Another exciting few days in exotic Romania. We took Monsieur Hiccupy d'Fancypampers to the doctor for yet another baby checkup, and he's doing well. He's continuing to develop into a regular person. This week's milestone: holding his head up for long periods of time, a key skill of regular people.
He's still fairly colicky. Ioana has taken to calling him "the Ostrogoth," which I think will be good for his future development. The doctors have recommended one colic remedy after another, so we're just going through them all, and I figure eventually the colic will go away on its own and we'll give credit to whatever the last remedy was that we tried, and keep doing it over and over for the rest of his life like the monkeys in that crack commercial. Unfortunately, Gabe seems to be a big fan of me singing "I'm Henry The Eighth I Am" over and over. It calms the baby, but makes everyone else cry, so no real gain there.
Today is May 1, which was a big holiday in Romania during Communist times but now seems like just another day. May is a big month for me and Io, though, because we will have two sets of visitors from the U.S. Fighting Tigers American Food West Boys Machine 26 coming out. Our friends Chris and Liz arrive in about a week and a half, and then shortly after that my parents will be here.
In their honor, I present my five tips for Americans coming to visit Romania. This is the down-and-dirty stuff you won't find in a Fodor's Guide, the real deal from the man on the ground:
1. You are not allowed to wear shoes inside the house. Most every home has an area near the front door with slippers for use by both residents and visitors. It gives the whole country a nice old-time Japan feel. And it's probably sensible, since the streets of Bucharest are covered with a uniform film of shit from the stray dogs and the occasional horse-drawn wagon.
I'll race you!
2. You are not allowed to wear hats anywhere official. It's okay to wear them at, like, the hipermart, but if you go into a hospital or a school or whatever, you need to take your hat off inside. God help you if you try to wear one in a church. Except He won't. This hat depicting Jesus as a fish with a barbed hook in His mouth is probably OK, though.
3. The light switch is on the outside of the bathroom. I have no idea why this is. It's the dumbest design decision I've ever seen, and that includes the way human birth was designed (just covering my bases with Jesus there. j/k Jesus! Fish-hooks! LOL!). It does, however, allow for some hilarious hijinx when someone walks by and thinks the light was carelessly left on, not realizing that you're in there taking a shower.
4. It's considered super-rude to have anything over your hands when shaking hands. Even if it's 30 metric degrees below zero and you're outside, people will take off their right glove, shake your hand, and then put the glove back on.
5. If you give someone flowers, it has to be an odd number of flowers. If you give them an even number, it means you want to kill them. I actually may have this backwards; maybe odd numbers mean you want to kill them. Frankly, I would stick with a nice bottle of wine.
For that last tip, I wanted to find a picture of the Grim Reaper handing someone flowers. I put "flowers reaper" into Google image search, and one of the first-page hits was this picture of a Dalek from Dr. Who, but with human arms stuck on and menacing you. I don't know what this is supposed to be or what it has to do with flowers, or with reapers, but in the spirit of Neal Stephenson Twiki I thought I should include it.
This book cover was also on page 1. Here at least there's a clear connection to both the Grim Reaper and flowers, but I was really captivated by what this book is: a Grim Reaper mystery! I assume that means the Grim Reaper is going around solving crimes, like Angela Landsbury in "Murder, She Wrote." Is there anything more awesome than that? That's the best concept since Bill and Ted won back their souls by beating the Grim Reaper at Battleship. Judy Clemens, if you haven't optioned off the movie rights yet, give me a call. I'm in Romania.
Moment of Zen:
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