side of the fence. She's a sycophant, that one, but its an acceptable trait in a dog who has been virtually abandoned by her owner.  In general they are sweet animals and although they won't seem to ever sit still enough for a decent photo, we have a good time running around on the hill and sharing bbq.  But they need to be quiet at night.  Because otherwise I'm. going. to. kill. them.

yeah, I know its a crappy picture of dogs.  You don't realize that this is the best of 37 shots.  

Some of you think a certain photographer should take photos of the dogs while they are sleeping during the day to ensure some decent pictures.  A certain photographer thought so too and a certain photographer recently braved the heat and went all the way to the top of the hill but could find no dogs.  They sequester themselves under bushes apparently.  Was I relishing the thought of banging pots and pans and gleefully disturbing their peaceful slumber?  Oh yes, I was. But my evil intentions were thwarted.
So instead my sweaty sojourn garnered me many photos of things looking hot, wilted and baked while I walked around complaining "its really miserable out here!" until some irritated soul leaned out the window and shouted "Yeah, dummy, that's why we're all inside sleeping so shut up!"    
touché monsieur
And now, a few photos of everything looking hot and withered and miserable.

Dawn breaks at 30 C

Some portions of our hill are quite steep.  When it rains the slopes become slippery.  Someone apparently had the idea that pouring cement pieces on the ground would provide traction.  It works really well if your idea of a good time is having your skin ripped off by chucks of gravel as opposed to merely falling in mud.

Okay, it has no bearing on anything but I included it because it irritated me and I'm pretty stinking hot and irritated these days.  So that's what makes it relevant to this post.
Sorry.  The heat has awoken The Irascible Knight formerly known as Leigha and these days I swing wide and often with my sword of sarcasm. When the thermometer climbs no higher than 27 I will return to the more pleasant version of myself and the sword will make only rare and brief appearances.
Ah, let's conclude before we sink further, shall we?
I realize that last week marked the six-month, half-way point in our journey.  It came and went with no comment from me.  Well, we never said we'd be gone exactly a year anyway which is my excuse for not acknowledging the milestone of either the halfway point of our trip nor the 50th posting on this blog.  Really, I never thought I would have the stick-to-it-ivness to keep going this long.  Thank you all for enduring and tuning in although why you do at times remains a mystery.  It's the photos of lattes, isn't it?  I knew it.

Romanian Life: Shopping (a primer)

Let's begin.

Lesson One: There is no such thing as customer service here.

I don't mean like when you go to Home Depot on the first warm Saturday in spring and it takes you 20 minutes to locate a sales associate who breathlessly informs you that the potting soil you seek is on aisle 12 and then rushes off to assist the other 400 customers needing help and you think to yourself "gee, there's just no customer service in this place."

No.

I mean like when you walk into a store where you are the only customer and where there are half a dozen employees who stare you down like they are Russian models at a private party and you've somehow sneaked past the bouncers and uncovered their exclusive suite.  (Note to any young men reading: don't stop here and rush to a buy plane ticket. The employees don't look like Russian models, they just act like them. Sorry, I know I got your little hearts racing for a second there.)

During the initial moments of this wordless rebuffing, your first reaction may be to apologize and back out, offering some lame excuse about trying to find the door to the toilet but then you stop yourself because it dawns on you that this is a retailer who is ostensibly in business with the goal of selling you merchandise for some sort of profit.  Lesson Two:  if you are ever going to shop in this country you will need to develop two necessary attributes: 1) the determination of a dieting bridesmaid, three days before the wedding and 2) the obtuseness of a celebrity interviewer. Easier said than done.

And to that end, let me disabuse you of any American preconceived expectations. (Forewarned is forearmed, yes?). First, in no way, shape or form are the employees interested in how your day is going and if you are finding everything you're looking for. The predominating interest will rest in intimidating you off the premises so they don't have to be bothered with you at all. At that point they can resume their primary activity which involves leaning laconically against vertical surfaces and performing an in-depth examination of their fingernails.

