Halfway down the Danube

The Wall

It's good to be back.

Claudia has gone into some detail over on the other blog, so I needn't repeat it. Let's just say I agree. Bucharest has come a long way; it has a long way yet to go, but it's moving fast.

But here's an odd thing. The last couple of days have left us feeling very positive about Romania. I'm even cautiously optimistic about Romania joining the EU in January. (Not that they will join -- I'm almost certain of that -- but that it will work out okay, at least in the short-to-medium term.)

But not one Romanian I've talked to shares this optimism. Or any optimism at all. The wall of cynicism and pessimism remains unbroken.

Given Romania's recent history... no, wait, given pretty much all of Romania's history... this is understandable. But it does get a bit annoying sometimes.

The economy is plugging along, unemployment is falling, inflation is coming down. If you don't like the current government, you'll probably have a chance to vote them out soon. And y'all are joining the EU!

Is there no enthusiasm out there at all?

The Wall

It's good to be back. Claudia has gone into some detail over on the other blog, so I needn't repeat it. Let's just say I agree. Bucharest has come a long way; it has a long way yet to go, but it's moving fast. But here's an odd thing. The last couple of days have left us feeling very positive about Romania. I'm even cautiously optimistic about Romania joining the EU in January. (Not that they will join -- I'm almost certain of that -- but that it will work out okay, at least in the short-to-medium term.) But not one Romanian I've talked to shares this optimism. Or any optimism at all. The wall of cynicism and pessimism remains unbroken. Given Romania's recent history... no, wait, given pretty much all of Romania's history... this is understandable. But it does get a bit annoying sometimes. The economy is plugging along, unemployment is falling, inflation is coming down. If you don't like the current government, you'll probably have a chance to vote them out soon. And y'all are joining the EU! Is there no enthusiasm out there at all?

Bucharest again

So we're going to Bucharest.

I have a conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, and it's inconveniently in the middle of the week, Tuesday through Thursday. Since travel from Armenia to Bulgaria is not exactly quick, that means next week is pretty much a wipe.

So, Claudia and I decided we would bring the whole family to Bucharest. We haven't been back to Romania since we left in March, and we miss it. We'll rent a little apartment for a week, visit with friends, let the boys run around in the parks. We'll be there Saturday to Saturday, and I'll pop down to Sofia for three days in the middle. (It's a one-hour flight, a five-hour drive, or a ten-hour train ride.)

We'll post if time allows. Watch this space.

Bucharest again

So we're going to Bucharest. I have a conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, and it's inconveniently in the middle of the week, Tuesday through Thursday. Since travel from Armenia to Bulgaria is not exactly quick, that means next week is pretty much a wipe. So, Claudia and I decided we would bring the whole family to Bucharest. We haven't been back to Romania since we left in March, and we miss it. We'll rent a little apartment for a week, visit with friends, let the boys run around in the parks. We'll be there Saturday to Saturday, and I'll pop down to Sofia for three days in the middle. (It's a one-hour flight, a five-hour drive, or a ten-hour train ride.) We'll post if time allows. Watch this space.

Sad House

The house looks sad. There are piles everywhere -- a car pile, an airship pile, a "this goes only to Germany" pile. Already, the house doesn't look like it's being lived in anymore. Tomorrow morning, the packers will come and take everything that isn't in the car by then. We will spend one more lonely night in an empty house, without internet access, a camping adventure for the kids. Then it's off to Germany in the car, and to Yerevan next weekend. It's the end of a chapter in our lives. We had wonderful times in this house, and we had difficult times. We rejoiced over the birth of David and Jacob, and we mourned the loss of Benjamin. We saw Alan walk out of the door to his first day of school, and we heard David speak his first word. We felt safe during earthquakes and sheltered against snow storms. We had friends over for Thanksgiving dinners and for board game evenings. We had a big Christmas tree in the corner, Easter eggs hanging off the chandelier, Halloween spiders dangling over the doors. It's a good house. I wish the next tenants as much happiness and luck in this house as we had. It's time to take the mezzuzah off the door frame. Good night, old house.

The death of a stranger

The packs of dogs prowling the streets of Bucharest are dangerous to begin with, and this is even more true in the winter when food is scarce. They become vicious and unpredictable. They attack from the back, they work together, they are desperate. I fear them. The culling of the Bucharest street dogs has been called for many times. It has been done before, with mixed results. Romanians love dogs, in general, and it's hard to push through anything which looks like a cull. So they are doing it differently now, but they are doing it with a vengeance. Why? Because on Sunday, a member of the Japanese Embassy died after a dog bite.

Fly Taxi

I've been travelling a lot lately. Which means I've been in and out of Bucharest's Otopeni Airport. Sometimes, Claudia can pick me up. But when she can't, I use Fly Taxi. Fly Taxi is the monopoly taxi service at Otopeni Airport. It's been around for about two years now. And the story of Fly Taxi is an interesting little parable of how things work in modern Romania.

First snow

Meanwhile, back in Romania

Because we do still live here, and not in Kosovo or Albania. Things that are going on here: -- It was National Day yesterday, and we managed to miss the big parade for the third year in a row. Boooo. In our defense, it was miserable weather again... chilly rain falling in sheets from a steely sky. Not to ring the American bell, but there is something to be said for having the national patriotic holiday in the summer.

Dirty but dry

The heavy rains have stopped and the waters are receding. Here is an article about why the floodings were so severe. The picture shows how the situation was in many streets. We also find out that really we are to blame for the flooded streets -- don't shower when it rains, seems to be the morale of the story.

More rain

It's been raining hard those past two days, almost without interruption. It is still raining hard. The sewers can't take all the water anymore and the soil is quite thoroughly saturated by now. So the water collects in the dips and potholes. Entire streets are flooded. This gives car rides a certain thrill -- how deep is the water? Are there any scary potholes hidden under that giant puddle? Will the car in front of you break down and have you stuck in water up to your car door? And just in how deep water can you drive this particular car? Alan especially loved the ride to his school this morning - the water splashed up on either side of the car, right to the rooftop. Any pedestrians on the way - we apologize, but you really have no business walking next to this new lake on the street. That was just careless of you. The rain is supposed to stop tonight, then resume and finally give up on Thursday. We can hope.

The nicest bathrooms in town

When we moved to Romania in 2003, my (up-to-date!) guide suggested that if we were to go out to a restaurant, we should take some toilet paper with us, as this is not always supplied. Even back then -- two years ago! gasp! -- this wasn't true. We've seen some truly disgusting toilets in Romania, yes. Some were just not usable at all. And were out of toilet paper. But the Bucharest restaurant toilets were usually OK. However, we did notice a trend over the past years.

Walnuts

On the corner of Strada Brasilia and Strada Bruxelles, just across the street from our house, there's a walnut tree. It grows in the corner of a garden, behind a cast-iron fence. But its branches arch out over the sidewalk and the street.

Closer...

Every day, Romania creeps a little closer to joining the EU. Here's the short version: Romania and Bulgaria are scheduled to become the 26th and 27th EU members on January 1, 2007. That's less than 16 months away. But! The accession treaty has a special "safeguard clause", providing that if the candidates don't show enough progress, accession can be delayed by a year -- pushing it back to January 1, 2008. And accession could also be delayed if any of the 25 EU members don't ratify the accession treaty. This has never happened, and it probably won't happen this time... it would create a major crisis if it did. But it is out there. So what's the status at the moment?

Romanians and "EU values"

Andy over at Csikszereda Musings reviews a recent study on Romanians and "EU values". There's lots of interesting stuff in there. Andy's short review is a good one, but it may be worth your while to read the whole thing. (pdf file.) Okay, maybe not the whole thing -- it's 85 pages long -- but you can find the executive summary on pages 8-14. And if you're interested in a foreigner's-eye view of Romania, check out the rest of Andy's blog, too. It's very good.

News roundup

Odds and ends of Romanian news from the last week. You remember all those floods from last month? Well, Romania got hit with more of them. Another 25 or so people killed, and a couple of thousand homeless, and maybe another couple of hundred million in damages. (American readers: to scale up, multiply everything by 15. So, in a US context, it's maybe 400 people dead and ~$3 billion of damage. In American terms, it's like Romania just got hit with two major killer Florida hurricanes in two months.)

The block below Strada Lisbon

So there's this block. A "block", in Eastern Europe, is what Americans call an apartment building. ("Block", to Americans, is a measure of urban distance. It has no meaning in most European cities. Another story.) "Block" sounds rather ugly to an American ear, but it's too often appropriate... most Communist-era apartment buildings are, indeed, pretty unattractive. We live in an older neighborhood of prewar houses set on tree-lined streets. Before the Commmunist takeover this was the edge of town, a comfortable area for Bucharest's doctors and lawyers. Most of the houses got nationalized under Communism; today, most of them are suffering from decades of deferred maintenance. The streets are potholed and the sidewalks so crumbled as to be almost impossible to navigate with a stroller. Still, it's a very nice neighborhood, and we've been very happy in our house.

Floods

There is massive flooding all across Romania this week. "Massive" here means thousands of houses destroyed and nearly 10,000 people turned into flood refugees, with ~$1 billion of damage. Five provinces have declared a state of emergency. Last time I checked, there were eight people dead and five missing, but those numbers are sure to increase. Most of the flooding seems to be around the arc of the Carpathians. Bucharest has barely been affected. (Though I did notice that the little Dumbovitsa river, the one that runs through a concrete chute downtown, was at an all-time high.) This makes me wonder if deforestation may have played a role; a lot of trees have been cut down in Romania in the last 10 years. But that's just a guess. It doesn't seem to have made the news outside Romania too much.

Beginner's mistake

Well. It's a scary story. Don't read it if you're pregnant. Or, maybe, you should, if you're pregnant and living in Romania. Also, you should not read this if you are squicky about a woman's inner workings. You are warned. In order not to jinx things, we haven't announced to you guys yet that I'm pregnant again. After Benjamin, it was a scary thing to do. Months of anxiety and endless hours of worry. I can not - did not - count the times I ran to the clinic to see the heartbeat of the baby. The weeks just wouldn't pass. But, somehow, we got over the dreaded milestone of 18 weeks, and things seemed to be fine. Baby was kicking and growing and turned out to be another boy (the fourth one, really, what are the chances of that?), and we were happy to hear that he was fine and healthy and all his chromosomes were accounted for. Everything went off like in a textbook pregnancy. Next stop: the big 20-week-ultrasound for physical anomalies. If you know us, it won't come as a surprise that we were a little late with that, at the end of the 23rd week. Unfortunately, this was also the week when Doug was in the States on a business trip. It couldn't be helped, though, and I promised to send him a picture of the baby as soon as I got home from the scan. We didn't really expect any problems -- I had been feeling fine, just gained way too much weight but that was due to potato chips and ice cream, not to gestational diabetes or similar.

The Hostages Are Back

So Romania's hostages got freed. This will be old news to our Romanian readers, since it happened nearly two weeks ago. Non-Romanian readers may not have noticed that Romania had three hostages in Iraq. (Hardly anyone outside Romania seems to have.) Two reporters and a cameraman, they were taken on March 28 and released nearly two months later, on May 22. They had a very frightening and stressful time, but seem to be basically intact. The whole country is very happy that they're back. Once you get beyond those very basic facts, though, things start to get weird.

The Last Defender of Bucharest

A Romanian friend sent us this picture (under the fold). The memorial commemorates the last stand when Bucharest fell to the Germans in 1916. It stands by the main road north to Ploiesti and the airport; we've driven past it a hundred times. The inscription says "The Last Defender of Bucharest".

Eurovision 2005

Well. Third place for Romania is not so bad. Really. I mean, the German singer ended up on the last place. That is bad. I can't really talk about this. I haven't heard any of the songs and we missed the contest due to extreme exhaustion after an action-filled day with the kids. (We went to the circus! More about that later.) Poor Doug was really disappointed. He likes the Eurovision so much because it's so... European. You can hear the Romanian song here, if you like. Or go to Fistful of Euros, where we are still nominally co-blogging, although we never write anything. (Shame on us.) Doug Merrill has some cool links, if you're interested. Hm? Oh, yes. The winner. Greece. I think that's sort of cool but again, I don't know the song.

Red circles

Romania has high exposure to seismic activity, but many of its urban structures are incapable of withstanding a powerful earthquake. With the help of the World Bank, authorities hope to address the problem before catastrophe strikes.
From the Southeast European Times

It seems to me they are a little bit late with this plan but any time is better than never, I guess. But the article boggled my mind.

Dang, another one

Another earthquake this morning. I woke up at 4:55 - for no reason at all. Then I heard something like a loud rumble and a moment later, the house shook hard. I felt it much stronger than the last one -- or maybe, my memory has edited the sickening feeling of a house moving around you. It was only a 5.1, compared to 5.6 last time. It was short, over in a few seconds. No (palpable) aftershocks so far, although I lay awake until the kids woke up at 6:30. It wasn't the big one Romania is waiting for. Sigh.

