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.