All about... Life in Romania

The Cheerful War

People here are gearing up for Revelion - their new year's eve. The Communists didn't think much of Christmas, but new year's eve was considered ok, as it marks time, and the Communists used to love reminding everyone of how the nice future was supposed to be just around the corner.

'Gearing up' for Revelion basically means setting off every kind of firework imaginable. In England, fireworks tend to go up. They also tend to explode with a similar force. Here, those rules go straight out the window, as indeed, do many of the fireworks. They can be handheld, set off in trees, on the pavement, out the window, sideways, upways, downways - anyway you can think of. Some trail off before popping in a half hearted manner. Others go off with like attention seeking death stars.

As in England, people can't wait. They begin setting off their fireworks a few days in advance, gradually working themselves up to the New Year's frenzy, in which the sky turns permanently pink, yellow and blue, and small dogs undergo an experience in terror that requires years of subsequent psycho-therapy.

The point is, all of these fireworks sound exactly like warfare: from the rattle of distant machine guns to the kind of explosion that would normally take out half a shopping center. It doesn't sound like war in films, it sounds like war full stop. The explosions go off, near, far and in the middle distance outside our windows.

I imagine it as war, but as cheerful war. For a country so ravaged by violance in its history, the cheerful war now comes at the end of every year. It is a true celebration of the human spirit.

December 27th, 2003. | 9:52 am cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

New year in a small town.

New year's eve. Giurgiu. Romania.

Like millions of people all over the world, you probably don't know where Giurgiu is. Perhaps you don't even know where Romania is. It may even be possible that you don't know, don't care and wonder why you even bother. If the latter, then I recommend that you go to Giurgiu on new year's eve, arm yourself with a bundle of fireworks and then set them all off in various directions in the snow, mist and fog. That is a good cure for torper.

So you know where to go, Romania is basically stuck down at the arse-end of Europe, wedged between friendly Serbia and cuddly Ukraine. Giurgiu is basically stuck down in the arse-end of Romania, tucked in where the danube creates a border with Bulgaria. A philosopher of logic, such as the great Bertrand Russell, would conclude that I spend my new year in the arse-end of the arse-end, and he would not be wrong. Except, of course, that Giurgiu is a relatively nice place.

You should never mistake anonimity for dullness, however, as the photograph below proves. Taken by myself on New Year's eve, it demonstrates how Giurgiu surprised itself by becoming involved in an alien attack, apparently timed for when the town was even more off-guard than usual.

January 1st, 2004. | 1:10 am cet. | Thoughts: 1 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Military Doctor

I have a mild allergy which causes a blocked nose and a headache practically every day. This problem is exacerbated by the pollution in Bucharest. My wife, Tia O'Connor, spent more than a year attempting to persuade me to see a doctor about it. I responded to her pleas with a simple and rational masculine authority: I said it was incurable and I would just have to live with it. Oddly enough, this only persuaded Tia that I needed to see a doctor even more. So I found myself sitting in a large pre-war waiting room while she told me everything she knew about the doctor we were going to see.

A military doctor, I thought, sounded like a good thing. There would be no nonesense with such a person. No patronising. No sugar coated half-truths. He'd cut straight to the chase. He'd take one look and say:

..and the fact that he was old was good too, I thought. That meant he'd survived. He was a champion among doctors. It was no wonder everyone said he was great... Such is the way the human mind can deny the awful truth.

In we went. He certainly did look old. But the nurse kept calling him "Mr General", which was re-assuring. I sat in a chair and he shoved some metal up my nose and had a good hunt around. Then he smiled and said:

We both looked at him hopefully..

Next day, we returned. We waited again and were eventually shown in. He was there, smiling away as usual. He ushered me to sit down. He took his time, waited for the right moment and said:

I said..

He looked confused for a moment, and then calmness spread across his features like a happy garden full of flowers. He shoved some metal up my nose and had a good hunt around. Then he smiled and said:

We both looked at him. It dawned on me that this doctor knew nothing other than how to not find sinusitis. I figured that he probably got the job in the army simply so that he could test everyone and then Ceacescu could call a big meeting and announce:

Nevertheless, we persisted..

Such is the power of doctoral authority, we did go and see the brain specialist. He stuck some soap under my nose and asked me if I could smell it. I couldn't of course. My nose was blocked because of the allergy. Foolishly I told the truth. Highly relieved, he immediately packed me off for a full-scale brain scan. It was done in one of those big machines you see on films. I was declared entirely free of brain problems. We went back to the brain specialist. He shook his head sadly.

January 6th, 2004. | 2:46 am cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Winter scene

In England, snow is such a novelty, that it still takes everyone by surprise when it happens, even in the middle of winter. People panic. Supermarkets are emptied of food, milkmen go on strike, letters are sent to Aberdeen for storage and a state of emergency is declared. Nobody goes to work, preferring instead to remain indoors peering out through their curtains every now and then in the forlorn hope that everything has returned to a comforting state of rain-drenched normality. The very idea of snow, actually falling, causes the kind of 'chaos' which makes headline news.

Here in Romania, things are very different. It starts snowing a couple of days before Christmas, and it stops sometime near the end of February. Huge icicles hang off everything - buildings, trees, cars, dogs and people. Everyone gets to see more of the world as a thick layer of glaciation builds over the pavements and roads. On some days, after a fresh fall, it is possible to walk outside in reasonable safety. On other days, when the ice has become compacted and smooth as a mirror, you'd better stay indoors.

Or at least, I'd better stay in doors. The people here have developed the unconscious instincts of ice skating gazelles. They can run, skip, jump and ballet dance on the ice with impunity. I, on the other hand, tend to pick my way across it like an elephant carrying a live hand grenade, while strangers point and laugh in my imagination. Such is the effect of years of bland weather on the growing psyche.

January 14th, 2004. | 1:57 am cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Reminiscence and Radiation.

A short while ago, one of the television channels here ran show which might as well have had the working title:

The show was basically a non-stop rollercoaster of black and white film of men in large ties singing about food on a stage completely devoid of decoration. Interspersed with this were static images of large machines full of valves - presumably to pace the excitement a little.

At one point the show featured an interview with a well known actress. Her appearances on stage and screen had given her fame across Romania, almost as far as Cluj. The interviewer, in his wisdom, however, elected to focus on her time as Romania's speaking clock.

I kid you not. Though, to her credit, she apparently spoke bravely of her experience - the technical difficulties with recording - the moment when they all forget if she'd said five past two, or ten past two, and they had to re-record a whole five minutes - the feeling of genuine religious awe that descended on the room when the time she recorded was the actual time on the clock on the wall - etc..

Stuff we ordinary punters don't normally think about, you know..

Anyway, if that had been me, I would have really milked my moment in the sun. I'd have gone on about how, like, I didn't just say the words..

.. but I really tried to invest them with a feeling of the real ... how can I put it ... weight .. of time .. of transience .. yes, I really tried to ennunciate that feeling of being a soap bubble - yes, that's it, a soap bubble in a cage full of mad tigers .. that's what I was trying to communicate.

But she never said that.

January 23rd, 2004. | 3:05 pm cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Searching for the right kind of hole

This is a true story of accountancy, paperwork and a desperate search for the right kind of hole.

I can only imagine how accountancy works for you happy-go-lucky freelancers outside of Romania. I daydream of a process which involves, I don't know, a few sums on a calculator and a quick email maybe once every year? Maybe the whole thing only takes a day or so of your time. Imagine that. No nightly visits from the dark angel of bureaucracy, wrapping up the last vestiges of my sanity in thick, heavy tape marked "Kafka didn't know the half of it, pal".

Here, we have to do our accounting and tax paperwork once every month. By 'paperwork', I mean that quaint notion of stuff written on actual paper. Because it is written on paper, you have to physically bring it to a special office. Note the use of "special" in that last sentence - implying, correctly, that there is only one office. And, guess what? It is a very small office, staffed by three extremely angry people who sit behind a sheet of thick, grimy, bullet-proof glass. So, you, and a million other sad deluded entrepreneurs, all have to cram into this room every month, and shout and wave your papers, and be deliberately insulted and ignored, so that you will eventually repent your sin of even daring to think of doing something for yourself, and you will be broken, and you will come to wipe the grateful tears from your eyes as you realise that, finally, you do love Big Brother.

But, of course, it's not that bad. There's worse.

There are rules dictating what you can put on your paper, and what papers you should submit. That is good. It gives you something to cling on to. Except they change the rules every single month - and they don't tell anyone. That is why, for example, we got a call from our accountant at around midnight last night, informing us that there is a new rule which meant that we had to stay up typing a new declaration. This declaration states something like -

Of course, an initial response to this kind of thing is to tell the officials that they shove their declaration into the backside of a very surprised donkey. But, if you do this, they smile and rub their hands and inform you that you now owe them about 200 euro, and is there anything else you would like to suggest they place into some farmyard animal or other? So, you just have to doff your cap and make your declaration. Four legs good, two legs bad.

But, of course, it's not that bad. There's worse.

When we set up here, we knew about the paperwork and stuff, but we foolishly believed that we could use any old paper to write our reports and declarations on. Of course, we were soon put right on that one. We had to buy a special book of special paper and then get that stamped with a special official stamp.

So, out we went, and found the special papers. Proud of ourselves, we went to the little office and presented them for stamping. The three angry people shook their heads.

And so, we found ourselves squeezed into the only available space in this office, writing numbers on the corner of hundreds of official pages with a ballpoint pen. Finally, exhaustedly, we presented the finished documents for re-inspection

Now, you're thinking - 'he's making this up' - aren't you? Nope. I'm not. It is all true. And this is how I found myself having to relax my wife with soothing music, tea, and having to wipe her brow with a soft cool cloth, before heading out and wandering all over Bucharest, looking for the right kind of hole.

Have you ever had to go into a strange shop in a strange city and ask where you could find the right kind of hole? Thought not. It is, to say the least, highly embarrasing. Luckily, people from outside Romania are generally highly thought of here, by the general public at least. So, far from laughing, they took my request seriously. I mean, they are very used to this kind of b****cks.

So it is due to the extreme goodwill of the people of Bucharest that I, amazingly, actually did find the right kind of hole. They have a special shop, tucked away, in a tiny backstreet, with a special hole-and-string machine - just for official papers. The next day, we returned to the office, and with great reluctance, they accepted our papers.

But, of course, it's not that bad. There's worse.

All of the above represents a tiny drop in the ocean of all the crap we've had to put up with to get our business officially accepted here. If it takes this much for business to be accepted - imagine how much it will take for business to be understood.

January 27th, 2004. | 12:41 am cet. | Thoughts: 1 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Buying a soundcard in Bucharest

February 8th, 2004. | 11:08 am cet. | Thoughts: 2 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Cold

Yesterday evening, we went out to get something to eat. It was my initiative. I suggested it, spontaneously, and without any direction. After getting over her initial shock , my wife agreed, although she said it was rather cold outside.

As anyone who has read Derrida will know, the phrase 'rather cold' has no fixed meaning. Its meaning is variable, and can be interpreted differently depending on the situation. If your situation is having lived in England and Ireland for most of your life, then the phrase 'rather cold' means putting on a coat, and perhaps a hat. If your situation is going out for a pizza in Bucharest in February, then the phrase can have a very different interpretation.

I first realised this as the last vestiges of heat left my pale and quivering body shortly after we emerged from the restaurant. I actually felt them go, rapidly, through a kind of numb lump on my shoulder (which I later remembered was my head). After that, the journey took on a dream-like quality. The streets, normally quite busy, were deserted. Everyone was at home, watching us through their windows and betting on our chances of survival. We passed dogs, standing like statues, apparently frozen to the pavement.

We supported each other with conversation. It wasn't the most sparkling conversation. In fact it entirely consisted of us repeating the sentence "Jesus, its fucking cold" to each other roughly every five minutes or so. This remained the case until we were almost home. Then, a small piece of my brain seemed to thaw just enough for me to ask a pertinent question:

Minus twenty? I've never been in minus twenty before in my life! The most I've been is probably minus four, and that was only for a while. I remembered all the films I had seen about people wandering lost in the Arctic. Before, I never really understood what the fuss was about. I was imagining minus four plus a bit. Now I knew. I ran through a mental check list of all the illnesses I was bound to catch if I survived the walk. I imagined getting back to our warm apartment and then feeling a wall of pain just before my foot fell off.

Well, none of it happened. I just warmed up slowly. But, that's it now. No more of this taking the initiative stuff. I tried it once and nearly killed us both. Nope - now I don't leave the flat until June.

February 13th, 2004. | 3:33 am cet. | Thoughts: 0 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Metro station at Piata Romana

The metro station at Piata Romana, in the center of Bucharest, exhibits what might be the most dangerous architectural design of any metro station in the world. It is narrow and curved, trackside, and it is quite long. The platforms, however, are just wide enough for one person to balance precariously on without falling under a train. It is not possible to pass anyone on the platforms, and movement along them is advised only when absolutely necessary. When a train arrives, the doors disgorge their payload and a large and nervous caterpiller of persons forms, making its way carefully to the exits. If everyone gets out alive, then the other great mass of people, who have all been crammed in these exits waiting to board the train, can pile in. If you've been there and survived, I salute you. You are ready to face life with renewed confidence.

The main reason for the design came in the form of an absolute supreme first-class, passed-with-honours, certifiable, universal bastard named Nicolae Ceausescu. He was once in charge of everything here. That's 'everything' at the molecular level, rather than the political - though the distinction hardly mattered back in those days.

When the Metro was orignally built, he refused to allow for a station to be built at Piata Romana at all. His official reason was that if a Metro station was built at Piata Romana, people would get too fat. Much better if they walk, instead. It is indeed possible to walk to Piata Romana from the next nearest Metro station. It takes about 15 minutes. Of course, it might take longer for the elderly. Of course it might take even longer for the elderly in conditions of minus 20 degrees. In any case, Ceausescu eventually changed his mind. He didn't give a reason. He just changed it. The fact that he did this long after the line had been built didn't matter. Orders were orders and today's dangerously absurd station serves as an enduring monument to his intelligence.

March 4th, 2004. | 9:14 am cet. | Thoughts: 14 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The cable car at Sinaia

Sinaia is a small town with a large Carpathian mountain at the back. If you get bored with the town, you can go up the mountain. They put a cable car there for this purpose. Last year, we were foolish enough to use it. I remember, before the terror began, casually thinking: 'What can be so scary about a cable car?'

The answer is two things. The first of these might be termed - 'sudden and unforseen variations in altitude'. When you get into a plane, and it takes off, you can be pretty sure it will go up at a reasonably level rate. The ground may be getting further away, but at least it is doing so in a gradual and rather unsurprising way. Take a cable car, on the other hand, and the ground just comes and goes as it pleases. One moment you are cruising along, looking down at the nearby tree-tops, the next you are over some crevasse and trees are no longer a comfort. Just when you're getting used to this, the trees come back. But of course, now you don't trust them anymore.

The other thing is the pylons. A cable car isn't just one smooth glide along a carefree length of steel, you know. The thing is held up by huge pylons. That means that the cable itself has to be slung over four large wheels on each pylon. So, when you pass over a pylon, the whole car bumps, rattles and lurches momentarily into a comfortable forty five degree downward pivot. After the first time this happened, I was so glad to have survived, I decided to join myself bodily to the whole system. The pylons gripped tightly onto the cable. The cable was held tightly by the cable car. And, inside the cable car, I was holding tightly on to my wife, the safety rail, my lunch and anything else I figured would help.

