Let My People Go

Well, our week with the Williams grandparents is over. All in all, everyone had a great time. Gabe's colic calmed down for the past few days, allowing us to go a bunch of places with my parents without it turning into a complete disaster.

So in addition to hanging around the bloc and the hotel a lot, we managed to head out for a family trip to Auchan, where we bought some baby stuff because the entire suitcase full of baby stuff that my mother brought with her wasn't enough. Maybe now we have enough baby stuff. If you ask me, anyway. You would have an easier time getting the military to admit it has enough jet planes than you would getting my mom or Io to admit we have enough baby stuff.

Fail.

We also headed out to Rahova to visit great-grandpa and great-grandma Negru. They were very happy to have us over, and to see Gabriel again. It was also a chance for my parents to meet them, and vice-versa, and for my folks to see the house where Io spent her adolescence.

It was an interesting day, because you've got three people who speak only Romanian, one who speaks Romanian and some English, one who speaks English and some Romanian, two who speak only English, one who speaks by screaming, and only one person who speaks both Romanian and English fluently. Poor Ioana was constantly being asked to translate things one way or the other, and she's the only one who can feed the baby, so there was a lot on her plate. But she had a good time along with everyone else. My parents even got to try some of the Negrus' home-made wine.

They're going to be really mad when they see I put this picture up.

Sorry guys, it was too awesome.

They're not actually drunk. So we all hung out there for a while and then headed back, and on Thursday we enjoyed a day of just lounging around the bloc with no real plans.

Tania made an excellent meal as she always does, and my parents continued to love the local cuisine. It's hard not to, really: lots of great meat and potatoes, and nothing yucky that is good for you. Tania even made her special home-made donuts.

Today was the last day we had together. My parents checked out of their hotel this morning, and we all had lunch together at The Beer Wagon. It was a typical Romanian slow-service, two-and-a-half-hour lunch, but the food was good and the place remains a beautiful place to have a meal.

After lunch, we sent my parents off to join their tour package. They're scheduled to take a tour of downtown Bucharest tomorrow, and then they are off on a river-boat cruise up the Danube.

EEE! EEE! EEE!

We said goodbye to them out in the middle of downtown Bucharest. I'll be seeing them in July for my brother's wedding, but we don't know when they'll see Gabriel again, or when they and Io will see each other again, so that's hard.

Bye parents! Thanks so much for visiting! It's not many parents who get dragged halfway around the world to post-Communist eastern Europe by their kids. I think of it as payback for hauling me off to live in Australia all those years ago.

So now, everything here is pretty much back to normal. There's the normal cleaning to do to recover after a week of out-of-town guests, but for the most part it's just going to be a bunch of getting back to regular activities: baby doctor, ESL classes, nursing exams for Io, and so on.

We have one last fun trip planned before the end of June when I have to leave. In a couple of weeks the whole family will be heading down to the Black Sea for a couple of days. Tania and Gagi are going to a wedding and Io and Gabe and I are tagging along. I'm looking forward to it because I've always wanted to see the Black Sea and we've just never had the time. So that should be pretty fun.

In a couple of weeks we'll ask the INS to let Io back into the country this year, and we'll see what they say. Odds are unfortunately very low. But we have to try. Assuming they say no, after that we go one more year and then odds are nearly certain that she'll get to come back.

A year is a long time, though.

I'm realizing that it's one month before I go back to Los Angeles, and that's hard. Watching my mom cry as she said goodbye to Gabe reminded me of how I'm going to have to leave him, a dark thought that comes up from time to time and usually gets pushed to the back of my head with a "Well that won't be for a while yet." But it's getting harder and harder to say that convincingly.

Moment of Zen:

Seasons Change With The Scenery

Boy is it hot. It's amazing the change in weather between Sighisoara (which is halfway up the Carpathian Mountains) and here in Bucharest. It went from a bit chilly early spring weather, to dog days of summer, hot and sweltering. Bucharest has a ton of poplar trees, which are all shedding these floating puffball seeds now. They're collecting in drifts on the ground like snow and the air is full of floating puffs. I've never seen anything like it.

