In the beginning of April 2009, I was mostly....

...fretting about having no TV. It's sad how lost I am without it. Seems like the TV drought is set to continue, too. :-(

Watch Your Language

As you are probably aware, I'm learning trying to learn the great language of this country, so as I don't have to spend the rest of my time here as a mute social outsider. Despite taking lessons for over a year now I still feel like I understand next to nothing and inarticulately stumble through verb/adjective/nounless sentences (and sometimes all three) with the help of hand gestures.

However, I came to the realisation that I must be making progress following some recent events.

I just stepped out to get milk and bread when a neighbour came over and starting badgering me about buying a camera from him (he's already snared the Malteaser at lunchtime and he understood as much without ever having a Romanian lesson in his life, so no medals so far). He explained to me it was very cheap and that it was a surveillance camera and I could take it and check to see if it worked on my computer before buying it. I agreed, seeing no polite way out of it. He went into his house to fetch said item and two of the young Romani girls from next door came over to ask if I was coming to pay for the camera. When he came back they were pawing him, asking for the money. He told them he hadn't got it and that I was going to try the camera first. I duly went back to the house with the minute (and clearly nicked not new) camera in tow. When I returned I explained that it didn't plug into the computer (which it didn't) and that we didn't need a surveillance camera, thank you. I don't know if he managed to sell the thing or where the girls got it from, but I knew I was best off out of it.

By now, another neighbour had joined us who, fortunately enough, spoke good English so could help the conversation along. He invited us into his garden and gave us strong homemade (is there any other kind?) țuica, he then invited us to have some food with him and his wife, which I felt obliged to accept because a) it looked good and b) he had told me all about how good Romanian food was. The other neighbour left for a family party so we went inside to eat. I sat in the kitchen and waited for him and his wife to come back. Eventually he came back and his wife stomped past me, without so much as a glance in my direction, picked up her plate and stormed out again, saying "I just want to be alone, why did you have to invite her, you sit with her if you like her so much" or words to that effect.

In hind-sight I'm not so sure it wasn't better before I knew what was going on.

A Europe without borders...

This post was supposed to be me telling you all about how I spent a fantastic Easter weekend on the beach in Bulgaria. But I am an idiot and left my passport behind so instead it'll have to be another story about Romania.

The Malteaser assured me we were going to a touristy area and we even bravely packed the camping gear and made for the Romanian coast. The plan was to stop in Vama Veche, (Once the private domain of Cluj university faculty members and associated with hippies and nudism. Apparently. ) before hopping over the border. Unfortunately, without a passport/official identity card (of which no Briton has) it was access denied. The border official was having none of my driving license and big flashing smile. I'd got so used to living in the Schengen zone, just a short car drive from 5 European countries you could just waltz into that I didn't even think about the need to account for my identity, especially as I was still in Europe.

So, we ended up in Vama Veche which seemed a long way from the packed tourist spot the Malteaser had promised. There wasn't a sole around apart from a growing motley crew of nasty dogs. The weather was sunny and bright but the evening brought the wind in and the temperature dropped. There didn't seem to be any hotels open and we struggled to even find anywhere to sell us a beer. We spent the night in the back of our car, listening to the dogs fighting. I'm sure in the height of summer that this place is heaving with people and abound with entertainment (the Lonely Planet indeed describes it thusly) but the place was deader than a dodo for Easter weekend.

Later the next day, I got to thinking... (Feel free to imagine me à la Carrie Bradshaw, in front of my shiny laptop, but perhaps minus the designer shoes and plus a couple of stone. Other than that, frankly, the physical resemblance is uncanny)...about why this place was not cashing in on the Bank Holiday weekend. Here is what I narrowed it down to;

1. Romanian people don't consider that it's hot enough to go to the beach. As someone who once got sunburned in April in Northern Ireland (but don't tell anyone), I consider anything over 20°C to be mandatory summer clothes weather. Here, with temperatures in the high teens and bright sunshine, children are still in woolly hats. All of them.
   
2. Everyone had gone to the beach in Bulgaria. There was a long line to cross the border but seemed to be almost nobody coming the other way. Apparently it is cheaper too, and a news report on Tuesday suggested the same thing; Romanians were defying the economic crisis and holidaying abroad.
   
3. It is not appropriate holiday time. In France everybody goes on holiday at the same time – skiing in February, beach in August. They even refer to the first week in September as "la rentrée" as the world and his dog returns from the coast en masse and goes back to work. In Britain we tend to take our holidays abroad but summer Bank Holidays are notoriously busy on the roads, even more so at Bluewater, and utter mayhem at the entrance to B&Q. Perhaps people just don't go away for the weekend at Easter (although this would contradict point 2).
   