The second thing you need to know up front is that nothing you request will be clear or convenient for the employee.  Its not a language thing; you can be a native Romanian and still have this issue.  Whatever you ask, it will at first appear to be extremely confusing and then extremely tiresome.  Even if you are in a shop which only sells pastries and you ask to buy some pastries, this will be very confusing to the person who is working at the pastry-only shop.  They will look at you with an expression that suggests you have told them you need to use their backyard for an afternoon of sea turtle racing.

My advice is that you try a pastry shop or two and get the hang of that before you attempt something requiring more staff involvement such as shoe shopping.

Your shoe shopping experience will probably look something like this: you approach the nail-examining employee and ask if you might try on a particular pair of shoes in a size 36.  The employee then glances briefly at the sample which you took from their display and asks "This style?" in a tone that suggests you found this shoe in a random garbage can 2 miles away and just brought it in to mess with them.

This brings us to the third point which is that you must not make the mistake of thinking that you will be expected or even encouraged to try anything on. You see, its enough that the pair of size 36 shoes have been located and handed to you, is it not? You asked and received which has gone far beyond what the employee clearly believes should be expected of them. To wait around while you slip your old shoe off and this new one on is really asking an awful lot. Yet wait they do, all the while observing your shoe testing with an expression that suggests you lack the intelligence to understand the concept of shoe sizing. It would seem there are no variances to Romanian feet: no high instep or narrow heels. A 36 is a 36 is a 36. Period. You don't go and ask for a 36.5 to compare. This request will garner you a look that would wither stone and you imagine the story being told over a beer later that evening:

“And this American, she's so dumb, she doesn't even know what size her foot is.”

“No wonder they can't balance their national budget.”

The end result of all of this business is that you may or may not go home with a new pair of shoes that may or may not fit properly. Be prepared for that.  Bring plenty of spares from the States which is a challenge it itself since new airline standards have reduced your alloted luggage weight to 10 grams, barely enough for underwear and toothbrush.  Well you can try and wear more than one pair on the airplane but that's a rather complicated trick and difficult to pull off without raising the hair-trigger suspicions of the FAA employees.
Or you could ship a container from the States which involves traveling to a shipyard, filling out customs forms, paying three separate customs houses as your package travels the world en route to its final destination where you will have to provide a blood sample and barter the life of your first born in order to obtain the release of your own property.
But its always good to know that you have those two options if you need to avail yourself of them.  
Anything is easier than shopping here.

Some things just don't translate well at all....

Fish egg salad is in these packages, for those of you who are curious.  Don't want to be an irresponsible blogger and fail to provide important information (Leng)
And my father would say there is no problem with the translation as it stands.

Trains

I know I have made many less-than-flattering observations about Romania (in other words, I complain like a ninny) but there is one thing that I love: the trains.  I wish we had trains like this in the U.S.  Or California more specifically.  There is something so liberating about getting on a train, knowing that you don't have to worry over parking or filling the gas tank or how many ounces of fluid you have in your suitcase and whether or not you will have to endure the hairs growing between your brows while you are on vacation because you are not allowed to bring tweezers on an airplane. (could someone really not defend themselves against tweezers?) No traffic jams, no pot holes, just the soothing rhythm of the wheels on the tracks and the luxury of listening to your MP3 while the landscape rushes by.
Trains, I love you.

