Some Things Along Strada C. Rosetti

Some Things Along Strada C. Rosetti


Far too quiet last night out on the street.
Dreams of police. Today we hog four chairs
in a café off Revolution Square,
where solitude and expensive coffee
agitate our collective memory.

The man in the blue bathrobe, he is ours,
blabbering, twisted like an ampersand
on his perch between bank and bar: one hand
on his cane, the other held out for beer.
He hasn’t had a shave in nineteen years.

We claim the palaces and museums,
the royal portraits on the Atheneum,
but blame the stray dogs and immigrant scum
on the old regime, whose blank bravado
still hardens all the faces in the Metro.

This week the diplomats and presidents
will affirm Europe’s doctrine in the East;
the yellow stars of the Union will increase
another star or two, new flags to cover
the old murals, the sickles and hammers.

Still, some things along Strada C. Rosetti
blur more than they clarify: budding trees
compete with wide Ottoman balconies
for the right to make shade. Light, meanwhile,
stagnates in a satellite dish. All style

is sacrificed to communication,
all music to the traffic’s cloying hiss.
The beautiful civil servant knows this,
since she works with facts, and yet her high heels
and headphones imply there’s something she feels

we all feel—we want to hear ourselves think,
we want to rise above the uniform
sidewalk blocks. The old cobblestones were torn
up years ago, along with the mansions
and monasteries. The old city was done

being old, we were informed. Not that we asked.
Those who were shot have had twenty years
to make peace with the silence they silenced here,
the dictator’s noise muffled with a noose,
his concrete horizon left to remind us

what it takes to scare the mind out of a man.
We want to see ourselves too. The police
block every street today, but they are our police.
Neither gypsy dogs nor glue-sniffing teens
can take that from us. We know it means

something now to sit and read a book,
to read something true. Yes, we want to be
seen, but don’t want to be watched—this, the relief
of a generation who couldn’t say, but knew
the National Library belonged to them too.

There are five real newspapers to read now
and a sign across the street can advertise
LEGAL TRANSLATIONS, but it’s still not wise
to have speech handled by professionals.
Better now to just shut up, pay the bill,

join the amateur rabble on the street,
or claim our place along the balustrade.
Just outside, the uniformed riot squad
is shoring up its bulletproof phalanx.
The anarchists will refuse to break ranks,

will affirm their faith in all disorder.
Yes, we’ve had disorder here. On this square
in fact, here on display, the souvenir
of a body politic that has a soul:
our library, still pocked with bullet holes.


Bucharest, 2008

[A poem written on the eve of the NATO Summit here last month.]

Christopher Bakken

Oswiecim/ Auschwitz

On Monday, we left the kids with Klara, a confident, blithe, blonde actress/babysitter, and sped off into Poland’s lush countryside in our tiny rental car headed for Auschwitz. Spring had arrived in Krakow, so all the fields were green, all the trees in bloom, and all the red and yellow tulips were arranged in careful color bursts along fence lines and flowerbeds.

The irony was not lost on us—the contrast between our existence and what we were seeing and doing in our time here (wandering the Krakow cafes in search of our third and fourth cappuccinos of the day, chasing our kids who were chasing the pigeons on the piazzas, collapsing for late afternoon naps on the giant European king-size bed, complaining about the lukewarm water, reveling in the spectacular Polish and Italian food served up in fancy restaurants) and what all those hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned or ‘exterminated’ in Auschwitz did not, could not ever see or ever do. More disconcerting? The skies were brilliant blue, the sun shining. A day when nothing awful could happen. A day that felt oddly innocent. That contrast kept us primarily silent on our drive to the death camp.

Then: outside Auschwitz’s gate, “Snack Stands” with people buying hotdogs, enormous bags of Cheetos, Snickers bars, then walking through the gates, junk food in hand. An internet café. And an espresso bar and picnic tables. It all felt grotesque. But of course, this is the Way We Live Now.