Then when we got to the top, I was attacked by a bee. Life is unfair.

March 7th, 2004. | 3:55 pm cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Water filtration unit

I had always suspected that the quality of the water here might fall somewhere just short of edible, but being a man, I decided that the best way to deal with this problem was to drink as much water as possible. That way, I would force my stomach to adapt to the stuff whether it wanted it or not. This went fine for while, except that I kept getting sick all the time. My wife, after trying rational explanation, irrational explanation, threats, throwing things at me, shouting, collapsing with worry and hitting me with large bits of wood, finally gave up and bought me a water filter.

Today, after happily using my filter for a couple of months, it suddenly struck me that the inside of the bit where you put the tap water has changed form. Its colour, previously white, is now orange. Its texture, previously smooth, is now characterised by scattered brownish lumpy things. I have decided to call this stuff, which probably has no true scientific name: 'the crap that was in the water all the time I was drinking it before'.

My first impulse was to eradicate it using a cloth and lots of soap, but then I realised that this would mean cleaning and that might be dangerous. What I will do instead is leave the brownish things alone to live in peace. In fact, I will nurture them gently with soothing music and the loving addition of even more water. My hope is that this will encourage the lumps to feed. Eventually they will grow. Smaller lumps will congeal into larger lumps which will eventually form into amorphous lump monsters. I intend to train these to become an efficient guerilla army. Then I will send them around to the water company to smash up their filing cabinets.

March 10th, 2004. | 5:52 am cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Jean Michel Giurgiu

Jean Michel Jarre is following me. I've talked about him before. I even made nasty jokes about his car. I thought I'd got rid of him. But, un-be-fucking-lievab-ly, it now looks like Jean Michel Jarre wants to play a concert at Giurgiu, that little place in the arse-end of the arse-end where I spent new year. Yes, he does. Really. I'm not joking. No I'm not. He really does plan to have a concert at Giurgiu. Look at his website if you don't believe me. My wife's sister told her last night, and I laughed and laughed at the idea - but no. It is true, and I wound up looking like an idiot, as usual.

But, in my defence, let's just put the sheer unbelievableness of this in perspective. On the one hand, we've got Giurgiu. Giurgiu is the kind of town that isn't even interesting enough to be in the middle of nowhere. It would probably just about make it to the back of a top shelf in nowhere's shed. Giurgiu would consider itself stunned with gratitude if the Cheeky Girls signed a piece of paper in the local library. The main activity on a typical Saturday night in Giurgiu is walking up to one end of the street and then back to the other end. Sheep give Giurgiu a miss because it isn't interesting enough for them. The official CIA report on Giurgiu is 'don't bother'. Giurgiu is, just, well, the absolute last place in the world that Jean Michel Jarre would ever even consider leaving a half eaten croissant on a park bench in.

On the other hand, we have old Jean Michel himself. When most people play a concert, they play it 'in' something. They play in Dallas, for example. Or the play in the local community hall, or in a summer festival, or whatever. Jarre doesn't play in anything. He plays 'on' things. He played a concert on Huston, for example. He played on the Eiffel tower, and on the Pyramids. He prefers to use lasers the size of football pitches, lorry loads of fireworks, and speaker stacks the size of buildings. The people of Giurgiu would be amazed if he just swung a torch around on a piece of string. If he does play a concert there, the place will probably be reduced to rubble.

Right, now, lets get back to me. Despite appearances, or perhaps, because of them, I actually am a big fan of Jean Michel Jarre. But, before I came here, I gave all that up. I sold all my Jean Michel Jarre CDs. I figured - that's that, going to a new and better life now. I didn't mind. I resigned myself to never hearing Jarre again. And now, the bastard comes and follows me here - right to my wife's home town. What's up with him, eh? Jealous, is he? Or was I his last and only remaining fan or something?

Of course, he makes this excuse on his website that it is all about this bridge they have at Giurgiu. The 'friendship' bridge, they call it. It crosses the Danube and connects Romania and Bulgaria. I don't know why they call it the friendship bridge. A more accurate name would be the 'hey, come and get your cheap tv's! - bridge'. But Jarre likes the name. He's like that - all for friendship and stuff. You can bet that if this concert goes ahead, it will be called the ... wait for it .... wait for it ... concert for friendship. Well, if he wants to come to some bridge and tell everyone to be friends, that's his business. Me, I'm packing my sandwiches. Its free, I've got a place to stay, and it should be pretty damn amazing if it happens.

March 11th, 2004. | 6:21 am cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Romanian driving school instructions

1. STARTING THE VEHICLE

There are three important things to remember here: mirror, signal, clutch. First of all, check your mirror. If it is still there, good. Now signal that you are about to pull away from the curb. Chuck your cigarette out of the window or something. Rev the engine a bit so people really understand. Finally, let out the clutch, turn the wheel and hit the accelerator as hard as possible. Now we're flying.

2. TRAFFIC LIGHTS

There is one simple rule when it comes to traffic lights. Accelerate as hard and as fast as possible. This is especially important if there are pedestrians crossing at the lights. Acceleration is vital, as it is important to scare the living shit out of them. Otherwise they won't run out of your way. If you do find yourself caught at a traffic light, continual pressure on the car horn will help to make you feel better.

3. THE U-TURN

The procedure here is always the same. Close your eyes, lower your head and turn the steering wheel as hard and fast as possible. If you have passengers, now would be a good time to ask them to pray.

4. PROCEEDING IN TRAFFIC

The golden rule is to always always drive faster than the other cars. If you see a space in another lane, drive into it. It doesn't matter which lane. If you don't do this, someone else will - and that means they will have won.

5. PARKING

Find a space, point your vehicle at it and accelerate. It doesn't matter where the space is. It could be on the road, on the pavement, in someone's garden or even full of people. Just park where you like. If you do choose a pedestrian area, remember to fill as much of the surrounding space as possible with your car. Right up against a wall is good. That shows them who is boss.

6. USE OF THE CAR HORN

You should use the car horn ONLY in the following situations: If there is a pedestrian on a zebra crossing. Waiting for lights to change. After lights have changed. Waiting in traffic. When you are bored. When you feel like it. Every thirty seconds. At all other times.

March 22nd, 2004. | 3:53 pm cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Orthotricium Lyelli

They say that a rolling stone gathers no moss, but it isn't true. Charlie Watts gathered some moss when he was a student with a summer job on the outer Hebrides. He was supposed to sell the moss to a local fisherman, but being the old rock 'n roller that he is, he hid it behind a cowshed. Later that night he crept out to the cowshed and carefully divided his moss into piles. The next night, he smoked his first pile. He was violently sick and he went home to London on the next boat. The locals erected a statue in his honour, but it was very small, and it got stepped on by a pony.

I mention this because myself and my wife are going away to the mountains today, where there are no computers. First we visit Sibiu, which is the home of the salami. Then we go to Brasov, because that is where the trains go. Jonathan Harker went to Transylvania by train too, and he had a good time by all accounts. We've got the hotels booked and everything. We will be back on Monday, and I will write a huge long post all about the various mosses we discover.

April 2nd, 2004. | 6:09 am cet. | Thoughts: 5 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Sibiu: part one.

If you took an English town like Brentwood and put it in Switzerland, you would end up with something resembling Sibiu. The town is dominated by a view of the Carpathian mountains. Their blue and white zig-zig-lumps form a constant backdrop that can be seen from all points in the center. You can even enjoy the site while waiting at traffic lights, which is something they seem to enjoy doing in Sibiu, even if the roads are completely devoid of cars. This reasonable conformity to basic road safety marks a complete contrast to road crossing in Bucharest, which is like crossing an asteroid belt full of Dacias. Sibiu could almost be in a different country, but one with the same food.

The town center is very old. It resembles a large medieval building site. It has probably resembled a medieval building site since medieval times. There seems to be an infinite program of restoration going on. One of the associations responsible uses the concise slogan: 'No more walls falling down in Sibiu'. Perhaps they could have added: 'Some decent pavements would be nice too' - but maybe they thought these things are better taken one step at a time. As medieval town centers go, however, Sibiu's has a wonderfully authentic feel to it.

We stayed in the 1991 winner of the 'Most Communist Hotel in Sibiu' contest. You can generally tell if a place is communist by looking at the hat stands. Hat stands are one of the very very few things that commuinists did well. They made loads of plastic ones, with lumpy nodules on them, to resemble something cool and atomic and industrial. Unlike communism, however, these hat stands last for ever. If you spot one in your hotel, that is a good indication that the place remains for ever communist. Another clue was that nothing in the place had been altered, moved, dusted or repaired since 1956. The real clincher, however, was the forms that we had to fill out on arrival. These asked us for ever bit of information about us that someone in charge could think of, right down to our shoe size and out favourite kind of balloon. I imagine that in days gone by these forms would have gone straight to some party filing cabinet labelled 'Comrades impertinent enough to dare to stay in a hotel'.

April 5th, 2004. | 9:00 am cet. | Thoughts: 5 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Sibiu, Part II: The return of Sibiu

Tea is a popular drink in Romania. There are all kinds of varieties - not just the usual brown shrapnel wrapped toilet paper. There's tea made from flowers, tea with bits of fruit in it, tea made from twigs and tea with rocks. All of them are hand made by trained tea monks ... or something. There is a tea cafe in Sibiu, called "Tea" - so as not to cause any disturbance for the locals. We went there all the time, and it was very nice, including the staff and everything. The only problem was all the other customers. Well, some of them. Well, one.

This one customer was a theology student, I think. I certainly hope so, or his single "joke" renders itself even more bizarre than when we heard it. He declamed loudly that he had heard of someone proposing the following as a title for a student paper: "Dracula ... as a religious symbol!". That was it. That was the joke. He laughed alone for an agonising thirty seconds before his companions joined in out of pity. This was their mistake, however. You see, when you're in the comedy business, and you think you've got a good line, the natural inclination is to spin it out - to build on the solid comedy foundation, so to speak. That is exactly what this poor soul proceeded to do. He managed this:

This time the silence felt like a wet ghoul under a dish cloth. With all the instinctive sympathy of a fellow comedian, I felt that the time had come to retaliate with a loud joke of my own. I don't remember the exact details now, but it was something highly amusing about Scottish mushrooms. It worked like a charm. Customers fell out of their chairs laughing. A brass band played 'congratulations' outside the window. The mayor arrived and thanked me personally. The other chap, in the mean time, was chased out of town by angry locals brandishing swizzle sticks. Well, that's what happened in my mind anyway.

April 9th, 2004. | 11:09 am cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Sibiu part III (The rise of the machines)

Sibiu is a quiet place, but that doesn't mean it is a stranger to drama. For example, there was the time when I realised that I had brought my battery charger for the camera, but - crucially - I had forgotten to bring the adaptor for two-pin plugs - rendering the adaptor itself completely unusable. The sheer tension of this discovery meant that the heavens rendered open, the sky fell in and crows ran around in confused circles. I, however, am a man of action.

Without pausing, I immediately set forth for Germanos electrical supplies shop on Sibiu high street. I was intent on buying a new charger, no matter what the cost. In Bucharest, the cost would have been a lot of confusion, followed by a long search for adapters, followed by a bill for some random amount of cash. In Sibiu, I walked in, and they gave me an adaptor, and then told me I could have it for free. We were so stunned at finding this level of customer service that we had to go and have a lie down in the park for a bit.

By way of thanks, I should say that if anyone needs an adaptor for a three-pin plug in a two-pin socket, then head over to Germanos, in Sibiu, in the center of Romania - they won't disappoint.

Speaking of disappointment, I must make quick mention of the dogs in Sibiu. These exist, but they are nothing like the fine dogs of Bucharest. They are merely chattle. They are all owned. And they are all - with just a single exception - Spaniels. Sibiu is full of Spaniels. I have no idea why. Perhaps it is where they all come from in the summer. Perhaps they migrate. I just don't know.

On the third day, we went to an Italian restaurant. The food was good and the chairs were nice, but there was a problem. They only had one CD for the sound system, and it was Bryan Adams 'greatest' hits. Now, Bryan Adams may well be famous all over Italy, but he is very difficult to eat pasta to. In fact, his music turns eating of any kind into a kind of trial by numbing warble. The mouth works but the ears want to catch the first bus home. Try it some time. Try shovelling a fork-full of calamari into your mouth while Bryan yelps out great electric powered goblets such as:

Yeah, right, thanks for the advice Bryan. I'll take it on board. As I am sure you often do yourself - in your private jet.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot. We went to this huge park with windmills. Here is a picture:

April 10th, 2004. | 1:06 am cet. | Thoughts: 2 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Hristos a inviat

Wake up on easter morning in Romania, and you will probably be handed an egg. Not a chocolate one, a real one, painted red - or maybe blue. Don't eat it. Just hold it in your fist. Soon enough, someone will approach you with an egg of their own, and they will say:

This means "Christ has risen". You must now say:

Which means "Indeed he has risen".

The conversation is cut abruptly short when your companion suddenly smashes their egg into yours three times. Don't be alarmed. This is a kind of game. The winner is the one whose egg doesn't break. There is no prize, however, so you win nothing. But then again, neither did jesus.

It is probably a good thing that the brief conversation doesn't proceed, as I cannot imagine it going anywhere that doesn't provoke violence:

At which point, Hristos, who indeed has risen, steps out of the wardrobe and slaps our interlocutor around the head with the Pope's favourite herring, thus saving the conflict from descending into violence and earning himself a small round of appluase from a group of pacifist woodland creatures.

Now, you may eat your egg.

April 13th, 2004. | 11:06 am cet. | Thoughts: 14 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Concerning Chad

The BBC seems to like stories about Romania. It doesn't really matter what the story is, so long as Romania gets a look in somewhere. They run at least one a month. Perhaps they're worried that if they don't, they might forget Romania exists. That would explain why, this month, they've hit the ground running with the news-dynamite-blitz-mania revelation that Romania's flag looks roughly the same as Chad's.

And it isn't just the BBC that has noticed. Some important people in Romania have spotted it too. In fact, say the BBC, our illustrious eternal beacon of presidential force, Mr. Iliescu, has officially told Romanians that they need not:

Which should help quell the mass hysteria that was recently threatening to break out in the flag department of Unirea shopping center.

But, to be honest, I suspect that after working ten hour days, with little or no break, for not enough money to hardly eat properly, many people here don't actually give a flying fuck about the flag in Chad.

April 15th, 2004. | 6:25 pm cet. | Thoughts: 17 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

From Here to Eternity

It's the first of May! That means it's labor day - a big holiday here in Romania. And we can feel the party atmosphere already, I can assure you. There's at least one flag stuck on a traffic light somewhere - probably two!

Labor day was invented in America back in the 1880's. Some grubby union types, after a long campaign of fighting, bombing and dancing, managed to secure for themselves one whole day a year as a holiday. A major victory. Everyone went back to the bottle processing factories in a peaceful frame of mind, as I'm sure you can imagine, happily counting down the 364 days remaining before they could go home again.

Then, during the twentieth century, labor day got nicked by communists and morris dancers, just like it was a hotel bath mat or something. The communists re-named it 'Happy-go-lucky day for your average international socialist working proletarian kinda guy' - or words to that effect. Oh, how they miss those big parades with the pointy missiles and a million highly trained morris dancers making the shape of Lenin's head out of head scarves and sticks.

These days, of course, no one can afford the petrol for a big parade anymore. So usually they just use a rabbit. The rabbit pulls a small matchbox on wheels, and inside the matchbox they've got toothpicks instead of missiles. Everyone lines the streets and applauds the heroic rabbit for at least two minutes before it gets run over by a Dacia carrying a consignment of cement to Bulgaria.

Normally, of course, there would be film crews coming from all over the world to film our heroic rabbit. Today, though, they all seem to have gone somewhere else. Apparently there's this big party going on next door and all these countries are invited and we're not. But do not, under any circumstances, be perturbed, for there's steps afoot to change all that. The ministry of internal affairs has personally assured the population that next year, they'll get another rabbit. Also eggs will be cheaper. And don't tell anyone, but diligent hyper-para-super-mania-celebrity Teo will personally come and visit every citizen and give them a free pencil.

May 1st, 2004. | 1:36 am cet. | Thoughts: 2 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

A clockwork orange

Today's entry on Albino Neutrino is brought to you as part of an EU funded initiative on the control of mirth in the candidate states. Mirth levels in these areas, though generally low, have been increasing recently - an occurrence which is causing some eyebrows to raise in Brussels.

This entry is consequently released under strictly controlled experimental conditions. A positive feedback loop is being used to measure levels of exuberance as it progresses. Any slight increase in mirth will itself act as an input into the system, causing a relaxation of seriousness, which in turn will increase the rate of jovial output.

Think of it as if it were an orange balanced on a piece of string. Normally, this orange would be in a condition of instability, due to the forces of gravity acting both upon it and the string. If, however, a ravenous orang utan should spot the orange, the state of the orange would radically change and the orang utan itself would enter into a condition of instability, having got itself all tangled up in string and covered in orange juice. That's what a positive feedback loop is like.

Everyone, of course, suffers from the odd jocular convulsion. The point is, however, that within within the borders of the EU, convulsive emissions are rarely controlled, and may flow freely between individual members without fear of fines or imprisonment. This even happens in the west of Ireland, where everything absurd was, until comparatively recently, completely banned by the de Valera administration.

Anyway, that's the point, see. And it is an important point too. Even a pointed pointer appointed to point out all the points wouldn't have a better point than this point here. I mean, even in Poland, where there's lots of points, recently, a group of agricultural workers was heard to make an unsanctioned remark about a donkey and a tax official, which caused a health worker to swallow hard on the wrong kind of boiled egg - the dangerous kind - adding to the tax payer's burden and causing untold confusion in Omsk. So, the point is serious, whatever the actual point is.

Raised eyebrows are, of course, a real problem among disaffected orang utans on the streets of Sibiu. The younger ones are optimistic that they can have their eyebrows lowered in time for 2007, which is when Romanian donkeys will be allowed to become homeopaths for the first time. Others sound a note of caution, claiming that any increased enlargement can only lead to deflation, stagnation and indigestion. An arch deacon in Lithuania recently suggested that the best thing to do would be to take a large melon and ram it hard up

The Remaining Paragraphs have Been Deleted by Order of the EU Commission for the control of Mirth in the candidate states.

May 2nd, 2004. | 9:53 pm cet. | Thoughts: 2 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Shawshank Redemption

A short tram ride from our apartment in the Bladerunner district of Bucharest will take you to the happy office of our local cable company, RDS. Perhaps, though, 'office' is not quite the right word. 'Wardrobe' is more like it. In fact - 'wardrobe with a queue' would sum up the place quite nicely. So, what happened today was that we set forth in a tram to our local wardrobe with a queue in order to pay RDS for having kept us connected to the outside world for a whole month.

A pleasant surprise awaited us on arrival. The queue was only about fifteen people deep. On occasion it has been known to meander down the street and disappear around a corner. So it was with some relief that we joined the rest of our compatriots in the noble activity of standing in the street. It was then that we realized that we were all being shouted at.

There was a woman in one of the apartments above us, who was wholeheartedly engaged in hurling a continual stream of abuse at anyone and everyone within shouting distance. Since we were all stuck in a queue right underneath her, we were her captive audience for a good half hour of listening pleasure. I asked Tia to translate for me:

In the moments that followed, I thought about this poor woman, stuck in her apartment block with nothing but the memories of the past to taunt her and no one for company but strangers in the street - and I pondered what to say. I managed this:

When we finally made it to the wardrobe, they wouldn't allow us to pay. Of course they wouldn't. They didn't have the right receipts with them. It was a foregone conclusion, really. Even when my wife said 'That was a waste of time' in a melancholy voice as we trudged home, she said it with that kind of air of inevitability that accompanies all statements which you just know are always going to be true.

You see, here, wasted time is the norm. Every day, you can expect to waste a good three hours at least, just trying to explain stuff to people who simply don't care. It is when you actually manage to get something done that you can crack open the champaign. Well, crack open the 'Sham-pain: only 250, 000 lei at your local 'Angst' supermarket during the whole of May!', at any rate.

We decided to capitalize on the sunshine as a balm for our collective mood, and walked back home down the main street. We passed a building site on the way, which was exactly like any other building site in the world, except for the men with guns. There were two of them, sitting in the sun on chairs, watching all the other builders. 'They must be using prisoners', said my wife, 'It's probably a state building.'.

Taking another look, I realized that these builders were not your average string-vest and fag hanging out of the mouth types. They were much leaner, for a start. And they were breathing funny. And they were tearing up the earth with their bare hands. Yet there was nothing between them and freedom but a meter jump into the street and a quick dash into the traffic. Or, more pertinently, there was nothing between them and us but a meter jump into the street and a dash into the traffic. So, we got home quite quickly in the end after all.

May 5th, 2004. | 11:57 am cet. | Thoughts: 7 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Singin' in the Rain

We like to think of ourselves as a creative 'family' here at Neutrino Global Enterprises: 'If it moves, buy it'. I hack out websites from air using nothing but my fingertips and a bucket of coffee. My wife Tia, on the other hand, makes delicate objet d'art from beauty's driftwood:

This, for instance, is one of her home made books. A book for mermaids. Today's modern mermaid needs something to keep all of her appointments and meetings in, and this is just the thing.

Each book is different. Each item has a different theme. Some are Indian, some are Japanese. All of them are unique.

May 10th, 2004. | 7:11 pm cet. | Thoughts: 9 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Bear

Our local pharmacy, Sensiblue, was recently running a special deal: Spend more than one million Lei and you get a free teddy bear!

So, we hit the local Sensiblue, spend something like 60 million lei on headache pills, toothpaste, perfume and crisps - stride purposefully up to the counter and demand our free bear. But - of course - it isn't that easy.

So, we leave, bearless. Trudging home, it occurs to both of us that we saw nothing at all in the shop about the bears being free only for baby products. We suspect we have been lied to. We suspect that they want to keep the bear. Our bear. The bear that was ours by right. Our anger mounts, but at least we are armed. For we have a leaflet. A leaflet a telephone number. 'If you have any complaints about any of the service you have received in our stores...'

..and so we did. Tia came home proudly hugging her free bear. We'd fought for the damn thing and we'd won. He is watching me now as I type this. His name is 'Teddy Sensiblue'. We're going to raise him to be an economist.

Here he is, happily watering our bookcase:

May 11th, 2004. | 9:47 am cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Mr Smith goes to Washington

It's local election time here in Bucharest. You're on the edge of your seat already. I can tell.

The ruling PSD party has already got every major advertising site in the city covered. Some of their advertisements use images draped in front of entire buildings. That means that the unfortunate inhabitants of an apartment near the embassy district are currently looking at the world through the PSD party candidate's left nostril. It's quite a nostril too. Even at life size. I'd hate to think what it looks like magnified 200 times. A vast green tunnel of doom, filled with bizarre trees that point to the future, I suppose.

I think that the PSD party have spent so much on advertising that they can now only afford one candidate. It's the same guy on every poster. Sometimes he's wearing glasses and a mustache, sure, and sometimes a silly hat, but I'm not fooled. He just looks like the same massive shiny egg in a suit. The same egg, every where you go, looking serious and demanding a vote from the terrified citizens. Or else, it will eat them.

There are other parties, of course! Loads of them, these days. They've got tiny little posters stuck on the back of buildings or in some corner on page 17 of the local newspapers. They're all trying very hard to look 'cool' and modern and progressive. Their candidates are photographed standing next to trees, for example. Or in fresh white shirts, just newly washed by their adoring mothers, who spent the whole time singing 'When my son gets into government, everyone will win a free car'.

My own hopes are pinned on a chap who placed a minuscule advertisement at the back of last week's 'Road Sweeper's Journal'. He was photographed looking up from his handcart while trying to polish the one good lens in his glasses with an oily rag. His slogan went something like: 'Vote for me. Yes, I am tiny and insignificant, but hey, at least I'm not going to steal all your money.'

He doesn't exist, of course. But it's better than nothing.

May 19th, 2004. | 8:26 pm cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Sun is Burning

The other day I ruminated on the role of Brad Pimp as an icon of twentieth century cinema. Mr. Pimp, is of course, a huge star, and like all huge stars he regularly has a nicely polished sun tan. People associate sun tans with success. But a sun tan doesn't necessarily mean success. It just means someone was out in the sun.

On the other hand, you can have something that no one associates with success, but which is actually quite successful. Like the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. They're successful. But does anyone associate them with success? No. Except for Riccardo Chailly. He's their conductor.

It would be very difficult to make a fake Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. But sun tans can be faked quite easily. People paint themselves brown, and say it was the sun, and everyone else is supposed to think that they were very successful. But really, a fake tan is like a chandelier in a slum. It only makes things worse. It is much better to just go to school and learn accountancy properly.

Here in Bucharest, it is really easy to get a suntan. Just stick your head out the window. It will turn a nice shade of bubbly brown in about ten minutes, just like cheese on toast. As an added bonus, your tan will be preserved by a thin layer of dusty petrol. It will positively shine. Even in the dark. Unfortunately, however, people here don't associate sun tans with success. Not even ones that glow in the dark.

The thing that people tend to associate with success here is large four by fours with all the windows blacked out. At least, the people driving them do, I suppose. But if the windows are all blacked out, then the sun probably never gets in. So these people are probably the palest people in the world. Almost translucent. And yet, everyone thinks they are really successful. No one would dare think that they weren't. They'd probably be shot.

I was once walking down a main street in Bucharest when I saw a large four by four with blacked out windows screech up to this suspicious horse. These big guys jumped out, grabbed the horse and shoved it into the vehicle. It took them about twenty five minutes to get the whole thing in. Even then, one of its legs was sticking out of the sun roof. I think the horse must have been up to something. Probably drugs. But they drove away before the police got there, so I will never know. Actually, the police never turned up at all. Typical. Just because I made up the whole thing just now. That's just like the police to do that. Except I made them up to. Everything here is made up. Even I am. I don't exist, really.

So, basically, the whole issue of sun tans is much more complicated than it seems.

June 25th, 2004. | 9:45 pm cet. | Thoughts: 2 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

A Poem on the Underground Wall

The other day, I considered the moral and aesthetic implications of John Logie Baird re-creating the Battle of Stirling using a pair of bagpipes and some rubber bands. But that was ok then, because I was nice and warm and comfortable. Today, I am none of these things no longer. And, boy, am I annoyed.

What has happened is that someone in the government has stolen all of my hot water. To those of you unused to the delights of Communism, I should point out that this is a comparatively easy thing to do over here.

I don't know the technical stuff too well, but basically, it is because of how all the buildings here are stuck together. You see, all the hot water pipes in my apartment join up in one big pipe for the whole block, and that pipe joins up to a bigger one in the street, and then these big pipes in the street all connect up to this really huge pipe which goes to government headquarters. This huge pipe has a little wheel on it, and there's this guy who sits in an office all day reading a newspaper, until someone in the government telephones him and asks him to turn the wheel and shut down all the hot water.

The call came yesterday, the guy turned the wheel, and all of the hot water for the whole city of Bucharest was shut down. They said on the news that it won't be switched back on for a month. This is an annual event here. They do it every July. They say it is so that they can fix things. Its all to do with dangerously low levels, apparently. Of bank accounts. In Switzerland. The cheap Bastards.

So, what I want to know is, where's all the riots? Where's the millions of freezing wet punters pouring into the streets, kicking over phone boxes and moving on government headquarters with tanks? Imagine they decided to shut off all the hot water for a month in London or Paris or New York. I somehow doubt that everyone there would just shrug their shoulders and wonder how they were going to wash their socks next week.

But the thing is, this has always happened here. It happened during Communist times, and it happens now, and thus, few seem to realize this simple fact: IT DOESN'T HAVE TO HAPPEN. I think that this realization, applied to so many many things here, could well kick start Romania on the road to change. There is so much potential here, but in order to avail of the possibilities, it is first necessary for people to be aware of them.

In the meantime, I suspect that someone in government headquarters is now languishing in a home made jacuzzi filled with MY hot water. Others are probably siphoning it off to restaurant owners so they can sell it to customers at over-inflated prices just because they stuck a bit of lemon in it. So I am on a mission now. A mission to find these people. And when I find them, I will force them to take a series of freezing showers and wear the same underwear for a month. Just to show them.

And, on a more personal note, thank Christ that June is finally over and I can stop having to look for a Paul Simon song title to use as my title. Paul Simon may well be an iconoclast of the music scene, but he really managed to write some boring song titles. Next month, I'll just go make to using my own. That'll teach me to try and be clever.

June 30th, 2004. | 11:31 am cet. | Thoughts: 8 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

An Incident with a Dog

These things really exist. They are a type of dog called a 'bull terrier'. Basically, they're a sack of skin with a huge muscle inside and some teeth at one end.

Naturally, these are the last thing you would think of bringing to a small inner-city park where a group of children are playing football, on a sunny day, and then letting lose from the lead to run amok among them.

So, anyway, today I was enjoying the sunshine in this small inner-city park while this group of children were playing football nearby. The bench opposite mine was occupied by three animals. One of them was a bull terrier. The other two were smoking. I am not sure what they actually were. I think they were female.

I didn't trouble myself with them too much, preferring to follow a train of thought concerning Immanual Kant and a Beef Pie. But then they started moving, which kind of upset everything.

One of them, the big one with electrostatic hair, was engaged in hurling a tiny yellow ball, pretty much at random, into the general direction of the park. The bull terrier, possibly assuming the ball to be a small flightless bird, set off like a streak of electrified milk, leaped on the ball, attempted to massacre it, and then brought it back to the two women, who rewarded the dog by casually dropping their cigarette ash onto its head. Then the process was repeated, almost mechanically, and without much enthusiasm from any of the parties involved.

All of this might have passed without incident, if the dog hadn't gone and had an idea. First, it noticed the game of football going on a few yards away. Then it noticed the ball. After a huge effort of calculation, it decided that this new ball was many times more interesting than the crap yellow thing its owners had been fooling with it. Having decided this, the dog acted accordingly, and charged headlong into the football game, seeking to kill their ball.

Now, you know those times when something happens and you just think, 'this isn't right' and 'one of those kids is going to get their hand bitten off in a minute'? Well, this was one of those times.

From this point on all the human parties involved behave with a degree of intelligence that is only slightly above that of the dog. One of the women, realizing that she probably should abandon her attempt to enjoy her fifteenth cigarette, hauled herself out of the seat and began to, well, shuffle towards the kids, while mumbling the dog's name and making vague motions with her hands. The kids, in the meantime, decided to try and grab the ball, by bending down low and using their own hands. Use of hands, in the company of a frenzied bull terrier, is really best kept to a minimum.

The woman eventually got to the dog, grabbed it, kicked it in the nuts and hauled it back to her bench. This subdued the dog for about, oh, sixty seconds. Then it noticed the ball again, and it got the same idea, and forgot all about the pain in its nether regions as it happily flung itself at the football once more. Amazingly, this all happened three times in a row, without incident. On the fourth time, however, that changed.

The dog and kids were all moving around the football as usual when there was this horrific scream, followed by the kind of incessant wailing which can only mean real shock. One of the kids stumbled back, holding his wrist, crying and screaming. He rapidly left the scene, followed by the others. The women hauled the dog back to her bench. Scanning the park, I could see this kid on the ground, with a large group of people in attendance. The woman lit up another cigarette and waited.

Soon enough, she was approached by a group of older children. They were all talking at once. I heard them telling her that what she'd done with her dog was completely illegal. They clearly wanted some retribution. The woman basically gave them some in the form of two short words, the second of which was 'off'.

Amazed as I was by her clear lack of remorse, my amazement was increased many times as I watched her companion produce the dog lead which had been in her bag the entire time and calmly, almost lazily, attach it to the dog. They left, shortly afterwards, followed by my own quickly concocted and devout wishes that they would be hit by something hard and fast moving at some point in the future.

About twenty minutes later, the kids were back playing football. I watched the one who had tangled with the dog run for the ball. Both his hands and wrists were entirely blemish free. He'd been pretending the whole time. Nice to see the spirit of enterprise alive and well, then.

July 5th, 2004. | 3:20 am cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Shining

Ghosts are scary. Not because we suspect they might be real, but because we think they probably aren't. The afterlife is like a big pillow made from candy floss. It's a comforting prospect but not one that is really likely to exist. If we believed in it like we believe in chairs then all the ghosts would suddenly become our friends. But we don't, and they're not. So there.

Anyway, on with the funny stuff. Once again, life in Romania has come to the rescue on that score. Throw in a couple of ghosts, and you've got a story.

Today, I went to see 'The Shining' for the fifteenth or sixteenth time. I really really really like films by Stanley Kubrick. I've seen 'The Shining' loads of times on DVD. This was the first time I have had the chance to see it in an actual real live cinema. So, I checked my watch, checked the cinema, checked everything was in place, and presented myself at the ticket counter twenty minutes before the film was due to start.

But of course, it wasn't that easy.

I could have complained. I could have shouted. I could have made a scene. But I learned to give all that up months ago. So I went and sat outside the cinema. A short while later, I was joined by the manager, who smoked a cigarette in the saddest manner I have ever seen, as if it were going to be his last.

Then, five minutes before the film was due to start, someone stopped and looked at the program. Myself and the manager could have grabbed him and thrown him inside. But we waited while he went in of his own accord. Then we ran in after him.

Ok, it wasn't four but two was good. Two was promising. I was sold a ticket to much cheering and fanfare. I went inside, sat down and waited for the film to start. When it did, I discovered the important things that they hadn't told me before.

First of all, the entire film was dubbed in German. Then it was dubbed, AGAIN, in Romanian. I suspected things were wrong as the credits rolled and I saw the words 'Das Shinink' (or something like that) roll past. I was sure of it when this very board Romanian suddenly intoned 'Stralucirea' out of nowhere, in full dolby stereo. Basically, the cinema appeared to have got hold of some dodgy German version of 'Das Shinink' and then, as a compensatory measure, hired some poor sap to speak all the lines in Romanian while they recorded him.

So, for example, during the famous scene when Danny sees the ghosts of the twin girls, normally they say something like:

But in the version I saw, they say something like:

And then this really bored Bucharest guy says:

However, I've got to hand it to this guy, he really persevered. He did all the voices: Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duvall and all the ghosts and everyone, using exactly the same flat expressionless tone throughout.

Even in the famous scene when Shelly reads Jack's writing, and every page has 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy' on it, this guy was there, not missing a beat, translating every single one of those typed lines into Romanian, for the benefit of the audience who perhaps hadn't got the idea from the visual image.

Oddly enough though, the printed lines were themselves actually in German, and they stated: 'Was Du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf Morgen'. That means 'Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today'. Perhaps that idea is more frightening for Germans or something, but anyway that's Stanley for you, always the perfectionist.

And there's more. During a particularly intense scene, set in room 237, which doesn't actually feature any dialog, the Romanian translator saw a chance and kept talking:

I think it is a testament to Kubrick's genius that despite all of this, and maybe perhaps because of it, the film was still absolutely fantastic.

July 12th, 2004. | 9:51 pm cet. | Thoughts: 14 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Oh Death, where is thy Tsantsarii?

It is that time of year again when the pavements melt and the dogs sink slowly into them, looking bewildered, with their tongues hanging out. That's because it is very hot.

At night, the only way to sleep is with all of the doors and windows open. You might chance upon a little bit of moving air that way. Unfortunately, the open window also allows in our little winged friends, the tsantsarii. (I am using the phonetic spelling here, because there are at least three special Romanian characters in this word, and they can all cause your monitor to explode).

A tsantsar is about the shape and size of a mosquito, except it is made entirely of glass, and is powered by a small propeller. Their purpose in life is to dive bomb your ears. They like to do this while you sleep. If you can imagine the sound of a model aircraft flying at about 100 times its normal speed, while it simultaneously whines about all of the problems your average model aircraft has to face, except it is also using an amplified loud hailer, which is then recorded onto a very scratched record, and played at 120 revs per minute through a speaker stack about a mile high, which is being dropped on your head: then you might get some idea of what a tsantsar sounds like when it dive bombs your ears.

Oddly enough, this makes sleeping somewhat difficult. That is why the average Romanian bedroom will contain the curious site of half-numbed people who seem to periodically smack themselves in the head every ten minutes or so. They are simply trying to kill the tsantsarii. When you are being dive bombed by one, smacking yourself hard in the head seems little price to pay if it can permanently annihilate the little bastard.

Sometimes, however, they will stop dive bombing of their own accord. They will suddenly become quiet. Too quiet. Don't be fooled. This doesn't mean they've decided to leave. It means they are quietly feeding on your toes.

You won't feel anything. Not for about an hour anyway. That's when this little red mountain will suddenly erupt from your foot, and it will itch in that kind of way which just absorbs your entire brain. You will cease to think like a normal human being. You will just become a large organism devoted to stopping itself from itching. You will remain in this condition for about forty eight hours.

Given this, it is hardly surprising that there is a lively market here for devices that are designed to drop tsantsarii before they make it from the window to your sleeping form. Guns can be quite effective, but it takes years of practice to aim correctly, and they tend to leave bullet holes in the walls and shatter your furniture. Flame throwers will work too, but usually burn the house down in the process. So these devices have been superseded by others, which are a little more cunning.

One of the modern devices is a coil of green stuff which you light before you go to bed. It burns slowly all night, releasing clouds of smoke into the room. That will the kill tsantsarii for sure. I get the impression, however, that it will probably kill everything else, too, including elephants, withing a ten mile radius.

The other device is this small electrical thing which sits on a plug. You simply plug it in, and leave it. Nothing seems to happen, but amazingly, it really works. Plug one of these in, and the tsantsarii just leave you alone all night. I have no idea how it works or why, but I am very grateful that it does.

A regular reader, Mr. White Bear (not his real name), has written in with a request for a picture of a Tsantsar, or failing that, of an elephant. Well, Mr. Bear, you're in luck. Though I am not in the habit of photographing tsantsarii myself, I did stumble across this image during my travels on the universal network of electronic publishing. The image, of course, is not life size. Normally they are twice that big.

July 14th, 2004. | 11:24 am cet. | Thoughts: 11 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Bear Necessities

After April's intensely exciting story about Romania and Chad, the BBC, ever obsessed with anything Romanian, dug up this report, which is about bears eating rubbish.

..says the BBC. But they don't actually say what they mean by 'increasingly'. Perhaps, for instance, only a couple of bears were reported last year, frequenting the singles bars in Brasov, maybe pretending to be tourists. This year, however, fifty of them chartered a bus, drove into town, raided the local pubs and demanded free cigarettes. Who knows? The BBC doesn't say.

It could be, therefore, that they simply added the word 'increasingly', in a desperate attempt to make something to their latest report: 'Sometimes the bears in Romania take food from nearby towns'. This actually happens all the time. Bears do it all over the world. Not just the Romanian ones. It's like running a story which claims that some of the birds in Chad build nests.

But clearly they felt they had to publish something. Maybe someone in the BBC said, 'Hey, its about time for another Romania story again. What will we write about? Can we write about some bears?'

The BBC actually once interviewed a villager on the subject, and got this insight into the whole scenario:

Back to 'increasingly'. If you look carefully at the story, it seems that the BBC actually got this little bit of emphasis straight from, our old and trusted friends, the government of Romania. Their official line being:

Serious damage? Like what? Headaches, perhaps? Anxiety? As far as I can tell, and someone please correct me if I am wrong, but I haven't heard of a single case of a sheep, or cow, being 'seriously damaged' by a bear. Perhaps they challenge the sheep to a pro-wrestling match or something. Maybe they shout rude names as they pass by on their way to the rubbish bins on the edge of town.

Perhaps, as the BBC claims, quoting a single Carpathian shepherd, a 'handful' of sheep are actually killed and eaten by bears every year. I somehow doubt it though. Even if it is true, I don't think that this merits having some 300 bears shot for it. That's how many were officially allowed to be shot last year. Maybe some of them were shot as an example to others. Maybe it takes three hundred bears to pin down one sheep. Who knows?

Hunting bears, however, is big business. And the government enjoys hunting them personally. Perhaps that has something to do with it all? Eh? What do you reckon the odds are?

They should get rid of that shower and put the bears in charge. The waste disposal industry would benefit enormously. Everyone would be happy.

July 21st, 2004. | 2:05 am cet. | Thoughts: 9 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Rodica has Left the Building

Bucharest, city of contrasts! The dogs contrast against the trees. The trees contrast against the sky. But otherwise, everything is exactly the same.

Actually it's mostly apartment blocks. Lots of them are grey, but some of them are a kind uninteresting brown. There are some amazing things inside them, however. Like Xerox machines, for example.

Xerox machines contain their own special kind of magic. Before the revolution, they were banned. Now that they're here everyone is eternally grateful. Especially with the amount of crap the government makes us photocopy these days.

We were in a Xerox place a while ago. Naturally there was someone in front of us who was Xeroxing the Encyclopedia Britannica as part of some school exercise. So we had to wait. That was when I started hearing a strange disembodied voice.

It belonged to a mysterious old woman, somewhere deep inside the apartment. She called out the this name:

Failing to get any reply, she shouted again. And again. And again. In fact, she shouted the name, every five seconds, about 200 times, while the Xerox machine dutifully produced another typeset page.

I felt sorry for this poor woman, and I felt even more sorry for Rodica, but I felt most sorry for the Xerox operator, whom I assume has to permanently live this Kafkaesque nightmare of endlessly duplicated arbitrary apartment inhabitants. Turn the page. Start the machine.

Turn the page. Start the machine.

I was not very surprised when, after about twenty minutes, the Xerox operator slammed down the lid of the Xerox machine and yelled out:

The old woman replied:

So I said:

That's me. Always public spirited. But try explaining that to the angry crowd who chased us into the street brandishing toner cartridges. Some people are never happy.

July 28th, 2004. | 6:26 pm cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Pleasure Principle

There's not much happening in Bucharest right now. That's because there's nothing here. Everyone has gone to the seaside.

The city closes for August. Shopkeepers put up signs that say 'Back in September'. Cinemas and Theaters close. Dogs lounge about drinking cocktails. Cats walk openly in the streets, without fear of harm or persecution.

Television programs also change. Instead of 'Huge man with a beard makes good old fashioned country food next to a large radiator', we get 'Huge man with a beard makes good old fashioned country food next to a large radiator: on the beach'. He's a professional though. He keeps on cooking, even when it is obvious that there's sand trapped in his dovlecel.

I never knew before that it is possible for an entire city to go the beach for a month. Since it is possible, however, why not extend the idea to the entire country? They could just put up a sign at the airport: 'Romania is closed. Come back later'. I'm sure that no one would mind.

August 13th, 2004. | 4:04 pm cet. | Thoughts: 8 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

How To Make A Scandal

Some people believe in emotionless mediation. The best way to resolve a dispute is considered to be through a reasoned dialog that incorporates all points of view. The resolution is brought about when all parties agree to a proposal that involves some sacrifice and some gain for everyone involved. After a tedious discussion, that can sometimes take years, everyone shakes hands and then they sign a piece of paper.

In Romania, there is a different approach to the whole problem of disputes, which saves a lot of time. All you have to do is simply, 'make a scandal'. This basically means, at some point in the negotiation, just blowing up and shouting as many insults as you can in the most dramatic way possible. This results in a rapid catharsis for everyone involved. The problem may still remain, but it doesn't seem nearly so bad as having a load of people shouting insults, so an accommodation is very quickly reached, in order that everyone can go home and get some peace.

The only problem with this is that 'making a scandal' is quite tiring and sometimes no one can really be bothered to step up to the plate and and shout the first insult. So, I propose to set up a new company, 'Scandals - R - Us'. We will supply professional scandal makers, ready to jump into any dispute, and insist that all the parties involved are stupid and inadequate for various random reasons.

I am banking that the EU commission will be our next client. Next time there is a dispute about the running of a petroleum refining company in the Constanza area, they can give us a call, and we'll send someone down there to tell everyone that petroleum refining isn't a job for real men, and that all their sisters make terrible rhubarb crumble. An accommodation will be reached shortly afterwards, with only superficial bruising.

August 21st, 2004. | 6:45 pm cet. | Thoughts: 5 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Strange Fruit

Here are my gourds. Please enjoy, but don't fondle.

I am not really sure about the official name for such things. They might be gourds, or they could be squash, or maybe something in between, such as squourds.

You can't eat them. You can't use them to start a fire. You might be able to carry water in one, at a pinch. In the main, however, people prefer to just keep them in their houses and look at them and think - 'well, that sure looks weird'.

Just in case they are gourds, allow me to point you to what must be THE most popular page on the entire Internet: The American Gourd Society. I thought that at least an American gourd might have something interesting about it. I figured they'd be sleeker, bigger, faster and more expensive than other world gourds. I even hoped that they might incorporate a digital camera or something.

But they don't. They are exactly the same as all the other gourds, except they're in America.

August 29th, 2004. | 9:56 am cet. | Thoughts: 11 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Ministry for Internal Administration

A Ministry of Internal Administration actually exists in this country. I don't know what they do, exactly, but I imagine that they look after all the filing cabinets and paper clips for the other ministries, such as...

The Ministry for Ministries, The Ministry for Gravel, The Ministry for Little Cakes, The Ministry for Scandals, The Ministry for Blaming Everyone Other Than Us, The Ministry for Shuffling Bits of Putty Around Otherwise Disused Desks, The Ministry for Dacias, The Ministry for Dogs, The Ministry for Paper, The Ministry for Jean Claude Van-Damme, The Ministry for Tomatoes, The Ministry for Remembering Where All the Other Ministries Are, The Ministry for Bribery, The Ministry for Corruption, The Ministry for Brown Paper Bags stuffed Full of Money and Hidden in Parks, The Ministry for Cheese, The Ministry for the Control of Stefan Banica Junior's Hair, The Ministry for Pondering, The Minstry for Pondering the Ministry for Pondering, The Ministry for Wondering What to do Next, The Ministry for Scandals, The Ministry for the Control of Acceptable Ring Tones, The Minstry for Being Nice to People from Abroad, The Ministry for Comfy Chairs, The Ministry for Telling Everyone How Great Romania is at Gymnastics, The Ministry for the Control of Huge Convoys with Ten Cars and Sirens and Motorbikes and Everything, The Ministry for Making Sure that What is on Television is as Bad as Possible, The Ministry for Making Tsintsari be as Annoying as Possible, The Ministry for Putting Plasticine Models on the Moon, and so on.

All of which begs the question: Who looks after the administration for the Ministry of Internal Administration? Perhaps there is a Ministry of Administration for the Ministry of Internal Administration. But then, who looks after their administration? I guess, that there must also be a Ministry for the Administration of the Ministry of Administration for the Ministry of Internal Administration.

And so on, all the way down to some very overworked guy in a little stationary shop on Lipscani Street.

September 1st, 2004. | 6:53 pm cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Breaking the Speed Limit by Driving too Slowly

Serban Pretor is a member of the Romanian CNA, which is the state broadcasting watchdog. But wait, there's more.

He is also some kind of state secretary. Something official and important, anyway. This makes it all the more surprising that he drives a Trabant.

He actually drives it quite slowly. Some people think so, anyway. Maybe from his perspective, he floors it and really pushes it to the limit, but that limit, for a Trabant, still amounts to 'quite slowly'.

Anyway, that's why he recently got beaten up by the state security police. For driving his Trabant too slowly. Of course, they didn't know, when they beat him up, that he was a state secretary. They do now, however.

They had been driving behind him, you see. They got upset at his slowness, and pulled him over, and beat the shit out of him. You know how it is. Could happen to anyone. Really. It was in all the papers.

So, if you're driving along in Romania, and you see state security behind you, speed up.

September 15th, 2004. | 3:25 pm cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Postcard from paradise

We found this in an antiques market the other day. There is lively trade here in postcards from the shadowlands.

I think that, when planning a utopia, the postcard angle shouldn't be neglected. I mean after all, you're going to want to tell people about it once it is finished. But the Communists made rubbish postcards. So their utopia can't have been that well thought through. Or maybe they just knew all along that it was rubbish, eh? So next time someone buttonholes you with a copy of 'Socialist Worker', show them a Communist postcard and ask: 'You really want to live here?'

The place in this picture isn't made up. We've walked through it loads of times. People live in the apartments. You can buy shoes in the shops underneath. A bit to the left is the palace where Ceausescu famously appeared on the balcony to try and placate the crowd during the revolution. There used to be a stand there that sold good hot dogs, but it has gone now.

The place in this picture isn't made up, but the window is. Really? I hear you ask. Yes. Look closely. It has, as you might just notice, been rather crudely painted in. I especially like the vase full of half dead flowers. It is almost as if someone said, 'You know, our beautiful socialist architecture really makes for a nice post card, but I can't help thinking it would be so much better if we painted in a window and a vase of flowers. No one will notice.

October 17th, 2004. | 11:24 am cet. | Thoughts: 9 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Oriental Haze

One thing Bucharest has which New York probably doesn't is it's own peasant museum. If New York does have a peasant museum, then I bet it is filled with animatronic peasants, all waving and smiling at the visitors as they place another piece of wattle into the traditional skyscraper. The Romanian museum eschews such things and is entirely original. So much so, in fact, that it won the European Museum of the Year Award in 1996. The favorite for that year, the Leipzig Museum of the Penguin, came fifth.

Another good thing about the peasant museum is that they do lots of festivals where peasants (or ex-peasants) can come and show off stuff that they make. At the moment there is a festival for all ethnic Romanian groups - Hungarian's, Armenians, Poles, Macedonians and so on. The festival is intended to demonstrate how Romania's ethnic and cultural diversity can join together in harmony and sell food very cheaply. We ate loads.

The best food was made by Tartars. I don't know about you, but until yesterday, I thought that Tartars were half made up people who ran around on horses and got shot at by officers in smart red coats. But no, they are real. And I now know that they make really really nice food. They make these little dumplings with meat and walnuts, and this yellow thing called a 'wonder' which is.

The only disappointment was that I couldn't find any of their famous fish sauce, but never mind, next time you're at your local supermarket, as them if they sell any genuine Tartar food. You never know.

October 23rd, 2004. | 11:00 am cet. | Thoughts: 3 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Zen Garden of Furry Delights

In Romania, it is easier to buy a St. Bernard than to buy a packet of Japanese rice crackers. Or at least, it was until yesterday. That was when we finally found a shop selling rice crackers. It took us nearly three years to find. On the other hand, we bought the St. Bernard over the Internet. It took about five seconds. Longer to deliver, but they drove it to our house.

Japanese rice crackers are easy to carry. St. Bernards are not. Japanese Rice crackers come in all shapes and sizes, as do St. Bernards, except you don't get many green and shiny ones. Japanese rice crackers are nice and crunchy. St. Bernards might be too, but you would have to ask an alligator, on holiday, in Switzerland, that speaks English. A quick search on Google brought up nothing on that score.

Having bought the crackers and carried them home, we proceeded to feed them to our St. Bernard. She seemed to like them, though I don't think she really appreciated their Zen-like aesthetic. St. Bernard was a monk, but he wasn't a Buddhist monk. If he had been, he would have been freezing cold.

October 26th, 2004. | 5:40 pm cet. | Thoughts: 5 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Earthquake

There was a relatively strong earthquake here last night, at about midnight. It measured 6.0 on the Richter scale, and lasted for about a minute or so. I've never been in a big earthquake before, but I like to treat every new experience as a learning experience. I learned that being in an earthquake is really fucking scary.

The first thing that surprised me was the noise. Big earthquakes really do sound like they come from films made in the nineteen sixties. There is this huge deep rumble which seems to come from everywhere all at once. That doesn't do a great deal for one's sense of calm serenity.

The second thing that surprised me was our reaction. We basically stood in a doorway and hoped that the building wouldn't collapse. I had always imagined that if I was in a earthquake I would just run outside to the most open space and stand there. But I hadn't factored being asleep on the sixth floor of a block at midnight into that scenario. Since the building was bucking and swaying like a carrot hung from a massive horse, the notion of walking down six flights of concrete stairs wasn't that appealing.

And the other thing is that we had no idea how bad it was, or would get, or how long it would last. The whole place just starts shaking, and you don't know if it will be for a few seconds, or what. So standing in a doorway and watching the light fittings all swaying is the only real option. When it was over, the first thing I did was to check if the cable was still working. It was.

Afterwards, they showed this clip on the news from a TV studio. This guy was about to make a report about the ten richest men in the world. But before he got the chance he started bouncing around like balloon in a tractor. It was pretty funny. It was all they had to show. Nothing fell over and no one was killed. So they kept showing this guy over and over again.

October 28th, 2004. | 11:22 am cet. | Thoughts: 8 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Mr arty takes a picture

Outside the national theatre, Bucharest, this morning.

November 6th, 2004. | 6:47 pm cet. | Thoughts: 13 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The sports hall gamble

I found a good story over at argumente. Argumente is a great blog about business and strategy from a Romanian perspective. I realise, of course, that business and strategy from a Romanian perspective is likely to be of interest to only around 10 percent of my audience, and he's probably asleep right now. Argumente, however, sports a patient chronicle of some of the nonsense that we have to put up with over here in the wilderness on the edge of the European Union, and its content will come as a surprise to many, I am sure.

So, here's the story. The Romanian prime minister, protector of bears and legend of the universe, Mr. Adrian Nastase, recently won a big shiny Mercedes. He won it in a bet. He bet this other guy that he would be able to build 400 new sports halls all over Romania. The other guy said 'Naahhhhh'. Nastase said 'Bet you a Mercedes I can do it'. The other guy said 'Your on', and then he lost.

Well, he sort of lost. The definition of what constitutes a 'sports hall' has been spread rather thin on this one. If you can agree that a square patch of wet mud and some incomplete foundations constitutes a 'sports hall', then the figure might be said to be somewhere around 400. Actually, given that definition, Nastase could be said to have built well over a thousand 'sports halls' in the center of Bucharest alone! An incredible feat!

Of course, in reality, it was all bollocks. A kind of publicity stunt. That doesn't amaze me. What amazes me is that the ruling party here seems to assume that promoting public policy as a reckless gamble for a Mercedes is a good idea. I mean, imagine if George Bush had gone to Iraq after downing some Wild Turkey with 'old Don Rumsfeld and staked everything on a new Pontiac Firebird. Well, come to think of it, Bush might have done just that. But he would have at least been smart enough not to tell anyone. Well, maybe not.

November 8th, 2004. | 6:30 pm cet. | Thoughts: 8 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Christmas lights

It's official. They've switched on the Christmas lights. Where I live, the lights stretch as far as the eye can see!. In fact, I don't mean to gloat, but the eye can actually see MUCH farther than even that.

The local Government Komittee For The Provision Of Kristmas Materials For Working Groups In Sector Z has really splashed out this year. We've got three lights, instead of one. There's a red one, a yellow one and a blue one. The yellow one is broken.

When I looked out of my window last night, instead of seeing the usual post-Communist industrial car park of doom, I saw a post-Communist industrial car park of doom with two lights on. Next stop, full membership of the EU.

December 3rd, 2004. | 9:00 am cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

At last.

Against all expectations, the Romanian people rose up and overthrew Communism today. Some of you may think that this happened around fifteen years ago. It's true that there was a revolution then but communists are a sneaky bunch. They just pretended to be capitalists and stuck around. They hid all their medals in their shoes.

It couldn't last forever. The trouble is that your average communist makes for a very bad salesman. They simply don't know how to do it. They're fairly good at corruption and they excel at blatant lying, but they're hopeless at customer service.

In the EU, if you want to buy some cheese, you can do it on-line. Here, you have to go to a special cheese office, fill out a form, go to the national bureau for cheese monitoring, get the form checked to make sure you used black ink and not blue ink, fill out a deposit slip for the national bank, deposit the price of the cheese plus a certain amount for administration costs, walk to the cheese production center, hand in the deposit slip plus your identification papers and an official form showing that you are allowed to buy cheese, get a return receipt from the production center, bring that to the cheese distributors, hand over your passport, wait for six weeks, go to the post office to see if the cheese has been produced, collect an official form from the post office, fill that in, go to a cheese shop and pick up your cheese, provided that, in the the mean time, ex-president Iliescu hasn't eaten it. It's no wonder the people have had enough.

Ex-president Iliescu tried very hard to fight to get re-elected. His campaign strategy was mainly based around wearing a pair of gold rimmed sunglasses. He wore them everywhere, even to France. When some people asked him why he was promoting for the election when that's against the Romanian constitution, he replied that he was only 'doing it in my spare time'. When he was asked about electoral fraud he said 'Yes, there was some, but it was only a little bit.'. When asked about his supposed neutrality, he said 'I'm not Switzerland'. He stopped wearing the sunglasses yesterday. Someone finally worked up the courage to tell him that they don't look 'cool'.

The new guy, Basescu, used to be a ship captain. I think that's great. A ship captain knows how to run things when it gets tough. Of all the ships he captained, none of them sank. He's an ex-communist too, but he didn't spend his time writing essays about how great Ceaucescu was. He was too busy running his ship. He's a businessman too. Hopefully, finally, and at last, Romanians will get to see all the great stuff that the rest of Europe takes for granted, like on-line cheese.

December 13th, 2004. | 6:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 30 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Contra El Materialismo Burgueso

The communist Inkompetenzia are getting off to a flying start today by threatening to block everything the new president tries to do. Tough negotiations ahead then, but never mind, at least we've got some great radio jingles.

December 14th, 2004. | 7:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 1 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Hasta la revista presei

There's so much incredible news in Romania these days that they've got a radio show devoted entirely to just reading the news and then talking about how incredible it is. It's called 'Hasta La Revista Presei' and it's one of the best things on air. The show's presenters are Liviu Mihaiu and Mihai Dobrovolski. This morning, both of them were introduced to our dog.

The St Bernard, 'Ursulica', has long been something of a political activist. She loves listening to 'Hasta La Revista Presei' so much that she's been constantly badgering them with phone calls and emails with her views on how Romania could be transformed if only everyone was allowed to eat more free biscuits. Initially skeptical, the show's producers were soon won over by Ursulica's enthusiasm for the biscuit plan. They agreed to a meeting, to discuss further the implications for the country.

Ursulica spent hours preparing for the interview. When the time came, however, she unfortunately went to pieces and jumped around with her tongue hanging out. Mihaiu and Dobrovolski gracefully allowed themselves to be photographed in front of this spectacle of disintegrating dignity.

OK, so that's all lies. What really happened is that Tia won a hat. It's a bright pink paramilitary beret. Tomorrow, everyone will be wearing one in Paris.

If you do happen to be in Paris, or wherever you happen to be, and you understand Romanian, I highly recommend you try to listen to this show, each morning at nine am, on Radio Guerrilla. It will show you what's going on here - and what's going on here is pretty amazing right now.

December 17th, 2004. | 1:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 5 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Time, Love and Tenderness

Everyone has a dark side, even Michael Bolton. Michael's dark side lives in a Romanian prison. His name is Miron Cozma, and although he hasn't released any records as bad as 'When a man loves a woman', he's still a right bastard.

In the early nineties Cozma led a large group of miners into Bucharest. They all ran around, smashing up loads of stuff and beating up loads of students. Nine people were killed. Eventually he was sent to prison for fifteen years.

The students had been protesting against a government led by the Supreme Leader of The World Inkompetenzia League, Mr. Ghinion Iliescu. Iliescu thanked Cozma for the havok and held on to power. Since the revolution (until very recently), there's only been one other president of Romania, and he put Cozma in prison.

Iliescu was acting president (with strong emphasis on 'acting'), until either very recently or this Monday. Pondering what to do in his last few days, he hit on a fantastic idea. He decided to officially pardon 46 rapists, fraudsters and murderers, including Cozma Bolton.

There was, needless to say, a huge outcry in Romania and abroad. Imagine if Tony Blair had released a bunch of maniacs, including Mira Hindley, just for the hell of it. People were stunned. Theories were put forward that Iliescu had some grand master plan, so deep and Machiavellian that no one could understand it except him. Other theories were put forward that Iliescu is not exactly the smartest bean in the tin. Well, OK, I put forward that theory, just now. But it fits the facts.

And there's more. Once Cozma ('just call me Mussolini') Bolton was out, he told TV crews:

He's probably delighted, therefore, that Iliescu decided to put him back in prison yesterday. Mr Prezident simply unpardoned his official pardon. So, in his last few days in office, Iliescu's released a bunch of criminals, let them run all over the country, then sent the police after one of them and threw him back in jail, leaving a stunned population in his wake and vastly eroding any pretense of political ability he may have ever had.

Meanwhile, in the soap opera 'Numai Iubire', Bianca is in trouble. I don't know about you, but I'm worried. If anyone has any suggestions about how Bianca can get away from the horrible nasty robbers, let me know, and I'll tell the police.

December 18th, 2004. | 3:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 3 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Dental records

I went to a Romanian dentist today. A bottle of vodka, a bucket and a polo mallet. Job done.

All of the above was a lie, except for the bit about the Romanian dentist. Actually, she was the best dentist I've ever been to, and I've been to at least one other one. The other one was in Deptford, in East London. He was surprised I had any teeth at all. At least in my mouth. Most of his customers brought theirs in a bag.

This one was amazed that my teeth had survived so long. She said that they were like dental Henry Moores sitting on a wilderness of pockmarked gum. Well, she didn't actually say that, but I could tell she was thinking it.

What she did suggest is that she would give them a 'little clean'. That's dentist-double-speak right there. The words 'little clean' summon up images of a soft polish with a lint cloth followed by a playful splash of spring water across newly sparkling vistas of molar.

What they actually mean is a prolonged attack with a claw hammer and a small vacuum thing that seems to serve no useful purpose other than making drowning an alternative to the pain. Every five minutes or so, you are allowed time in which to spit pink shrapnel into a bowl. When it is over, your teeth are so clean that they hardly exist at all, and your gums have gone beyond pain, beyond good and evil, and into a transcendental state of jellification.

As I type, I drink soup throw a straw. Every now and then I smack my head hard with a piece of wood to check if it is still there. Mind you, I do that anyway, so some things never change.

January 25th, 2005. | 7:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 12 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Cutsu de zapada!

There's more snow in Romania at the moment than there is in Frank Bough's codpiece. Since almost all of you will have no idea who Frank Bough is, I am going to have to do something which I normally hate doing. I am going to have to explain a joke.

Frank Bough used to present a program on BBC television in the early evening. It was called 'Nationwide' because, ...wait for it..., it showed stuff from all over the nation. The only criteria for stuff to get shown was that it be vaguely interesting in a kind of tedious and sad way. A vicar on a tandem, a very large cake, a farmer with a shed full of space hoppers: that kind of thing.

Bough presented them all with a cheery smile and happy smiling eyes. He did so with professionalism and aplomb, right up until the moment that he was caught sucking cocaine through a hose, like a maniac, in an S and M club in London.

So, snow. As I was saying, we've got tons of the stuff here at the moment. We took our St. Bernard out in the snow yesterday, and we saw something unique: A dog discovering its vocation.

It wouldn't be right to say that 'Little Bear' loves snow. It's more that she has some kind of mystical bond with snow. Snow is her life. She runs in it, rolls in it, buries herself, throws snowballs at the other dogs and creates large sculptures to the god of bones. Here's the photographic evidence for any snow-dog phenomena investigators out there, like the ones you see on the X-Files:

February 1st, 2005. | 10:07 am cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

A lethal shade of winter

The Romanian winter has entered its most prolonged and lethal stage. When the snow first fell, it was cold but fluffy. You could run in it, kick the stuff around and generally act like a clown in a custard factory. Those days are over.

Once it gets cold here, it stays cold. So the snow doesn't melt. It just gets walked on. That transforms it from an innocent powder into a thick layer of shiny black glass. This is then distorted into variety of rounded nodules and hillocks, none of which invite the shoe into any kind of lasting relationship.

A thin layer of grit is the only thing that enables anyone to get anywhere at all. I'm not sure where it comes from. It might be provided for free by some kind of crack team of grit specialists. It might simply be stuff that fell off other people's shoes. Or it might be made from the stuff that came off people when they fell face first into the pavement..

As you tread over the black ice, keeping your head down and moving slowly, you will inevitably spot some lumps of fresh ice in front of your feet. That's when you should start to run. If you look up you will see the source of this ice: a huge cluster of icicles that often looks like a giant squid which got lost somewhere and froze to death on the drainpipe right above you. There are thousands of these things, sticking out of buildings everywhere, and none of them have an early warning system.

A quick trip to the shops takes on a whole new dimension when disaster can come at any moment, from above or below. Milk and newspapers seem so much more precious.

February 9th, 2005. | 10:30 am cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

My long struggle with dentistry

My long struggle with dentistry began with a bottle of wine which, like me, was already half drunk. The bottle stood like a hitch-hiker with a cork thumb, looking for a lift on the highway of opportunity: Route 1993 direct to my blood stream.

I was at that age, you know the one, where it seems like a good idea to behave like people do in films, for a joke. So, instead of going to the kitchen to get a nice, sensible, sturdy, practical, dependable, solid, sure, reliable, mature, level-headed and well-made bottle opener - I figured I would just take on that damned cork with my own teeth.

I grabbed the bottle, bit the cork and spat into a corner. It flew out like a jet plane, carrying, as an extra passenger, half a tooth. The other half decided, perhaps recklessly, to remain inside my mouth. A week later, it began to disintegrate slowly.

If there was ever a time for a visit to the dentist, this would have been it. But dentists mean pain, and pain is not nice. It does, however, come in two kinds of not nice. There's the pain you can control and the pain you can't. I went for the former, spending a pleasant half hour in front of the mirror, pulling out tooth shrapnel, bit by bit, until there was nothing left but a stump.

The only thing now was for me to avoid dentists for the rest of my life. If I went to one, they would be sure to find the mess and wonder what the hell I had been up to. They're professionals, after all. So I spent the next 10 years performing my own rudimentary operations. Everything went fine until the other week when my entire mouth swelled up into a pain-shaped balloon. The game was up and I was found out - by a Romanian dentist.

To be continued... ( You know, like in the X-Files and stuff. Yep, it's cheesy, but you really don't want to read the whole thing in one go. In fact, you really don't want to read the whole thing. But if you insist, there'll be more.)

February 23rd, 2005. | 11:40 am cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

My continuing struggle with dentistry

I have been to dentists all over the world. I've been cleaned in Canada and drilled in Dubai. Cliff Richard has done that too, but not by dentists. How he keeps his teeth so pearly white is one of the more horrible secrets of the Harry Webb portfolio, but it involves a hedgehog and I shall say no more. The rest is between him and his god.

So, back to the totally unreadable story of my own teeth. Last week I went to a Romanian dentist, voluntarily and of my own free will, if you can call it 'free will' when your mouth hurts so bad you can hardly fry an egg. This is by far the best dentist I have ever been to visit. There's a number of reasons I can announce that, and here they are:

First of all: I came back. Normally I mumble something like 'OK, next Tuesday at eleven', and then jump in a taxi to the nearest airport.

Second: when their chair collapsed, they managed to whip the drill out of my mouth before they crashed to the floor in a tangled heap. Now, that's what I call professional. Any other dentist, and I would probably have a third nostril by now, about 3cm long and located somewhere in my cheek.

Third: They did this joke with some matchsticks. When the dentist found my home made stump they told me that I could get new a fake tooth, made of silver and covered in porcelain. To make this tooth fit, however, they have to 'prepare the socket' so to speak. This basically means stuffing with as many matches as possible. I found this out when the dentist's assistant started laughing and the dentist showed me this big bundle of matches and said 'look what I put in your mouth'. That kind of thing is what makes life interesting,.

This week, I got to meet my new silver tooth. It fits perfectly. On Tuesday, it gets glued in and then they put the porcelain over it. That's the technical terms anyway. I get lost with this stuff pretty quickly. When I am re-built, I'll probably get the hang of things a bit quicker.

February 24th, 2005. | 9:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Finally, we get to Dracula

We stayed near 'Dracula's Castle' at the weekend. Not the real one, obviously. Just the one that inspired Bram Stoker while he was writing the book. Apparently he read a description of this castle, and that made him think it would be perfect for Dracula. There was no television back then, so reading descriptions of castles was quite popular.

Bram, however, must have read the wrong description. In all the films Dracula's castle is way up on the side of a huge mountain with sheer cliffs all around and lots of thunder and wolves. In reality, it sits on a small hillock, near a main road. You could ride a tricycle up to the front door in about thirty seconds. There's a supermarket quite close too, which is pretty handy. OK, so the supermarket is called 'Wolf Supermarket', but that doesn't help much.

The castle is in a place called 'Bran'. You see? It just gets less and less scary as we go along. Bran has a quite nice corner and a small market selling chairs. Stoker left all of this out of the book. The whole thing is a travesty of good journalism.

Speaking of unusual Romanian supermarket names, there's one in Bucharest which is called 'Angst'. That's actually a very honest name. 'Angst' is exactly what you feel as soon as you set foot in the place. It's so dark in there that all you can see is the huge queue for the only working cash register. There's real fear by the bread counter. I don't go there anymore. I'm tired of waking up in the middle of the night, screaming for fresh mushrooms.

March 1st, 2005. | 7:45 pm cet. | Thoughts: 11 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Person experiences great customer service in Bucharest

Levels of customer service in Romania tend to hover between 'staring at the customer as if they're mad' and 'pretending the customer died'. There are exceptions, however.

NouMax are a dealer and service center for Apple here in Bucharest. That's a tough thing to be. The usual practice for hardware is to buy various chunks of cheap PC shrapnel and force it together with a hammer. Macs are expensive by comparison, and Apple's distribution policy for all of Eastern Europe boils down to 'Send everything to Budapest and let the rest take their chances.' NouMax are a link in a delicate chain.

Here's the success story: When I phoned NouMax yesterday, I was looking for some stuff in a hurry. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted, but I figured I'd like to drop over there and test some things out. They're only up the road from where I live - so I asked them for some directions. It was at that point that they offered to send a car to pick me up.

Send a car... That's amazing for most places - unbelievable for Bucharest. In the end, they brought everything to me. I could take a look at the stuff in my own home and pick whatever I wanted. Then they sent another car with the invoice which I happily paid. Everything went fine and their people really knew what they were doing.

Some of you might be thinking that this is simply an example of Apple's great service values - but it isn't just that. I am still recovering from the furious byzantine incompetence of another Apple dealer here in Bucharest. They shall remain nameless unless they really piss me off again.

So, basically, the upshot of this post is that if you want to get hold of Apple stuff in Bucharest, Romania, then try NouMax first. I realise that absolutely none of you will want to do this - but maybe one day some poor soul will stumble across this by accident and then they just won't believe their luck.

April 8th, 2005. | 6:42 pm cet. | Thoughts: 8 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Communist blocs

I would like to share some memories with you of the place I used to live. Now that I can confront my memories in the comfort of my baroque-crystal villa, I no longer feel the need to force them down into a ball of repressed hatred.

The place I used to live is called 'Bucur Obor'. That roughly translates as 'Bucur's Place'. Bucur was a shepherd. He was wandering around the huge, vast, empty, featureless, flat Wallachian plains when he decided that exactly this spot would do him for the rest of his life. I guess he just fell in love with a square of nothingness. All the other shepherds laughed at him but he ignored them. He's still there today, carefully threading his sheep through the car park.

Obor has moved on from the early days when it was just a field. Now it hosts a big shop and lots of blocs. There's blocs on top of other blocs. Some of them go up and some of them go sideways. If you know the scene from 'Full Metal Jacket' where the soldiers are looking for the sniper - then Obor looks exactly like that, except without all the fires. There are some fires, but they are quite small.

Bloc life is unique. The first thing you realize when you move into one is that the radiators have no controls. They just come on and off of their own accord. Everything in a bloc is communal, even water. If mad old Mrs. Dictator in flat 236 decides to hose down her cats fifteen times a day, then you're paying for it pal, so have a bath and try to relax.

All blocs come equipped with their own administrator. Ours was about the size and shape of a ground-to-air missile. She used to wait for us on the ground floor and then shout at us for no apparent reason. I threatened her with our lawyer. She said 'I am not afraid of lawyers, I am only afraid of god.' But she stopped shouting. I guess that, while god might have the advantage of power, lawyers are somewhat more substantive.

April 12th, 2005. | 6:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 3 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Homeland security

We were worried about security, so we called someone. He offered us two options. The first option was a modern alarm system which could be connected to our mobile phone. The idea is, apparently, that if we are out and someone breaks into our apartment, then we get a message about it on our mobile. The benefits are obvious. We would come home and find the place ransacked, but at least we wouldn't be surprised.

The second option: 'a massive great big fuck-off steel door' sounded much more appealing. The idea behind that one is that the potential criminal realizes that he is confronted with 'a massive great big fuck-off steel door' - and goes away. When one of these doors is locked, about 16 steel bolts shoot out of it in all directions, top, bottom, left and right - just like in films. Then it sits there, quietly and heavily inserting the following subtle message into the criminal mind: 'I am a big steel door, so fuck off'.

We had it installed last week. That meant we had to remove the old door. The old door was gone in seconds. The frame took a little longer. Behind the door frame is, what might be politely termed as 'filling', but more accurately termed as 'crap'. Old bits of brick, wood, socks and grass: basically anything that makes the door stay in the 'door - hole' (to use the technical phrase).

The new door comes with its own frame made of, yes you've guessed it, steel. The whole thing gets put into the 'door - hole' and all the crap is put back in around it. Then everything is sealed up with a combination of cement and super glue. Now we can wile away the ours by locking and unlocking the door and watching all these bolts come shooting out and retracting. It's better than TV - our TV, incidentally - which no one else can use without our explicit written permission. Same goes for the toaster.

April 25th, 2005. | 7:40 am cet. | Thoughts: 9 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

A careful blending of moral courage with physical timidity

Another bloody earthquake last night. I suppose that they've got to happen, but it's very irritating, really, to be woken at 5am, by the ground. This one was a 5.2 magnitude, which rates as 'somewhat unnerving' on the Richter scale.

That's my second quake now, so the novelty is wearing off. It was of a normal duration and felt like three blindfolded elephants on rocket powered roller skates hitting the building in quick succession.

I asked my wife if it was normal for there to be two quakes in such quick succession (the last one was in November) and she said 'Well, you know, if the earth is angry...' which seemed to be about the right answer.

As usual, when a simple demonstration is needed, the world of snooker provides the appropriate metaphor. Imagine a rack of snooker balls, except not triangular, and in three dimensions. Well, we're all living on a different ball. That's kind of it, really. That's why earthquakes happen.

Anyway, I was strangely delighted to be alive today. That's the upside, I suppose. I never know when the next one is coming, which means that in my world, eggs are extra tasty, dust has a luminous sheen and Wallace and Gromit's 'Cracking Adventures' are almost funny.

May 14th, 2005. | 4:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

A triumph of hope over adversity

There was an American in front of me in the pharmacy yesterday. Normally it's Romanians. The advantage with Romanians is that they already know the infinite possibilities of what might happen in a Romanian shop when you are trying to buy something there. I've been here for three and a half years, and I'm still only just getting the hang of it. The sweating American, fresh off the plane, had no chance. All I had to do was wait for him to get angry. He did not disappoint.

I suspect that he was probably frustrated to begin with. This was partly because he looked agitated, but mostly because he was buying Viagra and seemed to be in a hurry. The pharmacy staff, pragmatic as usual, had teamed up to tackle him. One of them acted as an interpreter, another manned the till and a third went hunting for the magic pastils. She, sadly, came back empty handed - but with a compromise offer.

It's quite usual here that people don't want to buy a whole box of pills. The pharmacies oblige by opening the boxes and cutting out the amount of pills required. The used box is then marked to show that it is no longer complete. When a shop runs out of a product, they usually can find a few of these marked boxes around. If someone wants a box, they will take all the extra pills and shove them into one box and sell it as a complete product. As you can see, this whole process takes a paragraph to explain in English, and would take a week to explain to a freshly arrived American through an ad hoc interpreter. So they didn't bother explaining it to him. They just presented him with an oddly marked box stuffed with plastic shrapnel and asked him to pay for that.

At this point, our proud purchaser, who must have been awash with adrenalin, confusion and other unmentionable fluids seeping into his brain: panicked. "No!" he said. "That's not how it works! It ... it just ... doesn't work like that". (An expression that I imagine he has used before).

Ah... the memories. How nice it was to observe someone floundering in the way I used to when I first arrived (and that was only buying cheese by the way). The staff, too courteous and patient to point out that, actually, this IS how it works, told him that it was all the Viagra they had in the shop, and so he could take it or leave it. He thought for a while and said, with a voice of infinite sadness: "Well, ok, I'll take one tablet."

How he arrived at that conclusion, I cannot imagine. Maybe his initial optimism was ruined by the whole process of just trying to buy the pills. Perhaps he now simply hoped to get lucky on his way to the next pharmacy. Maybe he was curious about Viagra but extremely paranoid at being found out, so he flew all the way to Romania so he could try out just one tablet in the privacy of his own hotel room. If anyone reading this knows someone who recently visited Romania and appeared to be either very agitated, strangely calm and/or walking oddly - then please get in touch with me and let me know the answer. I am a student of human behaviour and I have a laminated card to prove it.

May 19th, 2005. | 9:25 pm cet. | Thoughts: 9 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Hair off the Dog

A few days ago, in a moment of madness, we had our St. Bernard officially shaved. That's just what happens when you bring too much tequila to the all night poker game, I guess. As you can see, the dog isn't too happy about it, but at least we get to keep the car. And I hear that some folks will pay good money for this kind of thing in Kansas.

OK, before you all write in with letters warning us of the evils of gambling, and the essential purity of dog hairs remaining dogs, just where our Lord put them and all that, as Jesus mentions somewhere in the Parable of the Freezing Chihuahua - let me just say that all of the above is a complete lie. We did shave the dog, it is true, but we did it to help her, and not just to have a laugh at her expense.

You see, the climate in Romania is a bit strange. Spring lasts for about, say, 45 minutes. Then summer hits and the temperatures shoot up into the thirties. That's great for us, but not so good for the fledgling ex-pat St. Bernard community, who tend to while away the summer with their heads in the freezer, dreaming of avalanches.

Our own particular dog was getting noticeably slower than normal. This is quite an achievement for a St. Bernard. 'Normal' for them means 'comatose'. In the recent weather, this condition has reduced to 'very comatose and panting'. Luckily, there is a place near us where they shave dogs professionally. They've got a special table and clippers and everything. So we took our dog there, and now she looks like a freak but she won't stop jumping around and chasing cats, which I suppose is a good sign.

I guess we can paraphrase Othello here and claim that we shaved our dog 'not wisely, but too well'. Of course, Othello was talking of his love for Desdemona, and not for a St. Bernard, but I bet that if they'd had St. Bernards in Venice at that time, he'd have fallen in love with one of them instead, just like he did in Shakespeare's first draft of the play, called: 'Othello, The Tragedey Of The Noble Moor Of Venice, And His Favorite Dog Muffy'

June 5th, 2005. | 8:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 18 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Third time lucky

We were sitting on the couch, watching a DVD, when there was a bump. It felt as if a powerful dwarf had just hit the floor with a broom. Then there was another one. I said 'What was that?'. We looked at each other, both thinking the same thing. Suddenly there were lots of bumps. I shouted 'cutremor' - which is Romanian for earthquake (because I am smart) - and we ran for the doorway. By the time we got there, the shaking had stopped.

This one was a mag 5. That's the kind of earthquake that can trick you into making a complete fool of yourself and then just go away. As we slowly picked our way back to the sofa - which now looked to me like a traitor from the world of comfort - I felt more tremors. 'It's starting again!' I said to my wife. She answered - 'No. It's not. That's you. You are shaking now'. She was right. She's the voice of experience.

On the news, afterwards, they ran the usual report. An image of a big paper drum with a red pen jumping all over it. Another image of the same 'man in charge of earthquakes' who is saying: 'Yes, there was one', 'No, it wasn't too bad', 'Yes, it has probably stopped now', 'No, it probably doesn't mean that the big one is coming' and so on.

The DVD we were watching as 'Aguirre: The wrath of god' by Werner Herzog - a German director who once was filmed eating his own shoe.

June 20th, 2005. | 1:45 pm cet. | Thoughts: 4 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The follicle of youth

I got my haircut yesterday. Normally, I get it cut really short, then let it grow out until I look like a photo-fit on 'Crimewatch'. The one of the guy last seen dribbling into a cash machine near the baked bean warehouse.

I hate getting my haircut. It takes hours, because I wear glasses. So while they are cutting my hair, I can't see a thing. All I can see is this dull hairy blur getting slightly less hairier.

I think that hair dressers must be very insecure people, because they need feedback, or they are afraid to stop. That's why it takes me three hours. They just see me staring into space, with a glassy expression, as if I have departed the planet for a bowling ally somewhere in space. So they keep cutting and cutting until I either say something or there isn't any hair left.

My life is very complicated. I have to buy a shirt tomorrow. It will probably take weeks.

June 25th, 2005. | 9:30 pm cet. | Thoughts: 9 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Beethoven's Unfinished

Everyone in the street says "Beethoven" to us. That's what you get for owning a St. Bernard. There was a film made about a St. Bernard called Beethoven, and I guess it must have been really popular here, because it's the first thing everyone thinks of when they see ours.

So we finally cracked and rented the DVD. I was hoping for a dignified portrayal of a quite, determined, music loving St. Bernard who has to struggle to overcome prejudice from other people as well as from its fellow dogs, in order to raise the funds necessary to build an opera house in the Alps. But it just turned out to be about this stupid dog which runs towards hot dog stands all the time.

Worse still, the family in this film try and get their dog trained, but in the end prefer it untrained because it's just so much more 'natural' that way. Well, sorry to ruin the film and everything, but in real life, the training question would not even arise. The dog would simply be quietly shot.

A whole year measured out in posts. This is number 365. Of course, the actual blog itself has been going since 1927. It's just that posting was pretty slow during the first 73 years. It picked up a bit after the advent of valves, though.

July 1st, 2005. | 2:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 5 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Painted eggs

I didn't know what else to do with them, so I took a picture.

July 3rd, 2005. | 4:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 2 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Osteopathology

I found myself at an osteopath the other day. I don't know how I found myself there. I was supposed to be going to a carpet warehouse.

An osteopath is a cross between a sociopath and an ox. Being at one is like being beaten up very slowly by a determined pillow. 'You will hear things crack', he told me, 'but don't worry about it'.

I didn't worry. I simply tensed up into a coil of human fear. I tried to whimper in a military fashion while he rotated my feet through 360 degrees.

'It will hurt even more if you don't relax', he said.

'I don't care how much it hurts', I replied, 'I am remaining vigilant under attack'. He sighed, climbed off my nose, and formed me into a cube.

I am a meter taller now, but it is easier to pick up a fork from the back of a bullfrog. As my old Aunty Mutton used to say, all the time, from when she got up in the morning, until she fell off a cliff near Durham Cathedral.

July 15th, 2005. | 10:17 am cet. | Thoughts: 5 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Ex-Communist Fruitopia

Piata Amzei, in the center of Bucharest, is an ex-communist fruitopia. Some of the finest raspberries on the planet can be found here, openly flaunting themselves, in broad daylight. You can buy a fistful for less than a euro, take them home, arrange them in a circle on the kitchen floor and crawl around snuffling them like a pig. It's healthy and it helps the time pass. I don't care what the others say.

You couldn't do that in London or Durham. For one thing, you'd be arrested. For another, the big cities of the west don't really feature big on the old 'fruit market' front. No, they've mostly got supermarkets, kept at an even temperature, with musical revolving doors and 'readymeals' stacked a meter high. They're terrified of selling any tomato that is less than the perfect shade of red in case someone sues them. In fact, they're working on removing any trace of organic life from all fruits and vegetables so that the consumer will feel more comfortable next to the microwave.

Well, here in Bucharest, we still have real fruit 'n' veg markets. They're everywhere, just scattered about, like Stefan Banica's used hairsprays. Real ones too. I mean, where people actually come in from the country and sell the fruit that they actually grew there, in the actual ground using the actual shit from the actual pigs. You know, like they did in Ye Oldy Englandy before the toaster was invented.

Ask any ex-pat what they love about this city, and most of them will mention tomatoes. Honestly. You don't know what you're missing.

July 20th, 2005. | 12:35 pm cet. | Thoughts: 5 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Fire turned off the lights in Bucharest

Looking out at the evening light, I saw a big column of black smoke rising above the city. I couldn't tell if it was a small fire quite close, or a huge one very far away. If it was the former, that would have meant that the British Council had exploded, or maybe the Pizza Hut on the corner.

We put on the news. It was all about a big fire. A power station had spontaneously combusted in the heat. It is over 35 degrees here and some power stations just can't cope, apparently. Much of the center of Bucharest was without power. Not our part, though. We switched on the toaster and the kettle at the same time, to celebrate.

The weird thing was that, later on, as I powered up the Mac, I smelled burning. After a few moments sniffing at my Mac like some Apple crazed pervert, I realised that the burning smell was coming from the window. The whole of the center was smelling burnt.

No one was hurt, but the Bucharest Daily News reported that:

"Inside the building on fire was 30 tons of oil, which the firefighters took out with great difficulty"

There might be something lost in translation here, but I can only imagine these firefighters very carefully bringing out oil, in buckets, cups and whatever they can find, trying not to spill anything and ignoring the big fire right next to them.

The reports also mentioned quotes from a 'Bucharest Prefect'. I have no idea what a 'Bucharest Prefect' does, but it all sounds suspiciously communist to me. My guess is that they are kind of an administrator for all the other administrators. Maybe they won a kind of 'Best administrator in all of Bucharest' contest or something. If any of my Romanian readers would like to enlighten my ignorance here, I'd appreciate it.

July 29th, 2005. | 9:45 am cet. | Thoughts: 23 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Godzilla attacks Bucharest

There's two degrees of hot. There's 'nice and hot', and there's 'too hot to move'. It got that way here yesterday.

Over on Kit.blog there's a suggestion that the official temprature figures are too low. I agree with that. It definitely feels hotter than 36 degrees.

One explanation is that the figures are lowered deliberately to prevent panic. That can't be right. Panic is not part of the Romanian national character. That's the reason that 'Godzilla' was set in New York.

If Bucharest were attacked by Godzilla, I imagine most people here would just shrug their shoulders: "Ce este? Godzilla? Monstrul? Mare cacat, ce sa-ti spune...'. Some of the more public spirited would throw things at it. Eventually it would get bored and leave. It's far too hot for eating buildings, anyway.

New York is much more fun for a giant man-eating lizard. People run around screaming. They crash into lamp posts and everything. Brilliant.

August 2nd, 2005. | 10:10 am cet. | Thoughts: 17 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Fifteen minutes with Tia O'Connor

Tags: Tia birthday carturesti

Bing Crosby's first radio show, "15 Minutes with Bing Crosby," had it's debut on CBS on September 2nd, 1931. No one remembers it now, of course, but in its heyday it ran for at least a week. Tens of people all over America tuned in to hear Bing talk as fast as possible about anything that came into his head for exactly fifteen minutes. Sometimes he talked about cars and sometimes about mowing the lawn.

Nothing else interesting happened on September the 2nd for ages after that, except for the surrender of Japan to the allies and my wife being born. Which is great, because I get the day off every year and we go walking around the town in our top hats and great coats, waving at taxis and saying hello to all the local dogs - who like to serenade us with youling.

Personally, I don't believe in celebrating a birthday. After all, that's not the achievement. The achievement is everyday that you make it afterwards. So I celebrate all those days instead. With beer.

This time around we hit Carturesti. That's a big bookshop and tea emporium on Boulevard Magheru. It's like an oasis of calm intelligence in a city full of dirty money. I bought Tia a huge book about Canaletto.

We like Canaletto for the same reason that everyone else does. He draws all the windows and everything and gets it all right. Van Gogh, on the other hand, couldn't paint a window to save his life. That's why, to this day, no one knows how to pronounce his name.

In the evening we had some friends over. They know who they are. We ate canapes and drank wine. We watched 'Black Books' on DVD. Our friends laughed a lot, even though it is in English and they could hardly understand any of it. That's how good the wine was.

Incidentally, Bing Crosby's real name wasn't, in fact, 'Bing'. Yes - I was shocked too. It was Derek. He had to change it after pressure from his family. His uncles Bung, Bang and Hamish insisted on it.

September 5th, 2005. | 8:00 am cet. | Thoughts: 9 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The Bucharest Athenaeum

Tags: bucharest athenaeum twisty

The Athenaeum is one of the grandest and hardest to spell buildings in all of Bucharest. They hold concerts there. Bach, Beethoven, Tap Dancing, Balloon Animals - that kind of thing.

The building was completed in 1888 and designed by a French architect called Albert Galleron. Galleron was clearly obsessed with cakes and pastries. His dominant theme for the Athenaeum is 'kind of twisty'.

The whole building is a cylinder on top of another cylinder. The concerts are held in the top cylinder. People enter in the bottom cylinder. No less than four huge twisty spiral staircases go from one cylinder to the other. The floor is made of marble and covered with big twisting patterns. Circular shaped lights hang on twisting chains in a circle from the circular ceiling.

You get the idea. Galleron's famous slogan was 'Corners are either the work of the devil or the English, and I care not which'.

The main thing about the Athenaeum is that it is still here. The building is massive. One gets the impression that it will never fall down. This makes it very easy to relax and enjoy a concert there.

Another important feature of the Athenaeum is the 'La Mama' restaurant. This isn't in the building itself. It's down the road and around a corner. They do, however, have a bar and food - which is something the Athenaeum completely lacks. A horseshoe bar would be a good idea. After all the music and stuff.

September 11th, 2005. | 8:40 am cet. | Thoughts: 6 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Swedish Jazz

Tags: jazz swedish hendricks

Last night, we witnessed that rarest of beauties, Swedish jazz. Not many people know this, but jazz was invented by the vikings to help them unwind after a hard days slaughter. It only found its way to America when the legendary saxophonist, Sven Svenson, got lost, in a boat.

The band we saw was called "The Magnus Quartet Jazz Project, Ya, I said Magnus, Das is Me, Magnus, Who is Inventing This Here Project for the Benefit of the Whole World of The Jazz". Magnus played the saxophone, clarinet, flute, tin whistle, bellows, bagpipes and accordion. Sometimes he played them all at the same time. He was a brilliant musician, but not exactly shy or retiring.