Bucharest

Last week we hopped on a train and, instead of going north to the mountains as per our usual, we headed east in order to spend a few days in Bucharest.  
Silvia and Cornel, Vali and Simona, all residents of this city, have been asking when we would manage a visit but things were continuously derailing our plans.  Things such as the fact that I dislike Romanian cities and Mihai hates the heat and Bucharest is a hot, Romanian city.  Or so we thought (well, it's still a city, that fact remains).  
The last time I spent any length of time in the capital was in 2006 when various members of the Gogosanu family and I went on a 3-hour midnight walking tour.  Even at midnight the temperature was in the low 90s and as I recall, we hung out in the subway for no other reason than to catch the breeze from the trains as they rushed in and out of the station.  File that under "coping with the heat, Romanian style". 
Although it was a 3-hour walking tour, it was also midnight and dark, so I didn't get a clear picture of the city.
During a 2009 trip we again stayed with Vali and Simona in Bucharest for a few days but we hardly ever left their apartment because it was winter and we were having too much fun talking and eating Simona's cooking.  Going out into the cold and away from her food just to see some buildings seemed like a very silly idea.
This is my usual long-winded way of saying that I've never really spent much time in Bucharest and one day as I was talking to Silvia, who was born and raised there, and I realized we really should check it out.  It's the capital of the country, after all, and there are important bits of history we should see for the boys' educational benefit if nothing else.  
Which brings us to our visit last week.
To start with, Silvia and Cornel's house kind of blew my whole "Bucharest is a hot, noisy, dirty city in the summer" mantra right out of the water.  Believe it or not, their house is lovely and cool and quieter than our house in the little village of Obedin, population 375.  Yes, its true.  Unlike our place, their house is on a side street which gets almost no traffic, they have quiet neighbors and the only dog to be heard is their dog, Max.  
Max has a tongue that lolls fantastically out of the side of his mouth but do you think Max, being three, was interested in staying still for me to get a photo of this charming side-ways tongue?  Max was not.  
This is the only photo I have of Max that is not a blur of black...

We lounged on their patio under a canopy of grape vines and played games in the cool of the evening (well, some of us played and some of us drank beer and one of us had to stand and pace due to an annoying recurrence of sciatic pain).

And then we toured the city: the Historic Museum, downtown, the Athenaeum, Carul cu Bere (which I remember from 2006 and it turns out its just as much of a scene during the day as it was back then at midnight) and of course, Palatul Parlamentului.

When you stop and contemplate the history and significance of Palatul Parlamentulul, it feels somehow in bad form to tour there.  Granted, I've never been a fan of visiting government buildings or monuments (particularly the notion of paying money to gain entrance into buildings which my tax dollars have ostensibly already funded). I know there are some very well-intentioned people holding public offices but generally these large, overly chandeliered places remind me of the undeniable truth of "man dominating man to his injury".
I'm not an expert on Romanian political history.  If you want more details, ask Marius because he's the one who can really tell you.  Or ask someone who lived through the Ceauşescu years.  And that's what I mean, I suppose, when I say that touring his palace felt a little uncomfortable.  Because I know the stories of what was going on at the time and what Mihai's family, friends, and all of the other regular folk in the country were enduring while this colossus was being constructed.  Food shortages, power outages, petrol rationing, arrests, imprisonments...

So seeing the famous rug that weighs 5 tons, the marble columns and stair cases, the draperies made from silk, and standing on the balcony that looks out onto a replica of the Champs-Elysees (1 meter wider than the Champs-Elysses to assuage the ego of Nicolae Ceauşescu) ...well, left me with the sensation that I was rubber-necking at a crash site.  
It's one of those times when you tell your kids "See this thing? This is your object lesson as to why x, y and z are wrong" and hope that it really sinks in.  Unless they just end up spending so much time mimicking Fred Armisen's SNL skit about marble columns* that the big picture is utterly lost on them.  (Ah...the apathy produced by too much television strikes modern youth again.)


Socio-political lessons aside, the real point of our trip was to hang out with Silvia, Cornel and Max and this we did with great pleasure.  Along the way we at last got to see the city above ground in the day time and its really not half bad considering how many years it suffered under communism and the struggle to rebuild itself after the dismantling of the Eastern Bloc.   

When the tour was over we gave ourselves a break from thinking about deranged dictators and had a late lunch at a lovely restaurant in a park. It was cool and quiet in keeping with the overall theme of our visit. As the train pulled out of the station, taking us back home, we waved a grateful good-bye to Silvia and Cornel and thanked them for their kind hospitality and for changing my mind about Bucharest at last!

