On A Steel Horse I Ride

After close to a week of overcast, cold, wintry days, the sun finally came out for a one-day encore earlier this week.  We grabbed the King and headed out for an afternoon on the town.  We walked all over, there was delicious shwarma, everyone had fun.

On the way home, we saw a wagon-driver stopped at one of the blocs, so we went over to say hello.  The guy was super-nice and Gabe got to meet his first horse.  Wagoneers are pretty common outside of the city, but in Bucharest itself you only see one every few days or so.

That evening we dropped his Majesty off at the royal babysitter, and Io and I headed into downtown Bucharest to buy a couple things.  Our shopping wrapped up pretty fast, so we spontaneously stopped in at the Beer Wagon, my favorite restaurant in Bucharest, for a little dinner for two sans roi.  I got a Romanian specialty called "sarmale," which are like leaves stuffed with minced meat, plus my first mamaliga (polenta) of this trip.  SO GOOD.  There is not a ton of variety in Romanian cuisine, but what there is is very tasty and you really don't get it anywhere else.  It's good to be back.

I was hoping to get papanas donuts for dessert,  but we ran out of babysitter time.  I did, however, manage to grab some furious donut on the way home.

The Beer Wagon remains a great place to eat.  Great food, great atmosphere, and dinner for two was like $25.  I'm really glad we managed to fit it in this trip.

Unfortunately that was the only day of sun.  Yesterday it turned cold again and started raining.  It was a fun day for me, though.  Godfather Ovi has* a motorbike, which I call the Deathcycle, that he has been promising to let me ride for almost a year.  Loyal blog-readers will remember that we tried to get a ride together when I was living here at the beginning of the year, but couldn't because the bike had mechanical problems.  When I arrived in Bucharest this time, Ovi told me they were fixed and we set a date for a ride.  Then the bike broke down again so we had to call it off.  But he told me he now had it re-fixed and we could do the ride today, so he came over.

I'll be honest, here: I thought there was a reasonable chance that this motorcycle was going to kill me.  But one thing I've resolved to do as a dad is to show Gabe that life is not to be lived in fear.  It's to be lived.

Ovi showed up and I was like, "Woo, bike!"  He sort of lurched and skidded it to a stop and said "Front brakes is not work.  You have a wrench?"

Uh, sure, dude.  I have a wrench.




I'm thinking to myself, Well, the streets are wet and covered with slippery wet leaves, people here drive like maniacs, I don't even have so much as a pair of gloves, and the front brakes -- which, for the uninitiated, supply 2/3 of a motorcycle's stopping power -- are apparently not working.

FUCK.  YES.  Let's do it!

"It's 106 miles to Chicago.  We've got a full tank of gas, half a 

pack of cigarettes, it's dark out, and we're wearing sunglasses."

"Hit it."

The bike is a "Ural," basically a Russian copy of the BMW boxer engine (same kind as my bike at home) put into a bare-bones motorcycle frame.  It has cables, wires and hoses that just sort of hang out there and hit you in the knees when you're riding.  The gas tank had a hole punched in it at some point and now has an oval of metal welded over the breach.  I think Ovi said it was manufactured in 1962.

It was an interesting ride.  The bike actually rides okay and the engine is great.  It doesn't stop very well and the transmission is sort of "grabby," but I went for a ride around the blocs and had so much fun that I ended up getting totally lost.  Sometimes I felt like I was wrestling the bike around corners, but I managed to keep it rubber-side-down the whole way.  I eventually found Ovi walking around one of the streets.  "I thought you -- boom," he said, making a motion for falling.  "No, no, I was just lost."

It's by far the oldest and most interesting bike I've ever been on.  I felt like Steve McQueen or something.  It was like going back into some old spy movie, riding this rattletrap Soviet-made bike around the grim and chilly Communist blocs.  

I got back, thinking "Well I'm glad I didn't die," and then Io said she absolutely had to have a ride.  So we put her on the back and took another quick spin around the bloc.  She and I haven't ridden together since she left Los Angeles about a year and a half ago.  It was nice.

I managed to not kill myself or my wife, and then we all went upstairs for tea and hot chocolate, which I definitely needed after riding the cold Bucharest streets.  We walked Ovi back down to see him off, and he said "Now, you have a last ride!"  I could hear the Grim Reaper rattling the dice in his bony fingers, but I figured, What the hell.  It's to be lived, right?  So off I went again.  It actually gets easier each time because you get more used to the bike, so the last ride was the best one of all.

Moment of Zen:

* I say he "has" a motorcycle, but ownership in Romania is sort of...fluid.  It was his, it was his god-child's, now somehow it's his again, I dunno.

