I Love Your Cheese. With The Holes.

We are, as Harold Lauder says, on a great adventure.  A couple days ago we left on our big trip to Switzerland.  This was Gabe's first time out of the country, and his first airplane ride.  It's only the second time he's even left the area immediately surrounding the bloc!

I was not at all sure how this was going to go, but Gabe travels like a champion.  He was totally fine with us in the airport, we got through security no problem (Gabe got to spend some time being held by the security person while mom and dad went through the metal detector), and he was great on the airplane.

He slept about half of the trip, and the other half he was very excited to look out the window and explore various things on the plane.  He found the airline safety card particularly delicious, to the point that we had to move everything out of the seat-pocket in front of him.  I thought for sure we'd get a crying jag on takeoff and landing due to the pressure on his ears, but he was totally fine for both.  No crying at all.

Speaking of people who were excited to be on the plane, I was really impressed with Swissair.  The food on the flight was freaking amazing, as good as what you'd get in a decent restaurant in LA.  And they gave us Swiss chocolate for dessert, so you can't beat that.  All in all, a lovely experience.  I had been half dreading taking this flight, but everything went better than I could have hoped.  

Welcome to Switzerland!

We are staying with a friend of Io's, Alina Paduranu.  She's an old friend from Bucharest, who now lives in Switzerland with her boyfriend Christian and Christian's two kids, Robin and Roxane.  This is great, because otherwise staying in Zurich would be mega-expensive.  I had never met any of these people before, but they have been very welcoming and we feel right at home.  And all four of them are crazy for Gabe the Babe, so that's nice.  

Our first day in town we pretty much just got back to their condo, had dinner, and crashed.  Our hosts "threw together" an evening meal that was outstanding...as a food-lover, I can tell I am going to like it here.  Great breads, amazing cheeses.  (WITH THE HOLES.)  So that was all good.  I spent much of the evening playing Indiana Jones on the Wii with the two kids.  Holla!

Sunrise in Zurich

The only dark spot was that Gabe would not sleep at night.  He's been having problems sleeping pretty much since I got here, I think because of all the stress that there's been in the house.  Or maybe because he's going to start teething soon.  Whatever it is, he wakes up every hour or two all night long, which is hell on me and Io.  Fortunately, our guest room is isolated enough that the rest of the family was able to sleep okay, or at least they were polite enough to pretend that that's the case.

On Sunday we headed out to Lucerne, a town about an hour from Zurich.  It's an old-timey tourist town, famous mostly for the long 16th-century wooden bridge and tower that crosses the local river.  "You've probably heard of it," Christian said.  I was too embarrassed to tell him that the only thing I had heard of in Switzerland was chocolate and cuckoo clocks, and those pocketknives with the corkscrews on.

Lucerne was very pretty, and we had a great day there.  We spent several hours walking around the town just looking at various buildings and stuff, and then eventually stopped for some drinks and ice cream on the river.  It was such a good day.  

Gabe knows what is best in life

We finished up our visit with some hot roasted chestnuts, right off the fire from a street vendor.  This is apparently a Lucerne specialty, like getting soft pretzels in New York or hot dogs in Chicago.  I had never had roasted chestnuts before and didn't even know what they looked like, and frankly had started to think that Nat King Cole had made the whole thing up.  It turns out roasted chestnuts are quite delicious.

And after that, it was back to the condo in Zurich for a light dinner and then off to bed.  Gabe blessedly slept pretty much through the night, so Io and I got our first real night's sleep in about a week.  Today we're on our own most of the day, as the adults are at work and the kids are at school.  We're going to take it easy and go for a leisurely walk.  Yay vacation!

Moment of Zen:

Why Does Google Hate America

A quick word on hi-res photos: apparently Blogger no longer sends my posted photos to the Picasa album linked at right.  As part of Google's One World Initiative, now all the photos go to my Google+ profile.  So you can use the link at right to view photos up to July of 2011.  For photos since then, you need to go to the album in my Google+ account.  As soon as I can figure out how to link that at right, I will.  Until then I guess you have to have Google+ and need to put me in one of your Circles of Power.  I set the album for widest possible sharing, but I don't think anyone can see it without going through Google+.

UPDATE: I changed to a more modern Blogger interface, and now apparently clicking on a photo right in the blog will take you to the Google+ album.  Which is even better than the old system.  So apparently Google was just pretending to hate America, while really secretly fighting for America all along.  Sort of like Snape, but not so obvious.

Those Alien Bastards Are Gonna Pay For Shootin' Up My Ride

Regular life is starting up again here in Bucharest, or at least the new regular life. Things are still hard for everyone, but food still needs to be bought, babies need to be walked and bathed and fed, laundry needs to be done, and so on. I've been happy to be able to do stuff with Gabe again, although I know it's only for a short time.

