So ! (*imagine a long paragraph here with apologies for not writing, laments about my laziness and wondering if anybody will ever read this*)

Timi’s 4 years old, on her way to 4 1/2, blooming beautifully into a funny, witty child.She’s very enthusiastic about Barbie dolls, everything pink, cats, Mickey Mouse, Scooby Doo and syrens . Robi and I still work where you left us in the summer, the house lost its cable tv and gained a laptop, a mobile phone and soon a satellite dish. Julia went to work to Sweden, Dana (ex B) is still married, Dana A got divorced, the patients are swarming at my door as usually and I learned the art of breathing through the mouth, since we now have some peculiar odors lingering permanently around the Ambulatoriu, courtesy of a toilet, which in true Romanian style, was taken down to repair the plumbing underneath it only to be left that way because there wasn’t enough money for all the repairing they found it needed. Meh.

So, weblog. I’ve been a neglecting partner to thee, forgetting to visit, never bringing you even a tiny post and cheating on you with everything from World of Warcraft to needle working. Therefore I don’t make any promises and I don’t expect too much from you either. I’ll try to improve though. We’ll see if it works. Deal?

We had to go visit Robi’s grandmas first though, but I thought that it shouldn’t take that long, after all the festival’s gates were open until 6 pm, right? So we left, Robi’s middle sister, her husband and their baby in tow.
First stop was at the maternal grandma, a little energetic lady in her eighties still recovering from an attack of zona zoster . We knew she’s been feeling a lot better lately, but we didn’t expect to find her gone to the other part of the village, to help an even older friend with the cooking. We took a walk to the friend’s house, only to find the yard full of nervous Bucharestians . Like, 20 of them. A quiet “wtf?” was dropped, and we entered, asking politely about the whereabouts of our grandma. We found her quickly but that didn’t help much as we were forced to sit and “eat something!” by the sea of relatives, who turned out to be in an even greater number inside the house, sitting on every surface that vaguely resembled a chair, eating sarmale and shouting in rapid-fire Romanian at each other.

We sacrificed for the greater good, chose the smallest Wieners from a plate that was pushed in front of us and ate as slowly as possible, while waiting for the grandma to finish the two sarmale she was munching on. Turns out the horde of Bucharestians was there for the mass that commemorated 7 years since the passing of the friend’s husband. The grandma finished what was on her plate so we -gently - grabbed her and left just in time to avoid the attack of a fried meat-loaded platter heading straight towards us.

When we got back, the baby had already decided he waited way too long for us.

..while Timi and her cousin Lorand were busy flying kites

and jumping from tree trunks.

Which was all fine and dandy, except for the fact that we still had another grandma to visit and it was already 3 pm. So we left, promising to come back in a month or so, when our nephew will be baptized.

The other grandma was in her usual somber mood, which dissipated when she saw Timi and her little cousin.

A rabbit was taken out from his cage for Timi, and she petted him gently like she does with our kittens. The rabbit didn’t seem to mind, so she played with him while we cracked hazelnuts and chatted with Robi’s dad.

Suddenly, it was 5 pm and we were rushing back to the city. Fortunately, we arrived in time to see the yurt

and the peasant houses…

and - the most important part - we were given a crash course on how to deal with the bow. Robi was a natural, shooting arrow after arrow straight into the target like somebody who just got back from the 11th century.

And by golly, he looked smokin’ hot while doing that.

Then my turn arrived and the blood in my veins mutated into pure adrenaline. The arrow pointing to the target, the tension in the cord tying it like an extension to the arm, the other hand’s fist clenched on the wood … with the departure of that first arrow from the bow, I was hooked.

So we’re now hunting for bows on the ‘net and preparing for the next session of shooting. I blame our bloody Hun ancestors for that.

We spent the first evening there getting tipsy, eating rabbit with garlic and rosemary and reconnecting with Robi’s sisters and their husbands. A trip to the nearby Saint Anna lake was scheduled for the next day with much enthusiasm and we went to bed.

The lake’s known for the beautiful scenery surrounding it,
the fact that it’s formed in the cone of an ancient volcano,
the marshes nearby, home to one of the few carnivorous plants of the world, and for some the best Kurtos Kalacs Romania has to offer.

We had plans to grill sausages and make a few shish kebabs (known in Hungarian as Rablopecsenye or the thief’s roast) and so we rented a grill.

The boys were sent for the meat, left in the car at the entrance to the lake’s protected territory. By the time they got back though, a black cloud came out of nowhere and started pouring on us. Being the tough chicks that we are, we ignored it (while getting closer to the trunks of the bigger trees, but still), and went on with the preparations.