Operation Clean Sweep

You all know that I don't like the new law on abandoned and orphaned children. I've made that clear in the past. Now, you might be thinking that I'm foreign and without understanding and arrogant and all that. However, I'm in good company in my dislike - namely people working in orphanages, people from the National Agency for Child Protection, lawyers, nurses, doctors. All Romanians. They all hate the new law because it's bad for the children.

After Easter

Two things about the days after Orthodox Easter. First, nobody is eating much. Everyone says they have burta plena -- full bellies -- from all the feasting over the long weekend. Orthodox Easter is both a family holiday and a food holiday; great masses of food are cooked, and it's bad manners not to eat. As a result, after the weekend everyone is indopat -- stuffed. Second, there's a cool little tradition involving eggs.

Spring in Bucharest

Actually, it's been chilly and rainy those past days but the flowers and the blooms are out in profusion -- it's good for the soul, it is.

Two movies about a bank robbery

Way back in 1959, there was a major bank robbery at the National Bank in Bucharest. This was very strange for a couple of reasons. One, the robbers were stealing large amounts of a non-convertible currency that couldn't be used outside Romania. And two, bank robberies weren't supposed to happen in a Communist state. And, generally, they didn't. Like most contemporary Communist states, 1959 Romania had very low rates of this sort of crime. Officially, this was because Communism had removed the incentive for such perverse behavior. In reality, it was because Romania was a police state. Everyone had to carry an internal passport to move around the country. All telephones were bugged as a matter of course. Police informers, though not as pervasive as they would later become, were common. All personal records -- from medical files to bank accounts -- were open to state examination. There were still over 15,000 political prisoners. This was the bad old days under dictator Ghirghiu Dej, who was an unreconstructed Stalinist, old school. Police beat and tortured suspects as a matter of course, forced confessions were common, and draconic sentences were the norm. And criminal acts that could embarrass the state were pursued with merciless rigor. Nevertheless, there it was: several gunmen had robbed the bank and made off with over a million lei in cash. In those days, that was... ohh, maybe half a million contemporary, 1959 dollars? So maybe three or four million dollars in 2005 money. (A million lei today is about $40, but that's a story for another post.)

Hostages

Romania has three hostages in Iraq. They're journalists, and they went to Iraq on a reporting trip -- one of them interviewed Prime Minister Allawi, the day before they were kidnapped -- and they got grabbed on March 28. So this has been a continuing story in Romania for the last two weeks. Romania participates in the occupation of Iraq. There are about 850 Romanian soldiers there -- one full battalion, with the catchy name of "The Red Scorpions",deployed in the Al-Nasyria area -- and this number was scheduled to rise to about 1000 by the end of this year. It probably still will. The involvement in Iraq is not particularly popular in Romania; a recent poll showed 55% of Romanians indifferent or opposed. Nevertheless, President Basescu has said that the Romanian troops will remain "until democracy is established". Former PM Nastase said much the same thing, so it appears that support for Romania's participation crosses party lines. Why? Well, Romania places a high value on the security relationship with the US. (A cynic might suggest that they're keeping up the payments on their national security insurance policy.) The numbers involved are not large, and no Romanian soldiers have been killed yet, so up until now it hasn't seemed like a very expensive investment on Romania's part. So, while there's not much popular support, the political class is pretty solidly behind it. One interesting effect of this is that by the end of this year, Romania may be the fourth largest coalition partner in Iraq, after the US, Britain and South Korea. Back to the hostages: there are some weird aspects to the case. It's still not clear who kidnapped them. They were accompanied by a fourth person, an Arab-American who may also have had Romanian citizenship (or maybe not); it's not clear what his involvement is. A videotape of the hostages surfaced; it has some peculiarities (like, hostage guards who don't seem to know how to hold their guns) that make some people wonder if the whole thing is some sort of set-up. As to what happens next... it's really not clear. More than 150 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq over the past year. (Many more Iraqis, of course.) Most have been freed after negotiations or payment of ransom, but about a third have been killed. More on this when there is more.

Tunnel vision

Another excerpt from the memoirs of an American poet, this time Andrei Codrescu. He's from New Orleans -- originally, from Sibiu -- and is probably best known in the US as a commenter on National Public Radio, although his writing has its charms too. (Was he the one who quipped how great it was to live in a country where those three words, "National Public Radio", symbolize boredom, not nationalism? Might have been Daniel Schorr.) This is from The Muse is Always Half-Dressed in New Orleans The Hole in the Flag, his account of his trip back to Romania in December 1989:

The metro entrance gaped at our feet like a huge open mouth. We had read that the metro entrances of Bucharest were also entry points into Ceaucescu's maze of tunnels, a secret subterranean network constructed to outlast even nuclear war. There were reports of rooms stocked full of canned and frozen delicacies, armories containing missiles, communications centers gleaming with the latest technology. The underground network was reputed to be thousands of miles long, multilayered, a complicated nervous system whose exact shape and direction no one single person knew. Architects who had worked on portions of the system had been killed. [...] The land of Romania is combed with the tunnels of various ages. When I was a kid, I could get from my school to my house via an old tunnel that began just under the wall adjoining our chemistry lab. It was one of many built to serve as escape routes during a Turkish assault. It connected to older tunnels that honeycombed the city and ended in the mountains. We could sink under the city at the blink of an eye, and often did, when we skipped history, which was taught by a horrible man with an eye patch named Comrade Rana. But the tunnels existed precisely because history was one subject the Romanian people had been unable to skip. [...] A brief article, written in spare soldier's language by a certain Major Mihai Floca, described the tunnels under Bucharest being deactivated by his elite commando unit. He wrote of giant refrigerators stuffed with a variety of meats, stores of foods that "most people have forgotten the taste and color of," immense closets filled with quality clothes and shoes, comfortable dormitories, ultramodern workshops equipped with the latest electronic monitoring equipment and computers, caches of weapons, sophisticated bombs, germ warfare shells. The brightly lit "labyrinth" was vast, leading everywhere, under secret buildings, under the television and radio stations, under the Ceaucescu's many palaces and safe houses. "They were prepared to live forever in there," he concluded sternly.

You know, I might think that Major Floca might be indulging in a bit of post-Revolution urban legend, except now I've seen that damn Palace of the People. Now I wonder how well the tunnels' Ceaucescu-era concrete has dealt with the local water table and earthquake tremors. Codrescu continues:

What is it about Commies and tunnels? Harrison Salisbury reports in his book on Tiananmen Square that the Chinese troops that burst out of the Great Hall of the people and the historical museums ringing the square had slipped there secretly from tunnels under the Forbidden City. "There is even a branch railroad line with an underground station in Zhongnanhai," writes Salisbury. If one considers that the chief metaphor used in Communist propaganda is the "light of communism" or the "dawn of the new age," the tunnels become even more baffling. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense: A movement born and elaborated underground that came to light through violence and then ruled illegitimately must always make provisions to return to the darkness of its beginnings.

Ceaucescu, hunter or butcher? Take a wild guess

There is a type of despicable person that, as one learns more about them, one finds even more reasons to loathe them. Not even the smallest part of their lives seems free from the internal corruption they exude, and whatever they touch becomes tainted. Of recent historical figures, I feel that way most strongly about Imelda Marcos. But old Nick is certainly in the running. David Quammen, in his recent book, Monster of God (on what he calls 'alpha predators' and the rest of us call 'man-eaters'), gives an unusual perspective on old Nick's loathsomeness: Romania from the bears' point of view.

What proved helpful for Romania's bear population was not so much the lofty ideals of sustainable management as the realities of Communist autocracy. After the war, things were different in the mountains. Common people had no guns. Common people were afraid of the central government, its regulations, and its means of enforcement. Bear hunting became a prestigious privilege reserved mainly to the nomenclatura, the Party elite. [...] The history books don't say whether Gheorghiu-Dej, an urban agitator in the proletarian vein, fancied bear hunting personally, although there is a record of his hosting Nikita Khrushchev to a hard-drinking, bear-killing junket up in the Harghita district. Nicolae Ceaucescu, similarly, had shown no interest in woodland shooting sports during his earlier years. But in the late 1960s, while Ceaucescu solidified his position as supreme leader of both the Party and the country, he did discover a zeal for hunting -- or, more accurately, for the sort of pampered travesty of hunting that only a despot gets to experience and only a delusional egoist would enjoy.