Strategically placed foot saves me from child-porn charges

Io and I spent most of the day out yesterday. We took Gabe on a long walk and ended up at the "big market," an outdoor farmer's market that I had never been to before. Unlike the U.S. where a farmer's market is usually a one-day-a-week thing, in Bucharest they run every day. They're not a charming hippie throwback; for lots of people they're the place they buy groceries every day.

I've finally gotten to reacquaint myself with some of the Romanian delicacies that I've been missing while back home. I had one of their great street pastries, and yesterday Tania made mici for dinner. I've been searching for Furious Donuts but so far only inferior Sassy Donuts have come my way. But I will persevere. I would walk through Hell for Furious Donuts, so it's only a matter of time.

I saw this "America, FUCK YEAH!" hot dog display at the farmer's market as well. It's weird, but it seems like in the four months that I've been gone American hot dogs have suddenly become all the rage in Bucharest. I don't think I saw a single hot dog the entire six months I was here last time, but this trip I've seen several vendors selling them and some hipermart food court restaurants have added them to the menu as well. I have to say, this display makes hot dogs seem pretty fucking awesome. They may be overselling the hot dog experience more than a little bit.

Yesterday we also made a big purchase for His Majesty the King: his first high chair. He started eating baby food (home-made by Io with a blender) a month or so ago, so his diet is now about half milk and half other stuff. That means it's time for a place where we can conveniently feed him and it won't matter so much if he throws the food around. We went to Auchan and test-drove several models with him, and settled on the one at right. So far he seems to really like it.

Perhaps we are not feeding him enough

I had my own giant adventure this week: driving in Bucharest. Gagi was the only one who ever drove in our family. Tania hasn't driven in like 20 years, and although Io learned how to drive stick while in the States, since she got back she hasn't driven because the car was basically Gagi's domain.

Ultimately I think godfather Ovi is going to take over most driving duties, because someone permanent needs to be in that role and Io is leaving mid-next year. For now, I told them I would do the family driving. First we had to replace the battery in the Dacia, because it's old and went flat during the months the car has been sitting unused. Ovi came over to help us with that, switching out the battery from his ancient, barely-running car into ours. For some reason presumably related to centrally-planned Communist efficiency, the negative lead from our car was too big to clamp onto the post from Ovi's battery. I told him we'd have to get a new battery from Auchan that fits this car, but Ovi just went to his trunk, pulled out a thick piece of scrap wire, and pounded it into the gap between the post and the clamp with a tack-hammer. "Romanians," he told me, "are great inventors." He gave the battery a test jiggle, and the clamp flew off the post and the wire fell down into the engine. Awesome.

Eventually we got it working, though, and I drove Io and myself down to the Real hipermart where we spent an extraordinary amount of money on a bunch of stuff we needed. I had expected lots of problems with driving. I thought the Dacia was going to be an awful car with a really difficult transmission, but it's actually pretty good. The other drivers are still terrible, though, because everyone views the Rules of the Road as more Suggestions of the Road. I was waiting to make a left in a busy intersection at one point, and the guy behind me decided I wasn't being aggressive enough about pulling into traffic, so he just swung around me into the oncoming lane, nearly head-on collided with someone, and then screeched into the cross-street causing people to lay on the horn and dodge him. This is completely normal. Above we see Gabriel wearing a miniature version of the expression I have most of the time on Bucharest's roads.

Tonight we're packing, because tomorrow we leave on a vacation to visit Io's friend Alina in Switzerland. I wasn't sure we were still going to go, but during his last week Gagi made Io and Tania promise that she wasn't going to miss her Switzerland trip because of him. So we're going. It'll be Gabe's first time on an airplane and first time using his passport, and it will definitely be a real test for us as parents. I feel like we got some practice during the Sighisoara train trip earlier this year, so hopefully it will go OK.

Moment of Zen:

Godspeed

It's been several days of things related to Gagi's funeral. My best thoughts are with you and I miss you, Gagi.

I obviously didn't take any photos of the funeral or the things leading up to it, so I'm going to fill this post with pictures of Gagi as I remember him.

Romanians have a huge number of rites and traditions around death. It's probably obvious already from what's on this blog, but Romanian culture is in a lot of ways very fatalistic and often grim. This is a country that has never had it easy, from pre-Roman times to the present, and their attitude seems to be mostly "Life is often short and full of pain, people with power will screw you any way they can, so take what joy you can and don't get too bent out of shape when a bunch of bad things happen to you." Ioana tells me that in the old tradition people cry at a birth and laugh at a funeral, because you pity babies being born into this world of pain and are happy when your friends escape it. To me, raised in a country where it's considered, like, unpatriotic not to be optimistic all the time -- a country that often elects presidents based on how hope-and-change, morning-in-America they are -- this is odd. And sobering.