There was a pianist too. He played a fantastic solo that lasted all of three seconds before Magnus leapt in front of him with a flute sticking out of his ear. The whole ensemble was hot hot hot. They took it all they way - and I mean *all* the way - to Stockholm.

Oh yes, there was a singer too. Her name was Barbara (just call me Barb) Hendricks (Jimmy's sister). She's supposed to be this famous opera singer or something. Well, I've never heard of her, and she sang jazz like opera, which is just plain weird in my book. I prefered the crazy swedes doing a blistering version of Duke Ellington's 'Caravan'.

Afterwards we went to the Atheneum restaurant where we drank wine and espressos like our lives depended on it. Here, we encountered an odd phenomenon - the Romanian who speaks english and tries to sound like the Queen. This does happen from time to time, and normally I just think 'good luck to them' - but this one was talking LOUDLY TO HIS MOTHER - and it was somewhat overwhelming.

Initially, I thought he was part of the Austrian aristocracy until Tia assured me that he was Romanian. He said things like "ALLOW ME TO TRANSLATE THE MENU, MOTHER!! THIS IS 'MUSCHI DE VITA'!! -THAT'S ERR... 'MUSCHI'.. WHICH IS UMMMM... A SORT OF .... FISH-LIKE .... EGG THING". In the end the old dear wound up with a plate of raw liver. Who knows what she was actually expecting to get.

After that, and perhaps inevitably, he started going on and on and on about the price of land, money, houses etc... etc... Just the sort of things that English people always talk about loudly in restaurants. I had to retaliate, so I yelled out to the entire room: 'YOU KNOW THE TROUBLE WITH BUYING HOTELS IS THAT ONE IS NEVER ENOUGH! I HAVE TO BUY AT LEAST THREE A WEEK!!'.

That worked. At least, I hope it did. I don't know because we were thrown out then. Into the pouring rain.

September 20th, 2005. | 9:12 am cet. | Thoughts: 2 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Bucharest PARALYZED by heavy rains

Tags: rain floods bucharest

Apparently, Bucharest was flooded the other day. I can't say I noticed. I was too busy eating a cheese and pickle sandwich. I did see a dog float past the window, but thought nothing of it at the time.

Back where I come from, in Ireland, three days of miserable relentless rain is considered to be quite a nice break in the weather. Here, it causes paralysis and near panic. As the Bucharest Daily News put it:

"Umbrellas, raincoats, rubber boots and cars were useless as heavy rains lashed across the capital yesterday, causing chaos."

Well, I used an umbrella and it worked fine. It kept the rain off and everything. I guess I was just lucky.

As usual, in times of crisis, the terrified population turned to the wise words of the world famous Bucharest prefect, Miora Mantale. She said that, and I quote: "Everything is under control. There is no reason to panic". I entirely agree with her. In fact I think she should routinely put out this statement every morning so that everyone can feel a little bit happier during the day.

September 22nd, 2005. | 9:20 am cet. | Thoughts: 12 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The tea shop that loves dogs

Tags: dorobanti dogs bucharest

Bucharest has a tea shop that's dog friendly. Given the amount of dogs here, it should be doing well. One would imagine it packed with dogs, all of them sipping darjeeling and barking away about the issues that concern them, such as: "Domestication: simple pragmatics or selling out?" and "Cats: How can we quietly get rid of them once and for all?"

The neat trick of the place is that, though it is indeed dog friendly, they don't actually tell anyone. So most days, it's simply full of people sipping cappuccinos, blissfully unaware of the hoard of dogs that could descend on them at any moment. That is until we came along.

We heard about it through the grapevine, and now we are telling the world. It's called 'Rendezvous', and it is up in Dorobanti. Dorobanti, for those of you who don't know, is kind of like the upper-manhattan of Bucharest. So we decided to take the plunge and test out just how far the definition of 'friendly' actually stretches by bringing our St. Bernard to the place.

You know those scenes in films when two people and a dog walk into a bar and everyone goes quiet so all you can hear is the wind, and a piece of tumbleweed rolls past the cake stand? - well it was just like that. People saw the dog, registered the dog, reminded themselves that they were in a tea shop, and waited for us to all get thrown out.

But no, it didn't happen. The waiter came over and was very friendly to all three of us. He gave us a menu and the dog got a free bowl of water and a small doggie treat. She was ecstatic. It was as if her whole life had built up to this moment. That's why she leapt around in circles, knocked a chair over, and threw water everywhere. We got our coats and made ready to leave, but no - they insisted - they really genuinely are friends to the dog world.

So, everyone - if you've got a dog - go there. If you haven't got a dog, grab one off the street. If you just can't find a dog anywhere - still go - they like people too, and the tea and cakes are very nice.

October 1st, 2005. | 7:20 pm cet. | Thoughts: 9 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Tea with Dragos

Tags: argumente harp bar bucharest

The Harp bar is a little bit of Ireland in the heart of Piata Unirii. Well, it's got a little bit of Ireland in it, anyway. It's got a few Irish people, and Guinness and Irish food. In summer it's got those little white plastic chairs on the outside, which I know I've seen once in Killarney, too.

Last week, myself, Tia and our St. Bernard all met Dragos Novac, of @rgumente fame, inside the Harp bar. We had a grand old chat about how much the place has changed, and how much it will change. We also nattered about all things technical - exactly the kinds of things that I never talk about here - so I can't mention them now. Except to say that Dragos is great company - a man of vision, talent and energy who is sure to go far in this emerging economy of ours.

Our St. Bernard didn't join in the discussion much. It's difficult to make conversation when you're tied up under a table. I found that out last year in Prague - but the less said about that incident the better.

It was a surprise when the second St. Bernard turned up. It sauntered over to the bar and ordered a whisky. When they gave it the glass, it said - "no, love ... put it in a barrel, arf arf". Then another St. Bernard turned up, then another. Soon the place was full of them, drinking Guinness to beat the band and singing the Wild Rover. It was just like home ... so I had to leave.

October 8th, 2005. | 7:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 1 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The long and the short of it

Tags: life in romania posting lacrimi

I haven't posted for some time because:

1) Sitting on the sofa and staring aimlessly into space seemed so much more preferable.

2) I wasted a lot of time going to the kitchen and then wondering what I went in there for.

3) I am involved in some serious litigation against some bastards who keep leaving fluff in my drainpipes.

4) I had to pay my car insurance. This takes 7 months.

5) I was going to post and then suddenly "Lacrimi de Iubire" (It means 'the tears of love' and it is the world's first television drama to be named after a bottle of cheap wine) came on the TV. "Lacrimi de Iubire" is a gripping drama that delves into the truth about deep and troubling human issues. The truth is, apparently, that all of them can be cured with a drop of "Head and Shoulders" - the amazing wonder-all cure for existential despair and dirty toes. I find it compulsive.

6) People kept on phoning me up and asking me to do work for them. If I do the work, they give me money, which is nice. If I don't do the work, then they don't give me any money. That's the deal. It's simple, but very clever.

7) If I do this, no one gives me any money. Sympathy, yes, money, no - though, of course, if you appreciate what you read here and you'd like to send me a large can of beer and a bag of peanuts, then I won't refuse.

October 18th, 2005. | 9:00 am cet. | Thoughts: 5 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Time, love and tender mititei

Tags: mititei meat Michael Bolton

'Mititei' (pronounced 'meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech') are small rolls of grilled meat. I'm not sure what kind of meat, but I suspect it is all kinds, rolled up together in a grilled version of meat detante.

The best way to eat mititei is outside, in the freezing cold with beer. That's how people eat them here, usually under some kind of hastily erected tarpaulin shack in the middle of a bustling market.

For next to 0 euro, you get 5 mititei, bread, mustard and a big plastic cup of beer. Then you sit on a bench in the freezing cold and eat everything. I've done this in Bucharest, Giurgiu and Sinaia. The best time was in Giurgiu. Sinaia's gone all upmarket. They use real plates and everything there. It's disturbing.

Not that I'm against fancy restaurants or anything. I like a nice bit of quail stuffed with baked beans as much as the next man. It's just that "I don't restrict my experiences for no one or nuffink", as Michael Bolton once wrote in a song that he never eventually used.

Michael Bolton is coming to Bucharest on November 9th. There's posters everywhere with his big dumb grinning hair and "See you on the 9th!" scrawled across them. He's pretty damn sure of himself. If I do happen to accidentally stumble across him in a gutter on the 9th, I'll have one more creative thing to do with 5 mititei to add to my list.

For all of Michael's fans, here's an image of what the great hulker would look like staring out you over a giant plate of the things which he is clearly about to consume with all the gentle ferocity of a wild animal:

November 5th, 2005. | 8:00 am cet. | Thoughts: 14 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

Unconventional convention

Tags: romanian bloggers meetup bucharest

Last week, there was a secret meeting of bloggers from all over Romania, in a disused beer cellar that was specially imported from Hungary. We discussed our plans for taking over the country, and especially Cluj, by inserting special transmitters into people's hats.

We drank beer and wine. We didn't drink Gammeldansk, but some of us talked about drinking it. We did eat some very weird things. In most countries, they give you soup with a roll. In Hungary, they give you the soup inside the roll. It saves on the washing up. Here's the proof:

I enjoyed this meeting and I look forward to the next one when we will all discuss how to take over the minds of customs officials by using special 'Internet' microwaves. Always remember this: we are the chosen ones. You ... are not.

UPDATE!!!

There are more pictures at Adi's site.

November 14th, 2005. | 11:14 am cet. | Thoughts: 11 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

How to make money from your pet the easy way

Tags: christmas st bernard vivid magazine

As you can see, we have no qualms about exploiting our St. Bernard for commercial gain. In her eyes rests the resentment that built up from months of ridicule: being shaved, being sent into space etc... One day she will just turn on us and then, guess what? No more web log.

Christmas is a time for peace, meditation and reflection, but most of all it means no work and unlimited chocolate. I'm going to be taking a break from this 'blog' thing over the season. I might look out of the window or something. Not sure yet.

In the mean time, I highly recommend that you all read this, and not only because I made it. It contains some of the best writing about Romania by some of the smartest people in Bucharest and beyond, and it is all free.

December 16th, 2005. | 11:30 am cet. | Thoughts: 8 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

How to understand a Romanian train journey

Tags: romanian sleeper carriage

The best way to understand a Romanian train journey is to sleep your way through it. This is especially true for the trip from Bucharest to Sighetu Marmatiei. Sighetu is a small town in the north of the country, right on the border with Ukraine. It takes fourteen hours to get there by train, so you'd better be sure you need to go.

This is the wash hand basin on the train. I am asleep inside the bag.

The sleeper carriage provided by the Romanian rail company is like a cast-off from the Orient Express. It's all kitted out in walnut and brass, with modern conveniences such as toothbrushes. A conducter serves wine and peanuts. Sleeping is easy. It's like travelling through time.

The downside is my old sleeper carriage fear - top bunk disasters. I usually imagine that if the train stops suddenly for - e.g. a goose on the line - then I will be catapulted through the air, bounce off the wall and land in a crumpled heap on top off all kinds of lumpy things made out of walnut and brass. On the other hand, I have never heard of anyone actually dying in the way...

'What happened to Fred? Oh, well he was sleeping on the top bunk in a train and the train had to stop suddenly for a goose on the line and Fred was catapulted through the air only to die by landing in a crumpled heap on the floor. Really? How sad - he was a good golfer'.

You might - just might - be wondering why on earth I would want to spend 14 hours going to Sighetu Marmatiei anyhow. That's a good question. I am still searching for the answer. As soon as I work it out, I'll post it.

January 9th, 2006. | 12:00 am cet. | Thoughts: 9 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

How to understand Pensiunea Borlean

Tags: pensiunea borlean sighetu marmatiei meat

In a word: don't.

Pensiunea Borlean is tucked away in the foothills up near Sighetu Marmatiei. They offer meat eating holidays. You go there, eat meat and watch TV. In case all of this gets too much, they also offer board games, like Monopoly, with small plates of meat as a side interest.

I would never have gone there, except that the trip was organised by other people and I was kind of obligated. The owners of Pensiunea Borlean were clearly not compeled to reciprocate on that score.

Our first mistake was to ring them in advance and ask if we could have some vegetarian options on the menu. This request was met with blank amazement: 'What? You mean you DON'T want to eat MEAT? But that's confusing. Now we have to think about how to replace the meat. It's difficult.'

The next thing we did was ask them about the offer, on their web page, of a car to take us from the station. They gave the following helpful advice: 'But you're arriving early in the morning. You know, early and stuff. It's difficult. We can't offer a car under those conditions. You'll just have to fend for yourselves. Maybe if you'd accept some meat, we might reconsider...'

So we went in a taxi. The owners met us with broad, open and welcoming scowls. They gave us a breakfast of meat, which they assured us was entirely natural. To test this, I asked what was in one of the sausages and the owner said: 'Oh, the usual - All the bits from inside the head: some intestines, bits of lung - that kind of thing. It's all very natural here, you know.'

The assurance that the bits from inside the head were not made from plastic did little to placate my bile duct. I opted for bread. My wife had some aubergine puree. Handing it to her, the owner said: 'It's not easy for us, but we will tolerate you.'

This is why we spent five hours on New Year's Eve walking all over Sighetu desperately looking for a hotel with a free room. Our salvation came in the form of the 'Siesta Motel'. It's a fantastic place with great service. When I asked them if I could leave something in their kitchen fridge, they moved us to a huge room with a fridge attached. If anyone is going to Sighetu, I recommend it.

So it only remained for us to extract ourselves from the Pensiunea Borlean. We had paid for one night in advance and we were not going to waste the money. So we stayed there, huddled in the bedroom, until morning. I had arranged with a taxi to come and get us at 08:30. At 08:20, I announced to one of the owners that we were leaving.

He was a little man with a moustache typical for the region. He said: 'OK, fine. No, hang on - have you paid? Yes, you have. No, I mean ... no! You haven't paid. We'll, alright, so you paid for last night (50 euro - special holiday price) but now you have to pay for the nights you won't be staying. I mean, that's the rule. Yes. You owe us money...'

To avoid having to get into a fight with a small mustachioed man in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, we gradually began to run as he talked. It took him a little while to realise what was going on. Then he started to run after us. We rounded a corner and saw our taxi and our destiny.

Never again.

January 10th, 2006. | 4:00 pm cet. | Thoughts: 17 | Phylum: Life in Romania | Permalink

The residency bus

Tags: romania legitimate residence

Come to Romania! You can stay for ninety days, no questions asked. Special offer from the Ministry of Foreigners.

But what if you really enjoy your ninety days and would just love to have ninety six? What should you do then? What most people do is drive to the border, go for a quick walk in Bulgaria and then come back. Another ninety days is assured.

A national shame! What can be done about it? The answer is clear. Someone should set up a dedicated bus service to get people to the border more easily. The 'residence bus' could leave Bucharest on one day every month, packed with foreigners. After buying some fags in Ruse, everyone comes home. Job done.

As a detail, I think that they should paint the bus with lots of flowers and smiling faces. I admit that this isn't totally necessary and I suppose it may cause some problems at customs. But stillXML error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line 17