Christmas in Romania

"O Tannenbaum" or “O brad frumous”:
Romania loves Christmas and celebrates it to the fullest. Bucharest is aglow with lights and ribbons and decorated trees throughout. The trees are hung with anything from wrapped boxes to stuffed animals. Massive garland is usually strung from top to bottom rather than ‘round and ‘round, some symmetrically and carefully laden, others more haphazard. Every Piata has its own décor, making each easily identifiable for drivers still figuring out the city. All are beautiful and blue seems to be the favourite colour.



"Here We Come A’ Wassailing":
At 8:00 a.m. on December 24, we were aroused by a sharp knock at the door. In his non-dressed state, Ed peeked through the peephole, and beheld ---- carolers! Four young men, occasionally on key, stood in the apartment vestibule outside our door and favoured us with Romania’s best-loved carol, “Dimineata lui Craciunu”. (Tomorrow is Christmas day.) In the next couple of hours, we determined that this was indeed a Romanian custom, as they were only the first of a string of carolers, all singing the same song (!), all expecting favours of money or food in return. This however, proved to be the mild version of the custom. From our fourth floor apartment windows, we became aware of large bands of roving well-wishers, going house to house in the early morning hours. Singing is only part of the tradition, which also involves great banging on drums, pipes of all kinds, and raucous shouting. The cacophony set up a bellering and baying of stray dogs the like of which we’ve yet to see surpassed. These revelers are cross-generational, all of them dark-skinned (gypsies?), many dressed in red, with some of the kids in complete bearskins, head to tail. We are told that some of them sing rather well. This revelry reminded us of the tales of the Brummtopfers of our ancestry.

"Dimineata lui Craciunu" (in tune): Christmas Eve at the Athenaum : An evening of Romanian carols sung by ”Preludiu”, one of Romania’s leading choirs

Although we were in a receptive mood for an evening exactly like this, we were hard pressed to think of another choir as fine as the one we heard tonight. These rich harmonies, warm voices and divine tuning, sung from memory with most heartfelt faces, proved that all the awards in the world have not wearied these singers. They finished the concert with an audience sing-along, including “Chingle Bellss”, which got the most applause of all!

“Oh Bring us Some Figgy Pudding":
Supper at Caru cu’ bere was nothing to write home about, although the setting and the entertainment that came with it offset the food quite nicely. We should have stuck with the figgy pudding.



"I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day":
At 11:00 p.m. we attended the service at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, which proffered more Romanian and German carols, spiced with pipe organ. By midnight there was standing room only; the community of worshippers arriving to celebrate the mass spilled out into the street. From 11:50 to midnight the bells rang nonstop.

"Joy to the World":
7:00 a.m: As we made our way across our vast apartment to call our kids, the phone rang! They had “beat us to it”, and we all talked at once for about half an hour. They were celebrating Christmas Eve together, just like we always did, with gifts and games and encircling each other to say nice things on purpose. If your morning coffee can have a “spring in its step”, ours did today. As for us, our “no gifts this year" promise to each other held up in its usual way. Millie just happened to have picked up a “Kleinigkeit", upon which Ed was obliged to extract the “Kleinigkeit’ that HE had just happened to pick up also. And as usual, the "trifle" that Ed had got for Millie was much nicer (and bigger) than the one she had got for him, he protesting all the while that it's for "both of us"!!! Ah, tradition.....

"O du Froeliche":
This was the opening hymn of the service at the Evangelische Kirche (Lutheran) this morning. The sermon, in clear and (to us) surprisingly comprehensible German, compared the accounts of the Christmas Story in Luke and John. It was lovely to hear the story read in the language in which we first learned it. It was nostalgic.




“Bring me flesh….”:
Noon: And now we were treated to a feast, the likes of which Good King Wenceslas himself would have admired. Christmas dinner consisted of the finest flavours surely to be had in the city. The best part? The beef! Our declaration begat the curiousity of the waiter (Romanians don’t eat much beef), and a discussion ensued covering a plethora of topics which included the farm and my beef-producing brothers back home. The waiter was partial to saying, “Wow-wow!!"
"We Wish You a Merry Christmas!"
As Christmas day in Romania draws to an end, somewhere it is just dawning. Our hearts are full as we send our thoughts, good wishes and hugs out to our friends and families. May “auld acquaintance” not be forgot, and may you experience many blessings in the New Year ahead! Against the night sky, we can see brilliant fireworks as the celebrations continue.

Crăciun Fericit!
Millie and Ed

Istanbul

This is the city to travel to if you want to open a floodgate of conversation with the folk you happen to be talking with at the time. Well-traveled people acknowledge Istanbul as near the top of the list of cities not to miss. Having now been there, we keenly agree, although we are hardly an authority on any aspect of it, except maybe how to ignore a hawker!

We had all of three days (!) and barely skimmed the surface of what this great city has to offer its visitors. Nor did we spend enough time delving into its extraordinary history in advance, particularly as relates to past opulent Empires still evident in the architecture, the mosques and the bazaars. Istanbul is the only city in the world that served as the capital to three major empires—Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman. It the second largest city and third largest metro area in Europe.

A friend from school had seen to it that our hotel not be in the tourist-ridden Sultanhamet area. Once we visited this old section of the city however, we were sorry that we had listened to him! What an adventure!
On the other hand, had we not been “across the strait”, we might not have appreciated the smooth and unruffled manner in which Istanbul moves its millions of people. All public transportation is fast, effortless, on time, and uses the same system of “tokens”. Remember that we are comparing all these cities to Bucharest.

