Return to Brasov

Having been invited to give a reading and a lecture at the University of Transylvania, I got another chance to attempt to find Brasov, which I missed completely the last time around.

Technically, we visited Brasov back in early March, even spent the night in one its better hotels, but we never really found Brasov. We got some bad directions, walked the wrong way (away from the center, not towards it), took a taxi into the “center” after much frustration, then stumbled into the first authentic-looking restaurant we could find to appease our starving kids. Previous blog entries detail those mis-adventures. The next day we pulled out for Sighisoara, wondering what all the hype was about…

Suffice it to say, this time around I actually located the real center of Brasov and spent a good amount of time wandering in it. Brasov, as it turns out, is the Siena of Romania: adjacent to the gigantic “Black Church,” haunting and beautiful, is a giant “campo”-like space humming with pigeon and human life. On every side of this huge square are Saxonesque buildings of every shape, each painted a different bright color. From there, numerous narrow alleys radiate outward, each one offering a bevy of attractive cafes, archways, and secret little restaurants.

Above all this, as if rising out of the buildings themselves, is Mount Tampa, a wall of impenetrable foliage whose rounded heights are always disappearing into the Carpathian mist. It is one of the most pristine and charming city centers I’ve ever seen, and certainly the loveliest in Romania (though I’m told that Timisoara will give Brasov a run for its picturesque money).

All my joy at rambling about in this evocative and delightful place was heightened that much more by the brilliant students and professors who attended my reading and lecture, peppering me with perfectly delicious questions, exhibiting a largeness of spirit and curiosity that it was impossible not to love.

Ah, Brasov, city of long sighs and excellent coffee…. it’s good to have found where you were hiding all along, even in a steady drizzle!

I write these rhapsodic notes aboard the train back to Bucharest. For twenty minutes, we have been steadily rising into the curves of a spooky mountain pass. The rivers are gushing after two days of rain and…surprise, surprise…out of the low-hanging clouds huge, swollen snow-flakes are suddenly falling.

Photos above of the alpine approach to Brasov, and of the city itself...

Wish you were here,

Christopher

Ode to Cismigiu

When I first arrived in Bucharest, the gigantic Cismigiu park was a source of anxiety: it was there, in that grey, nasty, polluted, mud-hole that the glue-sniffers and pan-handlers haunted the shadows. The place has become progressively more hospitable, as we've noticed during occasional visits these past two months. Then, suddenly, today the place became nothing short of miraculous: flowers have exploded everywhere; green spaces have taken over where before everything was the color of muck; children run in circles around old people; the old people sit in groups talking about young people; strange dogs wander about looking important; and even the giant concrete pools (which I didn't believe would ever be full of water) are suddenly lakes...upon which couples in rowboats paddle beneath haughty willow trees... upon which swans glide about doing their swany things. To enter Cismigiu, in short, is to leave Bucharest behind and enter a vegetative dream.

C

SEX SHOP, or, It Was Bound To Happen

Though we live on Piata Lahovari, on Strada George Enescu, the easiest way to guide taxi drivers and friends to our apartment is to simply say, "Next to Sex Shop." There are a variety of Sex Shops across Bucharest: "Amsterdam Sex Shop," the redundant "Sexy Sex Shop," and our very own Plain Jane, "Sex Shop" which is usually guarded (fronted) by a friendly, rather upstanding chap who often tossles our kids' hair. (Though there is his counterpart who often sets up drinking camp beside Sex Shop's doors--a grizzled, irritable, glue-sniffing, and dwarfish guy, likely a junkie. Generally harmless, but he often tries to scam a beer or some Lei out of us.)

Thus far we've managed to keep Sophia's interests firmly on the ever-changing billboard outside our apartment's gates (one week an add for Nivea, the next week, a strange suspended orange and red faux-bubbles-ball ad for Orange Fanta). And we also kept her convinced that the way to recognize home was to look for the giant green "Plus" sign of the pharmacy located on the other side of our building.

Alas, Sophia, now the adept and sophisticated reader, sounded out the Red Neon "Sex Shop" the other day and identifies home as "Sex Shop." Granted, she has been imitating her father as he hails and instructs taxis. "Ta-xi!" she barks, hand raised in the air. And when we tumble into the cab, she says with equal authority, "Sex Shop!" When we were in Maramures last weekend, she asked (in her cranky moments), "can't we just go home to SEX SHOP?"

But today, as we we passed Sex Shop's door, usually firmly closed, she discovered it had been left ajar. Sex Shop has thus far remained a mysterious structure--its window's blacked out in red paint and covered over in black grates, the door always, always closed. But now, ajar. And over my shrill demands that she "Step Away From the Door!" (or because of them) she peeked and then stepped inside.

"It's a toy store, Momma!" she exclaimed in wondrous delight. On the wall? All the expected magazines and adult toys unwrapped and on display.

