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!

Chats with the neighbours

One of the great things about Romania is the sense of community. People not only know who their neighbours are, but speak to them regularly. In many cases; this is what actually passes for entertainment – in the country nearly everyone has a small step or wooden bench outside their gate and will sit here in fine weather, watching the events on the street and waiting for people to come by and chat.

I have only recently discovered the joys of these chats, having been too afraid to speak to my neighbours as I presumed I would understand nothing of their conversations. When I did try, the latter did indeed turn out to be true, but my neighbours seem genuinely delighted, not to mention patient, with my incomplete sentences and inability to decipher more than the barebones of any conversation.

As such, I have met (and forgotten the names of) many more people on the street, which has a lot of benefits. They will help you with where to pay bills and find the items you're looking for. They'll collect your bin in after the binmen have been past, as well as your post (this week the two were combined as I found my empty bin back in our courtyard with our letters at the bottom of it!). Unfortunately they will also ask for favours in return, usually help in finding a job, which I, personally, cannot help with, although it is automatically assumed that I can.

In particular, one guy from up the street regular comes to the house calling "Monsieur, Monsieur", until the Malteaser goes out to talk to him. He wants to work for us, from what I understand, but each time we have to tell him we have no work for him. I'm not sure we could actually afford the rates. Recently another neighbour asked the Malteaser to work on the house as he was going door to door. Twenty minutes later we saw him again in the street – another neighbour had given him 30 lei to clean her carpet. 30 LEI FOR 15MINS WORK!?! That works out as £20 an hour! And yet minimum wage earners here get around £250 a month. No wonder the economy's in a mess with these crazy pricing structures.

Even so, 15 minutes of work a week, however well paid, is not enough to support somebody and there is no way you cannot feel the divide. "What you up to?" "Nothing, you?" "Well, just off down the shops to get a couple of new tops and then I thought I'd get my nails done"....you see my problem. I was actually about to say that I was on my way to the dentist's the other day (I'm still plagued by brown teeth, appointment tomorrow) when a woman walked past with a smile that'd give Shane McGowan a fright. In the end I just kept my mouth shut (pun only half intended).

My other appointment this week was to get a bikini wax. You can skip this part if you're of a nervous disposition. Needless to say it was an interesting experience, which took place in a first floor room that looked like someone's kitchen and had an overwhelming smell of gas. When I arrived the door was open and I was concerned that I was going to have to disrobe in view of everyone. However, after a very public consultation about what I wanted done (which can only be made more embarrassing by the fact that I'm now writing about it in a blog) the door was closed and I was lying on a slightly grubby table (where were the protective paper sheet things and the dolphin noises CD? Not that I was particularly worried. I don't believe, as many Romanian women seem to, that infectious diseases can be contracted through the buttocks. This is why I do not stand on toilet seats and squat over the porcelain in public restrooms, leaving muddy footprints behind on the seat for the next person to wipe off). I was also pleased to note that the use of neat alcohol is not restricted to barbers shops.

All I can say is that it smarts!

In the last week of February 2009, I was mostly...

surprised about going into a shop, that I had never been in before in my life, and have the sales-staff greet me with cheery "Hello"s. Thinking I'd probably imagined it, I replied in Romanian and looked around the shop.On coming out of the changing rooms, a third shop assitant called "Excuse me!" at me. How on Earth did they know???

București cosmopoliți

I have never lived anywhere that could be described as cosmopolitan.

I grew up in a village in Norfolk where I think racial diversity meant coming from Norwich. The only non-whites for miles around were airmen from the nearby US Air Force Bases, leading me to the conclusion that black people came from America (a conviction I held until I was at least 10, I'm sure).

At university I was determined to head for the big city; big it might be, but Sheffield is definitely not glamorous. It's been glammed up a fair bit in recent years, and there are probably parts of it that I'd no longer recognize, yet the oppressive post-war concrete structures and the permanent drizzle from September to late May always dampened the esthetic of what was otherwise a fantastic place to be a student.

My studies took me across the channel to France, at last a bit of the exotic! I was sure I was on to a winner by stating I wanted to be placed in a city for my year as a teaching assistant. The excitement continued as I was told I was going to be in the Burgundy region. Wine, mustard, snails and Boeuf Bourgignon, Dukes and history and second homes, this was it. At the welcome meeting we were told how lucky were to be posted to the most affluent region in France…except if we were in the region's second largest town, Chalon-sûr-Sâone, in which case the situation was different. My school turned out to be on the outskirts of said town, between a sink estate and a factory, where I lived in what looked like a nuclear fall-out shelter in the middle of the school field.

After uni I tried again, this time sure I could get that position on Aix-en-Provence. Fate saw differently and I packed my bags for Valenciennes in Northern France, chav-central and a building site. I had by now resigned myself to living slightly askew of the cutting edge.

So, whilst some may have been apprehensive about moving to Romania, having never really lived the high-life myself, I told myself "How hard can it be?"

This answer was, harder than I thought!

Despite certain first impressions, I do love all the places I have lived and will defend them vehemently against snobs and ignoramuses who try to do them down, and I have no doubt I will feel the same about living in Buzău. This doesn't stop me feeling that I am missing out on some fun somewhere along the way.

Last week, I went to my first ever expats meeting in Bucharest. I was a bit nervous about what I would find but all of the women I spoke to were absolutely lovely and it really was a pleasant way to spend a morning. However, I came away with a rather bizarre feeling, knowing that all these women could continue going to their bridge clubs, book groups and coffee meetings (not to mention Monthly Luncheons and aqua gym sessions) whilst I would be two hours away, on my Todd. I didn't necessarily want to take part in all their meetings (I came to Romania in order to find out about Romanian lifestyles, after all) but I envied the escapism it offered them and the company of other expats (of whom there surely are in the town, I just haven't found them yet).

I did enjoy my trip to the big smoke; taking the train, then a cab, speaking English, having a coffee and a chat but it didn't feel very real. I'm obviously not cut out for these bourgeois affairs.

So until further notice I shall be here, running from the dogs, escaping to the swimming pool and dreaming of the day I can understand what all the people around me are talking about.

in the third week of February, I was mostly...

loving my SwiMP3.It allows you to listen to music whilst swimming. The sound is transmitted through bone conduction so you actually wear the headphones over your cheekbones. It was one of the more inspired presents from the Malteaser. I've even found myself singing along underwater and stepping up the pace when a dance track comes on. I love it!http://www.finisinc.com/products-swimp3v2.shtml

Money matters

Credit crunch, economic slump, company lay-offs, falling house prices, pouvoir d'achat, and banks going bust mean that this is not a good time for anyone financially.

Money-wise it was a (personally speaking) disastrous time to move to Romania. The country's entry into the European Union and the steady increase in foreign investment had created a wave of euphoria throughout the land which saw flats in major towns changing hands for higher prices than in Paris or Vienna. Even here in Buzău, flats in run down concrete blocks with dodgy lifts and even dodgier décor were being sold for in excess of 130 000€. I myself feel this figure is insane because the amenities available are nowhere near the standard of a provincial town in France (where you could expect to pay the same price) and you'd still have to contend with other inconveniences such as stray dogs and dirt roads. Luckily the situation is calming a little, but rent remains high – up to 1000€ a month here whilst in Bucharest it is double or triple that.

Quite how Romanian people can afford such prices is beyond me. Renault workers in Piteşti went on strike last year to obtain the princely sum of 300€/month. You'd need three salaries just to cover the rent! Even professional salaries seem incompatible with the cost of living, with an accountant earning around 14 000€ annually. The taxation system also means that lower earners are even worse off. Everybody pays a whopping 16% income tax! If you're a factory worker, that's 48€ of your 300€ gone before you've got it home. (Some of the other problems, like people holding down multiple jobs and widespread corruption seem to be easier to comprehend in this light).

The attitude of Romanians towards Westerners is rather a strange one; it is assumed that you have money to burn. This does not necessarily mean you will be taken advantage of, although I was ripped off by a taxi driver yesterday, but you will undoubtedly differ in opinion as to how money should be spent. I was recently ambushed by an insurance saleswoman who tried to sign me up for some life insurance. In Britain or France they wouldn't have looked twice at a 26 year old in jeans and trainers but here I was being given the hard sell. Having explained the formalities, we discussed how much I'd hypothetically like to pay each month. The default amount was already on the screen but "100 €, is too little" she told me, "for you, 150€ is no problem". Err??? My earnings have taken a nosedive recently (I'm paid by the hour for English training, which is not a priority for companies trying to keep their overheads down) but even before moving to Romania this would have been about 10% of my take home pay. Even in spite of the communication barrier, I felt quite speechless. That's an enormous amount to just "find" from somewhere and in the current economic climate I would not be able to do it. How much did she think I made?

What people spend their money on is vastly different though. Numero uno has to be a flash car, preferably a 4x4. This would come way ahead of fixing up the house or taking a foreign holiday. Many Westerners would spend money on the garden but nobody even has a garden here. Restaurants are often empty, there's no cinema, not many bars and cafés and I haven't been tempted by one single garment since I arrived (except on a trip to Bucharest). When they do go out at night, they're not drinking because they have to drive their flash car home. It seems that the trappings of a Western life come at the expense of a Westerner's lifestyle.

The reason that I have been giving values in €uros is not just because it's now my default value for calculations, it's also the Romanian one too. The currency is used for property, cars (even second-hand) and contracts for services, and everyone can convert values into Euros easily (as I write this the exchange rate is about 4.3 RON, Romanian New Lei, to the €uro). People are very optimistic about entering the €uro zone, which they expect to do in 2014 (I think it will take longer).

However, whilst high end goods and services are calculated in €uro (but often paid for in RON), cheaper items are calculated in the local currency. At the market, a kilo of spuds costs 1 RON (around 20p or 0.23€), meaning that change for anything less than one RON becomes fiddly. At the supermarket the price is often rounded up or down, at least to the nearest tenth of a RON or 10 bani. I'm still coming to grips with the fact that coins are more or less worthless here, and that it is important to always have a good stock of 1RON notes because nobody ever has any change.

The most perturbing thing of all is that the RON is a relatively new currency. It came into circulation in January 2005 and replaced the "old" lei (singular leu, meaning Lion) with 1 RON being equivalent to 10000 ROL. This aimed to bring purchasing power in line with that of Western European states. A nice idea, but as people effectively chose to adopt the €uro as a reference point at this time it would appear a little redundant. Also, most people still refer to the old values, meaning that you may be told that your cheese at the market costs 50 000. Even more confusing is the negation of the thousand when speaking, (so that the cheese would now be priced at 50) which always has me asking the seller the price about seven times, before trying to pay ten quid for a block of bland cheese.

At least they are more adaptable than the French. The Malteaser still converts EVERYTHING from €uros to Francs, as do most French people (they've only had 10 years to get used to it, after all!). My elderly relatives in Ireland converted to the Euro remarkably easily, and after 6 months, prices were no longer displayed in the two currencies. Needless to say that this is not the case in France; indeed if you go out into the country you'll find that the people in villages still talk about anciens francs, the value before the devaluation in 1969! I think this says a lot about people's will to change things. Although they're quick to defend the €uro in the face of les Anglais (Mutter, mutter, mutter, we are les britanniques and if I hear one more time about the "English" Prime Minister Gordon Brown I'll scream).

I think I'll just let someone else worry about the money for now. I quite like the idea of being a kept woman.

Ziua Îndrăgostiților

I'm not usually a fan of this overly commercialised excuse for an "occasion". That being said, this year has been a good one so I'm feeling slightly more ingratiated to it!

Firstly, for the first time ever, (this being our fourth 14th February ensemble) the Malteaser and acknowledged the day's existence and tried to be nice to each other. I baked him a chocolate cake and he took me out for a drink at "Café Romantic" last night. We must be getting soft in our old age!

Having gone a bit overboard on the eve (cake and beer being our absolute limit in terms of romanticism), today we had nothing special planned. We giggle to ourselves in French about the teenage couples in the park with their little red "te iubesc mult" bags or their bunches of flowers. We openly mocked the enormous cushions being sold in Carrefour.

Little did we know we were about to get our come-uppance!

Whilst in one of the aisles looking for dusters (yeah I know, romantic!) there's a load tannoy announcement. I realise that the reason it is so loud is because the guy with the microphone is right next to us. Before we have time to react, we've been cornered and the Malteaser is well and truly put on the spot as the whole supermarket is waiting for his answer. Having not understood the question, he does the only thing he can, and replies "Je suis français", accompanied by the customary Gallic shrug. A lesser microphone-brandishing PR pundit would have been dissuaded, but this bloke was keen.

Pushy supermarket announcer: "You speak English?"

Malteaser: "A little"

Pushy supermarket announcer: "Do you want to tell her how much you love her this day?

Malteaser (now a perfect shade of beetroot): "So much!"

Pushy supermarket announcer: "Aaah! Ok, now we take the photo and here are your presents"

Who knew that all I had to do was to resort to public humiliation to get an (begrudging) declaration of love from him?! I'm not sure where the photos are going to end up but the Malteaser and I are not the most photogenic couple in the world so they may already have been destroyed. These are our presents though!

When we got back to our street, out landlord and his friends were standing outside talking. We stayed talking to them for a while, as they explained the various "career choices" of some people in the street. "His future is in jail!" we were told as a group of guys from further up the street strolled past, curiously brandishing dead fir trees which they deposited on a neighbour's roof. We didn't understand absolutely everything!

Afterwards we were invited in for some fantastic home cooked Romanian food. Sarmale cu mămăligă washed down with țuică and wine. Delicios!