Paranoia and other pleasant things

Bouncing4

Posted: Timi

Speaking of Americans…0

…. this week’s renters are also from the U.S. of A. And also travelling very, very far away of it. Not to mention they’re witty and masters of taking nice photos. Sounds interesting? Then visit them, by clicking the piccy in the sidebar. I’ll still be here by the time you get back.

Posted: stumbled upon

Romerican wuz here!16

This weekend, the Americans have landed. Or at least one of them.

You see, there is this guy in Brasov, called Sean. A genuine Texan, he has come to live in Romania for reasons unknown to the public (though speculations claim he’s a CIA agent looking for the secret formula of ţuică, a powerful poison used by the locals to knock the foreign invaders unconscious). Sean has a blog which I read since besides being a swell guy, he’s also funny as hell. And intelligent. And takes good pics. And no, he’s not paying me to write this .

Now as we all know, even CIA agents go on holidays sometimes. After succesfully discovering what the acronym WC stands for, and thus preventing the Romanian terrorist organisation of Al-Bladderah from making thousands of foreigners die of embarrasment, he got his vacation and decided to pay us a visit with his trusty sidekick Laura, also known as LemonMouse.

His journey here was anything but uneventful, including a drinking contest with a hungarian overlord in Cluj Napoca, being given wrong directions by enemy agents disguised as passers-by and thus going west instead of south and getting a ride from another enemy agent that almost made him end in the secret military base of Campia Turzii. However, he and his sidekick were unstoppable and landed here safely on Saturday evening. We went on a nocturnal reconnaisance mission around the town and then discussed battle plans for the next day until after midnight.

Sunday morning, we went shopping, as Sean told us they’ll be making tacos. Tacos! As in “emblematic food of a cuisine I haven’t tasted yet”! My mouth was watering in anticipation. The cooking process was something I couldn’t miss, so there I was, crying from the onion, shredding the cheese and grounding the chicken breast while they were doing both the hard work and the fine art. I think I managed to learn how to do it, although I’ll still have to beg for the unveiling of the exact quantities of magic ingredients that combine into that marvel called tortilla.

The food was sooooooooooooooooo yummy. And hot. Really hot. Even though Romerican said he made a mild salsa. (Compared to what? Great balls of fire?) But even Robi, who has a known aversion to spicy food, made an exception and ate the salsa of the taco like it was baby food - because it was just so.damn.tasty.

After we regained our belly-moving capacity, we went out for another walk around the city, almost got attacked by dogs, drank some more beer and stayed up late again. Yeah, we’re that extreme.

They went home yesterday morning. I miss them already.

Posted: chestii

Got to get back, Samurai Jack4

Since Monday, the work has me again. It isn’t too bad though - there are few patients since the Handicapped Persons’ Comission is on vacation until the beginning of September. I’ve had two encounters that remained in my mind this week - one with a crying girl, the other with an unlucky byciclist.

The teary patient was in her early thenties, and she started sobbing almost immediately after she entered my room. The fact that both her mom and her grandma reprimanded her for crying, while telling me repeatedly that neither the other two psychologists nor the comission could make her cooperate didn’t help much. However, the good old sixth sense started soon whispering in my ear that the girl could be autistic, even if no previous diagnoses said anything about it. Confiding in it, I started approaching her by the way you should do with frightened patients that have the big A - not forcing eye contact, not making her do things for me directly, speaking with a low, calm voice, chatting about her animals, what she does each day, her sister’s baby … in about 4 minutes I made the sobbing stop, and she was cooperating. After a while, she even left her hand down from her face and looked at me. Careful not to scare her, I directed a quick examination of her cognitive state, wrote the results down, chatted with the now smiling girl some more, and gave some advices to the mom, who’s jaw dropped when she saw me performing apparent magic on the girl. When they left, I was smiling too.

The biker was an entirely different story. A typical Transylvanian peasant, now in his 50s, with a face full of deep sun wrinkles and hands that have seen more physical effort than three stadiums full of bodybuilders, he came with a diagnose of post-traumatic personality disorder and epilepsy-like crises. His story made me cringe. Seems that he was riding his bike one day when a speeding car got out of control, hit and dragged him for almost 30 meters before dropping his body on the concrete. He has been in a coma for two weeks and woke up not being sure if he’ll be able to move again. By the time he got out of the hospital, he found out that the accident was deemed his fault, thanks to certain large envelopes full of money that exchanged owners.

He cried when he described what it feels like to be transformed from a hard worker to a jobless infirm and how stuck he felt, not having money to start a lawsuit and maybe see justice. “I go to bed thinking of what a burden I’ve become to my wife and my boys .. if I wouldn’t have prayer I would have probably started drinking by now..”

