Vara Aventurilor

Maglavit: Day Two

2010-06-27T12:15:00.000+03:00

Our second day in Maglavit was every bit as busy and exciting as the first. It began with a trip to the village community center, where we were treated to a special performance by Valentina’s Romanian folk dancing troupe. In their traditional costumes, the girls travel around the country and the region to compete with other folk dancing groups. Their recent performance in the nearby village of Călăfat attracted an audience of nearly three hundred people, and they are planning to attend a competition in Turkey later this year. Imagine how special we felt when they got up on a Saturday morning and donned their costumes just for us!

Me and Andreea with some of the dancers

We also got to see a short comic sketch, which was still quite funny even if we didn’t understand all of it. Andreea’s sister Cristina gave a hilarious performance as a crazy man with a serious stutter talking to an official in a train station.

At the community center, we also got the visit the local library, where Valentina is the librarian.

Next we met Andreea’s boyfriend Marius and his family at their house on the outskirts of the village. Marius’s father is a beekeeper, and he enthusiastically explained the inner workings of the colony to us.

Getting ready to see the bees!

Another bee-hat picture, just for fun.

Marius's father shows us a colony. We got to see worker bees, drones, and the queen, and we learned to recognize the difference between cells full of honey and cells with eggs in them. At this time of year, there were a lot more eggs than there were pockets of honey. The peak season for honey is later in the summer.

Pointing out the queen. She is larger than the worker bees and the drones, and she has a green dot on her head, which was put there by the laboratory where she was hatched. The detailed tour of the colony that we received reminded me of trips to the science museum in elementary school, only entirely in Romanian!

Rows of hives or stupi, as they are called in Romanian.

Like Ionel and Valentina, Marius’s parents grow all of their own food. They preserve and use most of the produce from their garden, and they sell the honey from their bees at local markets and through a company in Germany.

Our last stop in Maglavit was a picnic near the lake. The village lies right along the Danube, which marks the border with Bulgaria, and there is a large lake the branches off the river near Maglavit. We cooled off in the weedy lake before enjoying a feast of sarmale and mămăligă with smântană (sour cream) and homemade wine on the lakeshore. Sarmale and mămăligă are classic Romanian dishes. They are some of my favorites, and I’m pretty sure that they were a big hit with Mike as well.

Looking across the lake towards the village.

After our picnic near the lake, we had to catch the bus back to Craiova, and then a train to Bucharest. We were sad to leave Maglavit and our new friends there, but after seeing and doing so much in less than a day, we were exhausted. Andreea and Marius's families urged us to come visit again someday, and they sent us on our way loaded down with fresh produce, honey, and homemade wine and brandy. For our part, we didn't know how to thank them enough. Our visit to Maglavit was by far one of my favorite travel experiences. Talking with our hosts and translating was excellent practice for my Romanian, and in retrospect, it was far and away more rewarding than visiting castles in the mountains, as beautiful as they may be. We made some great memories, and I think that it was the perfect way to introduce Mike to Romania.

Maglavit: Day One

2010-06-25T16:00:00.000+03:00

Neither of us was quite sure what to expect from our visit to Maglavit. I hoped that we would have a pleasant visit and get a taste of ordinary life in a Romanian village, something quite different from the choreographed version of Romania and the Dracula kitch that you get in touristy areas. The trip exceeded all of my expectations. The family that we stayed with could not have been more welcoming or generous, and we saw so much in the twenty-four hours that we spent in Maglavit that I’ve decided to break up the story into two posts.

We arrived in the village in the afternoon by bus, and Andreea's family picked us up. Andreea had to work in Bucharest until late, so we had several hours to tour the village and hang out with her family before she arrived. Our hosts were Ionel and Valentina, Andreea's parents, both of whom have lived in Maglavit their entire lives. Ionel works at the village's water treatment station, which was built several years ago with funding from the United States, and his wife Valentina runs the library at the village community center, in addition to teaching folk dancing classes and courses in Romanian Orthodox Christianity. We also met Andreea's sister Cristina, who attends high school in a larger village nearby and is a budding actress, and Valentina's nephew Andrei, whose mother is working in Italy.

After getting settled in and freshened up, we joined the family for a late lunch of delicious fresh fish from the Danube nearby followed by a tour of their incredible garden. The family grows all of their own food, from corn, cabbage, beans, and cherries, to chickens, rabbits, and pigs, and they preserve food from the garden by canning or freezing it, so that they can enjoy it all year round. We were amazed by the scope of the undertaking, and wondered how they had time to tend to the garden and its yield when both Ionel and Valentina have jobs. They explained that they have a lot of help from Ionel's parents who are both retired and live with the family. They also got a bit of help from us, harvesting cherries and strawberries for a delicious dessert!

Once we finished lunch and the garden tour, we piled into the car to tour the rest of the village. Our first stop was the Monastery. Maglavit Monastery has an interesting story. It was built in the 1950s in honor of Petrache Lupu, a shepherd who saw a vision of God while tending his sheep near Maglavit. At the time, the Communist Party's policy of atheism was taking its toll on the Orthodox Church, and after seeing God, Petrache Lupu began to speak out against the Communist Party's atheism and call on Romanians to return to the Church. The Monastery had fallen into disrepair, but was recently renovated with funds donated by controversial Romanian politician and football team owner, Gigi Becali.

Maglavit Monastery

The Monastery is home to a community of Romanian Orthodox nuns. Here one of them looks after the Monastery grounds.

A bell in the yard of the Monastery. After visiting the Monastery itself, we went to see the tree where Petrache Lupu saw God. The tree has become a pilgrimage site not unlike the spring at Lourdes, as its bark is reputed to have healing powers.

The next stop on our tour was the water treatment plant where Ionel works. It consisted of two of these little trailers, one for pumping and one for purification, and it was located next to the local football stadium, where Maglavit's team was practicing when we stopped by.

The pumping station

Our last stop for the day was at a fishery, which is run by Ionel and Valentina's cousins. We took a look at all of the different-sized fish in their tanks, and we got to throw them some food and watch the resulting frenzy of fins and tails.

Our hostess Valentina holding a live sturgeon.

Our host Ionel with a net full of fish trying to dive back into the water.

After a quick nap back at the house, we picked up Andreea from the bus stop around eleven, and headed back to the fishery for a late picnic dinner. Andreea's cousins picked out two huge fish from the tank and set to work killing and cleaning them.

Cleaning the fresh fish and prepping it for the grill.

We enjoyed homemade wine and plum brandy, and then the grilled fish with a delicious fresh garlic sauce. The night ended with a swim in the pool (not one of the fish tanks!) and an invigorating, multi-national game of keep-away, which ended at three in the morning!

Mike and I in the gazebo at the fishery where we had the picnic, which was decorated with traditional Romanian masks. I'm not sure which is scarier here, the mask or Mike's smile in this photo...

Craiova

2010-06-24T18:15:00.000+03:00

I'm sorry for the dearth of posts lately! I'll do my best to make up for the long silence over the next few days. I have lots of pictures and stories to share.

About two weeks ago (I can't believe it's been that long already!), Mike came to visit from Portugal. As I may have mentioned, he's working at a research institute in Lisbon this summer. Thanks to a Portuguese holiday, he was able to take some time away from work to come to Romania for a long weekend. I must admit, I was a little nervous about my responsibilities as a tour guide. This was Mike's first visit to Romania, and I really wanted him to like it here! As readers of this blog will know, there are a lot of beautiful places to see in Romania, way too many to see in five short days. So I had some difficult decisions to make.

After going back and forth several times, I finally settled on an itinerary. Instead of going to see some of Romania's best tourist spots, I decided to take us off the beaten path a bit. My friend and hiking-partner Irina introduced me to Andreea and Marius whose families both live in the village of Maglavit on the Danube. We arranged for Mike and me to go and stay with Andreea's family and to visit Marius's parents as well. Partially motivated by a selfish desire to see something new, rather than visit the same (beautiful) places for the nth time, I also wanted Mike to get a feel for ordinary Romania and village life.

To get to the village, we had to take the train to Craiova and then take a bus from there. Seeing as we had to stop there anyway, I decided that we would spend a night in Craiova as well. I had never been to Craiova, and I had heard mixed reviews of it. Jenny described it as a charming little university town, while some of my other friends were not so enthusiastic.

Because of the mixed reports I'd heard about Craiova, I though it might help to have the right tour guide. I got in touch with a couple on Couchsurfing, Razvan and Alexandra, who agreed to give us a tour of their favorite spots in Craiova. After a few mishaps with the train, we finally made it to Craiova on Thursday evening. Raz and Alex picked us up at the train station, and after a quick stop at our hotel, we went out for a traditional Romanian dinner. We spent the evening talking and laughing, getting to know Raz and Alex and their friends, and exploring Craiova's central square. Raz and Alex both grew up in Craiova, and they are getting married in July! Alex recently won the "visa lottery" and the two of them are applying for an immigration visa to move to the United States next year. They were wonderful hosts, and getting to know them and hear about Craiova from their perspective made the trip truly delightful.

The next morning, we walked around Craiova by day and took some pictures before w caught the bus to Maglavit. We visited the art museum and a huge park in the southern part of the city. We were struck by the beautiful architecture in the city center, which was full of ornate old buildings and impressive churches.

The Prefectura, the seat of the county government.

Craiova's central square

From our walk in the park

C'est la vie dans la grand ville

2010-06-07T17:24:00.003+03:00

Or "A sad, sad day in Bucharest"

For a week or so now, I've been looking forward to posting about cycling in Bucharest. I borrowed a bike from a friend of a friend, and I was loving it. It was so nice to ride around the city. Riding alongside the traffic was a little bit scary, but I wore my helmet and kind of enjoyed the rush. Mostly it was just great not to be dependent on the bus or metro lines or taxis. And Bucharest traffic can get pretty backed up at certain times of day, so it was great to speed past all of the waiting cars and buses and just get where I was going.

You may have noticed that I'm using the past tense a lot here. Today, I went out to get on my bike and go to the library, and it was gone. I had locked it up in the parking lot behind my apartment building last night. Sometime during the night, someone must have cut the lock. In retrospect, it seems so obvious that I should have found a way to lock it up inside the building.

As you can imagine, I'm pretty broken up about it. It wasn't my bike, and I feel terrible for losing someone else's bike. I'll have to pay for it now, which means that money will be tight for the rest of the summer. But really the money isn't that important. What's much worse is the guilt I feel over losing my friend's bike and the prospect of getting around Bucharest without a bike for the rest of my stay. It won't be a problem to take the bus and the metro or to walk, but I was having so much fun riding!

I talked to the police (in Romanian!) and filed a report. Hopefully they will find it, but you know how these things go... Wish me luck. As my junior high French teacher used to tell us "C'est la vie dans la grand ville"--that's life in the big city. And I suppose she's right. That's life. And it goes on. It doesn't stop me from feeling pretty terrible about it today, but I know that it's not the end of the world. These things happen, and I'm alright. Does it sound like I'm trying to convince myself of something? Maybe I am, but just a little bit.

Don't miss the (much more upbeat) post about Sulina below!

Sulina

2010-06-04T09:43:00.004+03:00

On our second day in the Delta, we took a long boat ride out to the village of Sulina, where the Danube reaches the Black Sea. At the entrance to an important European waterway, Sulina was once a bustling international port. It once had a population of over 40,000 people of various nationalities and was the home of the European Commission of the Lower Danube, which regulated trade and travel along the eastern Danube. Today Sulina is much smaller, with a population of closer to 5,000 Romanians. Because of its rich history and its current isolation, Sulina feels like a ghost town.

From Crisan, it took an hour and a half to reach Sulina in a small motor boat.

Here I am enjoying the ride. It was a bit chilly in the morning, but it turned into a beautiful sunny day.

Although Sulina is no longer and important port, large ships still pass through on their way from Russia or Turkey to western Europe.

One of the fascinating things about Sulina is its three lighthouses. The newest lighthouse is perched at the point where the river opens out into the sea, directing ships towards the mouth of the Danube. Older lighthouses are further inland, illustrating how the Delta has grown over the years as the Danube continually deposits silt on its way out into the Black Sea.

Here is Sulina's second lighthouse, which is now about a kilometer from the sea.

Sulina's first lighthouse was built by the European Commission of the Lower Danube in 18--, and it is now several kilometers from the sea.

We visited the lighthouse, which is now a small museum, to take a look at its inner workings...

...and get a nice view of Sulina from above.

We also took a closer look at Sulina's beautiful Romanian Orthodox Church.

The last part of our visit to Sulina was terribly exciting for a history-nerd like me. We visited Sulina's cemetery. Part of the cemetery is still used today, but it dates back to Sulina's heyday as a port city. This means that in addition to recent graves, it has whole sections of graves marked in English, German, Italian, Greek, and Ukrainian from the 1800s. Many of the people buried there were sailors who died in or near Sulina, while others worked for the European Commission of the Lower Danube. Visiting the cemetery made me think of my friend Caitlyn, who studies English and American maritime history. It also made me want to get in the archives and uncover the story of the cosmopolitan Sulina of the 19th century--the story of the people buried in those forgotten graves. Maybe after Caitlyn and I are both finished with our dissertations, we'll have to work on a joint project on Sulina. What do you say, Caitlyn?

Delta Dunarii

2010-06-04T09:35:00.000+03:00

Over my first weekend in Romania this summer (two weeks ago now, wow!), I went with Jenny and Fabien to the Danube Delta. I had never been to the Delta before, but I had heard from Romanians and foreigners alike that it is a must-see. The delta is a UNESCO protected wildlife area, and it is famous for its enormous variety of fish and birds. Over 300 different species of bird live in the Danube Delta for at least part of the year. Those of you who have ever witnessed my reaction when a bird gets too close to me will understand what this meant. The Delta was a potentially terrifying place for me! To my mingled relief and disappointment, we did not see nearly as many birds as I expected. And to my unqualified relief, they kept their distance!

In my opinion, one of the neatest things about the Delta is its remoteness. The few towns that are scattered throughout the wetlands can only be reached by boat. Large ferries, small motor boats, rowboats, and canoes carry people and goods along the various branches and canals of the Danube. The town where we stayed, Crisan, was a single row of houses stretching for seven kilometers with the main branch of the Danube on one side and marshes on the other side.

The scenery was beautiful, and we spent several enjoyable hours exploring the network of canals and lakes near Crisan.

Me, Jenny, and Fab squeezed into the boat for our tour of the Delta. Our guide, sitting behind us, made me miss Franklin from Manuel Antonio National Park. Viorel certainly knew his way around the Delta, and he was good at pointing out egrets, but he was nowhere near as knowledgeable or enthusiastic about the local flora and fauna as Franklin was.

An owl fast asleep on a branch.

A swan taking off. Its partner and their line of cygnets had just swum off into the reeds, a little too quickly for me to get a photo.

A floating gas station.

Unsurprisingly, the most common dish in the Delta consists of delicious, fresh fish. We had fish at nearly every meal, and we got lots of practice eating around the bones! Here Jenny and I show off our fish skeletons after our first dinner in Crisan:

On our second day in the Delta, we visited the old port city of Sulina--read all about it in my next post!

Bucharest Update

2010-05-31T23:11:00.004+03:00

I'll have a few new posts on my trip to the Danube Delta up soon, but in the meantime, I thought I'd give everyone a quick update on what's going on right now. I've been in Bucharest for almost two weeks now. I've been staying with my friend Jenny, who I met in the language class in Brasov last year, and her husband Fabien. Jenny and Fab have been the best of hosts for the past two weeks. They've been so welcoming--they even let me join them for a holiday weekend at the Delta!

Staying with Jenny and Fab has made my transition to Bucharest life very easy this time around. Last week I found an apartment in a cool part of town with roommates who seem really fun. I also started my work in the archives and found a bike to ride around the city. Now that I'm all settled in, I'll be moving to my new place on Wednesday. I'm looking forward to exploring my new neighborhood and riding my bike to the archives. The research has been a bit slow thus far, but I have a bunch of new leads to follow up on this week, so I hope that it will improve very soon.

Those of you who have read this blog in the past will know that I occasionally write about being lonely, or homesick, and even downright miserable once. While I can't say that this trip has been entirely without little pangs of homesickness or lonely moments, I can tell you that it's been a whole lot better than past years. I've been really happy here over the past few weeks, and while I certainly miss my friends and family back home, I'm having a great time. I've been able to get in touch with a lot of my friends from last summer and the year before, and I've already made a few new friends. Staying with Jenny and Fab has helped a lot as well. Dinners with the two of them and going jogging and to yoga with Jenny have made me feel very at home here. And finally, the fact that Mike is also spending the summer abroad helps more than I had expected. It's wonderful to talk to someone who really understands the ups and downs of a long trip like this because he's going through the same thing.