Truth to power, baby! Quammen continues:

Beginning in the late 1960s, Ceaucescu made himself the hunter in chief of Romanian forests as well as the commander in chief of the military. He arrogated hundreds of hunting areas -- the best of them, so far as large game is concerned -- to his personal use. Forest managers at the district level, and the hunting wardens who worked for them, and the gamekeepers who reported to the wardens, came to realize that any estimable animal emerging within their purview was an animal the Conducator might want to kill. They recognized that pandering to his blood lust, to his lazy greed for trophies, was good professional politics. One district competed against another for his visits, offering big bears and rack-heavy stags as easy targets for his pricey imported rifles. For a typical hunt, Ceaucescu would fly in by helicopter and land on a cleared pad within the hunting area itself. From there he'd be taken by rough-terrain vehicle (in earlier years he favored Jeeps, then a Russian make, the Gaz, and still later a rattletrap Romanian imitation, the Aro) along forest roads, to a point very near the spot where hungry bears or rutting red deer were expected to appear. He would walk the short distance to a strategically placed high seat -- in a tight little draw that served as a game corridor, say, or along a stream, where the gurgling water would cover noises made by a hunter. Usually he was accompanied by at least one security officer, who would carry his weapons and ammunition, and a forestry official from the district office. Many other Forest Department personnel would have been involved in preparing for his visit, but they were kept at a distance during the actual hunt. In the high seat, he had little patience for waiting and watching. His attention span, according to a witness who worked with him often, was five minutes. But for this brand of hunting, patience wasn't necessary. Bears came to the feeding troughs; red deer stags congregated in response to hormonal imperatives and the attraction of hinds; or, in some cases, both bears and wild boars were pushed toward a high seat in organized drives involving dozens of beaters. Ceaucescu took his shots, admired his kills, posed for photographs, and then departed. The report of his short attention span comes from Vasile Crisan, a forestry official who later published a memoir, in German, the title of which translates as Ceaucescu: Hunter or Butcher?

The Kindness of Strangers

Bucharest is being hit by snow again, and this time it's almost worse than the last time. Our car pool broke apart because the designated driver couldn't get his four-wheel-drive to move out of the masses of snow. So Doug and I shoveled the car out of half a meter of snow in record time and I set off to take Alan to school with my mini-van and the summer tires. I had almost no problems (barring horrible traffic). I got stuck once at the school where a nice stranger helped me and gave a good hard push. Then I heard it's going to continue to snow for three days and thought it would be better to stock up on groceries. Just in case.

Mulţumim!

I really have a good sense of orientation. I can drive into Budapest and find Keleti station without a map, having been to the city only once before. Give me a map and a street name and I will find just about any place in Bucharest. I do that regularly and I rarely get lost. Unless... unless I'm somewhere close to Calea Plevnei. Calea Plevnei is one of those strange places like Stonehenge or Salisbury Hill. It has it's own magnetic distortion field and no sense of orientation will help you. Even messenger pigeons get lost when they come close to Calea Plevnei. I swear that's true.

The adoption thing again

We're talking about orphans again, and the ban on international adoptions out of Romania. No, not here. It's happening over at Randy McDonald's LiveJournal.

Brother, hast thou a shovel?

This was by far the nicest aspect of the recent heavy snow fall: all the neighbor men helped together to dig the cars out of the snow. They even helped me, although I was whimsical enough to start the digging process two days after everybody else. Thanks, neighbors.

Our landlord is hidden behind the vine in the front, and another neighbor is behind that pick-up truck. There are more outside the picture - it was quite a mass digging.

Snow falling on Bucharest

We haven't had much snow this winter - so far. Friday night, it started snowing seriously and it hasn't stopped since. Snow in Bucharest is almost always yucky - wet slush on the streets, turning brownish-black, mixed with dog poop... But after two days of snowing, the snow is up to half a meter at some points and covers everything. No snow ploughs ever venture into our little side street and few cars have dared the elements, so the snow on the street is untouched. Since we were too cheap to buy those expensive winter tires, it also means that we're stuck for the time being. Shopping will be by foot at the expensive 24-hour supermarket. Good thing we live in a neighborhood that has shopping and restaurants in easy walking distance. (How easy that walking will be with toddlers who will be up to their hips in snow, we shall see.) Mind you, I'm not complaining. The kids love it. It looks beautiful. It's a nice cozy feeling of "nature prevails" without actually being in any danger. Spring sometime next week would be nice, though. (Yeah, I'm a wuss. But you knew that, right?) A picture of our winter street and one of our landlord digging out his car are under the fold.