Grandma and Grandpa Williams have arrived safely. We've had three days of nearly round-the-clock hanging out, which has been great except that the Colictron 5000 Mk. II has been at Colic Level 11: Maximum Force Mode most of the time. Fortunately my parents are rolling with the punches.

Io and I also took a morning to head down to the U.S. Embassy, where we got Gabe registered and signed up for a passport, Social Security card, and equivalent of a U.S. birth certificate (called a Declaration of Birth Abroad). This went much, much faster than the Romanian version: about two hours from start to finish. Amusingly, the biggest hangup was nothing to do with Gabriel, it was trying to convince the embassy that I am an American citizen.

After looking over my passport, application forms, and other documents, the consular officer wanted to know if I had brought my high school transcripts with me, or last year's tax returns. Sure, I always pack those for vacations. Do I have any documentation to show that I am a citizen of the United States? I'm like, I dunno, how about my fucking passport, jackass? So then he starts asking me questions designed to trick the dumbest faker in the universe, like Where did you grow up? ("Bucharest -- I mean, America! America!") But eventually he decided that I guess I was maybe a citizen after all, although he sure would have felt a lot better about this if he could see my high school transcript. But he signed off on everything, so Gabe's documents should arrive from the National League 56 865H U.S.A. State Dept. in the next couple of weeks.

Tania has been laying out an enormous feast every day, to the point where my parents are about to burst. So far my folks have liked pretty much all of the Romanian food, and even tried great-grandpa's tuica (moonshine). Once.

We haven't been able to do a lot around town, because my dad had to have emergency hernia surgery just a few days before he got on the plane, so he's still recovering. I don't think my folks want to see much other than Gabriel anyway, though.

So it's been a lot of hanging around the bloc with Gabe, hanging around my parents' hotel with Gabe, going out to a restaurant with Gabe, going to Auchan with Gabe. They are already scheduled to take a guided tour of Bucharest on Saturday, so there isn't a lot else for us to do, really.

Our plans for the next few days: more of the same! As my mom likes to say, they came halfway around the world to see the baby, and by God they are going to see the baby.

Moment of Zen:

It's Super Effective!

If I knew how to use Photoshop, I would add in beams of light coming down from Heaven, angels blowing trumpets, etc. We finally have Gabe's birth certificate. After two months of going around and around with the Romanian government, he officially exists. This is especially good because he gets his first round of vaccinations next week, and up until now we've been paying for his medical care out of pocket because he can't get the state-funded care without a serial number.

Not much else went on the past few days, we've just been recovering from Sighisoara and getting back into our routine, and preparing for my parents' visit. They arrive later this afternoon. It's been an orgy of cleaning and cooking around here to get ready.

Gabriel is still pretty colicky. Every time I think, Well, it looks like he's getting better, it turns out that he was just having a good day or two and then he descends back into Colic Madness. My parents are bringing a supposed Miracle Colic Remedy with them, so maybe that will help, but at this point we've been through so many sure-fire, can't-miss, it-worked-for-all-my-kids colic remedies that turned out to do nothing for Gabe that I am skeptical.

Strangely, one thing that seems to help is white noise. After discovering how being on the loud part of the train quieted him down, we did a bunch of internet sleuthing and discovered that other people have had this work for them as well. So now when he gets really colicky we sit him next to a running hair dryer, and many times he quiets down. This is obviously impractical as a long-term solution but it's great for when we're at our wits' end. I also downloaded a bunch of long MP3s of things like dishwashers, washing machines, etc. (you would be amazed at what you can find on the internet). They also seem to help, but our laptop speakers aren't loud enough to combat the worst colic. Still, it's another weapon in our arsenal. Hopefully the colic stuff goes away soon, for everyone's sakes.

Moment of Zen:

Day Ain't Over Yet

Well, nobody died.

