I am sitting in the Baia Mare library watching Sophia and Alexander wreak havoc on the play area—thankfully it is well stocked with blocks and farm animals and coloring books. Christopher is upstairs at “The American Corner” giving a poetry reading to 60 students and faculty from the nearby University. He is also being filmed by the local news—his second appearance on Romanian television in as many months.
We’ve spent a lot of hours in our rental car up here in North Country. Yesterday we drove to Sepanta to see the “Merry Cemetery,” a site featured on Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” episode on Romania. Chef Bourdain did not have a favorable impression of Romania and in many ways it is possible to understand why: there is an odd mix of poor rural peasant culture crossed with very garish, neon cement houses. We were told by our lovely Baia Mare host Lia that these houses are built by the younger generation who go off to Western Europe, make some cash, then return—raze the wooden huts (and sell the wood for good money for floorboards) and then build these hot pink or lime green mini-mansions that have an attached apartment for shriveled crone grandma out back.
As Christopher commented, driving through these villages you get a sense of what medieval Europe must have looked and smelled like. Every wooden hut has chickens in the yard, stacks of firewood, a skinny bedraggled horse (for the ever-present carts that slag their way across the roads), and dogs, dogs, dogs of various shapes and sized either snarling at passing cars or curled up fast asleep in the mud. Of course, not all is medieval—every hut, no matter its condition—seems to have enormous satellite dishes. Dissonant for sure. Grandma Crone in her headscarf and flouncy above-the-knee skirt and Wellingtons, bent over with hoe and rake in her small front yard garden, then goes inside to watch the latest episode of “Dallas,” “Law & Order,” or “Ghost Whisperer.”
“The Merry Cemetery” was both exquisite and bizarre. A local folk painter created row upon row of tall wooden gravemarkers; on these markers, he painted pictures of the below-the-ground residents; the pictures show either: 1) how the resident died (i.e., “Mr. XYZ is about to be hit by a train; Mr. ABC is decapitated by a bayonet or 2) what the resident did for a living (i.e., Mrs. EFG is baking cake; Mr. LMN is giving a shot to a cow. Apparently, the grave markers have very funny inscriptions but we don’t read Romanian so had to content ourselves with the painting alone. We were concerned when we reached a back corner of the cemetery and found the graves to be flooded out and gurgling up greenish muck. So we hightailed it out of there for the souvenir shops across the road. A wooden cobra (not a local snake) for Sophia, a “Female Saints” bracelet for Momma; a wooden alphabet train and a box with a wiggly wooden bug for Alexander; Poppa was in search of these charming hats all the local men wear but in the end, we couldn’t find anything but flowered, tasseled straw caps so he passed.
We’ve been finding that eating out with the kids has become a more trying affair. In part, the Romanian restaurants serve the same standard fare: meatball-sausage fingers; mamaliga (the polenta mixture—though at a restaurant in these sad, gray mining town it was served with crisp bits of bacon fat and pan juice, which was delicious); potatoes fried, mashed, fried, or fried; and mushy pickles. We broke down twice yesterday: we found a “pub” in Sighet (a very depressing city filled with young swashbucklers dressed to the nines in their fancy “Football” track suits and matching sneakers (think: Red track suit? Glossy red sneakers; Silver striped track suit? Silver sneakers. The women are dressed similarly only many seemed to have the fake-and-bake tan going and frosted blonde hair). That said, Christopher enjoyed a perfectly sloppy hamburger, the kids had some awful white bread and pizza, and I had a bowl of tasty vegetable and bean soup. For dinner last night we broke down again and dined at a hotel-restaurant in Baia Mare—Tagliatelle with porcini mushrooms and speck; baked ziti. It was very, very pleasant. But of course, we spend most of our meals in wrestling matches with the kids who seem to transform directly into barbarians the moment we sit at a table. Alexander flings his spoon and fork around pretending to be an “EEE Knight!!” and Sophia happily obliges and plays dragon.
On our hotel room television we’ve caught snippets of reporting on the NATO Summit—watched the motorcades travel down our street, President Bush leave his hotel and arrive at the Palace of the People, and all the First Ladies be subjected to a pretty rudimentary folk-dance recital. The highlight of this recital: Romanian dancers and singers dressed in their flower-bedecked costumes, sitting at long tables, pretending to slug down tankards of beer and take pretend bites of sausages and mamaliga all the while still singing something about something (“Oh the mud is our friend, we wallow, we wallow! I marry my sister, we wallow, we wallow!). Mrs. Bush had a very forced, pleasant smile on her face—she even tried to clap in time. It was obvious, though, to both Christopher and I that she was in deep, deep pain. It turns out the first ladies also went to the National Art Museum, where they almost certainly heard Christopher recite Romanian art history over the audio-guides. Had he known the first ladies would be listening, he might have supplemented those facts with a certain amount of commentary on the state of current world affairs and American foreign policy, but...
So now we get ready for lunch at McDonald’s (we are giving into the kids, their need for some home comforts even if we have to pay 1 Lei for ketchup packets), then wander off on a woods excursion in search of the Magic Waterfall (where Sophia has already stated she will wish for a dragon), and then dinner, and then back on the overnight train to Bucharest, our gold-sandpaper-walled apartment, and Christopher’s home cooking.
We’ve spent a lot of hours in our rental car up here in North Country. Yesterday we drove to Sepanta to see the “Merry Cemetery,” a site featured on Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” episode on Romania. Chef Bourdain did not have a favorable impression of Romania and in many ways it is possible to understand why: there is an odd mix of poor rural peasant culture crossed with very garish, neon cement houses. We were told by our lovely Baia Mare host Lia that these houses are built by the younger generation who go off to Western Europe, make some cash, then return—raze the wooden huts (and sell the wood for good money for floorboards) and then build these hot pink or lime green mini-mansions that have an attached apartment for shriveled crone grandma out back.
As Christopher commented, driving through these villages you get a sense of what medieval Europe must have looked and smelled like. Every wooden hut has chickens in the yard, stacks of firewood, a skinny bedraggled horse (for the ever-present carts that slag their way across the roads), and dogs, dogs, dogs of various shapes and sized either snarling at passing cars or curled up fast asleep in the mud. Of course, not all is medieval—every hut, no matter its condition—seems to have enormous satellite dishes. Dissonant for sure. Grandma Crone in her headscarf and flouncy above-the-knee skirt and Wellingtons, bent over with hoe and rake in her small front yard garden, then goes inside to watch the latest episode of “Dallas,” “Law & Order,” or “Ghost Whisperer.”
“The Merry Cemetery” was both exquisite and bizarre. A local folk painter created row upon row of tall wooden gravemarkers; on these markers, he painted pictures of the below-the-ground residents; the pictures show either: 1) how the resident died (i.e., “Mr. XYZ is about to be hit by a train; Mr. ABC is decapitated by a bayonet or 2) what the resident did for a living (i.e., Mrs. EFG is baking cake; Mr. LMN is giving a shot to a cow. Apparently, the grave markers have very funny inscriptions but we don’t read Romanian so had to content ourselves with the painting alone. We were concerned when we reached a back corner of the cemetery and found the graves to be flooded out and gurgling up greenish muck. So we hightailed it out of there for the souvenir shops across the road. A wooden cobra (not a local snake) for Sophia, a “Female Saints” bracelet for Momma; a wooden alphabet train and a box with a wiggly wooden bug for Alexander; Poppa was in search of these charming hats all the local men wear but in the end, we couldn’t find anything but flowered, tasseled straw caps so he passed.
We’ve been finding that eating out with the kids has become a more trying affair. In part, the Romanian restaurants serve the same standard fare: meatball-sausage fingers; mamaliga (the polenta mixture—though at a restaurant in these sad, gray mining town it was served with crisp bits of bacon fat and pan juice, which was delicious); potatoes fried, mashed, fried, or fried; and mushy pickles. We broke down twice yesterday: we found a “pub” in Sighet (a very depressing city filled with young swashbucklers dressed to the nines in their fancy “Football” track suits and matching sneakers (think: Red track suit? Glossy red sneakers; Silver striped track suit? Silver sneakers. The women are dressed similarly only many seemed to have the fake-and-bake tan going and frosted blonde hair). That said, Christopher enjoyed a perfectly sloppy hamburger, the kids had some awful white bread and pizza, and I had a bowl of tasty vegetable and bean soup. For dinner last night we broke down again and dined at a hotel-restaurant in Baia Mare—Tagliatelle with porcini mushrooms and speck; baked ziti. It was very, very pleasant. But of course, we spend most of our meals in wrestling matches with the kids who seem to transform directly into barbarians the moment we sit at a table. Alexander flings his spoon and fork around pretending to be an “EEE Knight!!” and Sophia happily obliges and plays dragon.
On our hotel room television we’ve caught snippets of reporting on the NATO Summit—watched the motorcades travel down our street, President Bush leave his hotel and arrive at the Palace of the People, and all the First Ladies be subjected to a pretty rudimentary folk-dance recital. The highlight of this recital: Romanian dancers and singers dressed in their flower-bedecked costumes, sitting at long tables, pretending to slug down tankards of beer and take pretend bites of sausages and mamaliga all the while still singing something about something (“Oh the mud is our friend, we wallow, we wallow! I marry my sister, we wallow, we wallow!). Mrs. Bush had a very forced, pleasant smile on her face—she even tried to clap in time. It was obvious, though, to both Christopher and I that she was in deep, deep pain. It turns out the first ladies also went to the National Art Museum, where they almost certainly heard Christopher recite Romanian art history over the audio-guides. Had he known the first ladies would be listening, he might have supplemented those facts with a certain amount of commentary on the state of current world affairs and American foreign policy, but...
So now we get ready for lunch at McDonald’s (we are giving into the kids, their need for some home comforts even if we have to pay 1 Lei for ketchup packets), then wander off on a woods excursion in search of the Magic Waterfall (where Sophia has already stated she will wish for a dragon), and then dinner, and then back on the overnight train to Bucharest, our gold-sandpaper-walled apartment, and Christopher’s home cooking.
Kerry
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