*Since you readers at home might not be up on your Fred Armisen skits, I am  including the link.  



http://www.clipjunkie.com/SNL---Marble-Columns-vid1119.html


(I hope it works and it doesn't connect anyone to anything unsavory.  I checked it out and it was safe and clean when I used it on this end of the globe.)

The Sounds of Silence

A soft-baked post because really, I am torn between posting nothing at all and providing a torturous blow-by-blow of the mundane details of our lives these days. Which is worse?

I know if I go too long I will start getting those pesky emails about when the next installment is coming.   (did I really say pesky?)

Oh, the pressure. This is why I can never pursue a career as a newspaper columnist.

We are alone here. Really alone, just the four of us. I had forgotten what it's like. It turns out it goes something like this: stretches of silence that go on for 30 minutes or more and the floors only need to be vacuumed every few days. Do I sound like I'm complaining? I'm not.

When you are a senior (60+) living in a country with socialized medicine you are provided with a once-a-year government funded vacation at the thermal bath resort of your choice. 18 days. If you are disabled from cancer treatment or an accident, you can do this twice a year. If you are disabled, your train ticket, hotel and meals are all free. If you are merely a senior with full use of your limbs and faculties you pay 50% of the cost.

So I have socialized medicine to thank for 18 days of blessed silence and clean floors.

We're continuing with the fence project by default. Although we have an exciting idea to build a permanent bbq and pergola near the shade of the walnut tree, neither Mihai nor I had come up with any sort of workable plan within a reasonable time frame. Instead, we ran off to the mountains one weekend and when we returned a whole new load of sand was being delivered and we realized to our great consternation that we had missed our window of opportunity. So we're reaping the fruits of our disorganization by grilling on a make-shift grate about the size of a laptop, held up by a stack of concrete pavers. But the work crew didn't have to lose precious summer work days due to our lack of foresight which turns out to be good for them so I must find contentment in that fact even while I'm complaining about the rickety and inadequate bbq set up.

These days there are six men here with us. Foanză is the overseer. In July Cosmin took off for a summer job cherry picking in the Czech Republic so there have been some new faces to get used to. Its always fun when Mihai runs to the city to get something or other and I'm left trying to decipher the words for “cutting blade” and “the power drill without the broken handle.” Foanză and I have come to understand each other more or less. He knows its important to use hand gestures to describe what he's looking for and he knows to expect that I will stare blankly for a long time before I come up with something. We've got it worked out. But the new guys really don't know what to do with me and when they come to the door now they just say “is Mr. Mihai here?” and when I answer yes, the relief on both sides is palpable.


And now for the weather...
Lately I've been waking up not knowing where I am.  No sounds of my father-in-law conversing with Titel in his normal volume which is something between a shout and a full-blown battle cry.  ("Titel-e!" he cries and one always expects to hear "rush that machine-gun nest!  Come on, men, to victory!!!" afterward.) 
And there is a flock of chickens nearby suffering from a crisis of identity.  They think they are seagulls.  It's the weirdest thing to be hanging laundry and hear the distinct cry of gulls in the air.  I look around, thinking I've undergone teleportation to the seaside but no, it's the neighbor's odd breed of chickens.  
And I'm sleeping with pajamas and a blanket and sometimes socks.  It's August.  And before August it was July (for those of you who wonder if the months are the same here in Romania as in the rest of the world, now you know the answer).  I get up and take a look around: yep, still in Obedin, and it's still summer.  And it's cool and quiet.


Do I sound like I'm complaining?  I'm not.

Scenes from our impulsive trip to the mountains:

reminds me strangely of the American West

 Our sunflowers. Glorious.

Rummaging around in the attic I found these ventuze - to draw the fever out of the skin.  Yes, really.  I got all Martha-Stewart-y and used them to decorate the table for the crew's lunch.  Their reaction was so underwhelming you would think that grown, hard-laboring men do not care about such things.  If Mihai was embarrassed for me he hardly let it show.