Among the great sights, sounds and smells that Sultanhamet offers are the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, the Grande Bazaar and the spice bazaar. We awoke to the prayer calls that are piped into every corner of the city via public address system five times a day.

It is astonishing to stand in the Hagia Sophia that, for over 900 years, was the most important church in Christianity. It was commissioned as a cathedral in the 6th century and remained that way until the 15th century, when it was converted into a mosque by Mehmet II. In 1934 the Turkish Republic declared it a museum. The mix of features of cathedral and mosque bestows a peculiar aura to this building that juxtaposes incredible Byzantine mosaics, icons and marble columns with a mihrab (niche indicating the direction of Mecca) and Islamic calligraphy inscriptions on the dome from the Ottoman period.

The Blue Mosque was constructed in 1609 as an Islamic rival to the Hagia Sophia. We arrived just before eleven o’clock prayers. Alongside the building, men were washing their feet under the waterspouts. We were expected only to remove our shoes. The interior, one of the finest examples of Ottoman architecture, is decorated with thousands upon thousands of blue and white Iznik tiles embellished with traditional Ottoman flower patterns. Inside we heard a sermon chanted by the Imam, and then we had to leave.

Some would say that if you haven’t visited the Grand Bazaar, you can’t claim to know Istanbul. We’ll not soon forget this labyrinth of 65 twisting streets crammed with more than 4,000 shops! Endless arrays of carpets, jewellery, textiles, clothing, candy, tea, ceramics, etc. etc., become the object of that great institution called bargaining that will release either the beauty or the beast in the tourist. Here again, we walked over streets that have been teeming for centuries, when this very area became the centre of trading during the Ottoman period.

Millie will begin with “How to talk to a vendor at the Grande Bazaar”:

Vendor: (proferring a boxed set of perfumes stamped “Chanel”,”Givenchy”, etc..) Lady, lady. Hey lady, you would like thees perfume ..…very naheees. Like you lady. Very beautiful like you, lady… hey, lady!! Only 50 lira.

Lady Millie: No thank you, I don’t wear perfume.

Vendor: For you lady, low prahees, 40 lira, lady. Very beautiful, good quality, lady. For you nahees prahees.

M: That’s fine, but you see I don’t wear perfume, so the price doesn’t matter…

V: (interrupting): Ahhhh, Lady, ver-r-r-ry good prahees, for you—30 lira.

M: (less “lady”-like now): Well sir, I hope you can sell it to someone else for that sir, because you’re not going to have any luck with me! Sir! (laughing)

V: (follows suit with the laughing ‘cause that just might be the way to go…) Lady, for you 15 lira! Best prahees.

M: (trying not to look at the boxes in spite of her curiousity to see if all those perfumes are spelled correctly) Well that’s probably more like it but you see, I don’t wear it.

By now, the vendor has tailed Millie far from his original roost, and he scuttles back whence he came. He finds her again later. The same box of ill-fated scents are down to 10 Lira!

Millie: If you keep this up, you’re going to have to give it to me!

Vendor looks puzzled.

M: (on a roll) But guess what, I won’t take it. Know why? I ---- don’t ---- want ----- it!!! . (She chooses a laugh that borders on the hysterical. The vendor is taken aback and turns on his heel. They do not meet again.)

Of course, to respond to the vendors is entirely optional, but if you’re at all in the mood, it can be great fun. They are not all as pushy as this guy, and many of them are entirely good-natured and probably hopelessly bored. But if they see that you’ve just been in the neighbouring store, they will insist on having their turn. This is not to say that we didn’t buy anything. We did. Even rugs. We were prepared in advance for that undertaking however, as Ed will tell you.

I’ll take over. I think that encounter with the ersatz perfume huckster plum barely scratches the surface. Now, let’s see what kind of stamina I had. When I finally found her, Millie’s eye had been captured by a scarf shop, and she’d just settled on a price per scarf for some really serious quantity gift buying. I periodically ducked in and out of this shop, monitoring the progress of this lengthy task. I must have exuded husband-in-waiting pheromones as my patient ennui remained quite undisturbed by the ever vigilant shopkeepers who hovered just outside their tiny premises, casting about for potential suckers for their wares, with an always ready and smiley “Excuse me sir, where are you from?” or, when ignored, “Guten Tag mein Herr, kommen Sie herein!” I flatter myself and my international attitude with the fact that time and again I was mistaken as German, Danish or miscellaneous Scandinavian, whereas in Bucharest, I seem to have American writ large all over me. But I digress. When Millie’s dealings were all but wrapped up, we made a pact to meet at the entrance of the bazaar in five minutes. I guess my listlessness was now gone, having a concrete destination in a finite time frame. Gone as well was my erstwhile curtain of untouchableness. Out of nowhere, a salesman swooped upon me, promptly found a chink in my armour and we entered into an agreement that we would “just look” into his “very” special carpet store. I warned him that I had 5 minutes maximum, but he insisted that was PLENTY time to “just look”. OK, where is it? As he took off at a gallop, making sure I was following, I protested that we had but 5 minutes. “Just around the corner!” he shouted, all at the run. Actually, 7 or 8 corners! I had the foresight to memorize the landmarks as we ran along. At last, there it was, a carpet shop like the hundreds of others, with spectacular inventory, like the hundreds of others. He barked a few Arabic orders to his underling, who brought out carpet after carpet, rolling them out to my feet, one after the other, with the practiced grace of someone to the manner born. “Tea?” he offered. “I only have 5 minutes!” I protested yet again. “Do you prefer the reds, or would you like to see more tribal patterns?” Eight more dazzling carpets in rapid succession, in spectacular array. “I’m sorry, I really do need to go now. My 5 minutes are up.” “What??!” he protests, genuinely dismayed, “Your wife gives you 5 minutes to buy a carpet???!!” Any defense would have been futile, so I wished him a good day, as I made my hasty retreat to the appointed rendezvous.


Shortly after this, we arranged to meet a bona-fide carpet dealer who came highly recommended by friends who have the real thing to show for their troubles. The carpets were bought after much apple tea, wandering conversations and an overnight sleep! Our “souvenirs” pictured here, give our Bucharest apartment a warm and friendly touch and serve to remind us of a wonderful trip.

Backpacking

HOW TO PICK UP YOUR KIDS FROM SCHOOL

a. Send the driver: At the end of the school day, the AISB parking lot jams up with every stripe of Mercedes, lovely BMWs, top-end black sedans and massive SUVs. (Who knew that Porsche, BMW and Audi would find a need to build one? Or that anyone in crowded Bucharest would find a need to own one?) Soon the lobby fills with men with no necks, generally disinterested large Romanians who seem to have all the time in the world to pick up their kids from school. Of course they are all talking on cell phones, but what Romanian is not! How did all these guys get their money, I wonder, for vehicles like that, a school like this, and leisure to pick up your kids in the middle of the afternoon? Since then it has been borne in on me that these are not dads at all, but drivers and bodyguards of the kids that attend here. The actual dads are out big-business-dealing it in sundry world metropolises. Hence the Porsches, this school, the drivers (the nannies, the maids the housekeepers….) the list goes on.

b. Give your kid a cell phone, and have him call the driver himself. One of these kids (age 15), whose family came out of the post communist chaos not too badly, owns a not-too-shabby Maserati Quattro, replete, of course, with driver.

c. Give your kid subway fare to take the metro and then the local bus home. This is the reality for most of our local Romanian scholarship students.

d. Here is the last word in how to pick up your kids: Phone ahead to the guards to be sure the school gates will open for you just as you come roaring into the school yard in your SUV accompanied by an unmarked dark vehicle with dual flashing blue lights atop it. Have five men in dark glasses and suits get out and methodically look around. (Think 'nerves of steel'; we've seen it before in the movies.) Have one of them walk over to the guards in the gate house, and perform the universal "everything's cool" gesture, that is, casually light a cigarette as you walk. Have two of the suits open the SUV trunk and throw in the back packs of the 2 kids that arrive, open the doors for the kids to enter, have the remaining four men take a slow last look around, get back into both vehicles and drive back out through the gates, blue lights still flashing, leaving the cigarette man chatting to the guards. No analysis here; just one of our every-day scenarios.

But do I feel guilty for having “made” my kids walk home from school every day? Not one little bit.

- Ed

Incredible Italy

We have returned from our magical week in incredible Italy. Its slightly rocky beginnings in Milan assured us that things could only improve (…waiting for our host to evict the ne'er-do-well who was still occupying our bed, leaving our bags to be watched by Giuseppe at the "desk" who assured us of his honesty by waving an impressive hunting knife while pointing in the direction of our precious belongings…..) Some Italian beers and Focaccia prepared us for our tromp through the streets of Milan. The first thing that we saw was a car burst into flames. Have we walked into the set of “Godfather V”?

Italy remains a vivid memory upon which we plan to draw for a very long time, which is why the travelogue is written in the present tense! We have many wonderful pictures to add, and will let our readers match our written highlights as follows.
Milan:
We arrive in Milan on Saturday with great enthusiasm and one small backpack each. For this we are grateful in ensuing waits among train stations and hikes to hotels. Giuseppe, our one-star host, turns out to be a loquacious enthusiast for all things Italian, in particular Cinque Terre, after which we will supposedly "never want to go home". He makes a very fine breakfast cappuccino.

The Armani, Versace and Gucci shops in the square don’t hold a candle to Milan’s Duomo that towers brilliantly in the sunshine above the rabble of the crowd in the market. We hear a Mass there at 12:30 on Sunday. We carry on to stand in front of La Scala, where Millie starts to drool. And what will the chances be of securing a ticket-any-ticket for Don Giovanni next Saturday, we ask at the ticket office. Absolutely none; this information is delivered in a style to which we become accustomed over the next few days --– with haste and finality, tsak-tsak-tsak! We retreat to a lovely outdoor café supper where we share the air with two effusive Irishmen who have just bought new blue jeans at Versace’s. The jeans are full of rips and holes that would have had our moms at the mending machine for hours.

We know that Milan houses Da Vinci's "Last Supper" in the church of St. Maria della Grazia. We also know that access to this painting is available only by purchasing tickets in advance --- three months in advance, as it turns out. We walk to the church anyway, and it’s a breathtaking edifice. An off-work official notices our interest and offers to see what he can do. He finds us two tickets. Because we are not with a tour group, we enter the refectory alone. We stand in front of “The Last Supper” for a very long time. We are initially astonished at the size of the mural, and then we deliberate on the light and shadow, on the energy in the bodies, the character in the faces…. It is a stirring experience and oddly, I feel close to tears. How remarkable that art can move us in this way.

On Monday we are on our way to Cinque Terre, armed with a fine picnic lunch that we anticipate enjoying on the train as we speed through the hills of Italy. The train is packed. We sit tightly knee to knee, across from fellow passengers who seem less than interested in our company. The Italian girl by the window talks loudly on her cell after scarfing her meal of loud crackers, prosciutto and chocolate. The hefty fellow that she ousted to gain her rightful seat is hopelessly uncomfortable. She closes the curtains. Our picnic cheese in the overhead bin starts to stink.
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Cinque Terre is many wonderful things, but mostly it is an escape from all things metropolitan. Who could tire of the jaunts from village to village, alternating between paths along the turquoise Mediterranean and those over hill and dale, among the olive and lemon groves, vineyards and sheep cotes, squeezing in through narrow passageways among the homes of the villagers. Some of the trails are rugged and extremely difficult. We meet only a very few “vacationers” on those, and are thankful to be halfway fit. We are in high spirits about the sunny, hot weather. We are also happy for the picnic items in our packs – yesterday’s cheese, foccacia and a half bottle of great wine. In our three days there, we stay in a pretty room in Vernazza, where our "conversation" with the proprietor is carried out amidst charades and chuckling. We eat the best seafood and biggest prawns we've ever seen in quaint taverns in Monterosso. Ed goes swimming in the Mediterranean. We take a boat ride to view the villages of Cinque Terre from the sea. They seem to be hanging from the very cliffs. We buy an original painting, a view of Vernazza, from a sidewalk artist. We think of Daniel as we listen to a guitar-playing busker in the train station. We meet wonderful people on the trails and in the trains, sharing our experiences, writing down their advice... We are surprised at the number of American tourists.


Thursday: Florence
Florence is crawling! This we hadn’t expected, the sidewalks are packed and jostling is not out of order. We find cheap lodgings right downtown, doff our backpacks and go for a stroll. It threatens rain. We eat more foccaccia and pizza and decide to take in a comedy. It’s a mime send-up of the Baroque era ----plays, operas, etc. Millie wishes Johanna were there so they could go into hysterics together.

On Friday, we are told that the Uffizi Museum is booked, but we remember our experience at the Last Supper. And indeed, we crowd into a cue for tickets. “This time of year—no problem!!” pronounces the guard. We spend the better part of the day in awe in front of Raffaels, Rembrandts, Botticellis and Durers. The Da Vinci exhibition is also part of this gallery, and we realize we can’t get through it all. We move on to the National Art Museum to view Michelangelo’s statue of David. Our marvelous adventure continues to surprise and astonish us.

We walk along the Ponte Vecchio on our way to a concert in St. Margaret’s English Church. Ed takes pictures of Millie standing beside unthinkably expensive jewelry in stores supposedly reminiscent of the Medici days. Millie will have to be content with hanging the picture around her neck. The concert is delivered by an ebullient, tightly-wound tenor with an arbitrary sense of timing, accompanied by a pianist whose improvisations alone are worth the price of admission. However, the same slaphappy technique is visited upon his classical piano solo pieces, some of which Madeline has also played. His renditions were one-dimensional to say the least, mostly consisting of beating the piano to death! He does favour us with Maddy-style final chords that lift him right off the piano bench and into a bow upon which the audience cheers. BUT (and I know how Maddy hates it when I say things like this) I honestly prefer her interpretation with its subtleties that give the thrashing parts so much more meaning. There are chocolates at intermission.

Back to Milan:
We arrive back in Milan by train on Saturday. It is 3:30. Our bravura brings us once again to the ticket office of La Scala. There seems to be some excitement among a little knot of people, tightly jammed into a circle facing inward. We crowd around and see that the centre of the hubbub is a little bald man, writing down names. It doesn’t take long to “put 2 and 2” together and we become numbers 122 and 123 on the list to see Don Giovanni. We soon learn that our sincerity will be tested, as we must come back at 5:00 to receive our tickets. Come back? No, no, we will stand right there, even if it’s til 7:00!! We stay. Everybody stays. More people come, and more and more, forming an Italian cue that consists of something akin to an apple press. We have a great conversation with an Australian and an Israeli who are traveling together and in no time, it’s 5:30. Now I am truly thankful for my backpack, which provides some space from the merciless pushing. The little bald man is now at the height of his clout and loving every second of it. He is joined by a smiling fellow whom we presume has the tickets. Wrong. He has little pink slips with numbers on them --- coupons, if you will. All the names are now read in order, and this is worth the wait alone. Our little friend has great fun with the pronunciation of our names and we laugh along as we collect coupons #122 and #123. There is angst as names are read and no one comes forward. Someone turns up late. He doesn’t get a coupon. We maintain our post. At 6:00 our two “hosts’ are joined by a woman who turns out to be the barker. Literally. As she shouts the numbers in Italian, we press into the ticket office to exchange our coupons for the real thing --– tickets to La Scala. There is great rejoicing among all 140 of us who have secured such a windfall. We feel like a family. And now we return to Giuseppe. Who wouldn’t? We have SO MUCH to tell him.

In our jeans and shiny faces, we are in good company in La Scala’s peanut gallery where one risks life and limb hanging over the rail to see the stage. But ahhhhhhh... the VOICES….. Millie nearly cries. And the acoustics are beyond description as methinks we don't have "such' in Canada. The orchestra --- well, the orchestra was perfect. The subtleties, the dance, the drama, all these musicians are in love with their art. Oh my goodness. The evening ends with a glass of wine on a sidewalk in full view of Milan’s Duomo at night. Are we dreaming?

Happy Thankgiving!

Hello there!

Thought I'd send a quick hello to accompany this new round of pictures. We thought of home as we picnicked on tomato sandwiches by the Danube River, thinking we'd rather be sampling three kinds of church potato salad and pie! As it was, we had to share the air with greasy riverboats, dogs and dumpsters, so anything more delectable would have been lost on us. A romantic picnic in a shady nook at the Danube will have to wait for another trip. We were happy to find this bench. However, last Sunday's trip into the country west of Bucharest offered up some great photo opportunities, as you will see in the post below. The final picture here is a typical sight from our balcony.

We are headed into Week 8 at school, after which AISB takes a week holiday. We have decided to visit Italy on this first "vacation", which will take us to Milan and Cinque Terre. Writing those words from this vantage point seems at one time both natural and surreal.

Tomorrow the Canadian teachers will wish each other a happy thanksgiving on their way to class. Mind you, students in Grades 3,4 and 5 are writing standardized tests for the next two days, which means that I don't do any teaching at all! So I get to pretend that I'm having Thanksgiving Monday "off" as usual. This is one of the perks of being a specialist, haha.
Maybe tomorrow's cafeteria menu will include chicken. We will choose it and pretend it's turkey. So here's to great times around your tables this weekend with family and friends. We are thankful for all the wonderful people that bind us together in any circumstance, even halfway across the world. God bless you, every one!

Love, Millie (Ed is already in bed after a day on the road. There are no "Sunday drivers" in Romania.)

A drive in the country cont'd

A drive in the country

Driving Like a Romanian

It’s Ed talking--Millie insists that I say that from the outset. Let’s also establish something else: I love driving here; as a visitor or temporary Romanian, I love being here. Today, some suits and ties from the Embassy came to the school to give a must-attend presentation to all of us expats who are driving around in embassy-licenced VWs. In tow was the top cop in the Romanian traffic division. It was essentially a mini-course on defensive driving, and a strong encouragement to, above all, be a, quote, girly man, and think deferentially in any confrontational traffic situation. I offer here, from my own observations and from this lecture, some driving instructions that seem to be Romanian-endorsed in terms of popular usage, but not advisable to us expats.

How to wait for a train to pass at a controlled railway crossing:
If you consider yourself an important Romanian in an important BMW or Mercedes or any SUV, then surely you deserve to jump the queue and pass the rest of the vehicles in line, and form a new line to the left of all the waiting vehicles, in the lane of the vehicles that will soon be streaming by, once the silly train has vacated the crossing. And if you are REALLy important, then, go ahead and form a THIRD line, beside those other important people. Of course, as soon as the gates raise up to release the traffic, you will gun your big engine and be across the tracks in jig time, ahead of everyone else, and be on your merry way. This could work, except that on the other side of the slow moving train, in the oncoming lanes, the same thing is happening! So when the train is finally past, we now we have three lanes of traffic, all facing each other! Imagine the testosterone! The honking cacophony! What fun!

How to make an air pollution statement:
If you are driving a “Roman” (brand name) dump truck or bus, you automatically make a statement re pollution—you belch an impressive black cloud of airborne filth every time that you accelerate even a little bit, as you must do in any stop-and-go traffic situation (virtually the only traffic situation in Bucharest). However, if you drive an aging under-powered Dacia (think Soviet Renault), you quite need to stomp that accelerator to get past the slow-moving person directly in front of you if you plan to put some serious petrol fog into the air. But if you drive one of those important clean-burning modern (see above) BMW/Mercedes/SUV types, then you REALLY need to stomp it to make any kind of statement re pollution and burning more than your share of available oxygen and finite amounts of hydro carbons. And don’t they just! We need to shut our windows daily to the otherwise fresh air.

How to turn left: (This advice is for us expats.)
Above all signal from WAY back, check yer mirror and check over yer shoulder!! Part of the Romanian way of life is to jump a queue, and there’s bound to be one of those (see above) jumpers just passing you in a non-existent third lane of traffic between the two marked lanes, just as you are about to turn left into your driveway or your destination du jour. And while you would be in the legal “right”, the Embassy officials continued to caution us, it’s never a good idea to be bloody right or dead right!

How to enjoy driving in Romania:
Just get in there, drive defensively, take some cautiously calculated risks, think ahead, and marvel at the textbook cases of traffic survival. Be patient, go with the flow, and use your mantra: “This is Romania!”

Still to come: How to pick up your kids from school; how to register a complaint with the owner of a parked car.

Ed H

Remarkable Romania

Thoughts on The Romanian Way of Doing Things

Hi. We’ve talked about the Romanian Way before. How often we've needed to say to each other, simply because no other explanation can suffice, Welcome to Romania. Let me illustrate:

A tank truck goes up and down our busy street spraying a thin layer of water onto the pavement behind it. Washing the streets can be a good idea, except it takes more than just wetting them. But I guess it DOES get rid of some of the dirt, because the dirt that was on the street is now splashed onto my car. Perhaps it’s a dirt relocation scheme.

Romanians expect a lot of responsibility from their flowers. They plant them and give them a good start (in Spring, I suppose; we’ve been here only since early August), then let them fend for themselves. And that includes weeding and cultivation, and edging around the flower beds. Impeccable grooming is reserved for one’s hair (personal style is very big here), and certainly not for a public garden or lawn. I believe this might be a holdover from earlier thinking that reasoned—why mow your grass when you can harvest it? And in the country, indeed, they certainly do. It all ends up on the haystack in your back or front yard. Cut, raked and stacked by hand, of course. City parks, of which there are many and potentially very lovely, all seem to have that disheveled bedhead look of grass that’s about four inches too long. But this is a North American speaking here, with values clearly distinct from those out here. The litter problem is the same. Public space isn’t MY space; why bother? But long-term ex-pats out here claim that these situations are getting better by the year. In today’s meanderings about the city, we saw a mobilization of clean-up staff such as we’d never seen here before. There seems to be a frenzied attempt to put on a gorgeous face for the Bucharest Francophonie convention that’s gathering Francophones from all over the world this week. Every litter bit of cleanup helps, I suppose.