I'm looking forward to moving into my new place, getting to know my roommates, and making more progress with my research. Oh, and if things weren't going well enough already, Mike is coming to visit a week from Wednesday! More posts (with pictures next time) on life in Bucharest and my travels in Romania to come soon!

Costa Rica Part III: Manuel Antonio National Park

2010-05-27T09:12:00.009+03:00

After our adventures in Orosi, Mike and I headed back to San Jose to meet up with Rob and his girlfriend, Amy, and Mike's parents, Jerry and Carey. The following day we would all head to Manuel Antonio National Park on the Pacific Coast. Jerry and Carey were unfailingly gracious and generous hosts, and the trip was a great opportunity to get to know them and Rob and Amy better.

After a night in San Jose, we loaded up a rented SUV (mercifully equipped with GPS!) to drive to Manuel Antonio. As you can imagine, traveling with six people and all of our bags was a bit more complicated than the trip to Orosi and Cartago. Here's Rob helping tie some of the suitcases to the top of the car before we all piled in:

At Manuel Antonio, we stayed at a beautiful resort whose catchphrase was "Still more monkeys than people." Our room had an incredible view of the Pacific Ocean just beyond the swimming pool:

Apparently the hotel was owned by a former pilot, which explains the room made out of the inside of an airplane.

On our first day in Manuel Antonio, we went on a guided nature walk through the national park. Our guide, Franklin, was incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about the Costa Rican flora and fauna. He was an expert and finding interesting creatures in the trees and setting up his "spotters' scope"--a sort of short range telescope on a tripod--so that the rest of us could see them. He was so good at finding things, in fact, that we started to joke that the spotters' scope contained slides of various animals, so that he could point it off into the rain forest in any direction and cue up a slide of some bats or a sloth.

Franklin was the perfect guide, and he found all kinds of neat things for us to see, like these Capuchin monkeys:

A cleverly disguised "stick bird":

And several sloths (if you look carefully, you should be able to see it hanging from a tree in the center of the picture):

The following day, our accommodations lived up to their claim that we would see more monkeys than people there. We woke up to find a whole troupe of Capuchin monkeys frolicking on the pool deck below our room. They ran all over the place, climbing on the canopy over the bar and sliding down it, and scurrying up trees and jumping from one to the next. Two of them even hopped up onto the railing of our balcony where we sat watching them. They paused on the rail for a moment, regarded me and Amy, and seemed to decided that four feet was as close as they wanted to get!

After our exciting morning of monkey-watching, we took to the sea so that Rob could go scuba diving. The rest of us were slated to go snorkeling, but unfortunately the water was too rough to see much of anything, except for a large school of colorful fish than swam all around us for a few minutes. For the rest of the day, we just enjoyed relaxing in the sun on the boat. It was a lovely morning, and we made it to shore just as it started to turn a bit stormy in the afternoon. A few of the party got a bit sea-sick, but I'm not naming any names here... A few hours later, everyone felt well enough to enjoy the best key lime pie any of us had ever tasted!

On our last morning in Manuel Antonio, Rob and Amy took off to visit a village outside of San Jose for a day, and the rest of us enjoyed a zip-line canopy tour. The tour was the perfect blend of sight-seeing and adventure, as we cruised through the rain forest canopy on zip-lines and rope swings. Strapped into rock-climbing harnesses, we hiked up a hill to begin our journey. The tour consisted of a series of platforms high in the trees, which were connected by ten zip-lines, one "tarzan swing," two rappels, and one rope-bridge. Riding the zip-lines was exhilarating, and the beautiful rain forest canopy that we flew by made it even more incredible. For the last rappel, our guides thought it would be funny to surprise me with a little free-fall. They told me to put my hands behind my head, and they would control the rappel for me. As Mike and his parents will gladly tell you, I screamed like you wouldn't believe on the way down. The fall caught me a little off guard, and afterwards I was shaking (but smiling) for quite a while. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from the tour yet, but if I get some later on, I'll be sure to post them.

The following day marked the end of the trip for Mike and me. We headed back to San Jose to fly back to Chicago, while the rest of the group prepared to continue their journey with a trip to the mountains to see a volcano and the famous cloud forest of Monteverde. The trip was an unforgettable experience, both in terms of what we got to see and do, and just as a chance to spend time with Mike's wonderful family. Thank you so much for inviting me to share in this incredible adventure!

Costa Rica Part II: Orosi

2010-05-27T08:53:00.000+03:00

From Cartago, we took a bus to the village of Orosi. This next part of the trip was one of the highlights for me (along with monkeys and zip-lining, which will be in the next post, I promise!). It was great to get off the beaten path a bit and see some of rural and small-town Costa Rica. The trip to Orosi was my kind of traveling at its best, no strict itinerary, riding the bus around and talking to locals and other foreigners (Orosi had a surprisingly large American expatriate population for such a small village. We met three while we were there.), and just exploring and seeing what there is to see.

Orosi was a quiet little town (everything closed by about 9pm, including the local "night-life") situated along a river and between several mountains. The rich volcanic soil makes Orosi and the surrounding river valley a great place to grow all kinds of produce, including coffee, limes, and bananas. The colorful market across the street from our hotel, pictured below, sold local fruit of all sorts.

We stayed at the Hotel Reventazon, which is named after the river that runs alongside of Orosi. The proprietor of the hotel was an American expat who is building an earthship on one of the mountains near Orosi. He told us about a natural hot spring next to the river. Orosi is near Costa Rica's tallest volcano, and all of the geothermal energy from the volcano results in several natural hot springs in the area. Two of them have been turned into tourist attractions, but one is still just out in the open and is a popular spot with the Orosi locals. The hotel owner gave us directions to the springs that sounded fairly straightforward, and we set off on our adventure.

Hotel Reventazon

As per his instructions, we took a bus over a bridge and out of town. We got off the bus near the power plant and took the left fork in the road, towards the river. Then things got tricky. Our next instruction was to look for a hole in a barbed wire fence on the left side of the road, go through it and walk through a coffee plantation towards the river. We promptly found a hole in barbed wire fence and veered off on a trail towards the river.

A bridge over the Reventazon River outside of Orosi (note: if you come to this bridge, you are NOT on the right track to finding the hot springs)

We weren't entirely sure that we were on the right track, but with our list of instructions and the river as a reliable landmark, we were confident that we would find the spring. In the meantime, we found a lot of other things:

Rainbow trees

Lime groves

Coffee plants

A long caravan of leaf-cutter ants taking their bounty back to the colony

We must have walked around for at least two full hours, trying one path after another, without finding any hot springs. We quickly learned that holes in barbed wire fences were pretty thick on the ground in Orosi. We tried several of them, all of the paths either dead-ending or stopping at the river with no hot springs to be seen. Time after time, we said to one another "This looks promising. I think this is the path he told us about." After so many wrong turns, we were beginning to think that we'd have to turn back without finding the hot springs.

Luckily we ran into some people to ask for further directions. Mike got to practice his Spanish asking passers-by where the "aguas callientes" were, while I stood by and paid close attention to the hand gestures and listened for cognates. With a little help, and quite a bit more walking (with a few more wrong turns), we were successful! We finally found a warm pool alongside the river, with two Tico men lounging in it:

Relaxing in the hot water was exactly what we needed after our long walk. And finally finding the spring was even sweeter after all that we went through on our way there!

The next day, we went on a hike up a nearby mountain before heading back to San Jose to meet up with Mike's family for the next leg of the trip. On our way up the mountain, we got to see some more of the local flora, a beautiful, if a bit foggy view of the town, and a few little waterfalls.

Plantains!

If you read this blog and you like SPORTS...

2010-05-26T15:16:00.003+03:00

You should check out my brother Alex's highly entertaining World Cup blog. Tune in now while he ranks all of the teams before the tournament gets started in a few weeks.

Oh, and SPORTS.

Costa Rica Part I: Cartago

2010-05-25T08:57:00.005+03:00

A few months ago, I never would have guessed that I'd be writing about Costa Rica in this blog. It's a long way from Romania and Indiana, the two places where I spend most of my time lately, so given the temporal and financial constraints, I didn't expect to make it there any time soon. I owe the unexpected pleasure of exploring a bit of Costa Rica to my boyfriend's family. They very generously invited me to join them on this trip to celebrate Mike's brother Rob's graduation from Indiana University.

Because Mike and I had to leave early to head to Portugal and Romania respectively, we went to Costa Rica ahead of everyone else and had two days to explore on our own. After arriving in San Jose (the capital and largest city), we got right on a bus bound for Cartago.

When the Spanish colonized the area that is now Costa Rica, Cartago was the capital of the colonial administration. An earthquake sometime in the 18th century destroyed many of the buildings from colonial times, and when the capital moved to San Jose, Cartago diminished in importance. There are still some nice things to see in Cartago, but the main reason that we went was to catch another bus the following day to a village in the beautiful Reventazon River Valley.

During our eighteen hours or so in Cartago, we visited a Catholic basilica.

Stayed at the urban-rustic paradise "Hotel Dinastia" for all of $16.

And explored the ruins of a cathedral from the colonial period.

The ruins have been made into a beautiful park, which appeared to be a popular spot with both tourists and locals.

While I was in Cartago, I couldn't help being reminded of Romania. From what I saw, Costa Rica and Romania seem to be at similar levels of economic development. I haven't done any research to back that statement up, so take it for what it is: the casual observation of someone who doesn't know a great deal about economics. Beyond that, there were a bunch of little cultural things that reminded me of Romania.

Like many Romanians I've encountered, Costa Ricans (or Ticos, as they call themselves) tended to be friendly and welcoming...and sometimes amused by foreign tourists.

Like these Tico men who saw me taking a picture of the ruins and wanted to ham it up for a photo of their own.

And like in Romania, there were dogs everywhere!

Some things, on the other hand, were very different from Romania. For one thing, Costa Rica is in the tropics:

Summer of Adventures

2010-05-18T22:17:00.003+03:00

It seems somehow appropriate that I begin this year's blog while stranded in Chicago after my flight to Romania was canceled yesterday. Because what is travel about if not going with the flow, taking the good with the bad. Apparently the volcano in Iceland, Mount Eyjafjallajokull, is still causing some problems for flights in and out of Europe. I'm not really sure why some flights are canceled, but others are fine, but I'm hoping to make it to Amsterdam tonight. In any case, having just returned from a week in Costa Rica, I've had plenty of the good lately. And if the bad means hanging out in Chicago for a night with my friend Christie and getting to Bucharest a day later than planned, then I'm not complaining.

I have to leave for the airport in just a few minutes, but I just wanted to get this thing started with an itinerary of my plans for the summer.

Here's the plan as it stands now:

May 9-16 Costa Rica
May 17-18 Chicago
May 19-22 Bucharest
May 22-24 Danube Delta, Romania
May 25-July 8 Bucharest (hopefully including weekends away for climbing, hiking, etc.)
July 9-19 Lisbon, Portugal (with tentative trips to Morocco and Spain over the weekends)

I had an incredible time in Costa Rica with my boyfriend, Michael, and his lovely family. I'll post stories and pictures from the trip soon, but for now here's a preview.

Mike and I exploring the beautiful Costa Rican countryside...

...before heading to the Pacific Coast to relax and check out the rain forest.

More pictures and stories to come (including monkeys)!

Rasnov and Bran Castle

2009-07-23T17:42:00.004+03:00

Last Saturday, my classmates and professors from the language program and I took a field trip to some nearby tourist attractions. We visited a medieval fortress in the village of Rasnov and Bran Castle, which is often referred to as Dracula's castle. The Rasnov fortress was built around 1215 on a hill between three villages along an important trading route. The idea was that if the area was attacked, many of the people and the livestock from the three surrounding villages could take shelter there while the soldiers defended the citadel.

According to local mythology, the well in the citadel was dug by two Turkish prisoners. They assumed that after completing the well, they would be given their freedom. Instead, when the well was completed after 17 years of hard work, they were killed. The name of the fortress comes from the German word for 'rose' because, like many old villages and cities in Transylvania, Rasnov was founded by Saxons (German-speakers who later converted to Lutheranism).

Rasnov Fortress

The chapel in the fortress

A view of the town of Rasnov from the citadel

Next, we visited Bran Castle, which, I'm sorry to inform you, has no connection to Dracula whatsoever. The castle was built in the thirteenth century by the Saxons of Brasov (or Kronstadt as it is known in German). Brasov is located on the border between Transylvania, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Wallachia, which was sometimes independent and sometimes a tributary state to the Ottoman Empire (based in Turkey). Therefore it was a strategic location for both warfare and commerce. Bran castle was originally a fortress used to defend Transylvania from the Turks, and it was later used as a customs post, where merchants crossing between Wallachia and Transylvania had to stop and pay a fine.

In the early twentieth century, the people of Bran gave the castle to Romania's beloved Queen Marie. The castle was the summer home of the royal family until the communist takeover in 1948. It was recently returned to the royal family and now belongs to the heir of Queen Marie's daughter, Archduke Dominic of Austria, who is an architect in New York.

Vlad Tepes (or Vlad the Impaler), the Wallachian prince who is rumered to have been the inspiration for Bram Stoker's book Dracula , never lived at Bran Castle, and no one knows for sure if he ever visited it. As far as I can tell, it was chosen as "Dracula's Castle" because it is a well preserved medieval castle in Transylvania. In order to capitalize on certain tourists' vampire obsessions, a lot of Dracula-related tourist traps have sprung up around the castle.

Bran Castle from across the valley

The central courtyard and tower of the castle

Me sitting in front a window with a great view

Wishing well in the courtyard

A particularly amusing bit of vampire kitsch

Romanian Dance Class

2009-07-22T22:56:00.002+03:00

In addition to our Romanian language classes every morning, the program includes lectures, films, tours, and activities: opportunities to both learn about Romanian culture and practice speaking and listening in Romanian. One of these activities is Romanian ballroom dancing. The class meets twice a week, and it is taught by a former dancer and choreographer from the Bucharest opera.

She is like a very elegant drill sergeant.

Here is a short video of my classmates dancing. You can see our instructor at the front of the room, but more importantly, you can hear her yelling "sub mana!" (under the hand) "cerc!" (circle) and counting the time in Romanian.

Tram 32

2009-07-22T22:11:00.005+03:00

I'm sorry that it's been so long since my last post. This language program has been keeping me very busy. So while I have a lot to write about, I don't have much time to write. I have a lot to tell you about the last week and a half in Brasov, but first I'd like to backtrack a bit to Bucharest.

When I first arrived in Bucharest this summer, I was intrigued by an article that I read in "Bucharest in Your Pocket" about Tram 32. The article (which has some great pictures, if you care to check it out) described "a pointless journey on public transport in Bucharest," and it claimed that a ride on Tram 32 would reveal "Bucharest as you've never seen it." That was enough to catch my attention, so I invited my friend Elspeth from the Embassy to join me on my little adventure. On my last Saturday in the city we took a ride on Tram 32.

Tram 32 passes through Rahova, which might be described as a working class neighborhood in Bucharest. Along the main streets, it looked relatively safe, but it is not one of Bucharest's nicer areas. We rode the tram to the second to last stop and got out at Piata Rahova, where there is a large market selling everything from pomegranates to suits. Piata Rahova was full off people and activity. It was livelier than similar neighborhoods that I've seen, but the claim that it was "Bucharest as you've never seen it" made me think that maybe the guidebook's target audience doesn't mingle with ordinary Bucharest residents very often.

In addition to its busy marketplace, Rahova's claim to fame is its painted blocs. As you may have seen in some of my other Bucharest photos, most blocs in the city are a uniform cement gray. In Rahova, the blocs are painted in bright colors, an idea that the local city counselor borrowed from Tirana, Albania. Although they don't look quite as nice as the ones in Tirana, the colors actually make the blocs look somewhat more cheerful.

By far the best part of the trip, however, was the ride to Piata Rahova. Shortly after we got on the tram, a man with an accordion got on and started walking up and down the center of the cars serenading us.

Unfortunately, I took the video sideways and couldn't figure out how to rotate it. However, the video is short and definitely worth watching. You'll just have to pretend that it's upright.

