Village LIfe part 10: The return of the Italians

"You can't go home again"
So said Thomas Wolfe

I'm wondering if this is true for folks who have two homes; one on one continent, one on another. Does the rule still apply? Is it less true the more homes you have or does it, in fact, become more true? Is it division or multiplication? Addition or subtraction? Where does the quadratic equation come in to play?

I realize this a supposed to be a travel blog where we discuss fun and exciting things which means I should not get math involved. Getting math involved is like starting a wedding speech discussing the results of your colonoscopy. Sure it's a necessary procedure but no one wants to hear about it and you force everyone to think about the details of their own most recent bowel movement and that just brings everyone down when they should be thinking about how many slices of cake they'll get and if the DJ will play their favorite hits from the 80's.

Frankly, I'm already down, which has nothing to do with the state of my GI tract and everything to do with being a bit travel-weary and probably even more to do with becoming emotionally overwrought at the thought of having to leave Romania so soon after we've arrived.

Not that Italy wasn't wonderful, not that I want to sound ungrateful for having been given the opportunity to spend three weeks galavanting around Europe. No. But we've had so little time at home. And by home I mean that place where you can lay on the couch eating popcorn, using your pajamas as a napkin while you watch mindless TV.  Home is where your hand knows where all of the light switches are without having to think twice, where you can make it to the toilet at 3 a.m, half asleep, and not wake up in the morning to discover you actually urinated in the closet.

I like being home, whether it's Santa Cruz home or Obedin home. Being home is pretty much my favorite thing.

So I suppose I'm down because during this trip we didn't stay in our Obedin home for very long. Instead we spent most of our time overeating in Italy.

We managed to be here long enough to do the necessary things like pay our taxes and get the boys' passports renewed. But there are other important things that make a trip home feel like a trip home: freeze a bottle of Fanta and make Fanta slushies, go to the school and play on the playground, watch an episode of Romania Au Talent, have a BBQ with Maru, be spoken to in Italian.*

Mihai and I unfortunately (but rather unsurprisingly given the lack of sleep we were getting) came down with a flu/cold and were unable to do our traditional 2-3 hour winter hike up the hill. We had to be satisfied with a sneeze-filled stroll down to the end of the village and back. So that's another thing I missed out on and am lamenting.

However, as we went about on our mucus-filled stroll, there was comfort in seeing that things haven't changed much. Yes, you still need to make sure your tetanus shots are current before you go down the slide in the schoolyard. Yes, drivers still use our little road like the Daytona Grand Prix.

So in that respect, Tomas Wolfe is wrong. You can go home again but you've just got to give yourself sufficient time in order to absorb the experience.

Unrelated to emotional angst, another problem with cutting things short is that when you go home and only leave yourself a few days for picture taking, you run the risk of having nothing but a string of overcast skies as your backdrop. This does not make for very appealing photos. But not every photo from a wedding is frame-worthy, right? Yet you keep them all because in each of them there is some moment caught, a memory that is evoked and for me, when I'm back in the States and looking at these images, it will remind me what it feels like to be home again.

Maru and his children

Foanta. We came across him repairing a neighbor's wall. Working as always.

Christy's grandmother

Irina, our faithful hiking companion. Growing up to be a stunning young woman.

Gigil, Nicolina, Alex (the other two you know)

The high schoolers (formerly known as the kids from the gradinita)

Bar-b-que and loafing on a Sunday.

Last but not least: Silvia.
Yes I know that after waiting so long I should have given you something other than a distant side shot but you know how I have no skill at photographing people. Must be an Italian thing.

*It has been brought to my attention by new readers that this Italian business appears to make little sense. I would refer you to this post: Village Life Part 2: Natural from 2011 April for an explanation.

http://zikebikediaries.blogspot.com/2011/04/village-life-part-2.html

Seasons

The earth has music for those who listen.
                 - Shakespeare

I've lived in an area with four distinct seasons before.
I was younger then and apparently possessed more sebacious glands.

The cold air has made a wreck of my skin.