Security is a really big industry here. They say paying a guy in a uniform here is cheaper than installing video surveillance equipment. And there’s no point ever in saying “Buna sera” (good evening) to a video camera, is there. Millie just took some leftover desserts (party earlier today, Sunday brunch) over to our security man, on her way to do some weekend catch-up at school. It was explained to me that “security” is too official a term to describe him, but what else can we call him—he “keeps an eye on the place”, they told me. And he holds the elevator, helps with your packages if needed, does crosswords on the steps, and lends general friendliness to your comings and goings.

In the supermarket below our apartment (that term is generous as well, I mean the word super) there is a cadre of at least three security people at all times, and this establishment is only a bit bigger than your average 7 Eleven back home. They observe you in varying degrees of subtlety. The lifers (in uniform) kibbitz with the checkout personnel (2), barely look at you, and will even on a good day help you pack your groceries, while the young ‘uns, still needing to prove themselves worthy of a uniform sometime in the future, watch your every move. Indeed, these watchers-in-training watch like they are being watched how well they watch.

The other day, as I entered the Brico store (like a Home Depot), I espied an empty checkout counter straight ahead, and like we all do in any grocery store in Manitoba, I zipped through it unencumbered and landed in a clearing just beyond it, wondering which direction I should now take for my shopping mission. For today’s discussion, let’s call this point A. You know how there’s that frozen moment in time, just before a reprimand, when your brain registers that, for instance, there was security personnel at the door, and there was a sign that indicated the Intrare 15 steps to the right, and that you were in a frisky mood, and really pushing the envelope here. She barked a command, politely, mind you, that unambiguously indicated that I had transgressed the Romanian Way, and that I needed to utilize the Intrare like everyone else, and would have none of it, other than that I exit the way I had entered, go through the Intrare, and end up back at point A where I had intended to be in the first place. The correction circle route took about 7 seconds, but the dignity of her job had been affirmed, the uniform had exerted its authority, and another step in the Romanian Way had been learned by this newby still having fun.

All our Homes

B is for Barn and Books and Bales
A world of memories each entails.
How to decide which to bring to the fore?
A formidable task for this child of yore.

The barn stands tall and red, a sentinel looking out over the Sawatsky family farm. Through the years, the barn has meant many things. For us who grew up within yards of it, the dusty loft provided hours of play. It housed the chores that taught us responsibility and ownership. It held lessons about birth and death and kittens. It was the test of a true and persistent painter. Newly red and shiny, our barn presented itself as a sizable curiosity piece to be proud of in front of our city cousins. Our eyes were drawn to it on all those walks home from Uncle John’s. One Christmas, we were treated to a splendid sight as we turned the corner of the lane. Dad had fashioned a perfect star on its gable; a tradition was born. The old barn now sports a modern roof. It doesn’t smell the same as it did in its “hayday”. But it’s still the same barn that has welcomed us home for more than fifty years. We hope it stands forever.


Dear readers,

While clicking through my “files from home” that (miraculously) transferred to this new computer, I came upon a page from a book that the Sawatsky siblings collated for our parents some years back. What warm memories I have of the folks perusing the pages of that project, savouring every entry on the 26 pages that correlated with the exact number of people in the family at the time --- one for each member of the alphabet in fact! We’d have to seek a different alphabet by now, as our numbers have grown considerably. Well, one could get extremely sentimental over here across the ocean, and there have been a few moments of longing for the family and all that comes with it, including the barn at the end of the lane I still call “home”!

Our home out here is looking a little more “lived in”, what with the acquisition of a Romanian carpet, Romanian dishes and a few other artifacts. We continue to find shopping an extraordinary experience. I must share Marlene’s reference to the Romanian people surely being “intrigued with the foreigners and their SILLY ways!” (Who would even THINK of putting star anise in soup!)

Bucharest is anticipating a major event next week. The Francophone Summit is coming to town, and it appears that this occasion will dominate city life for a few days. We have had numerous urgent missives regarding impending traffic snarls, should we decide to drive at all. In fact, buses have been designated for teachers and students, and we expect large numbers of students to stay away from school. Whereas in Manitoba we have “snow days”, here we have “traffic days”. Ed and I have had a few experiences in traffic. You know the kind--- where you arrive at your destination at the same time as the person you kept passing. Only he was walking.

Then there are the really delightful moments that we enjoy over and over in our reflections:
- Enjoying a Sunday afternoon concert in the park where the soprano rendered every popular piece from her musical theatre library, all in Romanian! (How does ‘’The Rain in Spain’’ work in Romanian?)

- Buying 15 beautiful tomatoes, a big bag of potatoes, a huge perfect head of cabbage and 6 gigantic apples from a village baba who wanted only 4.5 lei, or $2 in our language, for the lot! I gave her closer to what it would have cost us in our country. We’re encouraged not to do that. I couldn’t help it.