The Halfway Point

2009-07-14T07:59:00.003+03:00

I've now officially been here for three weeks and will be headed home in another three weeks. I've also reached that strange point where it feels completely normal to be here. It's almost like I never left. I think it's strange the way the mind works. At least for me, it seems that it can really only take in the immediate surroundings. When I'm in a certain place, be it Bucharest, Brasov, or Bloomington, that could just as well be the only place on earth. Of course I know objectively that other places exist and that life elsewhere is still moving along at the same speed as ever. But even though I get a constant reminder of that when I call friends and family at home, it just doesn't feel that way.

I don't know if this makes any sense, but because of this trick of perception, it doesn't feel like I was in the U.S. three weeks ago. It feels like I've always been here. When I arrived in Bucharest, the familiarity of the streets and the sights made it feel like I never left last summer. As though my Romanian self had taken a particularly long nap and awakened to find that a few things had changed, but for the most part the city had stayed the same. I've only been to Brasov briefly in the past, but my previous visit and its quintessential Romanianness make it familiar as well.

And with three weeks left to go, this strange feeling of inertia effects my thoughts about my departure as well. It doesn't seem real yet. Three weeks is long enough that I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that I'll be going home soon. It feels like I will be here indefinitely, just like it feels as though I've been here indefinitely.

I'm sorry if this post didn't make much sense. If you've had a similar experience with traveling or moving, I'd love to hear about it in comments or an email!

Cursurile la Brasov

2009-07-13T20:53:00.002+03:00

Just a quick update today; yesterday I left Bucharest and traveled to Brasov, which is three hours north of Bucharest by train. For the next three weeks I'll be studying Romanian language and culture at the University of Transylvania here in Brasov. Today was the first day of classes, and I am exhausted! We took a placement test this morning, and I was put in the intermediate level, just as I had hoped. In the intermediate class we will be expanding our knowledge of Romanian grammar and practicing speaking a lot. We'll also be going on field trips to some interesting sites in the area. It looks like I'll be very busy with the language program over the next few weeks, but I'll do my best to keep posting regularly!

Sibiu

2009-07-09T15:33:00.010+03:00

Last weekend I rode the train up to Sibiu, Romania with my friends who are interning at the Embassy this summer. I had a lovely time, and Sibiu is beautiful. I couldn't believe that I've been coming to Romania for the past few years and missing out on such a beautiful city! If you ever have a chance to visit Romania, you should definitely go to Sibiu. It is an old Saxon city in Transylvania full of beautiful churches and a charming central square. Unlike Bucharest, Sibiu has a distinctly central European look and feel. In 2007, Sibiu was selected as the European Union's "European Capital of Culture," and after visiting there, I can certainly see why. The city's architecture is beautiful, and there seemed to be live music everywhere we went. Rather than attempting to describe Sibiu further, I'll let my photos speak for themselves:

Sibiu's central square from above

Piata Mica or "Small Square" from above

Many of the houses in Sibiu have "eyes" like these in their roofs.

The Council Tower, from which all of my areal photos were taken.

Me and Elspeth with our roommate from the hostel, Clemons from Vienna

The clockworks in the Council Tower, plus my reflection

Sibiu's famous Evangelical Church

An Orthodox Cathedral that is a copy of Istanbul's Hagia Sofia

Sibiu is also home to a large village museum or outdoor ethnographic museum. There are a number of these in Romania, and I know I've posted pictures from one or two of them before. Sibiu's village museum was especially interesting, with lots of windmills and water wheels, ferries and carriages, and even an old fashioned Romanian bowling lane. The museum was founded by Astra, a Romanian cultural association that promoted the development of a unique Romanian culture and advocated for Romanian unity and independence throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Traveling companion David demonstrating the popular Romanian men's fashion of letting one's belly get some air...

Finally, here's one last taste of Sibiu's charm. Our first night in town, we sat outside at this cafe and drank espresso while listening to this string quartet:

Muzeul Pompierilor

2009-07-06T18:14:00.008+03:00

Last week I needed a break from the archives, and I wanted to take advantage of my time in Bucharest. So I looked in a guidebook for some new sights to see. One of the things they recommended caught my attention: the firefighters' museum. The guidebook said that the museum itself was a bit underwhelming, but that it was worth going to see the view from the tower. The tower was originally built so that the firefighters could watch for fires in the surrounding area. As you probably know if you've been following this blog over the past few years, one of my favorite things to do as a tourist is find a nice bird's-eye view of the city or countryside. I've spent over three months in Bucharest now, and have yet to do that, so I thought that it was about time.

Having visited the firefighters' museum or Muzeul Pomierilor, I would have to disagree with the guidebook. The tower was not very tall, and the view was less than spectacular. If you only have a short time in Bucharest, the Muzeul Pomierilor should not be on your "must see" list. Nonetheless, I enjoyed my visit there. The view wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, but the experience of going there was certainly entertaining.

The tower that houses the Muzeul Pomierilor

After I paid my admission fee and went up in the tower to see the lackluster view, I felt that it would be rude to just turn around and leave without looking at the rest of the museum. So I briefly examined the exhibit room on the top floor. I was under the impression that that was the entire museum, because how much could there really be to say about firefighting in Romania? Was I ever mistaken!

After viewing the top floor, the docent who had brought me up there in the elevator directed me to the stairs down. On the next floor there was another whole exhibit.

And on the next floor, and the next floor. The museum was very thorough, with five floors of information and artifacts on the past and present of firefighting in Romania. I was the only visitor in the museum at that moment, so the docent would accompany me to each floor, turning the light on as we entered and off as we left. Not wanting to be rude and rush through, I took my time and learned as much as my limited Romanian vocabulary allowed about pompieri.

Perhaps because I was the only visitor that afternoon, they gave me a little pin with a picture of the tower on it to commemorate my visit.

And they invited me to take my picture as a Romanian firefighter!

I guess fires and firefighting was the theme of the day, because on my walk to the museum, I saw this. This building was on my route to work last summer, so I passed by it in the bus or on foot every day. Last week, I heard from some Romanian friends that there had been a fire there, and on my walk to the museum I got to see for myself.

And through some strange coincidence, I also encountered some fire trucks and real live Romanian firefighters on my walk to the museum. Over the past two summers, I've heard sirens quite frequently in Bucharest, but this was my first time seeing red pompierii trucks like these. As far as I could tell, the fire that they had been called to was very minor, so don't worry!

After the disappointing view from the firefighters' tower, I decided to visit the Intercontinental Hotel in Piata Universitate, which as far as I can tell is the tallest building in Bucharest. They did not have an observation deck, but they let me go up to the pool balcony on the 22nd floor. As you can see below, I got the view of the city that I was looking for:

Happy Independence Day!

2009-07-06T18:11:00.005+03:00

Last year as an Embassy intern, I was invited to the Ambassador's Independence Day party. The party is generally regarded as a celebration of the relationship between Romania and the United States and a great opportunity to make and foster contacts with Romanian officials. Around three thousand Romanians and Embassy personnel are invited each year to mingle on the Ambassador's lawn and listen to speeches about Romanian-American friendship.

When I realized that I would be in Bucharest over the 4th of July this summer, I emailed some of my Embassy friends to ask if they could try to get me an invitation to the party this year. I thought it would be a great chance to catch up with all of my colleagues from last summer and meet the new Foreign Service Officers who have arrived since last August. Getting an invitation to the party was a bit more difficult than I expected. The Charge d'Affaires approved my invitation the morning of the party. Because I didn't have my physical invitation with me when I arrived at the ambassador's house, I had to be escorted in by my friend who works in the Regional Security Office.

Here is my elusive official invitation, which I received a few days after the party. The artwork is by a Romanian high school student who won the Embassy's contest to represent the party's theme "Let's celebrate Romanian-American friendship."

I'm really glad that I was able to go to the party. It was great to be there again and see everyone. The speeches by the Charge d'Affaires and the Romanian Prime Minister were very nice and provided an opportunity for me to practice my Romanian comprehension skills. The U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Romania does not currently have an ambassador, because President Obama's nominee has not yet been approved by the Senate. In the absence of an Ambassador, the Deputy Chief of Mission becomes the Acting Ambassador or Charge d'Affaires.

The Charge d'Affaires speaking at the party

Romanian Prime Minister Emil Boc speaking at the party

And here's me with one of the Marine Security Guards' hats as the party was winding down.

I think I'm in love (with Sibiu)

2009-07-03T17:46:00.004+03:00

I've been meaning to post about my adventures this past week (Embassy 4th of July party and the firefighters' museum), but that will have to wait, because this weekend I'm in Sibiu with the interns from the U.S. Embassy. We just arrived here, and it is beautiful! It looks a lot like Krakov, only Romanian. I'll take lots of pictures and catch you up on my travels early next week!

Tyulenovo

2009-06-30T17:03:00.009+03:00

So my big adventure this past weekend was a trip to Bulgaria to do some rock climbing. On my flight over here, I read an article on deep water soloing in the climbing magazine that my mom bought me for the trip. I had never heard of it before, but climbing without ropes over water sounded amazing. Given that I had just heard of it, I was pretty surprised when I got an opportunity to go try it out less than a week later. One of the Romanians I met through CouchSurfing mentioned that he was going to Tyulenovo,Bulgaria to do some deep water soloing, and I invited myself along. I was a bit unsure about driving to Bulgaria for the weekend with people I barely knew, but the risk was definitely worth it. The group was great, the scenery was unbelievable, and deep water soloing was an incredible rush!

If you took a look at the video in my last post, I should mention that my version of deep water soloing was much more relaxed than that. It was sort like what you might do if you couldn't decide whether to hang out on the beach or go climbing, so you decided to combine the two. The people I went with were excellent climbers, and the routes were very difficult, so I didn't do as much climbing as I would have liked. But in addition to trying my hand at deep water soloing, I got to watch some amazing climbing, swim in the Black Sea, and lie in the sun. I took a lot of pictures, and since they are proverbially worth a thousand words, I'll let them speak for themselves:

And here's a short video of some of the climbing I got to see. Unfortunately I didn't capture any good falls or jumps, but I'm told that the guy on the right with the red stripe on his shorts is Romania's best boulderer.

"Hydration is Happiness"

2009-06-27T00:43:00.004+03:00

I am still getting over my jet lag. I've made progress though. Last night, I was able to fall asleep by 2am, compared to 4am the night before that. This morning when I woke up at 9, I felt miserable. I figured that I was just tired, but then I realized that I felt a tiny bit hungover (and no, I had not been out drinking the night before). I had heard somewhere that a large part of the unpleasantness of jet lag is caused by dehydration. I have no idea what possible connection their could be between hydration and time zones, but given that hangovers are largely dehydration, I thought there might be something to that. Lo and behold, as soon as I started guzzling down water, I felt a lot better. I don't know if there is a take-away lesson here, like "drink lots of water if you're traveling across several time zones," but I did think it was interesting. So as a certain IU Outdoor Adventures trip leader claims, maybe hydration really is happiness.

I'll be away from my computer for the next day or so, doing something exciting so that I can come back and write about it. What will I be doing? Here's a hint.

Zacusca and Telemea

2009-06-26T00:25:00.004+03:00

Today I rediscovered a few of my favorite Romanian specialties. For lunch today I had a telemea and zacusca sandwich on fresh, "peasant" bread. My friend Nicole (a fellow intern at the Embassy) introduced me to zacusca last summer. It is a roasted eggplant dip full of spices, roasted peppers, maybe some tomatoes, and who knows what else. It's delicious. According to Nicole, the homemade variety is even better, but I have not been so lucky as to try it. That said, store-bought zacusca is nothing to sneeze at. Last summer when I had to pack my lunch every day, I discovered that pairing zacusca with telemea de oaie or sheep's milk cheese (it tastes kind of like a mild feta) made for a delicious sandwich.

I have not mastered the art of food photography as my friends Martha and Tom have, but I thought I'd include some pictures anyway, just to make the blog a little more interesting.

Zacusca!

Zacusca and telemea sandwiches in progress

In my first few days back in Bucharest, I have been rediscovering simple pleasures like this one. Hopefully I'll have some new adventures to report soon, but for now, it's just eggplant dip and sheep cheese.

On the value of difficulties*

2009-06-24T23:49:00.004+03:00

As those of you who are on facebook or have talked to me already know, I arrived safely in Bucharest. Both of my flights were uneventful and on time. So far my trip has been going amazingly well, so well that I'm a little worried about how long my luck is going to hold out! But for now, I'm not going to think about that; I'm just going to enjoy it.

For my two and a half weeks in Bucharest, I am house-sitting for an Embassy staffer. I worked with her last summer, and when I wrote to her telling her when I'd be in town, she offered to let me stay at her apartment for free if I water her plants. It sounded like an incredible deal to me, so I took her up on it and am doing my best to take excellent care of the plants! She will be back in town for the last week or so of my stay. At that point, I'll be moving to her guest room and trying not to be too much trouble. The apartment is beautiful: a large two-bedroom with a great kitchen. And it is in a lovely part of town, not far from a metro stop, shops, and bus lines.

If you read my blog last summer, you'll know that my arrival and first few days are going infinitely better than last year. I've decided that I'm thankful for the awful time that I had at the beginning of last summer. It was terrible while I was going through it, but I survived with no permanent damage to myself or my (or my parents') finances. Having experienced that, I have some good stories to tell (which I'm sure some of you are tired of hearing...), and more importantly, it puts a lot of things in perspective for me. Right now I'm jet lagged, I've gotten a bit homesick once or twice, and my cell phone didn't work when I got here. All of that? No big deal. I'm having an amazing time. If I didn't have the misery of last May to look back on, I might be frustrated or upset. Instead, I'm enjoying the sunshine and the sights of my new neighborhood, looking forward to the adventures that the next six weeks will bring.

* For anyone who saw the post before I changed the title, I decided that "hardship" was a bit too dramatic.

Third time's the charm

2009-06-22T22:42:00.003+03:00

Welcome back, everyone! In about an hour and a half, I'll be leaving for my third trip to Romania. And as you can see, I'll be blogging again. This summer I'll be spending six weeks in Romania; three weeks in Bucharest to do research on the history of psychoanalysis in Romania and a three week intensive language program in Brasov. This time around I'm much more prepared (I have a place to stay, a bank account that will work in Romania, a Romanian cell phone, etc.), so I expect things to go much more smoothly.

I've retitled the blog for this summer. Ora a Treia e Vraja is my rough translation of "the third time's the charm." I'm not sure if Romanians have a similar saying, but I'll ask around and get back to you on that. Remind me if you don't hear anything about it in the next few posts.

Because I'll only be in Romania for six weeks, this trip promises to be very busy. Nonetheless, I'll do my best to see some new things and places and make time to post some interesting and entertaining reflections for you. As always, comments are very much appreciated!

Sighet (and Sapanta) in Pictures

2008-08-03T07:56:00.007+03:00

This past Thursday and Friday, I got to take some time off work to travel up to Sighetu Marmatiei (informally known as Sighet) to visit the Memorial to the Victims of Communism and to the Resistance, which is the only museum in Romania dedicated to the history of the communist period. All of the other history museums that I have seen in Romania conveniently stop when they reach WWII. Sighet is right on the border with Ukraine in the region of Maramures, and it is fourteen hours by train from Bucharest. Maramures is known for it breathtaking landscapes, its wooden churches, and the traditional Romanian peasant culture that is preserved there to a large extent. While I was in Maramures, I also visited the village of Sapanta, home of the Merry Cemetery and one of the famous wooden churches.

The Sighet Memorial Museum is housed in a former political prison, which was used by the Communists to imprison interwar Romania's intellectual and political elites. Many of them were tortured and died in prison before their arbitrary sentences were up.

All of the exhibits are in former cells. This is the cell where the leader of the National Peasant Party Iuliu Maniu died.

An exhibit on the destruction of Bucharest's historical district in the 1980s.

An exhibit on the Ceausescu cult of personality.

The museum ends with an underground chapel for reflection.

The chapel is surrounded by the names of victims of communist repression carved in stone, not unlike the Vietnam memorial.

A statue depicting political prisoners, designed by a Romanian artist for the museum.

Cimitrul Vesel or "The Merry Cemetery" is full of colorful grave markers like these. Each of them contains a picture of the deceased, often depicting how he or she died or a scene from his or her life.

The grave markers also contain epitaphs, written in first person, poking fun at the deceased's way of life or manner of death. Unfortunately, my Romanian isn't quite good enough to get most of the jokes. I took lots of pictures though, and I plan to ask my Romanian friends to help translate.

Here's the grave marker of a young girl who died in a car accident. The pictures and epitaphs are all on a blue background, representing hope and the sky to which the souls of the dead ascend.

