Day 20: The Mall

Day 20:

This is our last day. Day 21 involves getting up at 4:30 a.m. to catch a flight back to Los Angeles. The plan for the day was to head downtown again, this time for some shopping and a movie.

Em put on her trademark skeptical expression, Io put on her Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and off we went.

I stopped in at the merdenele place for one last pastry, and then it was off to the tram stop. We headed downtown and checked out the mall.

I hadn't ever been there and didn't even know Bucharest had a mall. I probably should have taken pictures. It looks a lot like malls in LA, and everything there was super-expensive by Romanian standards -- "American prices," as Io put it. For example, a movie is I think 27 lei (about $8.50), which isn't a lot for a movie (particularly one in 3D) but is a lot compared to what other stuff in Bucharest costs. Like, that fresh-from-the-oven big pastry, which would be probably $2.50 in the US, was 40 cents. I'm not sure how that works; in a country where you can buy most stuff for 50% of what it costs in the US or less, how does a movie industry sustain itself charging 27 lei for a ticket? John Keynes would probably know.

Chris Pulliam: Io insisted I post this photo to show you Romania

has bowling, so you and Julie will come visit

So we did that stuff, and then went and saw "Despicable Me" in 3D (which is the only way to see it, let me tell you), did some grocery shopping at the grocery store that was bizarrely in the basement of the Romanian mall, and headed home.

Ta da. That's it. The next day I was up early and onto a plane for Los Angeles. Three weeks in Romania. It was pretty great: Crazy Wedding Week, and then Awesome Tour Of The Countryside Honeymoon Week, and then a relaxing week to round things out before I headed back home.

Big thanks to the Romanian in-laws for putting me up and for moving out while I was there, and to the godparents for all their work and kindness. I'll be back in January to actually live there for six months, and if there's one thing I learned while there it's that I need to learn to speak better Romanian.

Until then, this is Vampire Hunter Ryan Williams, signing off. The blog will start up again in January when I'm back behind the Iron Curtain. See you all then!

Day 19: Downtown again

Day 19:

You can't take cameras into the US Embassy, so I left mine at home. That means no photographs today. It was a day of errands and such in downtown Bucharest. At this point, I affected an attitude of blase world-weariness: yes, onto the 311 bus, I'm quite familiar with it; of course we go to Piata Unirii, haven't you ever been to downtown Bucharest before? No, you put your ticket in the machine like so, and then click it like this.

We walked around parts of downtown and found a climbing gym and a sporting-goods store for Em. Then we went to the embassy for me and Io -- I have some 401k documents that need her notarized signature, and this is the only place we could find in Bucharest with an American notary. The people at the embassy were surprisingly super-nice and quite efficient. We ran into another American / Romanian couple who were getting married, although in their case because the Romanian was just some regular dude off the street and not a Fulbright scholar they were allowed to just go right to America. Awesome.

We continued on and visited a Romanian bookstore that had some English-language books. It was pretty funny -- just an unlabeled corner in the back of the store ("How would you know this is the English section?" I asked Io. "Because the book titles are in English."). They had this crazy hodgepodge of books -- you'd go down the shelves and it's like Pet Sematary, The Seven Habits of Very Effective People, Pride & Prejudice, Twilight: New Dawn, 500 Crossword Puzzles, etc.

After that it was time for late lunch on the go. Io and Em were going into some grocery store to buy fruit, but I was having none of that. I swore that I wasn't going to eat any American food while I was here, but there was a McDonald's right there and nothing else really to eat, so what are you gonna do? Besides, the menu was all written in Romanian, so maybe that counts as Romanian food anyway.

It's funny, because we've been to several restaurants all around Romania, and in I would say 2/3 of them the menu is subtitled in another language, usually English or German. So I'm usually fine. Even a Romanian/German menu is okay because I read enough of each language to puzzle it out. McDonald's, amusingly, is entirely in Romanian, although many of the sandwiches have no real translation so are easy to spot. When I saw it was available, though, I had to get a Royale with Cheese.

Days 17-18: Even Yet More Laziness

Days 17-18:

(Sorry for the late update. Blogger -- have I mentioned it sucks? -- has had a non-working update function the past couple of days, at least from Romania)

We haven't done much. I've been making a conscious effort to just sort of relax and enjoy hanging out with Io before it's time to go back to the US. Yesterday we went to the Auchan and then off to visit the godparents.

Everything in Romania takes longer than things do in LA. It's interesting and I'm sure has something larger to say about the different lifestyles in both countries, but I'm too lazy to figure out what. But getting to the godparents was about a 45-minute trip that combined a walk, a long bus ride, and then another walk. Once we got there, Order of Business Number One was that Ovi wanted to take me for a motorcycle ride. A friend of his has a bike, and Ovi loves bikes and knows that I love bikes, so we'd been planning this for a while.

So Ovi and I walked over to the friend's place, then had to go up to the friend's apartment to get the battery for the bike. It had no gas, so we walked to a gas station, got gas, and walked back. At this point it's about two hours since I left the house. In LA, if I went to visit a friend, at T +2 hours we would have finished two sets of tennis and be eating lunch by now, or whatever. There are actually advantages and disadvantages to each. My Type A personality tends to automatically prefer the LA lifestyle, but there's something to be said for the slower lifestyle as well. You see more of what's going on around you, and somehow when everything moves slower everything seems, I dunno, less stressed. Although maybe that's more just because I'm on vacation.

Anyway, so Ovi took me to see this bike. It was made by a Russian company called Ural, and Ovi told me the bike was an "improved" version of the BMW boxer design (same as my current bike at home). So we get to the place, and there's a dramatic unveiling:

I felt like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.

"What a piece of junk!"

But the bike is actually a pretty cool example of old, hard-as-nails bike design. My R1150RT at home is all computers and slick lines and fly-by-wire. The Ural is a stripped-down, severe form of motorcycle: an engine block, two big cylinders, a utilitarian electrical system, and just enough frame to hold it together. It doesn't even have an electric starter. You can look at it and see exactly where each component is and what it does. "The front brake is -- nonexist," Ovi told me. Good to know. I notice the side of the gas tank is not just dented and scraped, but has been patched. Like, an oval of metal has literally been welded into the skin of the tank.

Unfortunately, although my mom will not think so, we couldn't get the bike started. The gas tank was rusted out and the fuel line, which runs right along the outside of the bike where anything in the world could sever it and lead to a catastrophic fire, wasn't getting any gas. So we had to abandon the motorcycle ride (although Ovi assures me the bike will be fixed by the time I'm back here next year).

Today, we've done basically nothing at all. Em and I went for a run, Io made us all delicious lamb stew and mamaliga, and went for a walk. Tomorrow it's off to downtown Bucharest for various errands.

Probably doesn't mean what I think

Day 16: Yet More Laziness

Day 16:

After the frenetic activity of our whirlwind tour of Romania and then the baptism / wedding checkup / house party, we felt entitled to a day of rest. We spent the morning mostly just hanging around the house doing nothing.

Ioana made delicious chicken in white wine for lunch, and I made wedge-cut fries Romanian style with paprika. Romanians love them some paprika, especially on potatoes, and I have to admit that they are onto something here. I don't know how expensive paprika is in America but I'm going to start using it more regularly.

Eventually Em convinced me that we should go out for a run. In the past weeks...okay, months...actually, going on a year...I've fallen out of my regular-5Ks running routine and gotten a bit, shall we say, more lax. So a run sounded like a good idea. We ran I would guess 1.75 miles or so around the streets of Titan (the neighborhood Ioana's family lives in). Em came back glowing and full of energy. I was sweating like I'd just been through a Romanian wedding. But exercise is good. Right? I hope so, because it sort of sucks to do.

After running, I felt like it was time for some donuts. I hadn't had Sassy Donuts since that day in the park. Io assured me she knew of a donut place that was a 20-minute walk away, which in my mind totally cancels out the fact that I'm eating donuts. So off we went.

Twenty minutes later, we arrived to find that these were (a) Furious Donuts, not the Sassy Donuts I craved; and (2) the place only had four lonely, stale donuts left, all of them with sour-cherry filling that I hate. Io bought one for herself, but I was having none of that.

Io convinced me that we should walk even farther from home because maybe there'd be Sassy Donuts somewhere else. We went on a long walking tour of Titan and eventually ended up at a local park. I was ready to go home, but Io said I should have faith and see if we could find some in the park. "Sure," I said. "Maybe my new God will bring forth Sassy Donuts." After all, I had renounced the Pope, hadn't I? Seems like maybe I'm owed a little something.