No smiles when he left.

Posted: hospital

Moldova, day 3 - amazing grace6

After the night in the tent, we woke up in a cheerful mood around 6:30, ready to continue to the best part of our journey - the three painted monasteries. They’re called Sucevita, Moldovita and Voronet, were built in the 15th -16th century and are part of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. Also, they are breathtaking.

Robi changed the position of the tent’s cover, so that it could dry on the side that was previously in the shadow..

..and we crossed the road to see Sucevita. Since it was 7-8ish, there were no tourists yet, just the voices of the nuns singing at the mass in a lateral chuch and the chirping of the birds. The garden of the monastery was one of the most peaceful places I’ve been on this Earth.

The main church of the monastery matched the garden - beautiful and harmonious, not one broken proportion in it.

The paintings showed Biblical scenes, like the Last Judgement, more speciphically the moment when the angels throw in the flames the damned:

Here’s Saint George killing the dragon (too bad the fresco is damaged by all the dimwits that felt the urge to immortalise their names on the wall):

And some not-so-biblical mermaids:

After Sucevita we went to Marginea, where we bought some black pottery from the local artisan (Gorgeous clay vases made with a technique used only there and in Mexico for under 4 bucks. Beat that.) and then off to Moldovita we were, on a road that had on both sides postcard-like views.

Moldovita was the most degraded from the three of them, but still had some nicely preserved frescoes and a museum (no pictures allowed, as usually) with Bibles, icons and priest garments from medieval times.

The fresco above my head is a religious calendar, with all the patron saints of each day painted in the proper order:

Last was Voronet, home of an unique shade of blue that didn’t pale one bit in the centuries since it was painted, and which cannot be restaurated since its’ recipe is lost and the chemists weren’t able to reproduce the composition. Good grief, to think what the idiots that graffitied their names in that marvel did.

This whole wall was dedicated to the Last Judgement, a theme near and dear to the painters in those times.

The good guys go to heaven..

..while the bad guys (read - heathens and Turks) look rather worried for their long-term future..

.. especially considering the river of fire under their legs and the hungry looks they get from the whale and octopus, giving a whole new meaning to the term “seafood”.

The trip from Voronet to Lespezi was uneventful. We were greeted with joy by Robi’s cousins and spent the evening chatting, drinking and laughing along with the kids at the way they could entertain themselves with our insulating matresses:

Posted: on the road

Randomest renter ever.4

So I leave my offer for renting on the exchange site, go to sleep, and wake up to 9 bids. I browse them, see two travelogues that would go perfectly with this week’s posts, and find out that one of them even was graceous enough to read and comment on the last post, not just bid. Robi comes home with this day’s bread, I leave the computer open and go to fix Timi some breakfast.

When I come back to the PC, there’s an accepted rent. As Timi , even if she’s not yet 3 years old, knows very well how to start the computer, open Winamp , browse pictures on Google or open The Sims2, it was clear what happened.So I present to you Timi’s choice this week - Evolution of Gina. Not a bad choice though. While the template might be a bit too dark for my taste, the writing’s good and the lady writing it had a life that included stealing Granola bars, being bitten by fire ants, having an eating disorder and being accepted to college at 40. Plus, she’s on my side on an issue I feel strogly about since this case - where the bastard got away with what he did, thanks to being tried in the States - that having your trial and punishment for what you did in the country where you did it is a duty that applies to Americans too, not just the rest of the world. I think I like her.

Posted: stumbled upon

Moldova, day 2 - who imported the friggin’ English weather?6

It was raining and the air was mid-March cold when we left Agapia. The road was undullating through the trees, nobody behind us, nobody in front, just the car, the (incredibly well-maintained) road and the occasional pile of pebble deposited by the forest after an all-night rain.

We got to Varatec, another nun monastery and the place where Veronica Micle, poetess extraordinaire and tragic love of Eminescu, our national poet, lived her last years and soon after his death, poisoned herself.

Just like in Agapia, there was no photograhing allowed inside, so we took a lot of gloomy outside shots, wondered around a bit, listened to the cries of two peasants trying to wake up a nun (”Maica Modestaaaaaaaa!!”) and went on our merry way.

Next was Targu-Neamt, a small city with awful traffic. They had a fortress which I knew from my schoolbooks (where it is told how eighteen poorly armed peasants stood up for five days agains the siege of Ian Sobieski in 1686)

Yup, it was still raining and we had no umbrellas. But at least there were lots of walls and partial ceilings to protect us .

The medieval toilet looked rather .. erm .. interesting.

After we got back to the car, hopped in, waited patiently until we got out of an intersection where everybody claimed they had the right to go through first and honked accordingly and ate some breakfast, we got to the memorial house of Romania’s biggest childrens’ stories writer, Ion Creanga.