Before visiting this church, I would have said that the wooden churches of Maramures weren't really all that exciting. But I was wrong. I don't think my pictures do them justice, but they are magnificent.

On my way to the wooden church, I met this Romanian family. They invited me in to see their handiwork (the father and son are blacksmiths) and to have some lunch. Unfortunately, I think the food that I ate there gave me food poisoning, which made for a very uncomfortable train ride home.

Here's me sitting in their summer kitchen/woodshed holding a puppy. My poisonous lunch is on the table beside me.

At some point during my long stay in the train bathroom, I noticed the Rom-lish on this sign and decided that I needed a picture of it.

Urcand Pe Munte

2008-07-29T23:03:00.000+03:00

Here's another little Romanian lesson for my readers back home. 'Urcand pe munte' means 'climbing mountains.' This past weekend, I went hiking in the Bucegi Mountains (pronounced Boo-che-jeh) with my new friend, Irina. When we arranged to go hiking, I guess I expected something more like hiking in Indiana. Beautiful scenary, a few hills, but really not much different from a long walk in the woods. Was I ever wrong. The phrase that Romanians translate as "to hike" is "a merge pe munte." Translated literally, it means "to go on the mountains," and I think that somthing gets lost in the translation to "hiking." This weekend I found out that a merge pe munte in Romania, is something of a cross between hiking and amatuer mountain climbing. On Saturday, we hiked up to an altitude of 2505 meters (8219 feet) and spent the night in a very rustic cabin on the top of Omu Peak. On Sunday morning, we packed up and hiked all the way back down to catch our train back to the city. The scenary was amazing, and I took a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, the weather didn't always cooperate, and we spent two hours hiking in the cold rain near Omu Peak. I was exhausted by the end of the trip, but it was completely worth it! My legs are still a bit sore, but I can't wait to get out there again. Enjoy the pictures:

Here's me standing awkwardly in front of a waterfall at the trail head. (As you can see, I hate posing alone in front of tourist attractions and other things like that.)

...mountains...

Here's Irina a few steps behind me on the trail. I don't have any action shots of myself climbing, so you'll have to imagine it.

Irina and some of our fellow hikers crossing a stream and making their way up the trail.

...mountains...

...more mountains...

Some more of our compatriots on the trail ahead of me.

A waterfall.

Onward and upward.

...some more mountains...

...you get the idea.

The rock formation "Babele," or "The old women," is so called because it is said to resemble a group of old women standing around and gossiping.

These are the beds that we slept in at Cabina Omu. It was a very uncomfortable night, because they pack people into these bunks, so that you're sleeping next to some stranger. And on top of that, there were about 25 people in the room, at least 4 of whom snored LOUDLY.

Here's me on day two of the hike. I'm bundled up because it's cold on top of the mountain, and my hair is wet because we had been hiking in a dense fog all morning. I was trying to get a great mountain background here, but I didn't quite succeed.

Romanian "Ice Skates"

2008-07-22T22:54:00.000+03:00

I mentioned in my last post that I've been learning a lot while I've been here. And I have. I've been learning a lot about Romanian politics and international diplomacy. But as I realized when I first arrived here, I've had to relearn a lot of things as well. By relearning, I guess what I mean is adapting to Romanian culture and society. Just learning to live here.

Since I started college and moved out on my own, I've learned to take care of myself and do all kinds of things that my parents used to handle. (Thank you, Mom and Dad!) Simple, everyday things like grocery shopping, banking, and laundry. Through trial and error I learned how much food to buy for the week, which brands to buy or avoid, what temperature to wash clothes at, etc.

OK, you may be wondering where I'm going with all of this, but hang in there. I do have a point. What I'm trying to get at, I guess, is culture shock. When I arrived in Bucharest, I had to relearn a lot of these basic skills. Not because I somehow forgot them on the flight over here, but because things are just different enough to throw you off. When I first got here, it was very disorienting. For example, it took me two to three weeks to figure out how to grocery shop here. That probably sounds pretty ridiculous, because how hard can grocery shopping be, really? But not only are the brands different, but the varieties and quality of the food is different, as are there relative prices. Certain things that are standard issue in American stores are either unavailable or prohibitively expensive here. And take pharmacies for instance. In the US, you can buy over-the-counter items by picking them up off the shelf, no need to talk to the druggist. Here you can't browse. You need to be able to tell the pharmacist exactly what ails you (and I have yet to meet a pharmacist here who speaks any useful English), and then they find a remedy to offer you.

My point is that tonight I realized that I've done it. I've relearned these basic life skills to the point that they are no longer remarkable. They seem perfectly normal to me. Which is why it's always a culture shock to go home as well. It's sort of like when you go ice skating. You get used to the motion of the skates, and then when you take them off and try to walk without them, its a bit tricky for a while. You feel unsteady walking on solid ground, because even though you've been doing it for years, your body adjusted briefly to the motion of skating. I've gotten used to the motions of living here, and when I go home in a month, I'll have to remember how to walk without my Romanian skates.

4 Weeks To Go

2008-07-20T12:28:00.000+03:00

As the title of this post implies, I have four weeks left in Bucharest. My impending departure has inspired a lot of mixed feelings. It's coming up soon, but at the same time, it's still a long way off. It seems like a long time when I'm bored at work or when I'm lonely and missing my friends and family back home. But it seems like it isn't enough time when I think about all the things I still want to do and see here. I still need to find an Adrian Mutu jersey for Alex and other gifts and souvenirs. I'd like to visit the seaside and go hiking in the mountains, and I still have research to finish up for my thesis.

But on the other hand, there are times when I wish I was going home tomorrow. My American friends here are leaving town one by one, and my Romanian friends are often very busy with their own lives (the fact that I recently lost my cell phone doesn't make it any easier to make plans with them...). It will be great to be home where I speak the language fluently and I have my friends and family, and my Bloomington roommates nearby, but at the same time it will be an adjustment. After getting used to Bucharest, returning to the U.S. will be a culture shock (not to the same extent as moving to Bucharest in the first place, but unsettling just the same).

I've been learning a lot here. My Romanian is improving, and I've been learning a lot about the Foreign Service and about Romanian politics through my job at the Embassy. And I've been learning a lot about myself as well. Over the next few weeks, I'll do my best to post more often, hopefully with pictures from my adventures in the mountains and at the Black Sea.

Love and miss you!
Erin

Happy 4th of July!

2008-07-04T09:12:00.000+03:00

Once again, I'm sorry for the lack of posts lately. In addition to getting used to working full time, I've been having some computer problems and spending less time online as a result. But my computer seems to be recovering (with little or no help from my troubleshooting skills), and I have the day off of work today, so I thought I'd take some time to give you an update. There are a few things I wanted to share:

Living abroad as "Oregon Trail"
Several weeks ago I described this trip as an adventure, complete with plenty of difficulties. Although things have improved considerably, it still isn't all fun and excitement. Yes, I'm glad that I'm here. I'm enjoying myself. I'm learning a lot and seeing and doing things that I couldn't at home. But there are still challenges. For example, I'm still having banking problems, and there's no "Apple Store" to fix my computer for me. On a lighter note, I went and got my hair cut at a place in my neighborhood by a stylist (if you could call her that) who didn't speak any English.

So last night it occurred to me that living in Romania is sort of like playing a 21st Century, globalized version of Oregon Trail. You progress through the summer, taking in the sights and meeting new people, until a screen comes up saying "You have no way to access your money," or "You've been asked to move out of your apartment," and you have to decide what to do about it. There are less dire messages, such as "You need to get a haircut. Will you go to the overpriced European Salon near work, or take your chances with the glorified barbershop that charges about $9 for a cut and 'style'?" or "The vendor at the farmers' market switched the fresh lettuce you asked for with some rotten stuff from the back of the stand." I'm just lucky that I haven't gotten any of the really bad ones, the equivalent of "You have dysentery." I have six weeks left, and I'm hoping to avoid "Your passport has been stolen," "You've been arrested on false pretenses by a corrupt cop," and "You've been bitten by a stray dog. Game Over."

Timisoara
On our way back from Krakow, Adam and I had an unexpected layover in Timisoara, a city in Western Romania, near the Hungarian border. Timisoara is very multi-cultural, with a substantial population of Romanians, Hungarians, Serbs, Germans, and other ethnicities, and it is also the city where the Romanian Revolution started in 1989. I've heard that it is a very nice place, so the few hours that we had to spend there were not entirely unwelcome. Here are a few pictures from Timisoara:

A Romanian Orthodox Cathedral

Inside the Cathedral

Houses in the central square of Timisoara

Caine
I know it's been a while, but here's another Romanian lesson. The Romanian word for dog is caine. Unfortunately blogger won't allow me to insert accent marks, but it is pronounced like this: cuh-ee-nay.
Romania is full of dogs. Stray dogs, pet dogs, feral dogs. Sometimes you can't really tell whether they belong to someone or not. In the city, many of the stray dogs are well fed and friendly because people put food out for them or throw them scraps regularly. Here's a picture of a sad looking stray at the train station in Sinaia:

Caine

Tonight I'm going to the 4th of July party at the U.S. Ambassador's residence. I'll try to take some pictures, and either way, I'll be sure to tell you all about it!

Krakow

2008-06-22T15:55:00.000+03:00

I'm sorry that I've been posting so infrequently lately. My new job at the Embassy has been keeping me pretty busy, but more on that later. I wanted to share some photos from Krakow with you. As I may have mentioned, Krakow, which was the capital of the Kingdom of Poland from the 11th century until the end of the 16th century, is beautiful. I highly recommend visiting Krakow if you ever get the chance. I could go on and on, but because a picture is worth a thousand words, I think it would be more efficient to post a lot of pictures.

One of the most impressive sights in Krakow is Wawel Castle:

Which, incidentally, has really cool drain spouts...

...and a "dragon's den" cave underneath the castle!

Wawel Castle overlooks the Vistula River...

...which Adam and I explored in a paddle boat one morning...

...and took pictures of the castle and other sights on the shore.

Krakow also has a beautiful central square, which hosts a market by day, and occasional fire performers by night.

We ran into a large walking beer, giving out coupons for free Tyskie. (or was it Zweik?)*

*Tyskie and Zweik are two of the Polish beers that we sampled in Krakow.

Budapest 2008

2008-06-10T08:18:00.000+03:00

Those of you who read this blog two years ago will know that I spent five days in Budapest on my study abroad program. So this time around, I tried to see some things that I missed last time, in addition to making sure that Adam visited certain not-to-be-missed sites. Here are some pictures from our stay in Budapest:

The hostel we stayed in was an apartment in a beautiful pre-war building with a central courtyard (shown here). We pretty much had the place to ourselves the whole time we were there, so it was like having our own apartment in Budapest.

On our first day of sightseeing, we visited Heroes Square and a large park on the Pest side of Budapest. Above is the Hungarian Agricultural Museum which is in the park.

Also in the park is a Turkish Bathhouse, which we returned to later in the week to go swimming.

We also visited the Hungarian Parliament...

...and the Statue Park, which houses a collection of communist era statues that once stood in various locations around Budapest. Here I am with the "Workers Inherit the World" statue.

And here's Adam sitting in an old Trabant, the East German car that was cheaply produced under communism and sold throughout the Eastern Bloc.

We visited St. Istvan's Basilica and went up in the tower for a beautiful view of Pest.

And at the foot of the Basilica, we had delicious gelato.

We also visited the For Sale Pub, where the walls are covered in business cards and notes that its patrons have left there over there years. We wrote a note on one of my old business cards and tacked it on the wall near our seat. Next time we visit we'll have to see if it's still there.

On our last day in Budapest, we crossed over to the Buda side and visited Castle Hill, where this new Palace is built on the remains of the older one.

Which you can see a part of here.

Castle Hill looks out over the rooftops on beautiful Buda. After catching a glimpse of Buda on our way back from Castle Hill, Adam and I decided that we hadn't spent enough time sightseeing on that side of the Danube.

And speaking of the Danube, here is another view across the river, with St. Istvan's and Pest in the background.

Postcards

2008-06-06T20:34:00.000+03:00

While I was in Budapest and Krakow, I picked up a few postcards, and I'm looking for people to send them to. If you'd like a postcard from me, send me an email at ekbiebuyck@gmail.com with your address! If you email me your address, I'll send you a postcard, but it may take a few weeks to a month to arrive, so please be patient!

Back in Bucharest

2008-06-05T17:52:00.001+03:00

Well, it's been a while since I posted last, and a lot has happened in the meantime. I still don't have an internet connection at home, so I won't be able to write as much as I'd like to right now, but rest assured I'll slowly fill you in. For now, I'll try to cover the most important parts and throw in a few pictures.

I met Adam at the Budapest airport last Tuesday afternoon, and after finding our hostel (it was harder than you'd think), we spent three days relaxing and touring Budapest. While in Budapest, I received an email from the State Department informing me that I have (finally) been granted a Secret level security clearance. The clearance process took much longer than I expected, so I had almost resigned myself to not working at the Embassy this summer. Needless to say, I was very pleasantly surprised to receive my clearance. This means that I get to stay in Bucharest until mid-August, instead of heading home at the end of June. I've been emailing and talking with the HR people in Washington and at the Embassy here, and it looks like I will be starting work sometime next week.

After three nights in Budapest, Adam and I took an overnight train to Krakow, Poland. Everyone I know who has been to Krakow has told me how beautiful it is, and they weren't wrong. Krakow was delightful. Due to poor timing, we weren't able to see all of the sights that we wanted to see, but I suppose that gives me a good reason to go back! I'll post more about Krakow with more pictures soon.

After three days and two nights in Krakow, Adam and I spent a grueling two days traveling back to Bucharest. Because of the train schedules, and various other problems, we had to take two separate trains, one from Krakow to Budapest, another from Budapest to Timisoara, and a third from Timisoara to Bucharest. The last train we the worst, because the sleeping cars were all booked, and we had to spend all of Tuesday night sitting in uncomfortable seats under bright florescent lights. We arrived in Bucharest on Wednesday morning and picked up the keys to my new apartment. The apartment is very nice, and I am still getting unpacked and settled in. It feels so nice to be unpacked somewhere and to have my rent paid. Now that I have a place to live and my security clearance, I can relax and enjoy my summer. I'm looking forward to starting work, and it is great having Adam here while I get settled into my new place and my new job. Tonight we are going to try to cook chili using the ingredients that we were able to find here in Bucharest. Pofta Buna!*

A view of Pest from Castle Hill in Buda

Wawel Castle in Krakow

A picture of Wawel Castle taken from a boat on the Vistula River

*The Romanian version of "Bon Appetit"

Housing Update/Trip to Budapest

2008-05-25T15:52:00.000+03:00

I tried to upload some pictures of Cismigiu Park, but Blogger was giving me a lot of trouble, so I guess those will have to wait. In the mean time, I wanted to give you an update on my housing situation. After a week or so of frustration, I've found an apartment (I seem to recall writing something like this before...). It is in another old apartment bloc, but this one is remodeled, and the interior is very nice. It is a spacious two bedroom apartment, which I will share with Jonathan, who is from France and is working for a construction company here in Bucharest. I'm looking forward to getting settled in (again) and to having reliable internet access.

However, I won't be moving in for another week, because the apartment isn't available until June 3rd. This actually works out great, though, because my boyfriend, Adam is coming to visit this week, and we're planning on spending a week traveling. As things stand now, we'll be spending three days in Budapest, Hungary followed by two days in Krakow, Poland. We'll be returning just in time to move into my new apartment. I'll be taking a lot of pictures during our travels, but I'm not sure what my internet situation will be, so I may not be able to post much until after I get back from Krakow. So wish me Drum Bun (the Romanian equivalent of Bon Voyage), and try not to miss me too much!

My Research

2008-05-23T17:41:00.000+03:00

One of the reasons for my trip was to conduct research for my masters thesis on Romanian communism. I'll be writing my thesis over the course of the next year back in Indiana, but it will require sources that I can only get my hands on in Romania. Therefore, when I haven't been trying to find a place to live or solve banking problems, I've been doing research. I've spent a few days in the Arhivele Nationale ale Romaniei (National Archives) and today I went to the Biblioteca Nationala a Romaniei (National Library). For a history nerd like me, it is really exciting to see these documents first hand. On Wednesday, I read the minutes from a meeting in which the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party made a momentous decision in 1966. Right across from the Archives is Cismigiu Park, Bucharest's most famous park. Here is a picture of the Archives building from the park:

And here:

Is the signature of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Good Bye Lenin!