But because it's an old country, and a deeply religious country, and above all a very superstitious country, I keep running into new traditions related to death. You're supposed to tell jokes the night before the funeral (a hold-over from the "laugh at a funeral" thing). Men stop shaving for 40 days. You can't clink drinking glasses for a week, you have to instead say a ritual phrase about God and then pour out part of your drink for the dead. There's a special "hello" you use to people when you're at the church for a funeral. The deceased's family is supposed to give away food, and as many of the deceased's possessions as possible. If you accept them you have to eat or use them, because that lets the dead person have use of them in the afterlife -- throwing them away is a terrible sin. I keep running into new traditions throughout the day. Today Io said we needed to do laundry, and I said "Let's do it tomorrow," and she told me that when someone dies you can't do laundry on the same weekday of their death for a year, so tomorrow's out because it's a Thursday.

I was trying to think whether we have the same number of traditions in America. I can't really think of a single one, but it may be because I'm too close to the culture.

On Monday there was a viewing of the body at the monastery where Gagi was to be buried. The viewing was done in a small chapel on the outskirts of the monastery. The men stand silent vigil over the casket, sometimes for hours at a time. The women talk directly to the deceased, telling him how they feel and remembering his life. In the old-country tradition, they wail their grief at the top of their voice, but it seems like only the baby-boomer generation does that now, with people my age or my parents' age simply talking to their loved one in a quiet voice. As much as it can be disturbing to someone not raised with it, the wailing is actually very cathartic. There's no way to maintain your composure when Grandma Negru is broken and wailing about her loss at the side of the coffin, and in a way that helps everyone process what's happened and get some feelings out. I know I cried a bunch, and I didn't even know him that long.

The family provides food to everyone who comes, and again there's a ritual phrase when you accept and you can't throw it away. It's also considered bad manners not to have some of the food and drink. There are ritual candles and the deceased holds onto a cross. Ioana told me that traditionally you slip a coin into his hand to pay the boatman at the River Styx. Orthodox priests consider that a pagan ritual and discourage it, but everyone still does it.

One thing that is very different from America is that Romanians do not have the same taboo about dead bodies that we do. People routinely kiss the body, hold his hand, stroke his face, and so on.

The next day was the funeral. There's another viewing session of several hours, this time in the main church. Again, the men stand silent vigil (for hours, if they are close family) and the women speak to the deceased. Mourners bring V-shaped flower arrangements called "crowns" that have a banner across them with the mourners' names and a message ("We will never forget you," "Eternal regret," etc.). Other bunches of flowers are heaped into the coffin with the deceased. Towels are symbolic, for reasons I didn't learn. There's a large cross at the head of the coffin and it gets a towel wrapped around it -- just a regular towel, like a hand towel or dish towel (but brand new). Pallbearers are also given towels. Male mourners are given a ceremonial candle, a handkerchief, and a small bag of food (a traditional bread and an apple was in mine, but I don't know if they're all like that). All the mourners get a piece of black ribbon pinned to their clothes, which reminded me of the flowers we all got pinned on when I was here for my wedding.

There were an amazing number of people there. Gagi was well-loved by lots and lots of people. Not just his immediate family, but extended family, his ex-coworkers from the factory that he retired from many years ago, Tania's co-workers and boss, more people than I could possibly keep track of.

After several hours the priest and his singer arrive, and there's a long reading that is chanted and sung. As it nears the end everyone has to hold onto the hand or clothing of the people around them, forming a giant human chain, and you sway your hands up and down. The priest blesses several ceremonial breads and pours ritual wine on them. Ceremonial candles are lit. Everyone gets in a line and files past the coffin, kissing the deceased's face, his hand, and a religious icon put in the coffin. Afterwards, pallbearers then take the coffin out to the churchyard, where there is more chanting and singing. A relative takes a bag of coins and scatters handful after handful, which the mourners pick up.

The pallbearers then take the coffin to the grave-site, accompanied by the mournful tolling of the church bell. Everyone follows along. At the grave there's more chanting and singing, the priest makes a cross on the deceased's chest with wine and then with what I think was myrrh. There's another human chain. The coffin is then sealed and lowered into the grave, and relatives each throw a handful of dirt in, and the deceased is buried. Everyone gets a serving of coliva, a special boiled-grains-and-sugar mash that is only made at funerals. From start to finish it was about 5 1/2 hours.

After the funeral there's a dinner. We had ours at a local restaurant. The food is limitless and it's an open bar, and pretty much everyone from the funeral goes. It must have cost Tania a fortune. People at the dinner seem to naturally keep in good spirits. They tell good stories about the deceased, but much of the time is just spent chatting over dinner about things unrelated to the funeral. It's sort of a time to transition back to normal life, I think, although for the immediate family obviously that is going to take a long time.