Snow, Flower, Car

Pictures to Trans-Fagaras Highway

Under the fold, some pictures of the Trans-Fagaras Highway. No pix of our trip through the clouds, though -- that was just plain white boring stuff. But you can see bits and pieces of the road through the clouds from the top. With a good connection, click on the pictures to see them slightly bigger.

Street encounters

I was in Mogosoaia today, to get the car fixed. (If you're familiar with the area and wondering why I go so far out of town... well, the repair shop there is fast, cheap, reliable and German.) On my way back, I saw something that wouldn't be remarkable at all in the US, quite remarkable in Germany and I've never seen it in Romania so far. Have a look:

I know what you're thinking. A truck, so what? Well, have a closer look at the printing on the outside:

Horse Trading

Hard haggling and much behind-the-scenes scrambling as both major parties struggle to form the next government. New President Basescu has said that he'll put forward a Prime Minister from his own party. But (as noted in previous posts) his party doesn't have a majority in Parliament. No one does. So, horse trading. It gets complicated because -- I'm going to simplify this -- PSD is unified, organized, well-financed and desperate; but on the other hand, Basescu is one stubborn SOB. So it could be an irresistable force vs. immovable object sort of thing.

11 random reasons to love Romania

Apropos of yesterday's post and the slightly cranky comment thread that grew out of it. After nearly two years here, we are still trying to figure out the mysteries of the Romanian self-image. Pride and defensiveness, patriotism and constant self-criticism -- it can be a little confusing. This probably deserves a long post in its own right. Meanwhile, here are eleven random things that foreigners like about Romania (not necessarily in order of importance, nor claiming completeness): 1. The people. 2. Wonderful peaches. 3. The Olt Valley. 4. Christmas carollers. 5. Bucharest parks. 6. Best tomatoes ever. 7. The Carpathians. 8. Good economic growth. 9. Child friendly. 10. Governments can lose elections. 11. EU material! I challenge you to add more! Let's have it for the good things!

Europe glows

... is the title of a recent Zeit-magazine article about the borders of Europe and how to define what is Europe and what not. The article is interesting in its own right but I really like the photo that came with it. It shows Europe at night - glowing. You can pick out single cities easily enough. You can see the borders of the Alps by the chain of lights gracing its northern slopes. And you can pick out the shape of Romania. Because it's a black region in the sea of lights. See for yourself:

UPDATE A friend of mine once said that in Serbia, everybody has a persecution complex. In Romania, everybody has an inferiority complex. It's an oversimplification but there is some truth to it. How else could readers of this blog react like this? I mean, isn't this picture amusing? As obviously photoshopped as it is? With the entire Republic of Ireland black? Almost all of Switzerland and Austria uninhabited? The region in Germany where I come from is also pitchblack, by the way. I mean, it's so clearly tampered with, didn't anybody see the irony in this? Sheesh.

Women's Shelter?

A quick plea for help: Do any of our Romanian readers know of a women's shelter here in Bucharest? I know there is at least one (it's small, I hear -- four persons tops). Does anyone have the number, is there another, can I have that number too? No, it's not for me. Doug is the kindest human being you can imagine, and he has a big, big heart. (I love that guy, I can't help myself.) In any case, I'd take the credit card and stay at the Hilton. With room service. (And he knows that.) But, please. If you know, send me the number by mail: claudia dot muir at gmail dot com. Thanks!

Basescu?

As of 11:00 this morning, it looks like Traian Basescu has defeated Adrian Nastase in the runoff election for the Romanian Presidency. If the mood in my office is typical, then most Romanian readers of this blog will already be celebrating. Non-Romanians will be wondering what it's all about. Short version: Nastase, the current Prime Minister, was very much the business as usual candidate. He ran a campaign whose message was (I am paraphrasing), "who cares if there's corruption? We're getting some good economic growth. We're going to join the EU. Sit back and don't worry your pretty little head about politics." Basescu... well, Basescu at least presents the possibility of change. He's a former naval officer who's been the Mayor of Bucharest for the last few years. He has his little quirks, which I may blog about later, but most urban and educated Romanians consider him vastly preferable to Nastase. This result is unexpected, to say the least. Nastase beat Basescu by 8 percentage points in the first round, two weeks ago. And he had near-total dominance of the media, a much larger and more powerful party machine, and pretty much unlimited funding. Even Basescu supporters had seemed more or less resigned. If this result is confirmed, it means that Romania will be entering on a period of "cohabitation", with the Prime Minister's office and the Presidency held by different parties. This will be a new thing for Romania.

The Rules

Driving in Romania is horrible, and driving in Bucharest is worse. The German in me despairs of the continuous ignoring of street signs, lines on the street, other traffic, traffic rules, and common sense. After over a year of driving in Bucharest, though, I'm quite adjusted to local standards, so when shuttling the kids to school or making a grocery run, I just unleash my inner barbarian. It's not pretty. However, I observed and I learned and I found there are rules that people are sticking to. They are just different from rules anywhere else. So, here are The Rules for Driving in Bucharest for you.

Diplomacy

Teo Peter, founding member of the Romanian rock group "Contact", was killed in a traffic accident in Bucharest on December 4. Peter traveled in a taxi that was struck by a US Embassy vehicle driven by US Marine Robert Christopher. Witnesses report that 31-year-old Marine drove his car at high speed through an intersection, did not heed the traffic signs, and hit the taxi. The impact was so forceful that the taxi whirled through the air and hit a pillar in front of the Sudanese embassy. Rescue workers could not save Peter's life, the driver of the taxi was severly wounded but is said to be in stable condition.

A random thought about the elections

One reason that Romania's government is getting back into office is that the opposition parties can't work together. The Democratic Alliance can't abide PRM, Partidul Romania Mare, the nationalist Party of Greater Romania. And this is understandable. PRM is pretty odious. But what if they weren't? (Here follows some completely random, uninformed political speculation.)

For sale

We've blogged about the Romanian treatment of the orphan and street kid problem, the EU reaction and the Romanian response to that before. Sky TV, a British TV station, showed a report last week that stirred some blood here. A team of reporters with pocketsful of Euros grazed the poorer areas of Bucharest, trying to buy babies. Did they succeed? You bet they did.

St. Martin's Day in Bucharest... or not?

How times flies, it St. Martin's Day again. Just like last year, we'll be having a lantern parade for the kids... or that's the plan, at least -- it's raining here in Bucharest. Defiantly, I spent all afternoon making two lanterns for my boys. What do you think, aren't they nice?

We'll go out, come rain or snow. The boys will be clad in their full-body rain gear and if the lanterns die, well, that's what lanterns usually do on this day. (The traditional end is to go up in flames but I've opted for the electrical sticks again, wuss that I am.) I'll let you all know how it was and maybe post a picture or two.

Earthquake, update

Our friend Christine sent us some links, to which we woke up this morning after a quiet night. Apparently, it was a 5.8 or 5.9 magnitude one, located some 100 miles northeast of us.* Our friend Dragos at @rgumente and Kit have commented on it too. I have to agree with Kit -- 20 seconds seemed like an eternity. It was enough time to wake up from a light slumber, wondering, realizing, saying "Doug?", hearing the answer "earthquake!" from the study, running to the kids, getting them out of bed and standing in the doorway. Time does stretch. For me, it also awoke memories of 1977. That big Romania earthquake? I lived in Istanbul with my family back then and I remember that evening clearly. Everything shook heavily and we, too, stood in the doorway with my parents clutching us children. The next day, we had huge cracks in the walls of our house. Not this year - our house here is built very earthquake safe. It also means that you cannot get a nail into the walls if your life depended on it, which used to annoy me mildly a number of times. Yesterday evening, though, I was quite content to live in such a sturdy house. My nanny didn't sleep all night. She, too, was plagued by memories of 1977. She used to live in a house next to a huge empty patch of land. After the earthquake, all the rubble from the flattened houses was brought there. She remembers seeing body parts mixed in with the concrete and pieces of buildings - arms, legs, heads. Gruesome pictures, guranteed to keep one's mind far too busy to sleep. Ceausescus Romania was an awful, awful place. *That's pretty close to Zabola. I wrote them an email, hoping to hear back from them soon. Update: Reuters reports that "Romanian officials said buildings, such as the historic Bucharest city hall, had suffered mostly cracks in walls and falling plaster and some roads were slightly damaged but utilities were functioning normally." The strength has also been upped to 6.0.