4. They are all having picnics and fishing.
   

After our polite refusal at the Bulgarian border we headed back up the Black sea coast and again found ourselves in the Danube Delta. Every winding path took us past families and groups outside, barbecuing and dancing (traditional Romanian dancing where you all stand in a circle and hold hands). We stopped by the Danube where people had set up camp, presumably to fish all weekend (there not being much else to do) at the point where the "road" (and I use this term lightly) had been submerged by flooding. It was a fantastic spot but as we were rather underequipped, having barely any water and no food or beer, we left after a few hours.

The Malteaser was disappointed – where was the bar? Why had no one thought of setting up some kind of café/ice-cream stand. I thought he was wishing the full-felt might of advanced capitalism onto the place a little too soon. If you have a bar then it has to be built on land that somebody owns and be paid for. If you follow this logic it is not far down the slippery slope before people have to pay to fish here, pay to camp and that access is limited to certain routes. You would no longer be able to explore the countryside as you wanted; in short, most of the things that we appreciate about Romania, their difference from Westren Europe, would disappear.

For all the crappy things that you have to put up with in Romania there are some absolutely fantastic advantages. I hope that they are not going to papered over sanitized in the name of progress and the EU.

This aint no upwardly mobile freeway...

...despite what the name might suggest! The town-planners were obviously on a coffee break when somebody thought up "Street of the prosperous", although I must say that it actually looks more attractive with the blossom on the trees, and probably beats my street hands down, even without bitumen. If you look closely enough you can make out the rugs hanging over the fence (apparently this is part of the big Spring Clean, just in time for [Orthodox] Easter, which is on Sunday).

I have been meaning to take a picture of this for ages but not dared until today - this is a local "insurance broker's", parked outside McDonalds! He's obviously very confident about the quality of his product as he's swanned off and left the door to his "office" open.

in March 2009, I was mostly...

...in Australia.I will get back to blogging as soon as I recover from this strange (tropical?!) illness that I have been afflicted with since my return.

Washing carpets amid the dunes

I'm finally back from Oz a little less pale and jaded than when I left this dreary backdrop and I'm pleased to see that Spring has (finally) sprung.

I had such a great time in "Fritza" our ickle camper-van, cruising around Tasmania which has stunning countryside and beaches and also pleasant, clean towns with friendly people. My friend looked beautiful for her wedding day and although it was a little damper than she may have hoped, it was a great day. And of course it was great to spend time with my friends, chatting and laughing, drinking and eating, hiking and sleeping...until it was time for us all to go back!

Sadly the Malteaser couldn't make it along (let's just say he has a position of greater authority than me, his new responsibility being to keep me as I'm now broke!) so Ozfest 2009 was 100% Anglo-centric. Whilst I caught back up with my French after a couple of days, I fear that the break has set my Romanian language learning back quite a bit more. I shall have to redouble my efforts if I want to reach any level of competency this side of Christmas!

Luckily the sun and rising temperatures put me in an optimistic mood and there has been a noticeable increase in activity levels in and around our street. Building projects that seemed to have been put on hold over the winter months have resumed, resulting in even more untidy piles of raw materials spread over the pavement and onto the street. I don't actually find it irksome to have the road covered in sand, gravel, uncovered earth or, this weekend, rather potent compost (ironically as I came back from buying compost!) but I imagine that this behaviour would have any self respecting middle class resident of any of my previous addresses up in arms and haranguing the perpetrators constantly with terse notes through the letterbox before deciding to write a very stern letter to the local paper (I can feel you all quaking in your boots at the wrath of Middle England). Here it goes almost unnoticed and many mounds have remained untouched over winter, providing convenient areas for dogs to relieve themselves.

The other activity that has seen a steep rise is carpet cleaning. The general practice among the țigani is to hang their washing out over the fences of their houses. This is where they hang large indoor rugs too, before beating them with a stick to remove all the dirt. You will also find teams of women on the street, either with the carpets on the quite dirty pavement or on the not much cleaner fence, scrubbing at the rugs with soap and water. It seems very laborious and rather a thankless task as it seems to have to be repeated ad nauseam.

I've heard rumours that the carpets are placed on bare ground, not on floorboards, hence the need for all teh cleaning. This is thusfar unconfirmed, I'll have to get back to you on that one!

In the first week of March 2009, I was mostly...

...getting into exercise DVDs.Too bad I might have to get into a bikini before they've had any effect on my **insulating** layers of flab!