And then the dinner's over and you go home, and that's it. Women wear black veils or ribbons in their hair for I'm not sure how long, and like I said before men don't shave for 40 days.

This blog isn't about throwing my emotions on an unsuspecting public, but I will say that the whole thing affected me a lot. Much more than I expected. I've only experienced one other death of someone close to me (my paternal grandfather, when I was 15). I have trouble adjusting to the idea that Gagi is gone. I knew I'd be sympathetically upset for Io and Tania, but I'm actually pretty upset even for myself. Gagi and I didn't know each other for very long, and even though we lived together in a tiny condo for six months it was hard to really get to know each other because we had so little common language, so everything had to be translated. Even so, I feel like I got a real sense of who he is and where he came from, what he had been through and how much he affected those around him. Any of us would count ourselves lucky to be as deeply loved by as many people as he was.

Atomic Batteries To Power

You can hear the machinery creaking as I try to bring this mostly-dormant blog back to life. It's been four months that I've been away, but I am back in Romania.

This trip back is an incredible emotional whipsaw. Right after I left Romania last time -- literally within the week, I think -- my father-in-law Gagi (whom all loyal readers know well) was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. He and the family fought as hard as they could, but this past week Gagi died. He was a good man who was dealt some harsh blows by fate. He led an upstanding life and found a lasting love. I will miss him, and I know Ioana and Tania will miss him every day.

So that is awful and hard on everyone. Everyone's days are an endless process of dealing with everything that has to be done in the aftermath and constant remembering. Earlier today we were starting to clean out his car, and you'll grab five things that are meaningless, and then find an ice cream wrapper from when we all spontaneously got ice creams while out doing errands last time I was here. It's like being sucker-punched, but all day long.

During Gagi's last weeks when things were very difficult, Ioana told me a Romanian saying that sums up their outlook on life: we don't make the road, we only walk the road.

He really loved Gabriel with all his heart

So that is very hard, every day. At the same time, though, I am over the moon about seeing Ioana and Gabriel again. We keep in touch via Skype while I'm gone (Skype, by the way, is an absolute Godsend. I would have gone crazy without it), usually 2-3 times a day, but it's nowhere near the same as being here. Especially with Gabe. Being able to see him smile when I come into the room, being able to make him laugh, to help with bath-time or just sitting with him, even just watching him sleep, there's no comparison.

Yesterday was my travel day, which is always weird because it's like I get up, work a full day at work, and then get on a plane and travel for 16 hours. British Airways remains the bomb, though, and the flight over was fine despite the fact that the people next to me seemed like they had not only never been on an airplane before, but perhaps had never really been around other people at all. For example, it's probably fine to never bathe if you're living in a cave in the wilderness somewhere. It's a little less acceptable when you are shoulder-to-shoulder with 500 other people in an aluminum tube.

Movie reviews from the ride over:

Limitless: A surprisingly good dramatic turn from that guy from The Hangover. Interesting high-concept premise (What if there was a drug that made you super-smart but had terrible side-effects?), good cast, good script. I vaguely remember this coming and going very fast in the theater, and I was happy to find it on the list of available movies on the plane. Thumbs up.

Bridesmaids: I watched about 20 minutes of this chick-flick before I had to turn it off. I had heard good things about this movie, but it is just freaking excruciating. What is it with chicks and their flicks? I know I'm not the audience this movie was written for, i.e. People Who Suck And Have Bad Taste In Movies, but I don't see how anybody, especially a woman, would enjoy this. F you, Bridesmaids. You're awful.

Battle: Los Angeles: Now THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. Army dudes vs. aliens. Heroism. Sacrifice. Characters so generic I think of them as "The One With Glasses" heroically sacrificing themselves.* I give this movie a marginal thumbs-up. It's hindered by the fact that it's so similar to the vastly, completely, in every way superior Black Hawk Down, but I guess if you take it on the level it's intended -- army dudes vs. aliens -- it works pretty well. Better than most movies of its genre.

Thor: I was not particularly excited about this movie. The trailers looked stupid. I watched it mostly because I feel like its my duty as a geek, and because I've seen all the other Avengers set-up movies so I might as well see this one, like it's some sort of movie Pokemon. Perhaps because of my low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised. This movie is not good by any measure, but it's better than I thought it would be and probably the best Avengers movie except for the first Iron Man. The guy who plays Thor is genuinely charismatic, and then there's Natalie Portman to look at as well. I liked how they somehow decided to put in a black viking, an Asian viking, and a British viking. And then it turns out the vikings' main weapon is a fire-shooting robot. What the hell? But anyway, thumbs up just for the ballsiness of it all.

* Spoiler.