The ducks didn’t care much about the rain either.

Soon the food was ready, so we ate it standing and laughing at our growing resemblance to a pack of wet stray dogs. Of course, just after finishing the last bit, the rain stopped, and other types of birds went back to the lake themselves:

After cleaning the place and taking enough pics for a small art gallery, we decided it was time to go back home and so we did, stopping only to visit one of Robi’s great uncles and his wife, a guy old enough to have this picture on the wall:

And yes, that’s World War I ’s losing side.

The questioning was short and sweet, but then again I was benefiting from the grandfather clause so I was just asked about where, what and with which tests I work, told that I’m a clinical specialist in psychology now (whee? OK, whee!) and it was over.

The cabbie was gone, there were no other cabs around and the tram line was out of order so I braced myself for another slow cooking session (it was 41 centigrades in the shade and around 60 in the sun, I kid you not. And I was in the sun.) and proceeded to find my way back to the subway on foot. With the help of a few fellow pedestrians (hey Transylvania! Bucharestians actually give you indications when asked for direction! Myth busted!) and the loss of a liter of body water I was back in the underground . Another phone for directions to Anne later, some laughing when two Australians asked me for orientation and the bus was taking me back to my friend’s place. Who was dressed up and ready to go to Barka Saffron, an Indian Restaurant where we had reservations. I died a little when I realized there wasn’t time for another shower but we were late already so I accepted the fact and tried to concentrate on my stomach imminent well-being , not my skin’s misery .

The directions Anne had from somebody to find the place were a bit off so we wandered around for another twenty minutes, phoning Ina, the other friend who was waiting for us in the restaurant . Finally we were there, a fine mist greeting us when we entered from some cleverly concealed hoses on the roof. The prices scared me a little since I didn’t had a lot of money left so I ordered only one course and a strange (but goooood) lime-basil-something cocktail with tons of ice. We chartered between the bar (where the girls were drinking Caipiroskas and the table, chatting about ex rocket scientist coworkers and the good or evil nature of the Rottweilers.

The food was delicious. I never tasted Indian before but I’m definitely hooked for life. Anne sent me some pictures of our food she took , but since I’m an hour away from leaving on a short vacation, I’ll probably post them when we’ll be back. If my laziness doesn’t get in the way of course.

After finishing lunch, we went through the mist again, asked a Pakistani cutie Anne spotted to take our pic (which he gladly obliged to, but not before asking if he could be in it, which me and Ina, being heartless married girls, declined) and crossed the street to find a cab, much to our Anne’s dismay, since she was seconds away from exchanging phone numbers with the guy. The cab turned out to have AIR CONDITIONING! so we enjoyed a short period of well-being before being thrown out in the hell again. A stop to Ina’s headquarters followed, where we met Aiax, her gentle (and very, very sociable) Rottweiler.

The train station seemed a lot friendlier than the day before and after some heartfelt goodbyes I got on the train. The trip back was uneventful and around midnight I was in my bed again. Home, sweeeeeet (and cool) home.

…. only to be woken around 3 AM by a drunk guy who was yelling at his wife that he’ll kill her and kill himself, because he doesn’t care anymore, or something along those lines. We were at the 9th floor, and he was somewhere on the street. He had some damn good lungs, , y’all . Half-woken I closed the balcony door and resigned to the idea of sweating again.

At 6:30 I was up, before the alarm clock even began to think about ringing. Poor Anne, who normally is the antithesis of an early bird, followed soon. She gave me the details on how to get to the shady part of Bucharest where the shindig was (go 8 bus stations, take the subway from University Square, switch to tram in Eroii Revolutiei Station). Easy as pie, thought I.

The first problem appeared when the names of the bus stops were said in the speaker at a level low enough to make babies fall asleep, while all the elderly ladies on the bus (what’s with the fatal attraction between old people and buses in Bucharest, anyway? There were no gray hairs on the subway, but the bus was full of them.) chatted about the price of the parsley and the bad manners of young people who weren’t giving their seats to them. So naturally, I missed the right stop and had to walk a pair of kilometers back, to Universitatii. Which is a big place that everybody knows … except it wasn’t marked by any written sign. There were University-looking buildings around me alright, but where was the damn square? And the subway station?

Submitting to the fact that I’m no Bucharestian, nor do I show any signs of innate Bucharestianism, I phoned Ina and asked for directions, describing whatever bigger buildings were in front of me. She had no idea either, so she passed the phone to her colleague, a natural-born local. Who at the beginning was also confused about my whereabouts (ha!) but then managed to point to my sorry ass in the right direction. Oh, that funky-smelling underground! Never have I expected to prefer it so much to the surface, where it was closing to 38 centigrades.

