St. Patrick’s Day in Sinaia, Romania -- March 18, 2007

Yesterday I traveled to Sinaia, in the foothills of the mountains, just under an hour by train north and a little bit west of Ploiesti, with Sam, a PC volunteer from Texas. It felt so good to get out of the city, and away from our busy daily schedule of language classes, practicum project, and homework. Sinaia has been a ski town, but their winter visitors declined because there isn’t much snow anymore. Instead, people go there for hiking, so a group of our young PCVs traveled on the crowded “Personal” train that left before ours in the morning. We met up with them later at the famous Peles castle, then they spent the afternoon hiking uphill some 2000 feet.

It was somewhat colder there than in Ploiesti, and hilly. With all the uphill walking I heated right up, and will probably be sore for days. Sam was a good companion, we talked all day as we walked around. She had a busy career with the foreign service, working all over the world, then retired about the same time as I did. She worked most recently for the Audubon Society. We paid a little more to travel on the “Rapide” train, so had assigned seats and nicer cars, much faster than the “Personal”. We’ve both had plenty of journeys in cramped quarters, sitting on our luggage in the aisles, with barely room to breathe – and, in fact, will undoubtedly be doing that again, soon enough.

Sam and I wandered all over town and toured the famous castle, actually the royal palace, and official residence of the Romanian kings. It was built by King Carol (actually German, named Karl), who was Romanian king for 48 years, longer than any other monarch. He and his wife were intellectuals with a passion for architecture, so each section of the castle is built in a different style: German, Swiss, Arabian, Turkish, Oriental. It was gorgeous, just completed in 1914, only a couple of months before the King died. King Carol was fluent in five languages, his wife in seven, and their impressive library contained over 9000 volumes. The carvings everywhere are almost overwhelming, sort of make you yearn for a simple place with plain walls, where you can actually see the grain of the wood. Of course there are paintings on every wall, many of them intricate mosaics of precious wood veneers.

My Romanian is still baby talk, but at least I could ask for train tickets to the right place, and get them paid for. Seven more weeks of language classes, I’m hoping I won’t feel quite to stupid by the time we’re finished. Then, with my luck, I’ll get sent to a village that speaks Hungarian. In fact, they are starting extra sessions in Hungarian at our school, for those who want to learn enough to get started, just in case. There are no similarities between the languages, Hungarian is related to Finnish, with beginnings and endings added on until words can be over 50 letters long, most of them consonants.

Two more weeks until we get our site assignments, so we are all curious and excited about it. We’ll find out where we’ll be living for the next couple of years, and what we will be doing there. We can start emailing other volunteers at that site, or if there aren’t any, at nearby locations.

I got a voice call on my computer two weeks ago from Grey, and one last week on the telephone from Peter. One of my practicum colleagues told me there is another Internet service that allows free voice calls from anywhere online to mobile and landlines in the U.S., and free landline calls to Germany. I’ll try it to call Dara. She says the baby is healthy and growing fast. Sabra says Vivian is more beautiful every day. Maybe I’ll get pictures soon, but I show my photos from the week after she was born to everyone who will look at them.

My bed, although comfortable, is a fold-down sofa, so sheets are iffy. Continental style, there is a sheet on the bottom with a covered duvet on top. While I was gone to Sinaia, my gazda changed the bedding and gave me a sheet that is ironed linen, barely big enough to cover the surface, and it scratches like hell. It’s scalloped and embroidered, quite beautiful, but I hate it! Every time I move, the stupid thing bunches up, I really think it should be a table cloth. Today I’m going to beg her to have my old one back!

I had my first fatality, so will plan a little funeral service for my battery charger. It couldn't handle the electricity here, and fried almost instantly. I should have known better, but was spoiled by my international laptop and camera battery chargers. I finally found a replacement that will work both here and at home. It was expensive, but is an investment I can hopefully use for many years. It amused me to find an Energizer that looks identical to the deceased. We depend on batteries for almost all our electronics, from music to light, and they’re spendy so it’s important to recharge them. Today we have no Internet connection here at all, so hopefully it’ll be up before long. If not, I’ll find somewhere else to post this update. I might try to go to the zoo this afternoon, if so I’ll have pictures soon. Here are some from yesterday’s trip.

...another day -- Ploiesti, Romania-- March 7, 2007

Here is Alexandra now -- she was the baby in the photo with Simona at the bottom of the last entry! And here is my friend Simona, gazda Cici's daughter-in-law.

.

We all catch our breath -- PST, Ploiesti, Romania-- March 3, 2007

It's been a week already, and I still feel pretty stupid when I talk to local Romanians. At least I can usually get my point across, and I'm getting pretty good at charades. I enjoy learning from the local people, using both my lame Romanian and lots of sign language. I purchase tickets and ride the bus to school every day, I shop in the store and (amazingly) come out with what I wanted to buy! I even found a wine shop where I can refill my wine bottle for under a dollar. My gazda is wonderful, although she doesn't speak a word of English, which is probably a blessing and forces us to use Romanian. Her daughter-in-law Simona speaks good English and her house is next door, so she can help us sometimes. She works every day during the week, and gets home late, but we will be able to visit on the weekend and catch up on whatever we twisted up in our communications. They already feel like family.

March first was a big holiday here, Martisor. Everyone gives small gifts for females, even young girls, with red and white ties on them. It is an ancient Dacian holiday that celebrates women. It seemed strange that since we arrivved there have been little kiosks everywhere selling red and white ribbons on tiny charms, jewelry stores featuring more expensive jewelry, flower stalls everyplace, and then suddenly yesterday they were gone. I received four little gifts with ribbons -- one from my gazda "mom", a little balance charm for my astrological sign Libra; a little chimney sweep from my language instructor (the man, that is-- and we learned chimney sweeps are very lucky in Eastern Europe); a pin of flowers from my program director for community economic development; and a little fabric pink rose pin, along with five beautiful tulips in a vase, from Simona and her husband Gabi, the son and daughter-in-law who live next door. Gabi has an internet network I can access at home, especially in the kitchen that is far down the hall. Believe it or not, I'm sitting at the kitchen table now at my gazda's, in my flannel pajamas, on Saturday morning. March 8th will be Women's Day, when only adult women get gifts, sort of like Mother's Day in the U.S., and this time the gifts will likely be flowers or chocolates. I'm glad we arrived this time of year, to celebrate these special days. We get a real holiday the Monday after Easter -- which is a different day here in Romania than in the U.S. (They apparently use an Orthodox calendar.) Anyway, it is the biggest holiday of the year.

Today my new extended family is planning a barbeque, Romanian style. During the week I was able to attend two evening concerts at the Filharmonic, one featuring a dozen French horns and the other with the full orchestra. It was unbelievably good and I was very impressed! Who knows what we'll have at the site where I will be posted for the next two years? Some of our group are traveling into Bucharest today, but I don't want to spend hours getting to the big city, just to look around and come back the same day. I'd rather take a long bath and wander around here.

We received our "Practicum" assignments on Thursday, and I'll be working with another volunteer, a young Asian guy, for a nonprofit that gives microfinance loans to small businesses. We will work with them two or three afternoons a week, and are supposed to develop some small project in our six-week assignment. Of course, our language classes will continue every weekday morning. My colleague is clearly a numbers guy, with banking experience. I'm sure he will look at their program from a banking/investment angle, while I'll probably see things more from the business owners' viewpoint. I can't imagine what sort of project we might do in a short time with them. The environmental groups are more likely to fix up a park, the ones working with schools might get students to do something in their neighborhood. But we will probably have a chance to go to outlying areas to see their "beneficiaries" who have been approved for small loans, so that will be interesting.

Since joining the European Union in January, there is lots of money available for upgrading from Romanian to E.U. standards for business, environment, minority integration, elimination of corruption, reduction of pollution, and so on, but the application process is extremely complicated and convoluted, so few agencies have been able to get grants. Integrating the Roma (gypsies) is a requirement for the E.U., and they are very poor, have low education levels, and live to a different code of behavior than the society around them. Eventually, I'll figure out what I might be able to do here. Meantime, I just want to develop relationships and get familiar with the country. Photos below of our barbeque on the teraza, with Gabi cooking on the grill. Here is my gazda Cici and her house...

Above is the dog Ruff, and a photo of Aunt Georgeta, Cici's sister, helping Simona's daughter Alexandra with her mathematics. Below are some pictures from around the piata on Saturday. And best of all, my gazda Cici brought out some old family pictures, and let me snap photos of them.

Below are the old family photos, showing Simona with Alexandra as a baby, and her wedding pictures. Also I was able to copy very old photographs of Cici and her sister Georgeta as young girls, and Great-grandma as a 24-year-old young woman.