We expected Auschwitz to be larger—an endless monolith. Instead, it was a tidy, orderly place—25 barracks, one after another, row after row. How could all those people who died here have lived here? Of course, the prisoners who came through here didn’t last long—4 months was the average life expectancy at Auschwitz in the early stages of Hitler’s Final Solution. And they slept 2 to 5 in a bed. Later, of course, there was no life expectancy at all.

Walking through the camp was exhausting, brutalizing, as it should be: the relentlessness of the violence that occurred there—and the life that was exterminated there—and knowing we were walking the same grounds, standing inside the same buildings, inside the gas chamber even, as the prisoners who died or survived the camps. But also where the Nazi soldiers and commandants once stood and opened up the cans of Cyclone B or pulled the triggers at the execution wall. The exhibits in the prisoners’ “barracks” were wretched. An entire room filled with shoes: woven sandals, wooden clogs, serviceable heels, tired slippers, wing tips. Another room filled with suitcases carefully labeled with names and addresses by the long-dead hands. Another filled with coils of women’s hair removed after they were gassed or shot—and used to make Nazi textiles. Another filled with prosthetic legs and hands and back braces. Thousands of spectacles. Thousands of cooking pots. Thousands of combs and hairbrushes. One porcelain doll, her face broken, her wedge of cheek lying beside her.

And after each exhibit: walking back into that blessed sunshine and into the jaunty trills of blackbirds and swallows. Realizing that Auschwitz, too, lived under that sun, with those birds, even then. Shouldn’t the earth have gone dark during those years? Shouldn’t the birds have flown away?

By the end of our 3 hours, we were flattened, and yet, felt absolutely certain that it was indeed important….essential that we had come—that we had walked through that place. And thankful we had not dared to bring our children here. Sophia would have been wrecked by it—as we were.

On the drive home, we stopped for lunch. Tired, heads aching, hearts aching, wiped out by the morning, we were somehow empty and thus ravenous and so we stopped at this tiny “bar”—one of the lovely kitchens that serve cheap, “Grandma” food. We had pickled herring on pickled onions, a mustardy coleslaw, beef goulash soup, and cheese and meat pierogies. We were hungry and hated our hunger after that morning, which called even the most basic human necessities into question.

When we returned back to our apartment, the kids were delirious. Klara had them running laps in the park outside, digging up worms, eating Happy Meals, playing with their plastic junk-toys that came with Happy Meals. Sophia and Alexander’s joy, their profound happiness, was wonderfully ordinary and prosaic. When they ran up to us babbling about their day, hugging our knees, showing off the new cache of “dragon nuts” they’d collected? What an innocent, necessary refuge from that morning’s horrors. What a privilege.

Kerry

Sophia Talks Ontology with The Poet

We have just returned from glorious Krakow, a city of poets. The place is unreasonably beautiful, the population unceasingly literary (the face of Czeslaw Milosz is visible upon posters hanging in the front windows of bookshops; the local playshop is performing something written by or related to Zbiegniew Herbert).

That said, The Poet for us is Adam Zagajewski, who along with his exquisite wife Maya, made the city accessible to our crazy band of Bakken gypsies (infamous across the Balkans, and now along the Baltic, for our ruthless sacking of cities): finding us a spacious apartment and introducing us to the mushrooms of Poland (who knew the Italian porcini, for which I have enormous expectations, have now been unseated by their wild Polish cousins Boletus edulis, the "borowik"?).

We had told Sophia and Alexander that the legend of Krakow's founding involved dragons, or the slaying of dragons, and that they might reasonably expect to find dragon eggs...or even "real" dragons in Poland. Indeed, after about ten minutes of investigation in the city park across from our apartment they returned with grubby handfuls of "dragon nuts" (walnuts that were probably scattered for the benefit of the local squirrels), which they presented to The Poet with great pride.

From the park, we began a leisurely stroll through the old city toward Castle Wawel, where Adam and Maya told us we would see an actual fire-breathing dragon. With her pockets stuffed with dragon nuts, her excitement growing at every step, the mind of Sophia began whirling with expectations and questions:

Sophia: "Do dragons really eat people?"

Dad: "I don't really know, but I suppose they might if you steal their dragon nuts."

Sophia: "Will the Krakow dragon eat us."

Dad: "I hope not."

Then a pregnant pause.

Sophia: "Are dragons real, Daddy."

Dad: "I don't know, Sophia, what do you think?"

This answer did not satisfy her, so she put it to The Poet:

Sophia: "Are dragons real, Adam?

Adam: [without missing a beat]: "Well, Sophia, that depends on how you define the nature of reality."

Not much for philosophical ambiguity, Sophia replied with a vaguely satisfied "hmmm," then remained speechless for at least two minutes (which is, we all know, almost unheard of....).

Christopher

Cranky Day

So Momma Bakken’s day began splendidly. The skies were blue. It was 80 degrees outside. We had our much-needed and beloved babysitter, Andreea, here to watch both Bakken bambini as it is the custom, in Romania, to give kids 2 weeks off from school for Orthodox Easter. Christopher, alas, headed to the National Library to grade a sackful of papers written mostly by students who are wonderful and appear frequently in his class, but also by students who almost never appear, yet are registered and wind up getting grades—he is encouraged to pass such students even though, say, they are studying abroad in Sweden for the semester.

So. Momma can’t complain. I head out, stopping off at a new pastry window I’ve been eyeing the past few weeks. Pastries I’ve never seen nor tried before. Breakfast? A Strudel cu Cascaval. Strudel with the Sour-ish cheese. I thought it would be spectacular. But then I felt like Jig in Hemingway’s short story, “Hills Like White Elephants”—it tasted just plain ordinary and not worth my wait. What does Jig say? “Everything tastes like licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for. Like absinthe.” Or something along those lines. Or there’s the other line: “”That’s all we do, isn’t it? Look at things and try new drinks?” That’s what I felt like post-Strudel cu Cascaval. Blah. Tired of pastries. Nothing sublime there—just toasted dough folded around mealy cheese. (Granted this is on the heels of yet another pastry disappointment yesterday—mass-produced Strudel cu Spinaci). Alas. Maybe I’ll just go back to my morning dose of Muesli—or what we fondly refer to as Horsefeed cu Raisins.

Despite the downturn in my-life-as-pastry-taster, I continued on my walk up to Herastrau Park. My goal? To walk to around lake. I set off, removed my Ipod and listened to the birds and the weed whackers and the tennis ball thwackers. And walked. What looked like an easy 30 minute circumnavigation quickly became an hour and a half as the lake kept pocketing out. And I kept walking (at one point, over a train trestle). How many kilometers? All I knew was that I had to get back home as Christopher and Andreea had an “appointment” with our Landlady T. (some fence-mending with Andreea’s interpretive help)—so I needed to remove Bakken Bambini from the apartment towards donuts or sundaes.

The result: things were smoothed out with Lady T. (though she is still irked by our shower curtain removal), and we hiked over with her to the Internet Billing office (to make sure we will cancel our contract and she won’t be billed), then had some mediocre pizza at an outdoor ristorante. How did this day end? Ah. We have felt surely we might, at the end of our Bucharest stay, receive some small portion of our apartment deposit back from Lady T.--minus the ancient toilet repairs, the shower curtain, and Alexander’s washable (but not entirely washable, apparently) magic-markering of his bedroom wall. A few of our hundred Euros might be ours again?

As Christopher blew off some steam drinking an ouzo and playing some much-need online poker (though not for real money), and Momma pre-cleaned the kids’ room in anticipation of our batty cleaning lady’s arrival tomorrow, we heard: CRASH! Alexander knocked the TV over. Cracked, dented, but miraculously it still works. Honestly. Christopher is, as we speak, watching Liverpool vs. Chelsea Champions League Soccer. Clear picture. I knew there was a reason I was going to Medjugorje in October. To thank the Blessed Lady who will perhaps intervene with our more cantankerous Lady T.

Krrrrry

Another gorgeous day at Herestrau Park

80 degrees and sunny in Bucharest today. Alexander entertained a large crowd of pedestrians while doing his ecstatic, hilarious Zorbatic dance to the lively beats of a Transylvanian bouzouki-band.

Such sublimity inspires, what else(?), gratuitous snapshots of our sublime bambini.

C & K

Confronting Power (and losing), or, Archaic Toilets and Plastic Bags

We’ll call this the week of disconcerting run-ins with the Romanian powers that be. Generally, we Bakkens like to keep a low profile—though this is often difficult as Sophia skips down the street singing “Yankee Doodle” and Alexander tears up the playground with great American bravado. But a few days ago, our Soviet-era toilet pretty much fell apart. The “guts” rusted out and so the odd pulley flusher system went kerplonk. Christopher admirably scoured all the local plumping stores for replacement parts, thinking to save our equally ancient landlady the hassle of repairs. But each dour store clerk shrugged and laughed at us. “No, no,” they each said. “No more.” By this we think they meant: Are you crazy? This rusted out contraption is 30 years old!

So we finally called Lady Tenescu over for a plumbing inspection. Now, she is sweet, but—and we have this on the authority of our wonderful Romanian babysitter Andreea-- Lady Tenescu is at least a little bit “crazy.” (So, too, our cleaning lady, who insists on showing me each room as she cleans, pointing to the dirty rags and gleaming floors. I’ve assumed she’s been asking me, “Good job? Does it look good?” To which I’ve been answering, “Bravo! Multemesc!” But Andreea corrected me: “Oh no,” she said. “She’s saying, ‘Look at how good a job I’ve done for you! It was so dirty and I am the best cleaner there is in all of Bucharest!’”)

But back to Lady Tenescu. When she realized that the toilet wasn’t a simple repair, she called in her plumber who laughed, too, at her and apparently told her the same story: the toilet is outdated, the parts impossible to find. It would require a complete overhaul. He spent the good part of 3 hours camped in our bathroom chipping away at some strange calcified stalactites that were inside the tank—then trudged off to the plumbing store for an entirely new system. What we got: a weird push button system that only works half the time, and now, as the tank refills with water, it sounds as if an industrial sprayer is inside the tank itself. 10 minutes of this racket. But, okay. The toilet flushes again.

When Lady Tenescu came for the rest of the rent money, she insisted that we would have to pay the 100 Euro plumbing repair job since it was under our supervision that it stopped working (“you must have pulled too hard on the flusher,” she insisted, through our babysitter’s expert translations). Apparently this is the custom. Renters pay for everything that stops working—even when it is a 30 year old toilet. Christopher balked. She chattered angrily at him then disappeared into the bathroom. She called him in, fingering the new shower curtain we’d purchased from Ikea to replace the disgusting, mold covered, dirt encrusted curtain that was left-over from the previous occupant. What could Lady Tenescu want? The old curtain back up? Alas, that was long ago tossed in the garbage. So—we don’t know what to expect when we try to get our security deposit back—100 Euros taken for the plumbing? Another 50 for the curtain? Andreea explained, “These old people cling to their things. Even the plastic bags are precious.”

Which brings me to plastic bags. Today, I walked Alexander over to Rainbow Supermarket—for the 56 and 57th bottle of milk for the week, for my own twentieth 2 Liter bottle of Diet Coke (somehow I’m addicted to it here), for Sophia’s “cow pudding,” and for sundry other heavy items. Since it’s a longish walk and I have to hang the plastic bags from the stroller handles, I usually double-bag, and usually without a problem. But today, as I was double-bagging the Diet Coke, a stern woman, backed up by a uniformed security guard, said, “Doamna! No!” They both the proceeded to de-double-bag my groceries to my great, public humiliation. So, it will be many days before I step foot in Rainbow—and now must return to the cramped aisles of the the ever-open, ever-shabby, “NonStop Nic” across the street.

Oh, and now the light in the bathroom refuses to work. As you can imagine, we look forward to the arrival of an electrician with great dread. No wonder it was here in Romania that Eugene Ionescu, great innovator in the Theatre of the Absurd, was born. No wonder he fled to Paris, where everyone knows they have excellent baguettes...and, um, beautiful toilets.

Kerry

Sunday in the Park and at, um, Hard Rock Café?

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