I Want To Be In That Number

This depiction of Gabriel is pretty much
how Gabe already imagines himself

It's a big day: on the Romanian Orthodox calendar, today is the day commemorating the archangels Michael and Gabriel.  That means today is King Gabe's "saint day," which is like an extra mini-birthday that Romanians get to have every year.  His first one!  Ioana and I got him a little squeaky dragon toy which he seems to enjoy a lot, and various people have been calling or stopping by to wish him "la multi ani!" (happy birthday) and give him little things.  This has actually worked out pretty well from a dad perspective, as some of the gifts have been either money or home-made pastries, both of which are useless to babies and which I, as regent, dispose of as I see fit.  I.e., into my wallet or mouth.

Happy saint day, Gabe!

As part of our saint day activities, godfather Ovi came by with the car and drove us down to great-grandma and great-grandpa Negru's place, where we spent several hours hanging out, having lunch, looking at great-grandpa's watch collection, and trying to steal great-grandpa's hat.

The great-grandparents were happy to see the King, and a good time was had by all.  Eventually Gabe and I were just worn out and both decided to sack out in the bedroom.  As Gabriel often says in his position as Warden of the North, winter is coming, and you can really start to feel it these days in Bucharest.  The bedroom is the only room that's heated (by the wood-burning stove, which has the added bonus of smelling good).  Io and the g-g's* stayed outside chatting and eating.

In the photo above, you can see Gabe with his Girls Just Wanna Have Fun top-of-the-head ponytail.  In Romanian tradition, babies cannot have their hair cut during their first year because it will detach their soul.  After his first birthday, the godparents give him his first haircut.  That's fine for most babies, but Gabe was born with a full head of hair and it is not getting any shorter.  So sometimes he gets the ponytail to keep the bangs out of his eyes.

Two other Romanian superstitions I learned this week:

1. You cannot give someone a knife as a present, or it will "cut your friendship."  But you can get around this by having the person pay you some nominal amount for the knife.  Ovi gave us 1 lei (30 cents) when I tried to give him a Swiss army knife as a souvenir.

2. You cannot step on manhole covers that have six holes in them.  The kind with four holes are okay, though.  Obviously.

And that is really pretty much all we did the last two days.  We've been trying to keep it fairly mellow since it's my last week here, so there's been lots of regular home routine, going to the park, going to Auchan, etc.  It's been nice.  It should continue to be pretty low-key the rest of the week.

I've started getting back into the swing of work.  Emails are starting to arrive with questions and case status updates for next week, and I've started digging in to a tedious work project that I brought with me.  So it will probably be a pretty seamless transition back to work life.

Moment of Zen:

They just wanna, they just wanna...

* Note to self: good name for an all-girl rock band

Only The Cheese Is As It Was*

We are back in Bucharest, with only our memories of Switzerland -- and about 1,500 photos, and this blog -- to remind us of what once was.

Our final day in Switzerland dawned clear and cold.  The plan was to spend the day in Zurich, because we hadn't really gone out and seen it.

Zurich is a unique city, in that it doesn't seem to have a lot of landmarks or must-see attractions.  It's like, if someone comes to LA for the first time, we go see the Hollywood sign, we go to Venice Beach, there are a couple of iconic buildings (the Music Center, the Getty Museum, etc), you can go to Universal Studios or Disneyland, whatever.  In Bucharest, there's the People's Palace, the Village Museum, their Arc d'Triomphe, Stradavelopous Church, etc.

But Zurich doesn't seem to have those sorts of tourist attractions.  It's just a large, modern, orderly, beautiful city.  The river and the lake are great and there are several gorgeous buildings, including a couple of old cathedrals and government buildings, but it seems (after a few hours, anyway) like a city that is mostly designed around modern commerce.  The city is all about banking and shopping.

Royale With Cheese, fries and a coke: $15

And what shopping there is.  Alina took us to Bahnhofstrasse, which is like the Rodeo Drive of Zurich.  Super, super high-end shopping: lots of jewelers, big-name fashion stores, custom tailors, and so on.  This stuff was all well out of our league, but it was fun to window-shop for a bit.  A few blocks to either side of Bahnhofstrasse were some shops that were more our speed, and we spent a million dollars on souvenirs.  Actually we spent a million dollars on Swiss francs, which we then spent on souvenirs.  It's easy to spend a million dollars in Zurich, because (a) there's a ton of shopping, and (2) everything costs a fortune.  We spent $40 stopping for coffee.

One of our first stops was -- get this -- McDonald's.  Alina told us that the Zurich McDonald's is the best McDonald's in the world, because they use Swiss grass-fed beef and have to meet all of Switzerland's super-strict food requirements.  Most people might think to themselves, "I'm all the way in Zurich, I'm not going to eat lunch at McDonald's."  But I thought: "The best McDonald's in the world?  I have to try that."


And I will admit, the burger was probably a little better than what you get at other McDonald'ses.  Or maybe it was just my imagination.

We spent most of the day just walking around Zurich.  This is one of my favorite things to do when I'm in a foreign city for the first time: just walk around without a schedule or destination, watching the city go about its business.  I had a great time.

We took a break to stop in at Sprungli, a super-duper high-end coffee and pastry shop, the kind of place that serves you a cup of coffee in a china cup and a pastry with silver service.  This place was frankly ridiculous (HA HA HA!  FOREIGN CURRENCY HUMOR!!!), but it's like, When am I going to be in Zurich again?  Don't you want to try it?  So we all got coffees, hot chocolate, and a couple of pastries.

Yummy!

We lucked out and got a great table in the corner, with big windows overlooking the plaza below. Gabriel had a great time sitting on the sill watching the trams go back and forth.  Refreshed, we headed out for more walking around Zurich with a renewed spring in our step, probably because our wallets were so much lighter.

We walked all over the city, taking in the sights and doing occasional shopping.  A good time was had by all.

While we were out walking, we came upon Occupy Zurich, where a bunch of hippies were sticking it to the man by sitting around in tents and holding sarcastic signs.  Alina told us that they originally wanted to set up in the big plaza in front of Credit Suisse, but the authorities told them they would have to hold their protest on the top of a remote hill that was not near anything.  So they did.  We found them when we hiked up there to take photos overlooking the city.  I appreciate that all Swiss citizens are very orderly and proper, but I'm not sure these Occupiers really understand what this movement is about.

Occupy Zurich: Rebelling Where The Government Permits

THANKS A LOT

We eventually headed back home, where Ioana and Alina headed off to their night at the spa, which I am told was a great experience, sublimely peaceful, and very relaxing.  The rest of us stayed home with Gabriel, which was the exact opposite of a night at the spa.

When the ladies got back, we had our last dinner in Zurich: a traditional Swiss meal of raclette.  There's actually a whole apparatus that goes along with this.  You take thick slices of raclette (a pungent cheese), usually with stuff inside it.  We had garlic raclette, peppercorn raclette, and paprika raclette. You put it on this special little tray and then slide it under a super-hot slab of rock, where it sits until the cheese is melted and bubbly.  Then you scrape it off onto some smashed baby potatoes on your plate, and eat it.  I had never heard of this dish, but it was pretty good!

And that was it.  We collapsed into bed, and the next day we just packed, piled into the car, and headed off to the airport.

I can't thank Alina, Christian, Robin and Roxane enough.  Without them we would probably never be able to go to Switzerland at all: the cost of hotels and city transportation would be too much.  They made us feel welcome and like part of the family right from day one.  We all miss them already, and hope that it won't be too long before we see them again.

As usual, Gabe traveled like a champion, sleeping through most of the flight and not crying during the parts when he was awake, even takeoff and landing.  He's a born traveler!

Bye, Switzerland!  Don't forget to write!

Some last, random Switzerland thoughts:

Can you believe I found a photo called "The Swiss Cheese
Fallacy"?  The internet has everything.

Cheese
Before I came here, as far as I knew the only cheese in Switzerland was Swiss cheese, which they call Emmentaler.  (I thought gruyere came from France.)  It turns out that Switzerland is like a cheese-lover's heaven, with a zillion types of incredibly good cheese.  I have no idea why Switzerland isn't more known for its cheeses in the States.  Or maybe it is, and I'm just stupid.  In a crowning irony, people in Switzerland basically never eat Swiss cheese.  I never had it once the whole time I was there, despite having tried like 15 varieties of local cheese.

Traveling
First off, major props once again to Swiss Air.  They are a first-rate airline.  Great food, great service, and they arrived early both times.  Highly recommended.  They even gave Gabriel a free stuffed airplane and Swiss Air bib.  The only disappointment: our planes were both smallish, so they just did a general boarding call for each flight.  I thought I was finally going to get to be one of the elite pre-boarders, since I had a small kid with me.  Curse you, Swiss Air!!

Ioana and I realized that, despite all our international jet-setting and over two years of marriage, this is the first time we flew together.  Up to this trip, it's always been or the other of us dropping the other off at the airport.  Bizarre.


So there you go.  Swiss vacation!  It was really great, and all three of us had such a good time.  We're now back in Bucharest, where I have one more week with Io and Gabe the Babe before heading back to LA again for the busy holiday season.  Hopefully the time during our next separation will fly by.