2008-05-21T15:35:00.000+03:00

For those of you who have not seen the film Good Bye Lenin!, I highly recommend it. As someone who has always had lingering sympathies for communist reformers (the ones like Imre Nagy in Hungary who wanted to create a more democratic socialist system), the way the main character seeks to combine the best aspects of pre- and post- 1989 Germany tugs at my heartstrings. Not to ruin the story for all of you, but it revolves around a young man in East Germany whose mother was in a coma during the fall of the Berlin Wall and all of the events surrounding it. She wakes up after a year or so of changes in the German Democratic Republic, and the doctors tell her son that any major shocks could be very dangerous for her. In order to keep the shock of the fall of communism from harming his mother, he tries to keep her in the dark, hiding the changes that have taken place and fabricating news stories for his bedridden mother.

The reason I'm telling you about all of this is two-fold. First, I want to encourage you to see an excellent film. And second, it's a round about way of introducing some photos. As Good By Lenin reveals, a lot of things changed in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. However, there are still places (a lot of them, really) where you can find the aesthetics of communism. If you are feeling "ostolgic" as they say in Germany, look no further than an un-remodeled apartment in Bucharest. Many of the apartments in the blocs that line Bucharest's streets retain their original finishings, making them lived-in relics of the communist past. Some apartments in the blocs have been remodeled and are very nice by Western standards. Before I left the apartment that I was staying in last week, I took some pictures to share with you. Obviously many of the consumer goods that are now available were not around under communism, so I'm not sure how much has changed about this apartment, but I feel confident that a lot of the fixtures remain the same. So here they are:

Bucataria- The kitchen

Balconul- The balcony

Baia- The bathroom

Sufrageria-The dining room, where I was staying, on the pullout couch in the picture.

The Paris of the East

2008-05-19T14:21:00.000+03:00

I've been told that Bucharest is called "The Paris of the East," and I never quite understood why anyone would call it that. Much of the city is made up of ugly concrete apartment buildings and equally unattractive edifices. During the communist period, dictator Nicolae Ceausescu destroyed entire neighborhoods full of beautiful old homes and churches in order to remake the city as he wanted it. As a result, Bucharest is home to the Palace of the People (now called the Palace of the Parliament), which is the second largest building in the world, and Bulavardul Unirii, the central street of Bucharest, which is exactly one meter wider than the Champs-Elysees in Paris. But on the other hand, it is lacking much of the grandeur and beauty that led people to compare it to Paris. One of my new friends here, Radu, used to be a tour guide for German tourists, and he was kind enough to show me some of the sights of the "Old City," a beautiful neighborhood of buildings from the 19th and early 20th century. It survived the communist period, even if some of the buildings are a bit out of repair. Looking at these beautiful streets, I can start to see why someone would call Bucharest the Paris of the East.

This is the CEC Bank building. It was originally the national bank of Romania, which was founded after the Kingdom of Romania gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire. The first people to make deposits at this bank were the King and Queen of Romania. They wanted to inspire confidence in the national bank, so they both opened accounts there.

Here is the Romanian History Museum. I'm looking forward to seeing the inside of it!

Strada Lipscani, the Street of the Lipscans, is so called because in the 19th century it was home to many stores run by merchants from Leipzig, Germany.

Valea Regilor, The Valley of the Kings, is a small walking-street full of restaurants and cafes serving Mediteranian and Near Eastern food. The street is covered will a stained glass roof, which ends in a beautiful dome:

Housing Update

2008-05-18T16:52:00.000+03:00

There's good news and there's bad news here in Bucharest. Which would you like to hear first? I guess I'll start with the bad news, so that I can end this post on a good note.

My living situation here has gone south rather quickly. As I mentioned in my last post, I've been having a lot of trouble getting access to my bank account. Unfortunately this meant that I did not have enough money to pay both my first month's rent and my security deposit upfront. My roommate/landlady, Magda, was very understanding at first, and she told me that I could pay her when I had the money. However, by the next day she had changed her mind, and she was suddenly worried that I was trying to rip her off. Naturally, her suspicion of me does not make for a very cozy living situation, and I have decided to move out. I'm not looking forward to apartment hunting again, but I think it will be for the best.

Before I decided to move out, I took some pictures from the balcony and the kitchen window. It has been beautiful and sunny since I arrived, which makes for nice pictures. Here they are:

Now for the good news. After calling around a bit and worrying about where I'm going to stay while I look for a new place, I got in touch with Nicole, the summer intern in the economics section of the U.S. Embassy. Nicole is also a masters student at Indiana University's Russian and East European Institute, although I hadn't met her because she has been living in Romania for a year on a Fulbright Fellowship. I called Nicole, and she said that I can stay with her while I look for somewhere to live. It was a great relief to talk to someone who can relate to what I'm going through. I'm so thankful for Nicole, and everyone else who has helped me or been friendly to me over the past few days! I'll keep you updated on my second attempt at finding an apartment.

An Adventure

2008-05-17T14:55:00.000+03:00

As those of you who have talked to me since I arrived in Bucharest already know, it's been a rough couple of days. I've had a lot of trouble with money (it took all day, five banks, and waiting in countless lines to get my travelers' checks cashed, and my debit/ATM card won't work in Romania), and I've been feeling very isolated and lonely. It's not an easy thing to be alone so far from home. When I've traveled before, I've always been with someone I knew. Whether it was family, friends, or just some people on the same study abroad program, there were always people around that I knew and could talk with in English. This trip is a bit different. I'm here alone. I didn't (and mostly still don't) know anyone in the city. Nothing that terrible has happened; my passport hasn't been stolen, I haven't been arrested for no reason by corrupt police officers, or anything horrble like that. But just the same, it hasn't been easy.

However, things are slowly improving. I think I've figured out the money situation. I've found an apartment with a somewhat comfortable bed, a good location, and a nice roommate. My Romanian is improving by leaps and bounds. And today is the first day that I haven't woken up, realized where I was, and wanted to cry. In fact, I haven't cried at all today. It might seem like a small thing, but it's a sign that things are getting better. One of the reasons for this improvement was a change in my thinking about the situation. I started to reflect on the fact that this is an adventure. And yes, adventures are supposed to be fun and exciting, but if I've learned anything from reading Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and watching Star Wars, it's that adventures aren't always fun, and they often aren't easy. There are a lot of times during adventures when things just flat out suck, times when you want to give up and go home. And when you're watching a movie or reading a book, you get to share in the suspense and excitement, but you don't have to experience the difficulties. So I started to think of this as an adventure. Not just the exciting parts, but a real adventure, hard parts and all. That's been helping me to feel better about being lonely, about wanting to go home, and all of that. It's sort of like facing down Voldemort, or blowing up the Death Star, or trudging through Mordor, only much more mundane.

I'm sorry if that was a bit of a downer. It really isn't supposed to be. Because the point is that I'm feeling better. I'm feeling more settled, and I met one of my Romanian "pen pals" last night, and he showed me around the city a bit. I'm looking forward to meeting more people and making friends here. I'm finding out that Bucharest is actually kind of a cool place, if you know where to look. But more on that (with pictures!) later. I just tried to upload some pictures that I took this morning, but unfortunately I'm still working from an "internet cafe" (which is full of teenage and pre-teen boys playing video games. One of them keeps showing off his English by saying charming things like "Oh, my f***ing God!"), and for some reason, this computer won't let me upload photos. More to come soon! Miss you!

Bucharest Day 3

2008-05-15T11:24:00.000+03:00

Sorry for the long wait, but just so you know, I made it here safely. I arrived in Bucharest at about 3:30pm local time on Tuesday afternoon. I'm blogging from an internet "cafe" where they charge by the minute for the use of their computers, so I'll have to make this quick. Here are a few things that I wanted to share:

The Hostel
Ok, so the hostel that I stayed in was less than ideal. If you're coming to Bucharest, I do not reccomend the Funky Chicken Hostel. Now, I haven't seen the movie "Hostel," but I know the gist of it from previews and so on. I can assure you that this hostel was nothing like the one in the film. The most dangerous things about this hostel were the terribly uncomfortable mattresses, the faint mildew smell, and last but not least, my hair dryer. I attempted to plug in my hairdryer this morning, using the apropriate (or so I thought)voltage converter, and as soon as I tried to turn it on, the plug sparked, and the power went out to the entire floor of the hostel. It took a while for the proprietress to figure out how to work the fuse box, but eventually the lights came back on, and she came to tell me "It was something in the house. I had only to push a button."

My New Apartment
Thankfully, I get to check out of said hostel today because I have found an apartment. I'm moving in at about 3 this afternoon. I'm really looking forward to moving in and unpack some of my things. I'm renting a room from a Romanian woman named Magda. The apartment is small but clean, and it has a balony. I'm living in what is technically the dining room and sleeping on a day bed/futon-like thing. The apartment is on the seventh floor of a Ceausescu-Era apartment bloc, and it is about 100 meters from a metro station. The area that it's in is a pretty residential area in central Bucharest. I'll post pictures soon, and we'll see if you agree with me about the prettiness of the neighborhood. It may be that you have to love Eastern Europe to appreciate its understated charm. Oh, and one more thing, Magda doesn't speak English. This will make things slightly difficult, but I think that in the long run it will be great. It will be great practice for me, like a live-in Romanian tutor.

Dor
Before I go, I thought I'd leave you with a little Romanian lesson. The first word I'm going to share with you has no direct translation in English. The word is 'dor.'
It is a noun, and the best way to translate it is "an intense longing for home, one's country, or one's people." I wanted to share this word with you today, because that's how I feel this morning. Dor. I think I finally understand what it means. It hurts, almost physically, to be so far from everyone I care about. I miss you all! Mi-e dor de va.

By this time tomorrow...

2008-05-12T08:20:00.000+03:00

...I'll be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. My flight leaves tomorrow at 6pm, and I arrive in Bucharest at about 3pm on Tuesday. I'm pretty much ready to go. I just need to get my bags organized tomorrow morning and buy some outlet converters, then I'll be set. I'll be sure to update once I get settled in and get an internet connection!

Welcome Back!

2008-05-03T02:46:00.000+03:00

As you may have heard, I'm going back to Romania this summer to do research for my MA thesis and (hopefully) work in the political section of the U.S. Embassy. At the request of some of my family and friends, I'm going to be keeping a blog of my travels again. All of the posts from my 2006 trip are still here if you care to read them, but I've changed the title of the blog. In 2006 it was called 'Romania Si Asa Mai Departe,' which means 'Romania and so on.' The new incarnation of the blog is entitled 'Vara Mea in Bucuresti,' meaning 'My Summer in Bucharest.'

To get things started, I'll fill you in on the logistics and purpose of this trip. I leave for Bucharest on Monday, May 12 from JFK airport in New York. After a layover in Madrid, I will arrive in Bucharest in the late afternoon of May 13. Once there, I'll spend a few days looking for a place to live and finding the archives and libraries that I'll need to visit for my thesis. After I get settled in, I'll spend the first month researching, sitting in on a class at the National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, and traveling around Hungary and Romania with Adam, who will be visiting for three weeks. By the second week of June, I hope to start my internship at the U.S. Embassy, where I'll work for ten weeks before returning to the U.S. on August 19.

Right now, my departure is just over a week away, and I'm simultaneously excited and nervous. The reasons for my excitement should be pretty obvious. I've been wanting to get back to Romania ever since I left two years ago; I'm looking forward to seeing more of the country and improving my language skills; and it'll be an adventure. The nervousness is probably pretty easy to explain, too. I don't know where I'm going to live once I get there; I have to pack enough clothes and other essentials for three months (I'm sure to forget something!); and I still haven't heard about my security clearance for my state department internship. I'll explain more about that in future posts. In the meantime, wish me luck with my packing and apartment hunting!

About to leave for home

2006-07-17T12:52:00.000+03:00

After 5 days out in the wilderness (well, not so much the wilderness as small farming towns), I am back in Gura Humorului. As I said in my last post, it is a very small town, so it is rather funny that it feels like 'civilization' compared to where we've been. Of course I will be posting nice detailed entries complete with pictures when I get home (I'm a bit dissapointed that I couldn't post them while actually in Romania. It was nice having all of you follow along with my adventures.), but I'll just give you a quick run down of where I've been and where I'm going.

First things first, where I've been over the past week:
-From Gura Humorului, we headed out to Vatra Moldovita (tiny farming town surrounding the Moldovita Monastery), where we stayed in a traditional Romanian farmhouse for two nights.
-After two days without a shower, we were ready to move on, and we left for Suceavita. Suceavita is another small town, but with less farming. Most of the activity in Suceavita seemed to revolve around the Monastery. There was not much to do or see in Suceavita, so we moved on after one night.
-After hitchhiking to Radauti to use the ATM, we caught a train to Putna. Putna is about 10 km from the Ukranian border, and the monastery there is actually home to a very active community of monks. We befriended a preist who spoke English, and stayed for two nights in the campground run by the monks, after which we returned to Gura Humorului.

Where I'm going now:
-I am leaving for Cluj-Napoca by train at about 3pm today. Patrick is staying in Romania for another two weeks before heading back to France until mid-August, so he will acompany me as far as Vatra Dornei. I will arrive in Cluj at about 8pm.
-I had hoped to spend the night in Cluj, but I don't think that is going to work out, so I will get on a sleeping car at about 1am bound for Budapest. My train will arrive in Budapest at about 8am.
-My flight leaves Budapest for London at about 3pm. So that gives me 7 hours to get from the train station to the airport (more time than strictly necessary? I think so).
-I'll get into London Gatwick at around 6pm on Tuesday. My flight to Detroit Metro leaves Wednesday at around noon. Because London is ridiculuosly expensive, I plan on spending the night in the airport. So I will have about 16 hours to find England football jerseys. Wish me luck :).

Bucovina

2006-07-08T22:43:00.000+03:00

Here's a quick update to let you all know where I am and what I am doing! I am currently in the town of Gura Humoruliu in the Bucovina region of Romania. Bucovina is in northeastern Romania. If you look at the map, it is the orange region at the top-right. Gura Humorului is a little over 30 kilometers west of Suceava, which is on the map. I haven't been able to update lately because it is a very small town, and I haven't much hope of finding somewhere that has wireless internet. Therefore, I am writing this update from a computer in Gura Humoruliu's one "Internet Cafe" (which is less of a cafe and more of a room full of computers where adolescent boys sit and play video games). However, I have been taking lots of pictures and writing detailed updates on my computer, which I promise to post as soon as I can. Unfortunately that may not happen until I am back in the U.S.

The study abroad program is over, as I may have mentioned before, and I am now traveling with my friend Patrick. He is a photo journalist, and he is in Romania to develop a story on the Painted Monestaries of Bucovina and tourism in this region. If you'd like to see some of his previous work from China and northern Michigan, visit his website at www.pwellever.com. Today we visited the first of several monestaries, Voronet, which is also the most famous. At 4 kilometers outside of Gura Humoruliu, it is the easiest to get to from where we are staying (we are staying in a hotel room that costs aproximately $14 per night!). Tomorrow we will visit the next nearest, which is called Humor, and from there we need to decide how we are going to get to the other monestaries (all of which are out of walking distance). It is wonderful to be back in Romania, and the hospitality here is amazing. I don't know how I'm going to leave to go home!

Thanks for all the comments and emails! I love reading them!

Noapte Buna! (good night)

The Black Sea- Friday, June 23

2006-07-03T21:11:00.000+03:00

The following day we did not have class, as it was a Friday, and so we left at 11 am for the beach. Koc University is not far from the town Kilyos on the Black Sea, in fact you can see the point where the Bosphorus opens into the Black Sea from the campus. The beach was nice; it wasn’t too crowded or anything, and we had very nice weather. It was hot and sunny (as it was for my entire stay in Turkey), and the water was clear and refreshing. The Black Sea was interesting in that it was salty and had waves like the ocean, but like a large lake, it did not seem to have very dramatic tides. From where we were located, we could see ships lined up waiting for their turn to go through the narrow Bosphorus. At first it didn’t seem like they were moving at all, but throughout the day, we noticed that they slowly moved south and then disappeared, replaced by another ship. Folke, his wife, Omatee, and their son, Stefan, came with us to the beach. It was a nice relaxing day of reading and drinking wine on the beach and swimming in the Black Sea. We stayed and had dinner in Kilyos before returning to campus.
Beach on the Black Sea
The girls on the beach
Folke and his son Stefan

Istanbul (not Constantinople)- Thursday, June 22

2006-07-03T20:38:00.000+03:00

On Thursday, June 22, we finally made our first excursion into Istanbul. I don’t know if I have mentioned this already, but the ride down from Koc (be it to Sariyer or to Istanbul) is always a bit of an adventure. Istanbul and the surrounding area are rather hilly, almost mountainous, and of course, many of the streets were built before the advent of cars. This means that the streets are narrow and wind up and down hills like crazy. To complete the rollercoaster-like effect of traveling in and around Istanbul, the bus and taxi drivers have absolutely no fear, and some are downright crazy. They don’t like sitting in traffic, so oftentimes we found ourselves hurtling through a maze of side streets in order to move ahead of the throng. As a result of all of these factors, there was never a dull moment on the hour-long ride into Istanbul, and I always felt a bit ill by the time we reached the city.

