Sunday has strangely and melancholically become the-day-we-give-in-to-being-homesick. Perhaps it is the lack of our Meadville rituals that we can’t transport here: Huevos a la Mexicana, multiple cappuccinos frothed out from our ridiculously expensive but perfect espresso machine, the CBS Sunday Morning Show, lazing about the attic with the kids while they run around pell-mell in their avalanche of toys. And of course, there is the phone which rings—family and friends calling to catch up, to send love and gossip, or to recount the multi-course dinner held at our house from the night before.
Here in our Sex Shop apartment, the kids wake up ridiculously early each Sunday because of all the traffic noise—car alarms, horns, sirens, weird screaming matches between the glue-sniffing vagabonds on the street below. We stare at our kitchen—no tortillas, only stale bread, and more importantly, no home canned salsa. We manage to supply the kids with pancakes from scratch, then try to entertain them with crayons and the menagerie of very small action figures they hauled overseas. But soon feeling apartment-claustrophobic, we stumble out into the mean streets of Bucharest for an excursion to the park. (“Shall we?” Christopher and I say to each other. This is said with a note of resigned desperation, as we often feel thoroughly fatigued by the multiple, daily trips a day we make to Bucharest’s playgrounds in an attempt to help our kids burn off their endless, insane energy.)
This past Sunday, we hopped the subway and got off at Herestrau Park—an enormous, weirdly formal, but certainly beautiful park filled with elegant beds of tulips, a long line of peasant caryatids (plucked from the farms of Transylvania in Romanian peasant dress instead of the chiton-wearing babes of the Acropolis) serving as a gateway into the park, and a weird sculpture garden consisting entirely of five-foot “Heads” (truly, heads only….of famous and/or obscure Balkan politicians) arranged in a circle. Famous heads, granted, but it seemed more like a scene out of some acid-trip John the Baptist dreamscape. The heads stare dispassionately, impassively at each other—despite looking as if they’ve just been decapitated and are now being served up on a cobblestone platter.
So we strolled and stopped off at playgrounds with suspect (hazardous and rusty) equipment, and Sophia jumped on a trampoline while Alexander pitched a tantrum because he was too young to bounce on a trampoline. And then we watched as the hilarious and charming stray dogs of Herestrau drank from the opulent fountains, unperturbed by the rollerblading kids and unstable rollerblading adults. And then suddenly everyone was STARVING—so we searched the park and came across countless Mici Stands selling platters of little grilled meatballs/sausages, white rolls, and a slather of mustard all for about 3 bucks. But I am tired, so tired, of the meatballs. So we trudged on—kids whining, Momma whining, Daddy whining. And as we exited the other end of the park, what did we find?
Sadly and gloriously? Hard Rock Café. We'd never thought to step foot in one, ever. But the place took Visa. We pigged out. They had a kid’s menu. Nachos and hotdogs and pulled pork sandwiches and hamburgers and fries. It tasted so perfectly, blandly, necessarily filling and tasty and, yes, American. And even better? A highchair (the first I’ve seen) to keep Alexander tame for an hour. Better than that? A beautiful Disneyfied princess who painted the kids faces (Sophia became a glittery Princess Kitty, Alexander became a hilarious, full-on Spiderman) and a clown who made balloon animals to order.....basically free babysitting while Christopher and I swooned over the platters of food and guzzled our Carlsberg (which is, truly, cheaper than water here!).
Kerry
Here in our Sex Shop apartment, the kids wake up ridiculously early each Sunday because of all the traffic noise—car alarms, horns, sirens, weird screaming matches between the glue-sniffing vagabonds on the street below. We stare at our kitchen—no tortillas, only stale bread, and more importantly, no home canned salsa. We manage to supply the kids with pancakes from scratch, then try to entertain them with crayons and the menagerie of very small action figures they hauled overseas. But soon feeling apartment-claustrophobic, we stumble out into the mean streets of Bucharest for an excursion to the park. (“Shall we?” Christopher and I say to each other. This is said with a note of resigned desperation, as we often feel thoroughly fatigued by the multiple, daily trips a day we make to Bucharest’s playgrounds in an attempt to help our kids burn off their endless, insane energy.)
This past Sunday, we hopped the subway and got off at Herestrau Park—an enormous, weirdly formal, but certainly beautiful park filled with elegant beds of tulips, a long line of peasant caryatids (plucked from the farms of Transylvania in Romanian peasant dress instead of the chiton-wearing babes of the Acropolis) serving as a gateway into the park, and a weird sculpture garden consisting entirely of five-foot “Heads” (truly, heads only….of famous and/or obscure Balkan politicians) arranged in a circle. Famous heads, granted, but it seemed more like a scene out of some acid-trip John the Baptist dreamscape. The heads stare dispassionately, impassively at each other—despite looking as if they’ve just been decapitated and are now being served up on a cobblestone platter.
So we strolled and stopped off at playgrounds with suspect (hazardous and rusty) equipment, and Sophia jumped on a trampoline while Alexander pitched a tantrum because he was too young to bounce on a trampoline. And then we watched as the hilarious and charming stray dogs of Herestrau drank from the opulent fountains, unperturbed by the rollerblading kids and unstable rollerblading adults. And then suddenly everyone was STARVING—so we searched the park and came across countless Mici Stands selling platters of little grilled meatballs/sausages, white rolls, and a slather of mustard all for about 3 bucks. But I am tired, so tired, of the meatballs. So we trudged on—kids whining, Momma whining, Daddy whining. And as we exited the other end of the park, what did we find?
Sadly and gloriously? Hard Rock Café. We'd never thought to step foot in one, ever. But the place took Visa. We pigged out. They had a kid’s menu. Nachos and hotdogs and pulled pork sandwiches and hamburgers and fries. It tasted so perfectly, blandly, necessarily filling and tasty and, yes, American. And even better? A highchair (the first I’ve seen) to keep Alexander tame for an hour. Better than that? A beautiful Disneyfied princess who painted the kids faces (Sophia became a glittery Princess Kitty, Alexander became a hilarious, full-on Spiderman) and a clown who made balloon animals to order.....basically free babysitting while Christopher and I swooned over the platters of food and guzzled our Carlsberg (which is, truly, cheaper than water here!).
Kerry
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