Eroii revolutiei was a very nice place to take a tram ..except for the fact that there were no tracks left, just a long deep hole with ten workers in it. Feeling my toes curl in fear at the mere idea of walking another few kilometers at that temperature, I ignored all warnings and approached a cab. The driver greeted me with “I’m not going to the center, they are working on all of the shortest routes to there” to which I replied with a sunny “And what do you say about a trip to Viilor Road?”

We agreed on a decent price and after some chat about how it was to be a cabby in the Communist era, I finally was where I was supposed to be, only 10 minutes late.

You see, dear readers, our brain dead minister of Health, mr. Nicolaescu, accepted in his infinite wisdom the request from the Romanian Psychologists’ College that every hospital psychologist, even if she doesn’t have a private practice, should apply, willy-nilly, for a License of Free Practice. Which means that you pay a hefty annual sum and travel every few years to Bucharest , all for the great privilege of… doing exactly what you did until now.

The last days before going to the capital were filled with worried faces and paranoid advices from my entourage. Now you non-transilvanians might not know that, but the average inhabitant of this region bears a deep fear and loathing of the evil place inhabited by “Mitici” as they call the metropolitans. Therefore I was told countless times to “Take care of your money, hide it in a few different places” ” “Never leave your mobile unattended, it will disappear in a second” “Be careful with the thieves in the buses, they are EVERYWHERE and nobody cares if you get robbed” and of course “Don’t ride with a non-corporate cabby, you’ll be conned, beaten and raped, not necessarily in that order”. A few days later, backpack on my back, plenty of water in a bottle and my trusty needlepoint in a bag, I was prepared to go.

The train was an Intercity, luxurious by Romanian standards, except for the fact that ..we didn’t have any air conditioning. Therefore me, Emma and Pelle (the two Swedes I was sharing my compartment with) got the window down, hydrated ourselves as much as we could and started sweating like three Yeltsins in a sauna. We managed to strike a friendship, so by Brasov, where they got out, phone numbers were exchanged and I invited them to our house a few days later. In Brasov a French doc couple replaced them and we spent the rest of the journey happily chatting about the differences between our countries’ hospitals, yours truly ocasionaly sneaking a peek at the guy because he was, girl Pioneer’s honor, the essence of eyecandyness.

I had two friends I phoned constantly while on the road - Ina, who offered transportation, and Anne, who volunteered the shelter. (Sweethearts, both of them.) Ina told me to wait for her at the station’s Micky Dee, and that’s where I stood, a bit touched by Transylvanian paranoia since it was too close to midnight for my liking; all inner eyes on the backpack, all outer eyes on the street kids that occasionally came to ask me for a dime.

But then Ina and the husband came, kisses flew on the cheeks and off we went, occasionally phoning Anne for direction. I looked at the car’s thermometer - there were 33 centigrades. At midnight. Damn.

I’ll start with the jam part, since the pictures are already uploaded. I’m not a big dulceata eater, but the rest of the family is, and since my mom’s concoction was more of a fruit flavored block of sugar, something had to be done. Therefore, last year I made my first batch of raspberry jam. Huge success, odes and praises followed. So this year, apricots, blueberries and the familiar raspberries were sacrificed on the altar of my culinary prowess.

Ahem. Ladies and cooking gentlemen, I give you …

.. The Apricot Jam!

We started by picking the apricots from the big tree in my mom’s garden - Robi shook it and I gathered the fallen fruits. We washed them,sliced them in half and took out the seeds.

Then we bought the sugar (1/2 kilograms for every kg of fruits) and the jellifier ( 100% fruit pectin - no additives for us). And then I put it all on the floor and decided I should document the process for posterity. And great justice.

The jellifier was mixed with 2 tablespoons of sugar / package …

…and poured on the unsuspecting apricots…

…who were then placed on fire, their fleshy mortal coils exulting sweet smells all over the kitchen while they were brought to boil .

The rest of the sugar was added…

…and their apricoty ectoplasms watched me in horror as I stirred them like a low-level demon would stir a pot of damned souls on his first day of work, until they got boiling again.

All the available jars were unlidded and placed in a Conga line…

…then filled with the hot stuff…

… then placed on their lids to cool.

The jam should last for two years. We’ll never know if it’s true though, since my dear locusts will probably raid the last jar in less than a year. Good thing that by that time the apricots will be ripe again, eh?