Around here, during the autumn and spring, you feel like you have a good relationship with the earth. As if you're friends, the kind that finish each other's sentences and show up to events wearing similar outfits without even planning to.
Then in the summer the mercury soars and things change.  You catch the earth sneaking up behind you with a knife in its hand.  Sure, it chuckles in that affable manner you thought you could trust.  It says, "I was just going to chop a few onions here."  heh heh.  You go back to what you were doing and try to forget about it.  It was nothing, just a hot spell.  No harm no foul.
Then winter comes.  The mercury plummets.  The earth no longer pretends to be Professor Xavier.  The retractable bone claws come out and take a swipe at you.
No more games here.  Now you know.  The earth is trying to kill you.
(but, like, Hugh Jackman, it looks so good while doing so)

Village Life part 9: Snow Days

During the last snowstorm the road into our village became impassable.  It was so bad that one afternoon the national roads were officially closed.  Which didn't stop people from driving on them.  I know cars were on the road because someone used one to hit our dog.  A car I mean.
The dog is fine which only served to reinforce in the driver's mind that he was not only completely justified in using roads that are closed but speeding on them as well.
Figures.
Walking around Obedin became even more hazardous than before which I had not thought possible.
In the end it was alright because the kids didn't have to venture out after all. THE SCHOOLS WERE CLOSED.
Oh glory.

How to spend all that free time...

if you scroll fast so it's like a movie

or not

Once again I've over done it with the photos.

I apologize.  (I type the words but my heart doesn't really feel the remorse).

You might recognize this house.  Or, if you're one of the readers who has a life (all of you I hope), you might not.
It's the house next door which is now technically ours since we apparently purchased it.  You'd think I would know more details about these major acquisitions but I don't.  

It's currently unihabited which makes it the perfect Snowball Fight Battle Ground.  I think eventually Maru and his family will move there which will make us neighbors.  I have only one request of him: no Euro Disco after midnight.  

Village Life part 8: When It Snows

I haven't referred to a Fred Armisen SNL skit in a long time. But that doesn't mean he isn't ever-present in my thoughts. (Ah, Mr. Armisen...may I call you Fred?)  Today's post brings us here: as a prelude.

Some people long for hustle and bustle.  Some folks love big cities with their lights and noise and the sense of excitement and importance that comes from a never-ending variety of things to do involving crowds and clamor.

You won't find me in that category.  A hurried, agitated life has never seemed remotely appealing. This might have more to do with being inherently, incurably lazy rather than the fact that I am an introvert.  I take no particular pride nor shame in this confession.  It is what it is.

But being an introvert means, rather than reacting with horror at the recent record-breaking amounts of snow-fall, I am overjoyed.  To be able to use the weather as an excuse to remain isolated from the rest of humankind feels like a benediction rather than a curse.  The snow is veritable manna.

I don't know how many introverts there are in Obedin.  Something tells me people around here have better things to think about than what en vogue personality type they belong to.  But introverts or extroverts, everyone eventually needs to get out and shovel their driveways clear.  Just as eventually I realized that if I am ever to rid myself of this 8 lbs of travel-acquired, food-overindulgence, I must get out of the house and move.

So we're back to walking through the village these days.  And everywhere we see the same ingredients for our visual stew: piles of snow, shovels, cold hands, sweaty brows.

This woman is 82. I dislike infantilizing the elderly. I know she can shovel that whole mess herself.  But should she have to?  Not while my fat roll is present, just begging for a little to be sweated away.

There were other ladies shoveling across the road and, for once, very few cars passing by.  About one every quarter of an hour.  I suppose that makes it as good a time as any to start talking about dead husbands and children. Sharing death stories in the cold quiet of a winter afternoon with our breath hanging in the air and the rhythmic scrape of shovel into snow.
Those are the times when you put your camera away and just listen.

Foanza was down the road a bit hanging out at the tractor factory, helping them clear their roof and yard.
Photographing on such a gray day is really difficult because the camera can't figure out where to focus.  But it didn't matter to Foanza, he wanted an action shot and wouldn't quit shoveling.  Not even when he was looking back over his shoulder to grin for the camera, throwing snow willy-nilly.

A professional photographer would have no problem with the monochromatic background.  But of course I'm not a professional by any stretch.  So I struggle.

But I love how the snow and sky act as a canvas for the fences and gates.  I have walked by these every day for a year and I've never noticed the colors in half of them until the snows came.

The snow has made the village new.  So I'm back to carrying my camera whenever we venture out.
I suppose the presence of the camera morphs me into someone foreign once more. People stop and stare as if seeing me for the first time.  "Doamna, pentru ce aveti aparatul de fotografiat?" Why do you have that camera? they ask.
"Ca sa pozez zapada." I am taking pictures of the snow I reply.  "Nu ninge unde locuisec." It doesn't snow where I live.
A quizzical tilt of the head.  "Zau?  Am crezut ca ninge in Italia."
Really?  I thought it snowed in Italy. 