- The note that our dear housekeeper left us after I suggested she help herself to lunch with what she could find in the fridge: “I have today a little time so I eat 2 red bowls with soup. Is very good and tasty, I hope is not too much. Please do not throw away, leave for me, I will eat.” She is a sweet, conscientious girl, putting herself through school with the money she makes from her cleaning jobs. As she would say, “I go at school.”

- Little Idan from Grade 2, who just can’t leave school without hugging all his teachers one last time …
“Miz Meellee, I hop’ you hev a good evening!”

- “Hob-nobbing” with the downstairs doorman in Romanian. “Buna ziua! Che mai facit?” we say (proudly), to which he replies with a crisp “Please!!”, pointing to the elevator. He knows darn well that is the sum total of our pretending. We are taking Romanian classes every Thursday after school. It’s not working.

- The lady who left her own store to walk us all the way across the mall to show us where I could buy a watch battery. We continue to find the people here very warm and infinitely helpful.

- Finding that the frozen soup bones that I victoriously bought had, upon thawing, morphed into three beef hearts. There is now a new and not-so-improved recipe in Millie’s book – Beefheart Borscht. Of course, she tried to get this by Ed without telling him. She surmised that it wasn’t working when the usual “Ode to best soup you ever made” was kindly replaced with “Boy, this sure isn’t like farm beef, is it? This is almost rubbery!”

- Listening to Maria, my Romanian teaching partner howl over our weird turns of phrase. "A basket case?" she muses, "Thees expression I do no' know, whaddiz to be a basket caze?"

- Never, ever hearing a Romanian parent raise a voice to a child.

This morning AISB students, staff parents and friends are gathering at school for the Terry Fox Run. This is a huge annual event for the school and takes place on Saturday to accommodate all the people who want to participate. I have felt twinges of “Canadianism” all week as we have prepared the students for this day. It was neat to be able to relate my own memory of Terry’s run all those years ago.

Thanks to all who are hanging in there with us and our experiences,

Ed and Millie take a Vacation

When one is settled into a day-to-day existence that involves the pressures of teaching school, being domestic in a new apartment, going to the gym to “work out” (thanks to Millie’s enthusiasm for such torture) and swim there (nice touch), and various and sundry activities that arise when you try to fit into a new lifestyle, then one begins to feel the need for a vacation from all of the above, especially if unexplored places beckon with potential adventures and revelations. And here, there’s a whole country waiting for us to flounder about in, and seeing what can be discovered.

Friday afternoon found us braving rush hour traffic north of Bucharest. A road work site had snarled exit-bound vehicles so badly, that it took about 45 minutes to travel 10 km to a north-bound artery. But patience is a virtue, and we were virtuous, perhaps more so than the many queue-jumpers who were in more of a hurry than we as they passed us in the face of impending death in the oncoming lane or schtuckered along over what might be called a shoulder, before squeezing back in to their lane of jammed cars and exhaust-belching ancient behemoth trucks. Romanian patience was tested occasionally and we did hear the odd blast of a waddayathinky’rdoing car horn. But I did read in a visitor’s guide this weekend that queue jumping is a part of the Romanian psyche. Good to know. When we finally got to see what was slowing us all down so massively, it was not a typical Canadian 2:1 highway repair site but rather, about a 6:1 situation. (The ratio stands for the number of men leaning on shovels to the number actually working.) An hour and a half we arrived in Sinaia (“sin-eye-a”), a ski town at the southern edge of the Carpathian Mountains. I had booked a room online in what turned out to be a lovely late 19th Century hotel, still trying with some success to hold onto its former glory. Brief confusion at the reception desk was soon resolved. The booking showed up reading September 8, 2002! But the typically very nice fellow at the desk didn’t make any cruel jokes about us being "late" and found us a room.

Sinaia boasts the location of the Peles Castle (that’s “Pellesh” to you), a structure built in the late 19th Century, to the discriminating tastes of King Carol. Locals insist that it’s the finest castle in all of Europe, and now that we’ve visited it, we might agree. It was the summer residence of this seemingly well-loved monarch of Romania. This must have been a prosperous period for Romanians in general, because all buildings from this period, from simple peasant hovels to fine city edifices to the said Peles Castle, show attention to spectacular and fascinating architectural detail. Did this ability to invest countless human hours into craftsmanship for art’s sake and not for practical reasons bespeak of a prosperity that allowed the citizenry to value an aesthetic like this? Hmm. The castle’s interior walls and ceilings, along with furnishing details, took European wood-working skills to a new high, as far as this tourist can vouch for. And all SO tasteful. We are talking about marquetry, end-grain inlays, spectacular veneer effects, exotic woods, wow. We were handed notes to read and the “do-not-touch” guards were extremely helpful and ready to chat as they overheard our musings and questionings. On our trek down and back to the hotel, we encountered the stalls of countless hawkers and hucksters vending their various wares. Assured by the young lady vendor that these genuine Romanian dinnerware plates were the real McCoy and not kitch, we bought 6 of them! How can you resist a guarantee like that? No, we really do like them. They are of the loudest flowery and birdy patterns imaginable, but again, tasteful, I promise. As well, it was time to think about brightening up the apartment with floor accoutrements, so an equally loud carpet hand-made in traditional Transylvania patterns was soon in hand, with anticipation beating in the heart as to where it would look best in the Bucharest apartment.

Later in the afternoon, we took a cable gondola ride to the top of the mountain, way past the tree line. We had been warned how cold it would be, so we dressed for it. We crawled about on the bald peak, watched a shepherd moving his sheep, and walked far too far down to make it easy to get back up to the cable car again. The evening ended eventfully in a restaurant proclaiming “Best food in the Balkans”, where we were joined by two teachers from our school who had also chosen this town as a vacation spot. Romanians really do know how to roast a pig!!