Moment of Zen:

* This completes my four-fecta of cheese-related titles for Switzerland.  (Link for those who aren't from California, since this title isn't Googleable.)

Say Cheese

I am by no means a chef, but I like to cook.  As anyone who has been lucky enough to spend the night with me can tell you, my cheese omelet is to die for.  And I will tell you now, internet, the big secret to my amazing omelet: gruyere cheese.  Most people have no idea what that is.  But I am telling you right now, as a man who loves cheese and has tried almost every sort of cheese there is, this stuff is the cat's pajamas.  I absolutely adore gruyere cheese and put it in everything.  I would marry gruyere cheese except that that would be bigamy.

So you can imagine my reaction when our Swiss hosts tell me that they'd like to take me out for cheese fondue at their favorite fondue place, which is in the town of Gruyeres.  This is like telling Billy Graham, "Okay, we'll jump in the car, head out to Heaven, we'll say hi to God and Jesus, quick lunch with Saint Peter, and then back by dinner, sound OK?"

Yes, Swiss hosts.  That sounds quite acceptable.  I'm like, What, you couldn't get Angelina Jolie to drive me there in a chocolate limousine?  So we piled into the car this morning (just the adults; kids are at school) and headed out to freaking Gruyeres.  I have no idea, by the way, why the cheese is called gruyere but the town's name is actually Gruyeres.  Whatever.

Gruyeres turns out to be a pretty quaint little town, dominated by a large castle on the hill which has now been turned into a sort of merchant area.  The restaurant was called simply The Chateau.  When you walk in the door, you are enveloped by an overpowering, thick aroma of gruyere cheese fondue.  I about fainted, it smelled so good.  It's a charming old place with a bunch of old-wood furniture and whatnot.  First course was bullion soup, which was quite tasty, followed by some dried meat which was also good.

But then the real show started: cheese fondue!  Now, I love cheese fondue.  It's hard to find in LA, and I actually make my own from time to time, but it's such a pain to make and so hard to get right that I probably only make it once every couple of years -- and at least half the time I screw it up.  So while I love, love, love to eat cheese fondue, I hardly ever get to actually have it.






But now I do, from the people who invented it:

This was, no joke, one of the best meals I've ever had.  The fondue was perfect and all the stuff around it was good.  I ate the fondue with French bread and also with small baked potatoes (that's what's in the basket on the left side of the photo above), something I'd never tried before.  They also gave us cornichons and pearl onions, but I was having none of that.  Afterwards there was double-cream in little chocolate cups.  Yum.

Afterwards I wanted to kill myself, figuring the rest of my life is going to be downhill from here.  Instead we walked around Gruyeres a little bit, including the H.R. Giger museum and Alien-themed coffee shop next door.  Not sure why that is here.

Just when you thought this day couldn't get any better for my taste buds, next stop: the Cailler chocolate factory!

I like Johnny Depp, but that remake was fucking blasphemy

Cailler's was one of the very first Swiss chocolatiers.  They're now owned by Nestle (also one of the original Swiss chocolate companies, believe it or not!), but they keep their own recipe and branding.  They offer tours of the place, which was actually a lot more interesting than I expected.  The first half of the tour is a big lesson about the history of chocolate, which, like the history of oil-pressing from 500 blog entries ago, turns out to be fairly fascinating.  Even the latter half of the tour, about how chocolate is made nowadays, was interesting enough to keep me entertained for its 10 minutes of the tour.  

Examining chocolate samples

Then at the end of the tour there's this madness: a room where you can eat all the chocolate you want for free.  Well, or included in the cost of the tour ticket, anyway.  Cailler's puts out samples of every kind of chocolate they make, with a little chocolate sommelier on hand to answer questions and replace the sample trays as they become more than half-empty.

This actually ends up being okay for Cailler's, because their chocolate is so rich and so good that you can only eat a handful of pieces before you absolutely can't have any more.

So we stuffed ourselves with chocolate, and then headed out to the gift shop, which featured Cailler's chocolate in a zillion varieties at 50% of what they go for at retail (according to our hosts).  Some of you reading this blog can expect some excellent tasting souvenirs from my trip.

We then piled back in the car and headed back to the condo, where we all chatted a little but collapsed into bed fairly fast.






Oh, I'm leaving out the whole day before.  Io and I hung out at home and explored more of Meilen.  There was no Gruyeres or Cailler's involved.  Enough said.

Navigating Meilen is made more interesting by the need to 

remember 4-5 awesome German street names

Today we're going to take a little tour of the city of Zurich, which we still haven't really seen (although we've driven through it many times), and then in the afternoon the girls are abandoning me and Christian to take care of Gabe while they head off to a spa.  Sounds great!  For them.

Moment of Zen: