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.

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???

In the run-up to thinking about packing...

With just weeks to go before I embark on my new life, preperations for the move are surprisingly tardy. Even rather elementary requirements, i.e. a place to live in our new country, have, as yet, been unfulfilled. But we remain blindly and naively hopeful that everything "will be alright".
This is not the first time I've upped sticks to a different European state but I can say with all honesty that the fears about this move are altogether different. People delight in regaling their stories (rarely first-hand) of rabid dogs, bare-footed orphans and blatant and widespread corruption, not to mention vampires. Before moving to France I was worried I'd be made to eat calf's brains (which I now know are delicious, of course!).
Occasionally people have spoken of the beauty of Romania (which I can attest to) but they are often sceptical as to whether this extends far enough down the Carpathians to the town of Buzău, which will be my home for the next three (or so) years. In response to this, I must say that esthetically-pleasing town-planning may not have been high on the list of priorities for the party big-wigs back in the day, but that living for three years respectively in Sheffield and in northern France does teach you to look beyond the surface.
However, the real sticking point is likely to be the isolation. I've been grappling with the Romanian language now for eight months. Although I'm making progress, I am nowhere near the level I had in French before crossing the channel five years ago, and will not be accompanied, like I was then, by other like-minded but equally clueless Brits for moral support, trips round Carrefour and drinks in the pub afterwards.
I will have my boyfriend, I suppose, who, despite being French, is pretty nice to have around most of the time.
And if he's really getting on my nerves, maybe I'll adopt one of those stray dogs....