When we arrived in Sultanahmet (a tourist area in the European side of Istanbul), we set up a time to meet for dinner, and we set off to take in the sites. Because we had class that morning, we only had a few hours to explore before dinner and before all of the museums and tourist attractions closed for the evening. After a brief visit to the Blue Mosque, which as you can see below is amazingly beautiful, I set off for the Topkapi Palace.
The Blue Mosque
The Ayasofia (originally an Orthodox Church, it was converted into a mosque during Ottoman rule)

The Topkapi Palace was the home of the Ottoman Sultans during (surprise, surprise) the Ottoman Empire. The palace has been transformed into a museum displaying not only the rooms of the palace, but also the jewels, treasures, and religious relics of Ottoman times. However, I am getting ahead of myself. It took me quite some time to locate the palace.

Following the map in my handy Istanbul guidebook, I wandering into a park that surrounds the palace. The park was very picturesque, and it was filled with couples of all ages walking hand-in-hand or sitting on benches in semi-secluded alcoves. When I entered the park, a young Turkish security officer yelled to me from his motorbike: “Hello, my friend! Welcome to paradise! How are you?” I continued to walk through the park looking for the entrance to the palace, but instead I found a tea garden on a hill overlooking the Bosphorus. The view and the simple fact that I was in Istanbul were too much to resist, so I took a break from my palace-hunt to sit and enjoy the view for a bit.
The park surrounding the Topkapi Palace
Tea Garden overlooking the Bosphorus

The Topkapi Palace was beautiful, if a bit expensive, and the best part of it was the Harem. In Ottoman times, the Harem was the private quarters of the Sultan and his family, which consisted of the Mother Sultan (i.e. the Sultan’s mother), his wives and concubines, and his children. The Harem also housed the eunuchs who guarded the harem, a hospital, and a school for the Sultan’s children and concubines. Concubines were instructed in the arts, including music and dance, and the most beautiful and intelligent among them were also instructed in reading, writing, etc. in order to prepare them for the possibility of being the keeper of the treasury or the Mother Sultan (both of which were powerful positions within the Harem and in the Empire itself) in the future.

The outside of the Topkapi Palace
A terrace in the Harem
Throne room in the Harem

My first trip into Istanbul also introduced me to two of my favorite things about the city (and one of my least favorite, but I’ll fill you in on that when I write about the Grand Bazaar): the call to prayer and the multitudes of minarets. One of the five pillars of Islam is prayer, specifically prayer five times a day. In order to fulfill this pillar, Muslims are called upon to pray at dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, early evening, and dusk. Every day, at each of these times, mosques all over the city broadcast the ‘call to prayer’ from tall, thin towers called minarets. The called to prayer is as beautiful as it is incomprehensible (to me as a non-Arabic speaker), and it is one of the things that I will miss about Istanbul. The other is the effect that the mosques have on the city skyline. The city is dotted all over with thin, pointed towers, sometimes standing alone, sometimes in pairs. The result is a beautiful and constant reminder that you have ventured into the Islamic world.

Good Morning, Bulgaria

2006-07-03T19:54:00.000+03:00

It is 11:08 am on Sunday, July 2nd, and I am writing this entry from a train somewhere in Bulgaria. The study abroad program ended on Friday, and we all went our separate ways. Megan and Rachel left for 12 days in Germany, Ravi and Jack for a month in Brussels, and everyone else headed home. My train left Istanbul at 10 pm Saturday, so I had one last day at Koc and a final evening in Istanbul. I got to the train station two hours early and had dinner and apple tea in a little outdoor restaurant near the Sirkeci Station. The table where I sat was in the shadow of a small mosque, which meant that I was able to listen to the call to prayer one last time.

When I boarded the train, I was pleased to discover that I had a compartment to myself. I reserved a bed in a second-class sleeping car (second class means three of four beds), and I had been a bit worried about sharing a compartment with two strangers. Once I got settled on the train, I met the two young men in the next compartment over, Matthew and Dan from England. They have a Eurorail pass for a month, and they have been traveling all around Europe for about two and a half weeks, staying one or two nights in each city, and spending about as many nights on trains. We chatted for a while, and I told them about Alex’s request for a Peter Crouch World Cup jersey. They filled me in on ‘the Crouch’ as they called him, and they even demonstrated the robot dance that he does after scoring a goal.

At about 3 am, we finally reached the Turkish boarder. We were instructed to take our passports and get off the train. I did so, taking my purse, containing most of my valuables, with me. When we got to the platform, the immigration window was not open. For some reason, we could not go through customs, and so we waited, milling around with no explanation for the delay. After about five minutes, it really began to bother me that my computer was still in my unlocked compartment (you can only lock them from the inside), so I went back to the train to get it. When I returned, the situation had not changed. The situation did not change for a total of TWO HOURS, after which they finally opened the customs office, and we formed a line. It was 6 am before we finally left the station, so I think we might be two hours behind schedule. Thankfully we did not need to disembark on the Bulgarian side. They simply stopped the train for about an hour and took our passports, while we were treated to the delightful early morning sounds of loud Bulgarian children playing on the platform. So there is the story of my journey thus far. I finally got a few hours sleep after we crossed into Bulgaria, but according to my original ticket (and I wouldn’t be surprised if we were two hours late) I still have about six and a half hours before I reach Bucuresti. Which means I might finally get my blog up to date!

A night out in Sariyer

2006-06-27T20:24:00.000+03:00

As I mentioned earlier, we are rather far from Istanbul, and it is a bit of an ordeal to get there. So unfortunately, we didn't make it down to the city until Thursday, but we did go down to the nearest town, Sariyer for dinner on Tuesday night. Sariyer is a nice little town right on the Bosphorus. So it has a lot of seafood restaurants with beautiful views over the water. We chose one such restaurant, and ended up having a very interesting night.

The view from our table

Most of us ordered the sea bass, which was served whole, much to our surprise. The fish was delicious, and the hospitality was great. The manager brought us an appetizer and later a dessert on the house.

Our group at the table

Me with the remains of my fish

Halfway through our fabulous meal, the manager approached our table and asked if we liked the music that was playing. We said that we did, and he told us that there was a party going on up on the roof with music and dancing. He continued to explain that a student was having a party up there, but only five people had shown up, and she was pretty disappointed. So he asked if we would like to go up there when we had finished our meal. We were a bit apprehensive, but in the end, we decided that we should go and check it out.

When we arrived on the roof and found the party, we discovered that it consisted of about seven Turkish teenage girls in prom dresses. They were very excited that we were there (well to be honest, they were a bit more excited to see the boys), even though we couldn't speak Turkish, and they could not speak English. With the help of the restaurant manager, we found out that it was a graduation party for the girls who were graduating from high school. We stayed for a while trying to converse with the girls, dancing, and drinking free wine. It was quite the experience, and I'm sure it gave them a great story to tell their friends.

Me and one of the new graduates

Guinea pig fortune tellers

2006-06-27T13:24:00.000+03:00

As I said earlier, I really wanted to get a picture of Johnny and Gabrielle, the fortune telling guinea pigs in Sofia. Although I was not able to find them again to get my own picture, I did find this picture of some fortune telling guinea pigs in action. The picture is from a website about someone else's trip to Sofia, and the pigs look a lot like the ones that told my fortune. I wonder if they are the same ones!

Also, in Istanbul, I have seen a few rabbits that tell fortunes, so maybe I will have my fortune told by small animals once again. And I will be sure to have my camera with me this time.

Koc University

2006-06-26T20:29:00.000+03:00

So I am currently in Turkey about 45 minutes to an hour outside of Istanbul. We are staying at Koc (pronounced 'coach') University in Sariyer, Turkey. The University is a very strange place. It is in a somewhat remote area outside of Istanbul, and it is very heavily guarded and surrounded by barbed wire. It has a bookstore, a grocery store, a hair salon, travel agency, restaurant, exercise facility, bank, post office, and pretty much everything except for a swimming pool. The buildings are all made out of the same color stone, as is much of the ground in between them. So it is like being on some strange military compound, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. I will do my best to take some pictures of the campus for you before I head out, but I don't have any yet.

When we want to go into Istanbul or to Sariyer (the nearest town) it is kind of a big undertaking. So unfortunately we don't have the freedom to explore Istanbul like I would like to. But we have been down there twice thus far. I am sorry for getting behind on my blog updates. I will do my best to get it up to date (with pictures and everything) in the next couple of days.

Here are some pictures of the campus:

To Istanbul

2006-06-19T20:09:00.000+03:00

We left Sofia at 10 Monday morning on a bus to Istanbul. It was a nine hour bus ride, but thankfully the bus was relatively empty, which meant that we each had two seats to ourselves. As I'm sure you can imagine, that made the trip much more bearable.

The most notable part of the experience was crossing the border. There was no bathroom on the bus, so by the time we reached the Bulgarian side of the border, we had to go pretty badly. After we went through customs, we were permitted to leave the bus to use the WC, as it is called in these parts. You may be wondering why I am telling you all of this, but don't worry, you are about to find out. When we walked into the bathroom, we noticed that it was very different from any of the WCs that we had seen in the U.S. and in Eastern Europe. This is what the "toilet" looked like:

It is basically a hole in the ground with two little places for your feet, and a chain on the wall that you pull to flush it. I have run into a few more of these since I have been in Turkey, but the first time I saw one, it was a bit of a shock.

At the Turkish border, we each had to buy a 90 day multiple entry visa for Turkey, which is this cool sticker that they put in my passport. It took us an hour to go through customs on the Turkish side, because we had to take all of our bags off of the buss to be inspected by a customs official. We arrived in Istanbul at about 6:30 and were greeted by part of our group, as well as Folke (our professor) and his wife and son, who took us to the University.

Sofia, Sofia, Sofia

2006-06-18T22:44:00.000+03:00

Three days after leaving Sofia, Bulgaria, I finally get around to telling you about it! I have been rather busy going to class and getting settled in Istanbul, so please forgive the delay. In spite of the fact that I only spent two days in Bulgaria, I have a lot to fill you in. I’ve decided to divide this entry into a few subsections in order to arrange my thoughts. So here they are:

My impressions of Bulgaria (and Sofia in particular)-
One of the most notable things about my short trip to Bulgaria was the language. Unlike Romanian (which is a Romance language and uses the Latin alphabet), Bulgarian is Slavic and uses the Cyrillic alphabet (or maybe the Greek alphabet, I’m not entirely sure). But the long and short of it is that it was absolutely incomprehensible to us, and to make things worse, the tourist map that we bought at the train station was labeled using the Latin alphabet, making it difficult to match the street names on the map to the Cyrillic street signs. Here is an example of Bulgarian writing:

Continuing on the theme of cultural differences, it is worth noting that in Bulgaria shaking your head from left to right means ‘yes’, while shaking it up and down means ‘no’ (i.e. the opposite of what we are used to). This led to some interesting interactions, because although some of our Romanian friends had warned us about this, it was very difficult to process. It was surprising how ingrained the meaning of those two gestures is for us. And it makes me wonder why it evolved differently in Bulgaria.

Aside from the slight culture shock, Sofia was beautiful. It is full of beautiful old Orthodox Churches and Cathedrals and old buildings, and it is very clean and well kept up. However, the thing that fascinated me most about Sofia was their commitment to history and archeology. Everywhere you go in Sofia, you will run into well-preserved historical sites. In the tunnels leading to the subway system, there are walls, buildings, streets, and columns from the Roman town that stood on where Sofia now is. These ruins are beautifully incorporated into the modern city around them. I thought that was absolutely wonderful. Rather than simply bulldozing the remains of their past or transporting it to museums, they work around it. It is really neat. The archeological museum was also really cool, but I will tell you about that later on.

Ruins of a Roman city incorporated into Sofia's metro system

The ruins of an old Byzantine Church, now located at the entrance to another metro stop

Our hostel-
One of the goals of our weekend getaway in Sofia was to save money (I know that doesn’t seem to make much sense, but traveling by train to Sofia then to Istanbul was significantly cheaper than flying straight to Istanbul, even if you take into account our accommodations). Therefore, I did my best to find the cheapest hostel available. It cost us $8 per person per night for a 4 person private room. It was an ideal set up for the Maggie, Bonnie, Jack, and me because it allowed us to lock our luggage in our room during the day and not worry about it. It also saved us from the possibility of having to share a room with creepy strangers. However, when you are paying $8 a night to stay somewhere, you can’t expect it to be luxurious, and it sure wasn’t. Not that I am complaining, because we had a very good experience with the hostel, and it was perfect for what we needed. That being said, it was an adventure staying there. The proprietress was a sweet woman who spoke about as much English as we speak Bulgarian (i.e. none), and the hostel is located in a small alleyway surrounded by machine shops and auto parts stores. Also, the shower consisted of a hose and a showerhead connected to the sink in the bathroom. That meant that when you take a shower, you shove your towel and clothes up on the window sill to keep them dry, dump your shampoo and soap in the sink, shut the bathroom door, and shower right there in the middle of the tiny bathroom. It was highly amusing, but still as effective as any other shower. There was also a small balcony near our room and the bathroom that overlooked the alleyway. It was full of things that looked as though they had been left behind by previous guests, and it provided access to clotheslines where our lovely hostess would hang laundry to dry after washing it for 3 Leva per load. All in all, the hostel was worked out perfectly for us, and was an adventure all the same.

The room I shared with Maggie, Jack, and Bonnie at Intersof Sofia Hostel

The balcony at Intersof

Two days of sightseeing and adventure-

Saturday- Day 1
We (Maggie, Bonnie, Jack, and I) arrived in Sofia by train at about 6:40 am. The information that I had about the hostel said that we could check it at 9 am, so we hung around the train station for a little while before catching a couple of taxis to our hostel. We were all pretty tired from our day and night on the train, so we settled in at the hostel for naps and showers. We finally got moving again at about noon, but after getting up so early on the train, it felt like it was 5 or 6 already. All of the guidebooks and tourism websites that we had consulted about Sofia gave the St. Alexander Nevski Memorial Church top billing, so we decided to grab some lunch and then head over to check it out. We took the bus downtown, but soon discovered that our hostel was within easy walking distance of the central city.

On our way to find an ATM and a place to eat lunch, we came across the beautiful Russian Church (which you can see in the picture below). We went inside the church, and unfortunately they did not allow you to take pictures inside. So you will have to take my word for it that it was beautiful. The walls were covered in beautiful frescos depicting scenes from the bible, and the icons around the alter were gorgeous. While we were there, we saw a young couple get engaged in the church. At first it kind of bothered me that they were being so touchy-feely in the middle of a busy tourist attraction, but later Bonnie pointed out that the woman kept looking at her engagement ring (which we assumed had just been placed there).

After a delicious lunch at an Italian restaurant (we were too hungry to be bothered trying to find a Bulgarian restaurant), we headed back to the St. Alexander Church. On the way there, we came across a neat little antique and craft market. We spent some time there finding cool souvenirs and trying our hands at haggling. Below is a picture of the St. Alexander Church. It was also beautiful inside, with no cameras allowed just like the Russian Church. I bought some postcards, though, so that I can show you at least some of the beautiful interior of the church. Every surface (except for the floors) was covered in beautiful frescos, and the domes (which you can see from the outside view, are numerous) were very impressive. In the basement of the church was a museum of Bulgarian iconography dating back to the 6th century. The icons were fascinating, and it was amazing how old some of them were.

After visiting the church, we walked back to the hostel. I wanted to get my computer because I had spotted a cafe with wireless internet, and of course I can't live without an internet connection for too long. :) The cafe was a refreshing taste of home. It was almost exactly like a Beaners or Caribou Coffee (and like Starbucks, except for the fact that I don't like Starbucks so that wouldn't be as favorable comparison in my mind). We ended up spending several hours on Saturday and Sunday in the cafe drinking iced mocha and using the internet. It was funny to discover that I might actually miss the heartless capitalism served with coffee as it is in the U.S.

After I finished sending emails and posting a few of the earlier updates on this blog, I let Jack and Bonnie use my computer, and I went off to explore Sofia a bit. As I've mentioned before, the thing that I love most about traveling is the chance encounters that you have with people and the interesting stories that you can tell about them afterwards. So anyway, here is the story: I was walking along a main street in Sofia, heading towards a mosque that looked rather interesting. There were people sitting at little booths and tables on either side of the sidewalk, which is not uncommon in Sofia. What caught my attention, however, was a man sitting at a table with two guinea pigs on it. The pigs were not in a cage or anything; they were sitting on a cafeteria tray eating hay. I was very curious when I saw this; "Is he selling guinea pigs?" I wondered. So I approached the table and asked if I could pet them. The man spoke only a little bit more English than I speak Bulgarian, so it was an interesting exchange for that reason alone. He pointed to the pigs and said "Tell your fortune!" So I gave him 50 Stravinski (I think that is what they are called, but in any case, 100 of them make up one Leva), and gestured to the guinea pigs and said "Pick one." I chose one of the pigs, and he produced a long thin box full of little envelopes from underneath the table. He placed the pig on the end of it, and it proceeded to climb up on the box and pull one of the envelopes out of the box with its teeth. I opened my fortune only to find that it was entirely written in Bulgarian. But I decided that since guinea pigs are such gifted clairvoyants, the fortune is probably so right-on that I don't even want to know what it says. After having my fortune told, I stayed to pet the pigs for a bit longer, and their keeper told me that their names are Johnny and Gabrielle. I wish that I had had my camera with me at the time, because I wanted to get a picture of Johnny and Gabrielle telling fortunes. I even tried to go back and find them the next day, but they were gone.

Sunday- Day 2
On Sunday morning, we got up at about 10, and decided to go our own way until lunch time, when we planned to meet up at the National Museum of Art. I wanted to walk around the area of Sofia that I explored the night before, but this time i took my camera with me. Bonnie came along with me, and we walked through Sofia for a while, and visited another beautiful church, where we saw part of an Orthodox Baptism ceremony. Here are some pictures from our stroll around Sofia:

After walking around for a bit, we sat down in a little part where a group of old men were playing an accordion, a clarinet, and various other instruments. The music was very pretty, and we stayed there for a while listening to the music and people watching. Here is a picture of the musicians:

After our brief rest in the park, we visited the Archeological Museum. As I mentioned before, Bulgarians seem to be very concerned with historical preservation, and the vast and impressive collections in the archeological museum were another testament to that. The museum contained artifacts from Bulgaria the paleolithic age all the way through Roman and Ottoman occupation. It was amazing to see the statues, tools, carvings, and other artifacts. Below is one of the pictures I took before they told me that cameras were not allowed:

Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to see the entire museum because at one o'clock we had to meet Maggie and Jack at the art museum. At the museum there was a display of the work by a contemporary Bulgarian painter who worked during the communist period, but it was difficult to tell what his relationship was to the communist government. We also walked through the permanent exhibits of Bulgarian art. Below is a picture of a self-portrait by a Bulgarian artist whose name I forget:

Later that evening, the four of us went out to dinner at a Greek restaurant. The food was very good, but the most exciting thing about this restaurant was the fact that they provided FREE WATER. I know that isn't very exciting in the U.S., but in Europe, it was a cause for celebration. One of the things that I miss most about the U.S. (other than the people I miss, of course) is getting free water with ice in restaurants. At home I usually order water when i go out to eat because it saves me money, and I like it. But here, most of the water is carbonated, it is never served with ice, and you almost always have to pay for it. So when our waiter started pouring us all non-carbonated water and said that it was "on the house", we almost hugged him.

After dinner, I walked across town to see the Palace of Culture, which is the "largest multifunctional complex in southeastern Europe" according to my tourist map. From what I can tell it is pretty much a city within itself, with a shopping mall, conference center, cinema, nightclubs, restaurants, etc. When I arrived at the palace of culture, it was a happening place. There was an exhibition of graffiti art taking place, and there was live music. I walked around for a while, checking out the exhibit and taking pictures before returning to the hostel for the night.

The Palace of Culture

A sculpture (or something like that) near the Palace of Culture

A particularly interesting bit of graffiti art, entitled Religion

My ride home was yet another adventure as I tried to explain to my non-English-speaking cab driver why I wanted to go to number 37 Racovski Street. I told him it was a hostel, and he didn't seem to understand, so I told him "hotel", which confused him further (remember, the hostel is in a little alley surrounded by machine shops, not exactly the kind of place you would find a hotel). So we spent the entire ride trying to have a conversation using the few words of English that he knew and the zero words of Bulgarian that I know. By the end of it, he taught me how to say "left", "right", and "straight ahead" in Bulgarian, which I have forgotten by this point.

Happy Birthday and Happy Father's Day

2006-06-18T18:51:00.000+03:00

Just a little post to wish Nana a happy belated birthday, and my dad a happy father's day! There are postcards on their way for both of you! I miss you!

To all my loyal readers...

2006-06-17T19:26:00.000+03:00

I only have limited time online right now, and posting pictures takes a while, but I promise to add pictures to these new posts once I reach Istanbul. If you want to take a closer look at any of these pictures, just click on them and they will open in a new window. Also, I encourage you all to leave me comments if you have questions or particularly like something. And one last thing, I have been buying a lot of postcards, so if you'd like one, email me at biebuyc5@msu.edu with your address!

Updatul de tranul

2006-06-17T19:25:00.000+03:00

We are sitting at the Romania/Bulgaria border, waiting for our passports to come back. I am hanging out with Maggie and Bonnie in their car until we get moving again, and then I am going to get to bed. It is only 9:35, but we get into Sofia at 6 a.m. so we’ll be getting up very early. The real purpose of this update, though, is to tell you about the sleeping cars. They are awesome! We are traveling first class because it only ended up costing about $38. They have two beds to a compartment, and they are set up like bunk-beds along one wall. I will take a few pictures for you in the morning before we leave. I am looking forward to falling asleep to the sound and rhythm of the train. Good night.

Thursday, June 15- Last Day in Cluj

2006-06-17T19:24:00.000+03:00

Yesterday was the last day in Cluj for those of us who are going to Sofia, and it was a very good day indeed. First thing in the morning I talked to Adam on the phone, which was a very nice way to start the day, and it put me in a good mood for class. After the morning lecture, I had some errands to run during lunch. I wanted to buy the book on Vladimir Zamfirescu’s paintings from the art museum, and I had to exchange money for Bulgaria, etc. I didn’t think that it would be very exciting, but something unexpected and fantastic happened.

I went to the art museum to buy the Zamfirescu book, and he was there! I didn’t realize it at first, but when I asked for the book, the Romanian woman at the counter said something that I didn't understand, and then she pointed behind me and said "Zamfirescu!" I looked, and there was an old man standing behind me who looked suspiciously like the picture of Zamfirescu that it on the over of the book! So I got to meet him, and he signed the book for me! It say (in Romanian) "For Erin- with thanks and affection, Vladimir Zamfirescu 15/6/2006." I was incredibly excited! But unfortunately in my excitement, I forgot to ask to get a picture with him.

Zamfirescu's note to me

My wonderful day continued into the evening, with the farewell dinner that the Department of European Studies held for us. I wore my new Romanian blouse and received lots of compliments on it, and it was a lovely evening overall. I talked with some of the professors from Universitatea Babes-Bolyai about my desire to study Romanian history. They encouraged me to return to Cluj and said that they will be waiting for me. They also had great things to say about Maria Bucur, the Romanian historian that I would like to work with at Indiana University, which was very good to hear.

Some of the MSU group with Corrina and Sivlia

So that brings us up to today on the train. We are nearly to Bucuresti now (only about an hour left), and we have passed through the Carpathian Mountains, which are beautiful. I’ll update about Sofia sometime this weekend!

A view from the train window

Sighisoara

2006-06-17T19:23:00.000+03:00

Sighisoara (Sigi-shwara) is a town in Transylvania about 3 hours south of Cluj, and it has a very well preserved medieval quarter. It is also the birthplace of Vlad Tepes (Tepesh) or Vlad the Impaler. Vlad Tepes was a prince of Wallahia in the middle ages, and he became a hero of Romanian nationalism because he stood up to the Turks (Wallahia was a tributary state to the Ottoman Empire at the time). He earned the nickname ‘the impaler’ because of the vast number of Turkish soldiers he impaled. However, the real reason that Vlad Tepes is interesting to Westerners is the fact that he was the historical inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

We left for Sighisoara by bus at 8:30 a.m, and on the way there we visited a salt mine. The mine is in a town called Turda, which is rather interesting in and of itself. We went on a tour of the salt mine, which was opened in the mid-1800s. It had been inactive since the 1930s when it became unprofitable because of the depression, but for a while it was used to store cheese because it acts as a natural refrigerator. The salt mine was very cool, because the caverns were enormous, and the walls were made entirely of salt. Our tour guide dropped a rock into one of the caverns in order to show us how deep it was, and it took ages for the rock to hit the bottom. It was amazing.

A look down into the cavern

A wall made of salt

After we left the salt mine, we still had about two and a half hours to go before Sighisoara, but the view of the countryside was very nice. When we arrived in Sighisaora, we went to lunch at a restaurant that is located in the house where Vlad Tepes was born. It serves traditional Romanian cuisine, and I ordered stuffed cabbage and mamaliga. The stuffed cabbage was just like the dish that my Great Aunt Mary served when we visited her and Uncle Alex in Edmonton, Alberta. Having eaten that dish before made me feel very Romanian, which was kind of cool.

A plaque stating that this was the home of Vlad Dracul (Vlad Tepes's father)

After lunch we went up into the clock tower for a panoramic view of the town. The view was very cool, and all around the tower there were little plaques telling visitors how far various cities around the world are from Sighisoara. After descending from the tower, I climbed up the stairs to visit the Church on the Hill and the graveyard that is near it. The church is beautiful, but pictures were not allowed. Luckily I was able to sneak a few for you.

A view of Sighisoara from above

More rooftops of Sighisoara

For Adam and Emily

The alter of the Church on the Hill

The graveyard near the church

The rest of Sighisoara consisted of souvenir shops with a mix Dracula knick-knacks and traditional Romanian art and handiworks. I fell in love with a handmade, traditional Romanian blouse. It is absolutely gorgeous. It was rather expensive, so I debated whether or not I should buy it. But in the end I decided to go for it, and I’m very glad that I did. I learned from some of the Romanian students that the blouse I bought is called an ‘ie’ and that it is woven out of hemp. Sylvia told me that she has one very similar to mine, but it is 200 years old and was passed down by her great-grandmother.

A close up of some of the lace on my 'ie'

Tuesday, June 13

2006-06-17T19:21:00.000+03:00

Other than the fact that we were all exhausted, Tuesday was rather uneventful, although I did take some time during lunch to explore the Calvinist Church. It was simple but beautiful inside, and when I visited, someone was playing the organ. The music was beautiful, and I sat for a while to listed before heading back to class. Tuesday night I went to bed early so that I would be sure to be well rested for our trip to Sighisoara the next day.

On Tuesday I also walked down the street from Hotel Pami to take some pictures of the communist era apartment buildings that I mentioned earlier. They dominate the landscape on the outskirts of every large or medium-sized city that I have seen in Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.

Monday, June 12

2006-06-17T19:20:00.000+03:00

Monday we had class until 3:30 p.m. as usual, after which I visited the Botanical Gardens. The gardens were small but very nice. They included many little paths and sets of stone steps leading off into the woods and then opening into little clearings with benches, flowers, etc. It was a very nice place to take a stroll.

A few photos from the botanical gardens:

After the gardens, I returned to the hotel, to go out with the group to celebrate Andrada’s last night in town. Andrada is one of the Romanian students who showed us around and helped us while we were in Cluj. She is going to be working in Las Vegas for the summer and visiting MSU in the fall before she returns to Romania. We went to a bar called Insomnia first. It was a near place, but our table was entirely too crowded and loud. I was having a bit of a miserable time, so I was very glad when we left to go to Jay’s. Jay’s is an underground bar with a very fun atmosphere. It looks like it is in an old cellar or a tunnel, and they play a mix of American and Romanian music. We danced on the benches and table until about 2 a.m. It was a great time, and a nice send off for Andrada. Unfortunately we had to get up for class the next day, which was not so much fun.

Our Romanian friends Ioana, Andrada, Silvia, and Corrina.

The girls at Insomnia. From left to right: Maggie, Bonnie, Megan, Rachel, and of course, me.

Me, Slivia, Maggie, and Rachel posing on a bench at Jay's.

18 hours on the train gives me lots of time to write

2006-06-17T19:18:00.000+03:00

I haven’t posted in a while, and a lot has happened since my last entry. But luckily I have 18 hours of travel during which to fill you in on my doings in Romania. I figure I will start with the beginning (which I think is Monday, June 12) and split it up into several different entries. But just so that you know what is going on right now, I’ll fill you in on that first. I am on the train right now from Cluj-Napoca to Bucuresti (pronounced Bu-cur-esht) with Maggie, Bonnie, and Jack. We will arrive in Bucuresti, the capitol of Romania, at about 6 p.m., and then at 7 p.m. we will board a sleeping car for the 10 hour trip to Sofia, the capitol of Bulgaria. We’ll be in two capitol cities within 12 hours, which is pretty cool if you think about it.

The train we are on right now is kind of interesting. Rather than just having seats in rows like every other train that I have been on, it has compartments (just like the Hogwarts Express!) with eight seats in each one. It is kind of a neat set up, but with 8 people in the compartment it is a bit crowded. Therefore, Bonnie and I are camped out in an empty compartment until someone kicks us out. The scenery that we are passing by is gorgeous. IT is very hilly, and there are people working in fields or tending sheep or cows along either side of the train (unless of course we are passing by a larger town). We have been on the train for almost six hours, and right now we are pulling into the station at Brasov, which means that we have about 2 hours until we get to Bucuresti. I have been keeping track of our route on my map of Romania and Bulgaria (great fun for a geography nerd like me!).

Maggie and Jack in the train compartment

We have stopped in Brasov; so Bonnie and I are back in our proper compartment, just in case. Maggie and I are having a “music exchange”, meaning that she is listening to the fabulous mix CD that Adam made for me before I left, and I am listening to a few of her CDs. Ok, I will get down to work now and tell you what I’ve been up to.

A lovely evening out on the town

2006-06-12T00:59:00.000+03:00

Tonight we all went out to dinner together and then went to see a film about the Romanian revolution at the Transylvania International Film Festival. The film was excellent, and the tiramisu at dinner was to die for.

Jared, Maggie, and Ravi at dinner: "We have two hours for lunch tomorrow. Think of how much tiramisu we could eat in two hours!"

Adventures in Cluj-Napoca

2006-06-12T00:25:00.000+03:00

This morning I was feeling a bit down. I miss everyone back home (although after talking to my favorite World Cup-obsessed brother, I think I might be cured!), and I was disappointed because one of the students here said that he would arrange for us to visit a few caves in the Apuseni Mountains nearby, and he didn't follow through on it. So in order to cheer myself up, I decided to go adventuring. I packed up all of the things that you need for a good adventure (water, some snacks, a map, a bit of money, and of course my camera), I put on some comfortable shoes, and I set out. I had a tentative plan in mind, but when adventuring one ought to be flexible and take things as they come, so naturally I didn't stick to it.

The first place that I visited was the 'Village Museum' which is an outdoor ethnographic museum (kind of like a Romanian Greenfield Village). It had houses, barns, churches, and other buildings from all around Romania. The earliest ones were from the 17th or 18th century. The entry fee for the museum was only 2 Lei, but they charged 25 Lei (about 8 or 9 dollars) to use a camera in the village. So I took $8 worth of pictures for you. But of course I can't post them all, so if you want to see all 60 of them, you'll have to wait until I get home. Here are some of the best:

The Village Museum was pretty far from the center of town, but I ended up walking back because after paying 25 Lei to use my camera, I didn't have enough money to take a cab. It was a long but enjoyable walk, because it was a beautiful day (warm and sunny) and because I had a few interesting encounters along the way. That is one of the things that I love about traveling: the chance encounters that you have with people. As I walked along, I noticed a lot of people in church attire carrying handfuls of wheat as they walked along. I was intrigued by this, so after a while I tried to ask someone what it was all about. I said, "Scuzati, vorbiti englezeste?" (Excuse me do you speak English?) And the woman I was addressing answered in Romanian, so I gestured to the wheat in her hand and asked, "Pentru ce?" (Literally translated this means "For what?" but it was the best I could come up with at the time.) She pointed down the street and said something about a church. I thanked her and went on my way. After a while I came to a Greek Catholic Church, and outside of it a man handed me some wheat and a priest made a cross on my forehead with some holy water. So I have no idea what the wheat is all about, but I carried it around with me all day, probably marking me as a Greek Catholic to any Romanians I met.

After lunch I visited the Transylvanian History Museum, which was a bit of a let down (although the admission was 1 Leu, so I shouldn't complain), and the Romanian Orthodox Cathedral, which was beautiful inside and out.

Me+A Camera+A Sunny Afternoon in Cluj

2006-06-10T23:42:00.000+03:00

Equals lots of pictures for you!

Yesterday (Friday) we did not have class. Instead we went to the Art Museum in the morning and had the afternoon free. The art museum was very interesting. In addition to Romanian art from the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a display of pieces by a contemporary Romanian artist. The exhibit was fascinating, and I am toying with the idea of returning to by a book on his work.

After our visit to the museum, the rest of the group went to see a Hungarian Film at the Transylvania International Film Festival, and I went off to explore the city on my own. In keeping with my pictures from Budapest, I set out to find the highest point of the city to get a nice panoramic view. Here are the pictures from my walk up to the observation area, and my pictures of Cluj from above:

My journey begins at another one of Cluj's beautiful churches.

A statue inside the church

My journey continues across the river

Heading towards the hill

Another of Cluj's beautiful old buildings

Halfway up the hill, looking away from Cluj into the countryside

The rooftops of Cluj

New photos!

2006-06-08T20:39:00.000+03:00

If you have already read my post about the St. Istvan's etc. in Budapest, you should take another look, because I added some photos. I will add more later (to the other Budapest post, and the last one from Cluj), but Blogger just got very slow right now, so check back later.

Also, my new favorite hobby in Cluj is riding in taxis. Cab fare is very cheap here ($1.50 to get home from downtown), and it is a 30 minute walk from central Cluj to my hotel, and it gives me the perfect opportunity to practice my Romanian. Both of the cab drivers I have had thus far have spoken either very little English or none at all. And that is good, because when I try to speak Romanian to Romanians who speak good English, the give me a funny look then switch to English. I think my Romanian is improving, and I am definitely becoming more comfortable using it.

Cluj-Napoca, Capitol of Transylvania, Romania

2006-06-08T20:21:00.000+03:00

It is my third day in Cluj, and in spite of some logistical problems, I am enjoying it. I’ll start with the bad news, and then fill you in on the good stuff.

The bad news: In the interest of protecting their customers from identity theft, both of the credit unions that I have cards from do not allow withdrawals from Romania, Turkey, Bulgaria, and a list of 30 or so other countries. I did not think of this before I left, and I did not notify either bank that I would be in Eastern Europe. Therefore I have no way to access my money. I have been on the phone with both banks several times since arriving, and each time they assure me that it has been taken care of, but my cards still are not working at all. On top of the general frustration of being in a foreign country with no way to obtain money, it is expensive to keep calling the banks in the U.S. to try to fix things. Today after walking around for nearly two hours, visiting different banks trying to get a cash advance on my debit card (which the MSU credit union said would work), I reached the end of my rope and called my dad for help. (Thank you so much for your help, dad! I love you!).

The good news: Apart from lack of sleep and being a victim of identity theft protection, I love Cluj. I was a bit apprehensive about coming here, because I love Romania so much in theory, that I was a bit worried that I would be let down. Thankfully, I was not; Romania is delightful. Cluj is a beautiful small city with a very interesting history. Cluj is the capitol of Transylvania, which was part of Hungary until the late 1800s, but the majority of the population is Romanian. The architecture is fascinating, because it is a mix of beautiful old buildings (some of which are well kept ups, while others are very run down) and communist era monstrosities. During the 80s Ceausescu instituted an urbanization, moving people from the countryside to the city to work in factories. In order to house all of them, the government built huge, ugly concrete apartment buildings. I don’t think I haven any pictures of them yet, but I will be sure to take some.

We started class on Tuesday, and that has taken up a lot of my time, but we did get to do some sightseeing last night. We took a tour of the city with a professor of history at Universitatea Babes-Bolyai (Babesh-Boy-ay), and then we went to the opera. We saw Aida in Italian at the Teatrul National (National Theater), and the tickets only cost 3 lei (approximately $1)!

Here are the photos from my tour of Cluj:

Random shots of Cluj, to give you an idea of what we're dealing with here.

A statue of St. George slaying a dragon, located outside of the "Towerless Church"

The tower of St. Michael's Church with Romanian Flags (I am fascinated by Romanian Nationalism)

The inside of the Teatrul National where we saw our $1 opera
A view of the Romanian Orthodox Church from the top floor of the Teatrul National

Very Short Cluj Post

2006-06-07T09:04:00.000+03:00

I am so glad that this is finally working! I have to go get ready for class, but I will add some pictures to the previous posts later tonight. I'll also give you an update on my adventures in Cluj. Tonight we go on a tour of the city, and then we are going to the opera. So I should have some nice pictures (provided it isn't raining) and a lot to say!

On the train 6/5/06

2006-06-07T09:01:00.000+03:00

We left Budapest from Keleti Station at 2:00 this afternoon Central European Standard Time. I’m sitting on the train right now just inside the Romanian border, and it is 7 p.m. Eastern European Standard Time. We have been stopped for a while for customs, but now I see a man coming down the car to give us our passports back. My passport now has a red stamp in it that says “Polita de frontier, Episcopia Bihor, Romania.” This is a very exciting moment. I am sitting across from Jared, and we are sitting near a Romanian woman who is going home to a town near Tirgu Mures, a German man going to visit his parents in a town in between Cluj and the Border, and a Hungarian-Romanian man who is going home to Tirgu Mures after filming a wedding near Budapest. We have been having very interesting conversations about Romanian history and ethnic relations in Transylvania. At first I was disappointed that I wasn’t sitting with people from our group, but I have enjoyed talking to the people sitting near us. We are finally moving again, and I think we have about three more hours until we get to Cluj. I have been trying to get my reading done, but the scenery and the conversation have been too distracting, and I haven’t gotten very far. I can’t believe that I am finally in Romania.

Budapest- Day 4: 6/4/06

2006-06-07T08:59:00.000+03:00

Last full day in Budapest, and most of us are exhausted from three days of intense sightseeing. Today I went to the Parliament Building with five of my fellow students. Getting tickets for the English language Parliament tour was quite the adventure (involving some confusion and lots of pushing and shoving). Parliament was gorgeous, and it was very interesting to hear about the symbolism in the architecture. For example, the entrance to parliament has 96 steps and the domed hall is 96 meters tall because they Magyars came to the area that is now Hungary in 896. It was kind of like being back in DC… only Hungarian. ☺ Our tour guide was good, and I greatly enjoyed his corny tour guide jokes. About half of my pictures from the tour came out blurry, dark, or simply awful, but I got a few good shots, especially of the ceiling in the domed hall.

The interior of the Hungarian Parliament chamber
The ceiling of the domed hall in the parliament building
The Hungarian Crown Jewels
Me looking adoringly at Imre Nagy, Prime Minister in the 1950s and Hungarian nationalist hero (watch out, Adam, looks like you've got some competition!)

Tomorrow we leave at 2 p.m. for an 8-hour train ride to Cluj. I am totally psyched to go to Romania (big surprise, right?). It is really fantastic to be in Eastern Europe. For the past few years I have loved studying the region, but it didn’t really seem real to me. It was as though it only existed in my mind and in the books that I read. I’m not sure if I’m getting across what I’m trying to say. Of course I knew that Eastern Europe was real, but just the same, it feels a little bit like visiting a fantasyland. Fortunately my experience here thus far (I know, it’s only been 4 days) has only made me love it even more. It has lived up to all of my expectations.

A Beautiful Day in Budapest 6/3/06

2006-06-07T08:58:00.000+03:00

I’m not quite sure where to begin this entry, but I suppose that I should tell you a bit about last night. We all went out to a bar together (the first time the entire group was together). I didn’t really feel like going out, and honestly I was a bit annoyed by the enthusiasm that this group has for alcohol. Most of the group is under 21, so they love going to the bar, and just buying alcohol in general because they can’t in the U.S. Maybe I’m just a nerd and getting trashed every night has never appealed to me all that much, but I’d rather be able to get up at a decent hour so that I can do and see a lot during the day.

So for all of those reasons, I didn’t want to go, but because it is the first week, I made myself go. It actually ended up being a lot of fun. There was a group of British men having a stag party at the table next to us, and they were very entertaining. After we left that bar (the stag party was so loud that the manager of the bar called the police to have them removed), we went to a small pub. The atmosphere was a lot like the Peanut Barrel in East Lansing, and they had terrible live music. Maggie and I made friend with some Brits who taught us how to say ‘Thank you’ in Magyar and told us about the Terror Haza, which is a museum dedicated to Hungarian Fascism and Hungarian Communism. We didn’t get home until 4 a.m., which brings me to this morning…

Jared, Maggie, and Megan at the pub.

Some of the group with our new friend Jeff, who wanted to join our 'study trip' in order to avoid being arrested by the Hungarian police.

I woke up at 9:30 feeling alright, but not 100%. I was informed (rather rudely) that we were leaving at 10:00 to go sightseeing. The ringleader could not be persuaded to push our departure back, so I opted to stay behind and meet up with the group at 6:00 for dinner. So I spent a very enjoyable morning sending and receiving emails, showering, and planning my own sightseeing. I decided to go to the Central Market, St. Istvan (Stephan)’s Basilica, the Hungarian Parliament Building, and the Terror Haza. It was great to be on my own in the city. I got to go at my own pace, and chose what I wanted to see and what I didn’t. I have pictures from everything except for the Terror Haza, which was very informative and moving. It was very artistically done, as well. I only wish that more of it had been translated. I feel like I missed a lot because I don’t read Magyar.

Some pictures from the Central Market.

The outside of St. Istvan's Baslica.

A view of Pest from the tower of St. Istvan's.

The Hungarian Parliament Building (third largest Parliament Building in the world)

The outside of the Terror Haza

Tonight we went out to dinner with Folke, our professor. I had a wonderful eggplant dish, and I shared a bottle of wine with Folke and Ravi. Folke talked to me about Romania for ages, because he knows about my independent study and my interest in Romania, and I talked to Maggie, Mike, and Ravi about our favorite novels. It was a very enjoyable night, and thankfully no one wanted to go out tonight!

Thank goodness for wireless! 1/2/06

2006-06-02T22:15:00.000+03:00

Day two here in Budapest, and I am LOVING it. In spite of the ugly weather and not speaking a word of Magyar, I am having a wonderful time. It is very strange not being able to speak the language at all. If I knew just a few words, I would feel much better (for example: excuse me, please, thank you, do you speak English, yes, no, hello, and goodbye).

This morning I got up early and met Maggie and Bonnie for breakfast. The rest of the group was supposed to meet us at 9:30 in the lobby to go to Statue Park, but no one else showed. So the three of us went on our own. We went to Statue Park, the train station to buy our tickets to Cluj, the Cave Church in Gellért Hill, and the Gellért Hotel Baths. I’ll give you a description of each location (except the train station) and the best of the pictures I took today:

Statue Park: Statue Park is a sort of outdoor museum of communist propaganda statues. After the fall of communism in Hungary, they collected communist statues from all over the country and created Statue Park. Due to lack of funding, the facilities and landscaping are none too impressive, but the statues make up for that. It was amazing to see in person the communist symbolism and propaganda that I have read so much about. Some of the statues were enormous and very imposing. I was very excited to find memorials to Hungarian communist leaders that I read about fall semester (and of course statues of Marx and Lenin). I was almost ridiculously excited about going to Statue Park, and it did not let me down.

Cave Church: The Cave Church is exactly what it sounds like. It is a church (and a few smaller chapels) built into a cave. Apparently it was built by Hungarian Monks after they visited Lourdes, and during communism the entrance was bricked up. It is quaint and beautiful, and there is a wonderful view of Pest from the hill that it sits on. (Aside: Budapest is made of two cities that joined ages ago, Buda on one side of the Danube, and Pest on the other).

Gellért Hotel Baths: The Gellért Hotel is a beautiful old hotel in Buda, and it is home to the most famous public bathhouse in Budapest. We paid 2,400 Forint (the rough equivalent of $12) to spend the afternoon in the baths. The baths include a gorgeous swimming pool, a peppermint infused steam room, saunas, and hot and cold mineral baths. We tried out all of them, had a wonderful time, and left feeling wonderfully refreshed. It was fabulous. So fabulous, in fact, that I’d like to go again either before we leave the city or before I fly out of Budapest in July. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the swimming pool because my camera was in my locker, and I don’t think people would have appreciated me taking pictures of them in their bathing suits. So you will have to make do with pictures of the outside.

So, that pretty much sums up today. As I mentioned earlier, the weather has been terrible (rain, wind, and 10-14 degrees Celsius all day). But on a more positive note, I have gotten the hang of the exchange rate (about 200 Forint to $1), and I made two friends on the trip today.

Flight/First Night in Budapest 1/1/06

2006-06-02T22:13:00.000+03:00

It is 11:03 p.m. Central European Time, which means that it is 5:03 p.m. at home. The date/time on this entry won’t reflect that, because the Internet is down at my hotel tonight. While it wouldn’t ordinarily be a big problem, it is my first night here, and I wanted to let my family know that I had made it here safely. After a very frustrating and ultimately futile attempt to reach the nearest Internet café, I ended up calling home from my hotel room, which charges 200% for telephone calls. So I don’t know how much that will end up costing me; I suppose I will find out soon enough.

So after starting my first entry off on sort of a bummer note, I’ll fill you in on all the good news. I reached Budapest safely after 12 hours of travel. The folks at London Gatwick Airport were very helpful, and it’s a very good thing that they were, otherwise I might not have made it onto my flight to Budapest. The flights were tiring and rather draining but uneventful (which is good, of course). Watching the sky grow lighter as we flew east into the dawn was beautiful.

When I finally made it to Budapest, I met up with part of the MSU group at my hotel and made plans to meet up for dinner after a much-needed shower and change of clothes. We took the metro downtown for dinner and then explored Budapest by night. Dinner was very good and very affordable (although I haven’t quite figured out the exchange rate yet…), and it gave us a chance to get to know each other a little bit. I think we have a good group, assuming that we can get over our Madison egos and listen to one another once and a while. I wasn’t really in the mood for making friends after the long night and day spent getting here, but I did my best. I have been in enough similar situations by now to know that these first days are vital. If you isolate yourself or make enemies in the first week, you’ll be miserable. And I did end up having a good time and liking the group quite a bit, so it was worth it.

Except for the obvious problems of being overtired and jet-lagged, I am loving it here. Having never been to Europe, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I rather thought that it would be like going to Quebec City or to other places that I have been to in the U.S. or Canada, but I was wrong. Europe is a whole different animal. More on this next time, as I am off to get a desperately needed good-night’s sleep.

Getting ready to go.

2006-05-24T22:47:00.000+03:00

Here is my tentative list of things to pack. If you think of anything that I've forgotten, let me know!

Computer

Books

Pens

Notebook

“Coursepack” for Independent Study

Camera

Passport

Flight info

International student ID

Driver’s license

Electrical outlet converter(s)

Maps

Travel guides

Romanian book/flashcards

Rain coat

Sweatshirt

Umbrella

Casual blazer/jacket

Green sweater

Rain shirt from home

2 pairs of jeans

Black capris

Khaki capris

Khaki shorts

2 jean skirts

Khaki skirt

Pink skirt

Pink shorts

3 belts

2 casual tee-shirts (mizzou and v)

2 undershirts (white and black)

3 long sleeved shirts (orange, black, and maybe pink)

Laval shirt

Black v-neck tank

Casual black tank

Black sweater set

Black gauze top

Striped button down

Sparkly sweatshirt

Black skirt and top

Red dress

2 sports bras

Black bra

White bra

~14 pairs of undies

5 pairs of socks

Sneakers

Pink shoes

Black fancy sandals

Flip flops

Toothbrush

Travel cover for toothbrush

Make-up bag

Face wash

Astringent

Face moisturizer

Body/hand moisturizer

Loofa

Sunscreen

Shampoo

Conditioner

Hair brush

Hair ties

Clips and barrettes

Hair straightener

T minus 12 days

2006-05-19T21:29:00.000+03:00

12 days until I leave for Budapest. I thought I'd get this thing started so that I can send out the address to anyone who might want to read it.