Village Life part 7: Măru

Normally I am very industrious and hard-working, suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder.  Which means in California I do all of my own yard maintenance and house cleaning.  But here it's a different story.  This place is 10x larger than our place in Santa Cruz. No matter how much the disorganization of my in-laws stokes the flames of my OCD, they will never get it to burn hot enough to manage the enormity that is Villa Ionescu.

In the end it got the better of me but it wasn't for lack of obsessing trying.

So we hired Maru, he of the mad cow incident this past summer. *

As I might have mentioned before, employment opportunities around here aren't so plentiful.
Though he's never said it, I'm guessing that being our maintenance guy isn't Maru's first choice for a job but at least it's a pay check.  We do our best to make it as palatable as possible by supplying him with
food and libations while he chops wood and pours new concrete for the driveway and what not.  All in all, we spend a lot of time with Maru as he's either hanging out in the kitchen drinking coffee or we're hanging out with him in the snow trying to coax him into putting on a pair of warmer gloves.

Way back in October he threw a party for his baby daughter.  She was baptized in the Romanian Orthodox church and then apparently it's traditional to have a bit of a shin-dig afterward.  I think of it as a variation of the American baby shower but without the pink and blue froo-froo decorations.
A hard-core baby shower with beer.  The kind most American men would like to go to.  The kind where no one asks them to play 'guess-how-many-squares-of-toilet-paper-go-around-my-wife's-belly" while drinking fruit punch with orange slices.

It was kind of a big deal.  Half the village was invited so we felt very honored that we foreigners were invited as well.

If you read Linda's blog, you've seen her pictures (which were more plentiful) already.  As I said, this was way back in October but somehow I had lost track of where I'd downloaded our photos.  (Being snowed in really goes a long way toward helping you complete those long-procrastinated tasks.)

But I digress.

Here's the main star of the event, being held by her lovely mother who is as shy as her daughter is gregarious even at the age of 8 months (in October).

Foanza was there decked out in a suit.*  He looked pretty dapper and he knew it.  He wasn't timid about asking for some photographs either.  So where are these pictures?  Sadly, I have no idea but if it keeps snowing I might find them yet.

Also missing are photos of Maru but for that I have an explanation.  Maru wasn't there for most of the party. Because I know you're wondering I'll tell you why: he had to go all the way back into the city to buy cucumbers which someone had forgotten to purchase.
Mind you, there was already enough food to feed the entire village but obviously the menu had been firmly established beforehand and the party just could. not. take. place. unless there were cucumbers.
Oh how I love life's little universals!

As you can see, they pulled out all the stops.  Nary a pink streamer nor baby blue doily in sight.

This steaming cauldron of goodness could be smelled all the way down to the end of the village road.  It was so cold outside and this thing was bubbling and wafting the most delicious perfume of sarmale.
Sarmale is the national dish for celebrations.  We in the States would call them cabbage rolls though somehow the translation seems to fall flat and fails to do them justice.   (I don't know what purpose the upside down plates on the top of the pot served but I'm sure it was for something important)

This is Gheorghe with his most prized possession, his electric guitar.

I don't know which I love more: the fact that his expression and Luci's are almost identical or those fantastic shoes on the step behind them.  It was about 2 degrees outside, I never noticed anyone going barefoot so I assume the owner slipped into something more appropriate like a pair of thermal insulated snow boots.  

Like all parties everywhere, there was food, there were drinks, there was talking and laughter and hugging and music.
Deafening, ear-drum-rupturing music.
Across this country, at every restaurant, bar, baby shower or any place where people gather ostensibly to socialize (i.e: talk), you will invariably encounter music being pumped forth at a volume that is mind-numbing.
"What's with the music?" you'll ask.
"What?"
"This music, the music, why is it so loud?"
"What?"
It's the oddest thing.  Most everyone agrees that it impedes any sort of meaningful conversation and the genre that's playing is almost always one that most people don't even care for (Euro disco/Manele/American pop).  You don't even get to enjoy the experience of losing your hearing.  Yet there it is.  Blasting.
And there it was, present at Maru's party even if Maru wasn't.
We couldn't stay long enough to either see Maru or sample any cucumbers.  Our Budapest/Italy/cruise thing was commencing the next morning and we still hadn't finished packing.  So we had to leave the party early but the party didn't really leave us.
No, it followed us.  At least the music did.
Down the street.
Through the doors.
And the windows.
Upstairs.
While packing.  "Did you get the passports in the bag?"
"What?"
And through the night while we dreamed of fancy-cut cucumbers chewed to the beat of Euro disco.

*I included links to the pictures from previous posts so you can remember what they look like if you are so inclined.  I hope I'm not encouraging anyone to waste their time.  I wasted plenty of mine trying to figure out how to do this.