"No, honey," I said. "That's a toy store for grown-ups."

"No, Mommy," Sophia corrected. "See? There's a toy car on the wall."

I couldn't imagine what she was mis-seeing or perhaps really seeing--some sort of miniaturized, motorized four-wheeled gadget?

Thankfully, Sex Shop's guardian, who was laughing, gently shooed her away and pointed to the sign on the door: "No one under 18.: (in Romanian but still understandable). That seemed to help me tug Sophia along and through the gate of our apartment. But then, smart kid that she is, she turned to me and said, "But Momma, I can't wait eighteen years in Romania to go back inside! Can't we go in now?"

The Pastry Windows of Bucharest, or, Where I Spend a Whole Lot of Lei

As we’ve walked around the mad streets of Bucharest, dodging cars parked on the sidewalks, the piles of poop and their attendant shaggy, dreadlocked dogs, and driven through and through and through the more remote, muddy, rural countryside of central and northern Romanian, we have made sure to stop off at the scores of pastry stands and pastry windows (literally! windows that slide open and dispense pastries by the warm bagful) along the way.

First and always and everywhere is the chain Fornetti; in Bucharest, there’s a Fornetti window (sometimes two) on every block and people lined for the mass-produced Merdenele, Streudel, or slabs of pizza topped with ketchup. Christopher swears by their chicken liver stuffed pastry—something about the earthy saltiness and bizarre composition (a pastry stuffed with mashed innards?) speaks to him. I, however, view Fornetti as the Dominos of Sweets. Every last streudel or merdenele is uniform and greasy, baked off site, and reheated in a stainless steel oven. Of course, back in the States if a Fornetti opened up at Chestnut and Arch in Meadville, I’d be smacking my lips over a Merdenele cu Branza every day. But here? When you can find little pastry stands that bake their goods in wood burning ovens?

My favorite: Patisserie Dacia. This stand, like all true specialists, only sells 4 items: pretzels with poppy seeds and salt; strange, sugared, foot-shaped donuts; Merdenele (pastries filled with a feta-like cheese); and the blessed Streudel cu Mere (see our previous blog on the subject). No matter the time of day, there is always a line snaked down the block, people clutching their lei and salivating. I can’t walk by this stand without eating one, or two, of the just-fired-in-the-oven, half a foot long streudels—cinnamon apple goo drips from the ends of fire-charred rolled up pastry, confectioner’s sugar dusts my mouth and hands and sweater. Small-scale out-and-out gluttony (streudel inhaled right there on the sidewalk) now seems like a necessary Rite of Spring in Bucharest. The pretzels cost .6 lei (20 cents) and the streudel? 2 lei (75cents).

Yesterday, I branched out and tried a new pastry window and something called Tragon: a triangular shaped, still-warm, flaky pastry filled with drippy sweet cheese and raisins and dunked in confectioner’s sugar. I tried to parcel out my bites—nibble here, nibble there, which nibble to save for last? Yes, of yes, one with the cheese. Or one with the raisins. Or maybe just the pastry. Of course, I still had to adjust my walk away from Patisserie Dacia as I felt pulled by the yodel of the streudel….

Every now and then, Christopher and I stop at the local hotdog-wrapped-in-pastry stand that also sells a divine cross between sour cherry pie/tart/coffee cake. The bottom of this tart (Prajiture cu visine) is a dense sweet cheese custard which is topped by sour cherries and preserves. We usually fight for the last crumb of this—and don’t have to decency or patience to carry it home and eat it properly with our café lattes. Instead, once again, we piggishly inhale it on the sidewalk corner, oblivious to the car exhaust, the dog poop, and the hundreds of harried pedestrians.

The most charming window of all is up by Sophia’s school. The same cheerful woman greets us through the open window, her head topped by a hairnet and white cap, her body tied up, hygienically, in an spanking white apron. “Hello!” she says, smiling. She is the exact vision of an Eastern European Pastry Mama you might expect—sturdy forearms, perfectly applied red lipstick, hair bunned and netted, the expectant helpful expression on her face. Yet she speaks elegant English, which makes her especially qualified to help us choose between the Sweet Cheese Merdenele and the Feta Merdenele and the Merdenele cu Cascaval (a vaguely sour white cheese). She sells, by the kilogram, finger-sized puff pastries filled with cheese, sausage, or mushrooms. Here, too, are S-shaped pastry-cookies smeared in raspberry jam which Alexander attacks with great, heathenish pleasure.

Sophia, on the other hand, is obsessed with all things Covrigi (pretzels). There are specific stands that only sell pretzels and one happens to be on the walk to her school. So most days she gets a pretzel to and fro. The covrigi (like hot pretzels in the States only smaller and baked longer) are dipped half-way in either: salt, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or onion crisps. Sophia has made a recent discovery of a circular pretzel that is pretty close to a sesame bagel—only it is softer and about the size of a life preserver. Little S is also a fan of the mammoth Pig-in-a-Blanket, and eats it sans ketchup or mustard, on her walk back from school. (A strange custom: “lunch” at Sophia’s school is called “breakfast”—so she is only too happy with the breakfast-pretzel-breakfast-pretzel/hotdog-snack-dinner-dessert daily schedule.)

On our trip to Maramures we tried one of the many versions of Placinta—deep fried and folded over calzone-style and stuffed with jam, onion and potato, or cheese. We also had some of the best Papanasi:homemade donuts coated in cherry or apricot preserves and slathered with sour cream. Also served hot.

And though this doesn’t qualify as a pastry “window,” we’ve discovered a Lebanese sweet shop that sells splendid baklava and coconut squares and a yellow lemon sponge cake topped with pistachios. Oh yes—Christopher is also a fan of their lamb pies. But the pleasures of Bucharest’s Middle Eastern offerings are for another posting.

Kerry

Sophia's Global Gregariousness

Little Alexander Oscar is still young enough to just kick back in his stroller looking adorable to earn baby-noises and googly glances, not to mention kisses and free candy from random pedestrians and grandmothers across Europe.

Sophia, on the other hand, must work her charismatic magic. And work her magic she does, receiving generous hand-outs from nearly every shop-owner she encounters after just a few coy phrases in English, a well-placed word or two of Romanian, and her sneaky little smile.

Pictured above are a few of her international friends, from the Amalfi Coast, to the Hungarian border towns of Romania, to the mean streets of Bucharest.

She reserves some extra special magic for the ever-charming Marius, the not very intimidating security guard at Sophia's school, who is a source of endless fascination and hilarity to her.

C

Eligible Daughter: Good Pans, Excellent Buckets, Nice Jugs!

Among the more hilarious things we saw while driving around Maramures: trees, bushes and even hand-made tree-like racks festooned with bright pots and pans and buckets. Was this a peasant method for drying dishes? Who would use so many pots and pans for a single meal? Was this a kind of Easter tree?

The mystery was solved by our friend Lia, who explained that in the villages of Maramures families announce that they have a daughter they are hoping to marry off by decorating their trees with pots and pans: the nicer the pans and the fuller the tree, the bigger the dame's dowry (so a giant redwood covered all over with All-Clad would advertise the ultimate babe, I guess!). These are matrimonial, culinary billboards, in essence.

Along the same lines, the front room of many houses is dedicated entirely to the display of a girl's dowry, all of it (chests, carpets, doilies, implements, china, etc.) arranged strategically to attract the eyes of inquiring local hunks.

La,

C

Peasants: the beautiful and the awful

Peasant culture? Well, yes, as Kerry describes below, the region of Maramures offered some fascinating glimpses of how life was lived in the northern Balkans for hundred of years: each house has its own well for water (with, yes, the old winch and pulley and bucket system), its own stable, its own congregation of busy yard beasts. And everyone seems to be making something out of wood: elaborately beautiful wooden gateways mark the entrance to most family dwellings. Some of these places look entirely gorgeous, demonstrative in their illustrations of agrarian pride--they are tidy, carefully groomed, myriad-flowered visions of simple living inhabited by cheerful, robust looking folks. Often, I felt like I'd stepped into the world of Brueghel. In contrast, I also saw some of the most profound, heart-breaking scenes: houses built out of scraps, built next to rivers of garbage and sewage and chemical run-off (even our two year old son remarked "oh, yuck" when we walked him down to the "river" bank), inhabited by people who look as utterly defeated as their surroundings. In short, there was no question of romaticizing this area. The quaint and the kitsch are juxtaposed everywhere with the pitiful and the awful. It's not as if I arrived in Romania with some idealized version of peasant life tucked inside my American consciousness. Having spent time on my grandfather's dairy farm in Wisconsin as a kid I know first hand that a farmer's life is as much hell as it is agrarian heaven. But I felt moments of actual shock driving through the Romanian countryside, which led me to certain questions: What was it like here under Ceauşescu? Was it exactly the same, minus the satellite dishes and conspicuous cars? Was there any bread? Was there any corn for the mamaliga? Was I really seeing the IMPROVED version of rural conditions, the result of two decades of capitalism? Such questions were all the more poignant when, always unexpectedly, against this backdrop of peasant poverty and/or prosperity would rise one of the brand new, often quite garish concrete and re-bar houses, opulent compared to the surrounding huts, as if bizarrely relocated from some version of the Romanian suburbs.

Go to Maramures, I say! You would have to be dead not to be moved by a place as enticing, fascinating, and off-putting as this.

Christopher

[P.S. Double click on any of the photographs to expand them to full screen]