Sunday noon we rented a couple of bikes. In this country, the entrepreneurial spirit has not yet progressed to the point where one would keep all one’s rental equipment in top nick for your discerning customers from “yant sied”! But then, a quick return to the vendor who handles the bikes garnered a steed much more mechanically sound, and off we went, into the crazy downtown tourist traffic. This was much too insane for our skills level, so we turned to the upper high streets that climbed about on the mountain side, Millie insisting all the while that she would NEVER master the physics concepts of mechanical advantage, and WHICH of her 18 gears should she be in ANYway, and it’s faster to walk ANYway, and whose idea was this ANYway, but we soon found some shopping that could relieve her frustrations, after which we got back onto the bikes in high spirits. Then we blundered into the railway station, and found a most unRomanian sight: A spectacularly clean station, and a gleaming passenger train at rest. The cars were all Pullman-style cars, of 1920s design, letterings of gold, whitewall wheels and suspensions, table lamps in the windows, porters in uniform bustling about. We soon learned that we were in the presence of the famous Orient Express. No kidding! It had been in station about half an hour, and all the idle rich had been whisked off to Peles Caste for lunch. They would be back for afternoon tea in several hours, with dinner to follow a later time. But in the meantime, a very friendly Scot, who loved his job as a porter, agreed to give us a tour. As Peles is to castles, this train was to its kind. It had been a labour of love for its owner. Cars had been found rotting in fields and junk yards, and he had spent millions to return this train to its former and legendary splendour. Opulence! Satins and silks and finest woods and carpets. Awesome.

We returned the bikes and headed back in good time to avoid the home-coming traffic of weekenders from their mountain getaways. A confusing sign pointed us off the highway. But all roads lead to Bucharest, and our pleasant detour went through village after village where the economy was subsistence farming. The few places that boasted tractors displayed them prominently in place of honour just outside the door of the house. Most families, clearly, were still fixed to the old ways of farming—one or two horses, a cow or two, a strip of land. A contraption, with an engine like the ones that Uncle John Sawatsky was fond of restoring, loudly chugged along one of village roads. At first I thought it was a “homemade” car but on closer inspection saw it to be a mobile sawmill. All the farm folk, especially old bubbas in their black dresses and socks, were taking their Sunday afternoon leisure, sitting on benches just outside the fences and walls around their houses, watching their friends, and perhaps the odd yellow VW, go by. It was a delightful side trip and a charming weekend. - Ed

A September to Remember

Have we mentioned the dogs? We read that there are upwards of 100,000 stray dogs in the city. When we see a dog on a leash we think, “How odd!” But we are quite certain that Bucharestians love their stray dogs. We know that they feed them. Besides their own dogs that they keep inside walled yards to help guard their place, Romanians encourage the strays outside the walls, facilitating stray committees that fend off drifters or people soliciting for money. From our balcony, we can see that one homeowner has two doghouses --- one inside and another outside the wall around his property. One of our teacher friends is beside herself with passion and concern for these poor animals and has in fact saved a stray puppy from the depths of wretchedness by offering it an upscale apartment life. “Lucky dog” as they say! Sort of the ultimate souvenir.

In other news, the coffee is monstrously strong, but good. Really, it is Turkish coffee style, mud on the bottom. Our school lunches are wonderful—huge amounts of potatoes, meats, veggies, salads, fruit. Ed eats so much that he requires only a snack of salami and crackers for supper. When the cupboard is bare, there is the small grocery market on the ground floor of our building.

Speaking of food, there is a small knot of gypsy children who hang around our building every now and then. When we go out to the car, they often come running, extending their grubby hands and long faces, exercising their few English words like “please mister”, “hungry”, and with random crying sounds hoping to tug at our heart and purse strings. They don’t try to hide their current stash of potato chips, candy bars or even their chubbiness!

Ed loves driving here and believes that Romanians are ultimately efficient. True, the law says that the speed limit is 50 in town, but if the road is clear, why not take advantage of it and go 90? There are no stop signs out in our area at all, and the rule at corners is simple. Don’t hit each other. In the very busy parts of the city, there are stop lights, and they are rigorously obeyed. But on Sunday, we needed to get to a main avenue, and the street we were on was one way. The "wrong" way! Well, the sign makers didn’t know which way Ed needed to go, and because there was no traffic at that moment, we drove a block or two in the wrong direction. In speaking to the right people, this move will have earned him great respect. A beeping horn behind you is not an impatient blast, but rather a quite polite suggestion that the light is green, and you may proceed. A beep can also mean that you may cut in front of me, or it could mean, please don’t hit me because I’m the one who is two inches from your left rear fender, the one who is finding his own third lane on a two lane road. We need to drive very carefully ---- there’s a horse and wagon carrying a load of watermelons down the road, or a pedestrian on a crossing which has all its paint worn off, or a stray dog sleeping on the side of the road, or a foot-deep pot hole in the middle of the street, not to speak of the man hole with the missing man hole cover. As for parking, there is ALWAYS a place on the sidewalk.

When we sit at our dining room table these days our balcony door and windows are wide open. No bugs come into the house. Straight East, we can look into the wide open fields that are fast becoming Bucharest North. If we train the binoculars into that direction, we can see a shepherd and his flock, a cowherd with his/her cows, and some child coming out there to tell them it's suppertime. It’s all fascinating.