The interior was arranged to show the way it looked during the writer’s childhood:

Next to the house, there was some kind of Creanga theme-park with scenes from his memories and tales, reenacted by an army of stuffed animals (and I’m not talking about plushies - it was all carcasses, baby). My stomach revoled against the idea of entering, so we left.

We had a stop at the Veronica Micle museum (you know, the lyrical lass from a few paragraphes ago) - again, no photographing inside.

After that, we left for Suceava, where we were greeted by SUNNY! weather. There was no place to park the car in the center, so Robi snook it on an alley clearly marked “only for residents” and parked nonchalantly. We went to the local history museum, where we discovered that the Moldavian kings used Ninjas as part of their regular army…

…and Elvis lived in Moldavia after his American dissapearance.

Next on the list was the citadel of Suceava, where a medieval festival was held (souds familiar?). There were commercial banners and billboards everywhere, so we were more interested in the people that entertained the audience, like this fair beauty, narrating the introduction to a commedia dell’arte play:

Out of Suceava we went then, stopping only for a short visit to a Lukoil gas station ( “Probably the best toilet in town”) and headed for northern Moldavia, also known as Bucovina. The sun was shining, the air was hot and we were singing our hearts out until we saw that a hurricane was coming. No, really. There was this perfect blue sky with no clouds until the middle of the firmament, and from there until the horizon it was all black. As in lack of white. People, it looked friggin’ scary and we were heading right that way. 50 km later, we were in the ugliest storm I’ve ever seen, completed with thunders and lightnings. Figuring that we didn’t need our battery recharged by a jolt of electricity or the car’s shape remodeled by hailstones we parked under the roof of an abandoned gas station and waited. And waited. Then we waited some more. After almost an hour we got too bored to be cautios and left.

We didn’t have to go for too long until we saw that the ditches were full and water was all over the road . Saying a quick prayer we drove through it, hoping it won’t get so high that it’ll stop the car. Fortunately, a few kilometers later the terrain started to be shaped in such a way that water was back to the ditches, and we managed to get to Putna.

Putna is a monks’monastery, the place where Moldavia’s most revered king (Americans - think George Washington, substract some height, add more fighting) is burried. His name is Stefan cel Mare (”Stephen the Great”)

The church looke graceous, like a ship on the sea

and was in the middle of being painted with frescoes inside for the first time.

It also contained the cranium of some saint, put in a box with an opening where people could touch and kiss said cranium. Somehow, I didn’t feel the urge to immitate.

In the courtyard, we saw a lot of very heterosexually looking guys walking around in long skirts. We scratched our heads in amazement, until I remembered that you’re not supposed to visit dressed indecently, and that included men’s shorts. You could still go in if you put on one of these, given to you at the entrance of the monastery:

It was getting late, so we went to Sucevita where we were hoping to find a place to camp or a room at affordable price. Unfortunately, the prices weren’t exactly for Romanian pockets where they still had rooms, and where the price was fair, they were fully occupied. We managed to find one pension (”Casa Traian” by its name) where prices were low and only one other car was in the parking. Full of amazement, I wanted to pay in advance as a gesture of good will. After which, we stepped in Twilight Zone.

“Why do you want to pay in advance?” said the lady that shoved us our room.

“You know, in case you are not around tomorrow when we leave .. isn’t this the custom over here?”

“No .. moooom?”

Her mom appeared, and she explained what I wanted to do.

“No. What do you take us for? Who are you? What kind of people are you? Are you looking just for a sleazy place where you can fuck?” said mom, while angrily cutting some mushrooms.

“What?” said I, not being quite able to comprehend the sudden burst of hostility.

“I don’t think you are a married couple, at all.”

“But lady, we’re very much married, we even have a three years old” said I again, starting to lose my temper in the polite Transylvanian way.

“I don’t believe you, and I think you should leave. My house is not a place of perdition”

Meanwhile, Robi finished to park the car in the dark and approached the porch.

“What’s happening?”- him

“Craziness. She’s not believing that we’re married and wants us to leave. ” -me

“Yes. You should leave immediately” -the mom

“Ok, we’ll do so. No wonder you had spare rooms” -me

“I might be thought crazy, but.. ” - the mom

“That’s not a possibility, lady, that’s a fact” - me, not so sotto voce, while leaving .

“You have no shame!” - the mom

“Whatever, crazy lady” - me, getting in the car.

We found a camping spot where two other tents were put already, set up our tent at the light of the flashlight and went to sleep. Our faces were frozen by morning, but at least our bodies were more-or-less warm, dry and rested.

Posted: on the road