So we headed down there, which turned out to be a very happening place. Lots of people out on a Sunday afternoon, lots of stalls selling all sorts of stuff. There were some delicious treats -- some Hungarians were selling home-made candy (we bought some), and there were a couple of stalls selling delicious kolac. This is the stuff I previously called Turkish conac. The correct word is kolac, and it turns out Io was saying Kurdish, not Turkish, so Vlad Tepes is off the hook for killing the kolac makers. Saddam Hussein, you are now on my shit list.

We wandered around the park for a while, which was nice, but no Sassy Donuts. We had given up and were heading to the metro to catch the subway home when suddenly I heard the sweet voices of angels. The heavens parted, light beamed down, a burning bush started making frantic gestures towards a nearby stall, and a flock of geese flew overhead in the shape of a donut honking out the Ave Maria. I figured this was all a big coincidence, but as I walked up the stairs I saw...

SASSY DONUT!!!

So this story has a happy ending. I ordered my donuts (I have become a total expert at ordering donuts in Romanian), thanked whatever God the Eastern Orthodox worship, and had ten minutes of bliss as we headed back to the metro for home. Hooray!

This is way better than being Catholic

Days 14-15: The Honeymoon is Over

Day 14:

Last day of our honeymoon trip. The schedule is wake up, go climb 1,500 steps to Poienari Fortress, and then head back to Bucharest with a couple quick sightseeing stops on the way.

It's hard to see the fort in that picture, but if you look at the building at ground level with the conical roof, the fortress is pretty much directly above that. It's probably only visible in the big version of the photo on Picasa (linked here)

Getting up there requires climbing 1,500 stone steps up the wooded mountainside. It's a very pretty walk, but it's 1,500 stairs.

That's a lot of stairs. If I were doing the Navy SEAL Workout every day like my friend Saeed, maybe I could do it no problem. But when we came to this sign along the way I was about ready to kill someone. By the time I hit the 2/3 mark I was seriously considering just taking over the fortress when I got to the top and ruling Wallachia as a bandit lord.

Eventually, though, we reached the top of the hill and had the fortress in sight. The original tower was built in I think the 13th century. In Vlad Tepes' time, the surrounding wall and outbuildings were constructed to help hold off the Turks. Legend has it that one Easter morning, Vlad had his troops surround the Easter feast of a noble family that he found out had tried to poison him. The guards seized the nobles and brought them out here, and forced them to work on the construction of the fortress in their finery until all their clothes were destroyed. I assume after that he had them all impaled, although the legend doesn't actually say.

The fortress itself was smallish but really cool from a historical perspective.

After that it was off to Biserica Domneasca, a 14th-century chruch in Curtea de Arges. There's a whole legend about this church that Ioana told me, but I wasn't listening very well. Something about the builder being forced to kill his pregnant wife and then jumping off the roof and creating a saltwater well where he landed, or something like that.

But the inside of the church was amazing, every square inch was covered in paintings (many of them restored originals from the 14th century). I didn't take any photos (expensive), but Emma did, so maybe I'll get some pictures up soon.

After that, it was back into the Dacia for one last leg back to Bucharest. We got home around 6pm. Goodbye, honeymoon. It was great! Write to me, Mrs. Waffles!

Day 15;

I gave the camera a rest today, so no photos. We went down to the village house in the morning for two different church ceremonies. First off, the priest has to do a one-week checkup on your marriage, make sure nobody has killed anyone or anything like that. Then we did the baptism conversion, which ended up being a much longer and more complicated process than I realized. The priest himself had never done one (not a lot of Roman Catholics in Romania) and had to go digging through the archives to find the correct procedure. But we eventually got it handled, and he asked me if I renounced my loyalty to the Pope, which is like asking me whether I renounce my loyalty to the Tooth Fairy, so I told him "Sure." He anointed me with oil, which I think is olive oil, so I smelled like bruschetta all day and was craving Italian.

Instead we went back to the village house for yet another party, although much smaller this time. We had mici and mutton skewers and basically just hung out all day in the yard. One of the attendees had brought her six-year-old son. He had never met anyone who didn't speak Romanian before, and he couldn't get it through his head that I couldn't understand him. He would ask me something, and I would tell him (in Romanian) that I don't speak Romanian, I'm American, I only speak English, and he would just cock his head to the side like "What the hell is this guy talking about?" and ask me the same thing again. I would try a different tack with "I don't understand" and then the kid would just yell his question at the top of his lungs, apparently having decided I must be hard of hearing. I eventually tracked down Ioana and tried to have her explain it for me, but he still couldn't get his head around the idea that I was a grownup and could talk but couldn't speak Romanian. He understood the concept of speaking English (his English teacher spoke English), but not the idea that I didn't also speak Romanian. He kept asking Ioana why I was using all small words, and I think after a while he just decided I was retarded.

Eventually we just played soccer together, which worked out fine because I know how to count in Romanian and he knows how to count in English, so once I learned the Romanian for "What's the score?" we were all good.

Day 13: I'll Be Comin' Through The Mountain When I Come

Day 13:

Today was Carpathian Mountains Day. In fact, we were scheduled to go over what I am told is the highest mountain in the Carpathian range (which makes it the highest mountain in Romania) because that is, unaccountably, where the Romanians decided to make the road over the mountains. The day dawned cold but clear, a big change from the rain we'd had the last couple days. We all piled into the Dacia in high spirits and prayed there wouldn't be snow on the road. To the left you'll see Emma doing her best Cee-Lo impression as she belts out "Crazy" for the rest of us.

A short way up the road, we ran into our first obstacle. Although snow-colored, these sheep fortunately posed little danger to our trusty Dacia. After a short delay, we were back in business.

It got much, much colder the higher we got. Emma and I bought gloves at a roadside stand. The cloud and fog layer started coming closer and closer to us.

I tried to get some photos showing how steep the drop-off was, but it just doesn't come out in pictures. Sometimes it's fine, but there are lots of stretches where the cliff is nearly 90 degrees. You walk up to the edge and look down and it's like looking over the roof of the Empire State Building.

About an hour or so in, we were above the snow-line. The bright sun of Versailles was far, far behind us. The roads at this point were slushy with some snow, but the Dacia -- loaded down with all four of us, our luggage, and towels -- handled it just fine.

Keep in mind, by the way, that it's just a week outside of summer at this point, but there's a bunch of snow on the ground up here. Io said the highest parts of the mountains have snow essentially year-round, with maybe one month of melt.

Further up, and the snow is higher. They don't have an actual snowplow, but the Romanians keep the road clear by driving a back-hoe down the road with the front shovel blade lowered, clearing out a single lane that sort of wanders over the road.

This was definitely challenging to our doughty driver, Gagi. But he handled it like a champion.

The mountains themselves were really gorgeous:

As the road got closer to the top of the range, the Romanian engineers apparently looked back at the miles and miles of snowy switchbacks and collectively decided "Fuck this" and blasted a tunnel through to the other side. Let me just tell you all right now: do not cross the Carpathians if you're claustrophobic. The tunnel was quite long, completely unlit, and curved enough so that for about a third of it you're in total darkness.

Once out the other side, we started heading down again and ran into yet another herd of sheep. That shepherd has got some real stones herding sheep this high up. I mean, I was freezing just looking at him.

The snow thinned out again as we headed lower, which was a happy thing for all of us. Eventually we made it down to a little town on the other side.

I think of this place as Rachel-town, because they had horses that just wandered around wherever they felt like. We stopped for some tea and hot chocolate and then pressed onwards.

Unfortunately, Ioana got a pretty bad cold starting on Day 13. She stayed in the car bundled up almost the entire time. The only time she really got out was for the horses. She maintained her good cheer, though:

We drove for quite a while down the mountain, passing an old Romanian fortress on the way. Io told me we'd be climbing up to that fortress tomorrow, which involved going up 1,500 steps. I figured I had better eat well for lunch, dinner, and breakfast tomorrow, and probably for the two or three days after the climb just to be sure. When we stopped to eat I got a traditional Romanian stew with pork and sausage, polenta and fried egg. Io got an entire fish with a head on and everything.

Fish With Heads Still On: Yuck

We stopped for the night in a great little place where we all got our own rooms, which even had showers with hot water and actual water pressure. I had my first good shower since I got here, which as you can see by looking at the title of this post was two weeks ago. Yay!