Today’s headlines

"I can't believe the news today. I can't close my eyes and make it go away"

Not just a rather trite reference to U2, but the actual, honest-to-God truth.

These were all genuine items of news on the lunchtime edition. Should I be scared that they are all related to death???

First up was the grizzly story of a mother and daughter were found dead in their flat. The discovery was made after...yes, you've guessed it, residents of the block of flats complained of the smell coming from their dwelling. It is thought that the daughter suffered a heart attack and the mother, who was bed-bound, subsequently died of starvation and dehydration. I put down the digestive, no longer feeling hungry.

Next was a story from my (new) home town, Buzău. Keeping on the same theme, a family stood with official documents of their relative who had been the posthumous victim of a gross administration error. This poor man had apparently been in the fridge of a morgue for TWO YEARS because his name got left off a list of some kind. There was a kind of bizarre altercation between the family and the staff of the mortuary which I didn't really understand and one woman barged inside what looked like a the concrete bunker and emerged, triumphant but shaking to confirm the man's identity. I'm not really sure of the upshot of all this was, but I was beginning to feel like I was watching some twisted misadventure in TV programming, a sort of Watchdog-cum-Romania's Worst Civil Servants. I'd certainly never seen such a strange culmination of stories on any news bulletin before. It was a far cry from the Anglia News* and its comfy sofa.

*as a little aside here, I would just like to share this investigative journalism gem from the Eastern Counties that I had the fortune to witness a few years ago. One of the top stories that evening was about the regions oldest lightbulb that had seen its light extinguished after 90 years of service. This could be "verified" by what looked like the regions oldest resident, who specifically remembered his father putting in the lightbulb (it being state-of-the-art technology back then) and was accompanied by the "testimonies" of various friends and neighbours who had taken an interest in the 40 watt bulb over the years. Shocking platitudes were bandied around, how the bulb would be "missed", a piece of the past "lost forever" and I think the old bloke even shed a tear. Report over, they returned to the studio where I expected to see the two presenters, not on the usual sofa, but inside barrels, energetically scraping the bottoms. But no, unabashed and comfortably seated they smiled inanely, inviting viewers; "If you've got an object that had lasted a really long time, FOR EXAMPLE A PEN!!!!, why not write to us as Anglia News… I bet the production team were secretly glad when Tony Martin shot that boy on his farm just to have something newsworthy happen in the region.*

So back to today's news, the next story was by far the most disturbing, not just for the information itself, but also the video footage. Inside a particularly sparsely furnished flat sat an old woman, crying as she has just lost her husband. Yet, for some reason I'm not able to understand (she's too poor, doesn't want to, no-one to help???) her husband's body is still in the flat. Zoom out to reveal the deceased on the bed behind her, wrapped in what looked an old carpet. I nearly choked on my cuppa! His face may have been pixilated but this didn't disguise the fact that it had turned blue. Underneath scrolled the all-important salacious information – this woman had slept next to the corpse for the past two nights! Cue pounding at the door as local residents demand that something is done; the old woman, resplendent in her apron, headscarf and wellington boots is angry and starts swearing, a crowd gathering on the stairwell. I check to see that this is still the news and not a Romanian Jerry Springer Show. There seems to me to be that nasty air of voyeurism; we're successful journalists and live in comfortable flats in affluent Bucharest, let's make some footage about how the other half are doing! It really brings home the huge divides there are here, and what a large number of social problems still need to addressed.

Outside the flats, a neighbour had cleared out the back of his old transit van, presumably to cart off the cadaver, whilst more people loitered outside, angling for few seconds of small-screen celebrity, where one day they could look back on the day they said "we're worried that if the dead body's going to start to smell" to the nation. Or some such.

So, in just a few minutes the news had come full circle, and we were back on the subject of decomposing flesh. At this point I phased out of trying to concentrate on what was said and just marveled at the on-screen banners – man in one year battle to prove his identity after he was apparently reported dead, children killed in house fire caused by gas leak – continued their morbid tirade of news. I reached for the remote.

If nothing else, it really has brought home to me just how different living in Romania is to anywhere I've been before.

And people think that I'm backward because I come from Norfolk! You don't know the half of it.

la petite anglaise

Catherine Sanderson, aka petite anglaise, has become my new idol this last week. Her brilliant blog has had me engrossed for several reasons, which I'm about to come to, even if I'm terribly jealous of her fantastic gift she has for prose and annoyed about the fact that she's done it all first.
By checking out http://www.petiteanglaise.com/ , which I recommend to anyone, you'll soon be embroiled in the sagas of her (sometimes deeply complicated) personal life. Bridget Jones-esque (I'm sure she's sick of this particular comparison), and surprisingly candid, she has built such a rapport with her followers that thousands of people probably now feel, as I do, that they know her. The success speaks for itself as she is now a published author, firstly of her 'memoirs' and there is also an upcoming novel in the pipeline.
Before she underwent the drastic transformation from bored mum/secretary to postmodern representation of nouvelle célébrité, "petite"'s posts had a somewhat different emphasis. There she was, night after night,in her Paris appartment, waiting for her long-term Frog partner (appropriately nicknamed "Mr Frog") to return home, having put their little "tadpole" to bed. She pines for the hedonistic days of her first few years in Paris which sit in stark contrast to the metro-boulot-dodo she now exists through. She tells us what it is really like for a "little English woman" amongst all these French people - and I fully concur. They are hypochodriacs, obsessed with their bottoms and women can be very cold to other women (no offence to any froggies reading this, not least my own Monsieur Grenouille). But why did she have to write down all of these well observed and timely anecdotes before I got to get my stories out?
I had this idea that my blog would be the Romanian equivalent. Immitation is the most sincere form of flattery, hence my pseudonym, englezoaica. Yet somehow the comic events don't flow as they did when I first arrived in France. I don't understand enough of the language/culture to recognise these little "quirks" and I don't have other expat friends to compare notes with (whilst simultaneously cackling like drains).
Thinking about it, perhaps the real problem lies in the fact that this blog is making me nostalgic for my life back in France. So until that passes, there may be future indulgence of past stories that belittle the French.
Pas de problème, I hear you cry???

Progress

I'm feeling very proud of myself, as today was the first time I didn't cry, run, whimper or even flinch as a dog made for me.
Today's example was particularly unpleasant - the mangey, saggy-titted bitch emerged from out of the bushes running towards me, barking and baring her teeth; I merely carried on walking.
The dog did not, like all but one of the other times, even touch me, but slunk off, quite literally, with its tail between its legs.
I have also learnt that dog's are likely to go for you if you have a long scarf and belt on your coat that flap (I'm now dog-hypothesizing) not dissimilarly to a tail, thus getting the said animal a bit het up. This was the cause of "the other time" when I was rather unceremoniously bitten (pinched) on the arse. I don't know who was more embarassed afterwards, the dog or me!
Despite my current optimism, I doubt very much that this'll be the last time I talk about the canine race here. For the moment it is câinii unu, englezoaica unu

Surreal

Having spent the day in a cocooned state, predominantly in front of my laptop, devouring other expat women's blogs, it seemed very surprising when I ventured out today to find that I was still in Romania.
By ventured, I do in fact mean I nipped to the post office, where I was severly reprimanded for trying to use my photocard driving license as a form of ID. Not wanting to be picky here, but I'm fairly sure that if that box with my, quite unusual (and particularly in these parts), name on it, has ended up in that God-foresaken, Communist-throwback excuse for a Post Office, it was likely only to contain items of interest to the strange being in a black and white coat and limited grasp of the Romanian language. This was of course the case (thanks mum and dad for the hot water bottle, tights, gloves and teabags!).
Post Offices and I are not getting on at the moment. Since leaving Britain 3 years ago, I have a disproportional amount of post go missing, and this whether cross-channel, in either direction, or, more recently, a letter sent from GB out here. Yet I have always received all bills and bank statements and a large amount of junk. I can't even imagine where it ends up or who's responsable (although having once seen a "Dispatches" documentary on Channel four about Royal Mail I have a fair idea). If anyone does have any tips on how to stop losing post or how to, eventually, get it back (she enquires hopefully) please let me know.
After the Poșta I snuck into the bakers to get some (predictably) bread, where I was confused for a phramacist. This was a first for me but did lead to a lovely little chat with the two women there. It also got me thinking about my notoriety - the women at the pool now say "hello" when they see me (although I imagine I'm fairly easy to remember as I am one of the few people to use the pool) and the other day a man was calling down the street after me "Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle". Unfortunately the rest of what he said was completly lost due to my poor understanding of Romanian but also to his lack of teeth.
So I am becoming a bit of a local celebrity (that might be building it up too much) or at least a figure of curiosity around here.
But its a very surreal experience to know that everyone's talking about you but you can't tell what they're saying.

Sport for all

Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming to be a great athelete. I'm not even a mediocre athelete. But that still doesn't stop me from thinking that the people of Buzău have missed a trick where sports are concerned.

Take the gym I've started going to. Full of modern equipment and offering regular classes of abs, aerobics and tae-bo. Fantastic! I'd found a new passtime and, hopefully a way to meet people so I happily trotted along to my first class. Having got changed I was then beginning to get a bit scared. There were only a few of us in the group and a huge mirror covered wall. They'd soon see that I was not up to the challenge of 45 minutes of aerobic workout.

Turns out that I had nothing to worry about. The class basically consisted of stretches, repeated 16 times over. All the instructor did was count to eight....and then count to eight again. I felt cheated out of a complicated dance type routine (that I would never have been able to follow in English, let alone Romanian) and, although the one where you have to swing your leg round close to your head is bloody difficult (and meant that the next day I had trouble sitting down) I think even a septegenarian Jane Fonda would be wondering when the aerobic part of the aerobics was happening.

So I decided to try the swimming pool. It was blowing a gale and trying to snow but I trecked to the "Aqua Center" across town. I found it to be almost completely empty! I looked around the sparkling marble lobby (where were all the vending machines?) but couldn't see anywhere to pay so I headed to the changing rooms where there seemed to be some kind of party going on. Several staff members in uniform were sat round a table drinking fizzy pop and eating crisps. I walked in and asked if I had to pay here, to which one of the women replied "Cine?" (Who?). Feeling doubly intimidated I repeted my request and evetually got my ticket (more expensive than in France!) and was allowed to change in the corner (there were not changing rooms, per se, just portable screens on wheels with a bench behind to hang your clothes on. I had a locker but had to leave the key behind. Still, with staff to swimmers ratio of 3:1 I felt sure that my smalls were being well looked after.

The pool itself is modern, well maintained and pretty warm. It's also a fulll size Olympic one which seems a little unneccesary given the fact that you'd have to swim in zig zags to actually bump into someone.

There is the unpleasant problem of the lingering aftertaste of the water. Somebody told me it was the cleaning pastilles that left the water looking white and cloudy. I'd not noticed this personally but the water certainly tasted rank! For the rest of the day I felt like my mouth had been sandblasted. Not very nice and perhaps the reason for the low frequentation of the said facilities.

If the manager of Aqua Center is reading this, you need to;

1. employ less staff (two of them were hiding in the toilets when I went in) to help decrease prices

2. open at more convenient times. 9-6pm Monday to Friday maybe be convenient for your staff but it's not great for anyone who goes to school or college or works a regular job (ie everyone)

3. sort out that nasty taste!

on my way back from the pool I saw a youth flailing around on inline skates. The light was fading and temperature below zero but he still insisted on wobbling along in a very uncertain manner, in the middle of the road, swerving from angry drivers, beeping their horns in their Dacias/4x4s.

Maybe there is hope for Sport in Buzău after all - with determination like that he could go far.

Or he could end up in Casualty!

Sinaia

Sinaia. Secondary home of the short-lived dynasty of Romanian monarchs (they were technically German, although I think the same is true of the Windsors) and other noted Romanians, although this particular castle never had a vampire. Even if it was said that Queen Maria (incidently Queen Victoria's daughter) was a bit on the feisty side.

The two castles, Peleș and Pelișor, are well worth a visit and quite refreshingly modern, especially compared to the stuffy old Stately Homes we have back in Blighty.

As the photos show the weather was bright and crisp. It hadn't snowed for several days so the grass was beginning to poke through, and even when we headed up the mountain to 1500m, there was still barely enough snow to ski. The mild daytime temperatures did have the unfortunate side effect of leaving ice patches on the ground formed from refrozen melted snow. Now, admittedly I am British and am probably guilty of being mollycoddled to such an extent that I think the Nanny State should provide under-pavement heating to prevent such dangerous occurunces. Coupled with this, I have just escaped after four years in France, where the government is assumed to be responsible for all possible woes that befall its people, natural or otherwise. (Case in point, the reason snow in Marseilles - for the first time in 22 years there were a few inches of snow on the French Riviera and the residents blamed the closure of schools and public transport on the government for not having snow-clearing equipment on standby. In Marseilles!) Yet even, after theis I still think something could have been done to prevent me, and many others, tottering around like Bambi. The low point, admittedly of our own making, was when we realised we had parked the car on top of what can only be described as a glacier. I could barely get down from the car and inched my way down the treacherous slope grabbing on to people's garden fences. As for moving said vehicle afterwards...sadly no video evidence of this event exists but we basically had to smash the ice behind the back tyres with a rock then reverse/slide the car off the slope. Inevitably the car did spin round like a top and crash into the fence a few times. Nobody was hurt in the process.

So all's well that ends well. Looking forward to getting back up to the mountains again soon. It's beautiful!