All in all, the weekend with Liz, Chris, and the Archbishop of Burpingham went really well. We started off with a whirlwind visit to downtown Bucharest that I called the Sorry, We're Closed Tour. We all piled onto the subway and Gabe took his first train ride. He had a lot of fun watching his servants struggle with a country that has never heard of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Once we got downtown, our first stop was the People's Palace (officially renamed the Parliamentary Palace after the revolution, but nobody calls it that). It's the largest office building in Romania and in fact the second-largest in the world, after the Pentagon. We tried to go on one of the tours they offered, but all the tours were already full. Sorry, we're closed. But we got to see the outside, which is pretty impressive in and of itself. I've driven by it several times, but walking up to it you really realize the scale of the thing, which is quite literally insane. I couldn't even get a picture of the whole thing because I wasn't willing to cross the street.

The biggest thing in Romania, and the smallest thing in Romania

Next stop was Stavrepolous Church, a very old building in downtown. I drew hang-outside-with-screaming-and-scratching-your-face-right-off-Gabriel duty, so I didn't get any photos inside the church. Passing tourists were treated to my medley of baby-soothing Monkees hits. Luckily, Gabe's screaming drowned out my singing.

He calmed down reasonably fast, though. Lunch was at a restaurant called The Beer Wagon, which was about as awesome a lunch as I've had. I don't know what the building was originally, but you get old art, huge vaulted ceilings, a wandering violinist, and great food, all for like $20 per person including drinks, dessert and tip. Awesome job, Romania! Chris and Liz were both good to their word about eating only traditional Romanian food while they were here.

Next we headed back on the subway and went to another part of the city so that Liz and Chris could check out the National Art Gallery and the National Music Hall. Io and I stayed with Gabe in the park in case he got colicky again -- art museums and music halls are not the sorts of places you want to take King Gabriel.

He seemed to have a good time at the park, as nearly as anyone can tell what a baby is thinking. Io and I were glad to get off our feet for a bit and it gave us a chance to feed and change him in peace. Chris and Liz went to the museum, which was closed, and the music hall, which was also closed. Whoops!

After that we all got on the subway and headed back to the bloc, where Tania and Gagi had prepared a traditional feast: meatballs, home-made pastrami, cheeses, polenta, bread, green garlic and green onion, caviar, you name it. We had a bottle of Romanian wine and everyone went off to pack and try to sleep. Io and I got to bed at like 1am, with an alarm set for 5:30am for our Sighisoara trip.

We got off pretty much on time Sunday morning, but due to just missing one of our subway trains we ended up getting to the main train station just minutes before our train was leaving. Luckily we got on board OK and off we went. Leg #1 was about two hours to Sinaia, home of Peles Castle.

Gabe was pretty good on the entire trip, sleeping most of the time. I hadn't been on a cross-country train trip in over 25 years, so I was really looking forward to it.

Romanian trains are a real hodge-podge, with totally different types of cars hitched together willy-nilly. You buy tickets of either first- or second-class, but what you actually get for that is completely random. Some second-class cars are set up like a Greyhound bus, and others have semi-private compartments. Some trains have dining cars, some have just bar cars, some have nothing. It's like Train Roulette. Which I guess is sort of fun. Anyway, Leg #1 went off without a hitch and we made it to Sinaia with no problems.

Sinaia is a nice town, largely a tourist destination. There are lots of beautiful old buildings and churches, like the one at left. We had a nice walk up a big hill and through a park on a beautiful spring day.

The town's reason for existence is Peles Castle, which was the summer home of Romania's first king, Carol I (who was actually German). Liz, Chris and I went on a long tour of the inside while Io (who had already seen it) sat at a nearby cafe with Gabriel.

The inside of the castle brought out the same feelings that most castles do for me: that it was pretty amazing in terms of architecture, the collection of art and weapons and so on, and just the sheer opulence of every room; but more than anything, I kept thinking about the tremendous waste and the fact that all of it was built on the backs of peasants who were essentially slaves. I can't stand royalty -- you should have seen me tearing my hair out at all the attention paid to the recent British wedding -- and this castle is royalty to the tenth power. It's one of the most striking examples of undeserved wealth and its concomitant insecurity that you will ever see.

We had lunch (mici, one of my favorite traditional Romanian foods) in Sinaia and then it was back onto the train for Leg #2, which was two and a half hours to Sighisoara. The trip started with what has got to be every new parent's nightmare scenario: we get onto the train with a baby who is screaming at the absolute top of his lungs and won't stop. We get to our assigned seats and the stroller, which we collapsed with a flick of the wrist a bunch of times in the store, refuses to collapse down so we can't get out of the aisle. People are piling up behind us waiting to get to their seats, we keep pulling the stroller back up and then pushing it back down but it keeps jamming, Gabe is screaming like we're skinning him....yikes. That was the low point of the trip for sure.

Gabe was pretty colicky through a lot of Leg #2, but we learned that if you take him to the part where two cars connect, the extra noise and vibration calms him down. Even though a lot of this leg of the trip was difficult, going through it was probably good. There's this feeling that some of the worst has happened, and you got through it, and now you know it won't kill you.

We got into Sighisoara in the evening and managed to wander all over the city with our luggage and pushing a full stroller uphill over cobblestones before finding our B&B. But we did eventually find it, a charming little German place that was built right up against one of the medieval walls that encircles the original city.

Unfortunately, charming places also include charming plumbing and a general lack of modernity. Having original wood beams in the walls and ceiling of our room was great, but I would have traded them for a coffeemaker we could use to heat water for formula for when Gabe needed his medicine.

We had dinner on the terrace of a great little restaurant and then abandoned our original plan of a nighttime walk through Sighisoara in order to collapse into bed.

The next morning we had breakfast in the B&B's charming little breakfast nook -- a collection of local cheeses that all tasted exactly the same, salamis, bread with four kinds of jam and six kinds of honey, and mineral water with a selection of syrups you could mix into it to taste. Yum!

We headed out for a big walking tour of Sighisoara, which was just as beautiful as I remembered.

Io and I were not about to let Chris & Liz have the only kissy picture

We stopped off for a snack at the Dracula Cafe, where I had Dracula's chocolate ice cream. After that, it was off for more walking and sightseeing, and eventually lunch at a place serving old-timey traditional Romanian food, where I had mici again, and then back to the B&B to say goodbye to Chris and Liz.

Which turned into a complete nightmare, because the guy who owns the B&B had left the building and locked it behind him, with all our luggage inside, and wasn't answering his cell phone. Chris and Liz were okay because they were taking a midnight train to Budapest, but Io and I were supposed to be on a 2:50 train back to Bucharest, and it's 2:20 now. So after a lot of frantic calling and eventually running into the guy's girlfriend by happenstance, who called his friend, who called his mother, we managed to get our stuff and say the fastest goodbye to Chris and Liz that you've ever seen. We made it to our train platform about one minute before the train pulled in.

It was great to meet Liz and Chris. This was my first time meeting people that I only knew from the internet, and I wasn't sure how it would go. But the two of them were super-nice, adventurous, very funny, and really helpful with Gabriel to boot. All in all, quite a success.

Y'all come back now, y'hear?

At my insistence, we bought first-class tickets for the 6-1/2 hour trip back to Bucharest. That got us a semi-private compartment that we shared with an older mom and her twenty-something daughter who was back visiting from New York. They were nice people and didn't complain when Gabe got colicky, so that was good. And we just had more space in general to do stuff, and by coincidence that train had a handicapped car hooked up to it that had a big bathroom with a changing table. Gabe slept a lot of the trip, too. So the trip back was pretty much paradise compared with the trip from Sinaia to Sighisoara. Between the train and then the subway and then walking, we got home around midnight yesterday, and slept like rocks.

Today we went out to pick up our marriage certificate, having been assured for the second time that it would be ready, only to be told that there was a problem with the English-to-Romanian translation and the government office wouldn't accept it. So we went back to the translators to have it fixed, but of course, Now? Oh no, they can't do it now. Maybe tomorrow.

Die, Romania. Just die.

King Gabriel loves riding around in his carseat, though, so he's just fine with all this. More trips into town? No problem! Make sure you pack the good pacifier, or you shall rue the day!

And now we have three days off before my parents get here for a week-long visit, which should be great. I'm really looking forward to seeing them again. I have to say that because they read this blog like the Bears read an offense, but in this case it has the happy coincidence of being true. It'll be their first time meeting Gabriel, their first grandchild, so everyone should have a really good time.

Moment of Zen: