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.

Kerry

We fled Bucharest and Bush and the NATO Summit and its attendant anti-terrorism/biological warfare units. A ten-hour overnight train ride with our very own romantic “couchette”—2 narrow beds, bunked, nary a space to sit down except on the bottom bunk. But we felt like a family of throwback travelers—after all, the Orient Express’s final destination used to be Bucharest. We delighted in the fact that our little, narrow couchette had a call button that pictured an attendant carrying a tray of drinks. We never bothered to buzz this illusionary help, mind you, which we assumed to be pure fantasy.

Instead, we packed our own hastily, haphazardly thrown together snacks—candy and chocolate, bread and cheese (the remainders of our pepperoncini-inflected scamorza from Italy), potato-cheese pastries, vino, etc., etc. It carried us all the way to Baia Mare, the gateway to “Wooden Maramures.”

The train pulled in at 5:30 am—we all staggered to our rental car and proceeded to drive outside Baia Mare to Motel Lostrita—a trout farm many miles beyond anything. What is Lostrita? A cross between a large, pastel-painted motel (bad carpeting, cheap envelopes of shampoo) and agritourism—definitely NOT Italian style. There is, sadly, a youngish mule buck kept in a pen on the edge of the grounds which Sophia and Alexander are, of course, obsessed with. His nubbin antlers are covered over in velvet. He is not afraid of our kids though he is afraid of the very husky peasant-chef woman who stomps back and forth between the trout pools and the restaurant kitchen. We were told, on Lostrita’s website, that we would have the “pleasure” of watching the “many trout dance and splash playfully while we ate.” This has not yet happened. The trout seem content to hide beneath the bridges in the dark, murky waters. There is also a bizarre “duck pond” area filled with decoys—Sophia is not yet convinced that they are fakes and demands we watch them to hear when the quack. We've spent two full days driving through several mountain ranges, several climates (including snow), and through hundreds of entirely fascinating, entirely unsettling peasant gatherings (where they decorate trees with pots and pans, among other wild customs).

We’ll send a full report upon our return. Believe us, there is a lot to tell!

C & K

Big Brother Back in Bucharest

This year's NATO Summit is being hosted by our newly adopted home-city, which means that within two or three days our neighbors will include Bush, Putin, Sarkozy, and Hamid Karzai. The highlight of the summit, according to the latest round-up of world news, will be discussions of Afganistan. The "Macedonia" issue is also slated for discussion (whether FYROM, the Former Yugoslav. Republic of Macedonia, whose very name the Greeks reject for complicated reasons, should be allowed to join the NATO party).

With the imminent arrival of so much blustery power in one city, here in the "age of Terror," things are feeling a little spooky. Our normally boisterous Piata Lahovari (just steps from the massive Howard Johnson's, where surely many dignitaries will be staying) is utterly empty, since the streets surrounding us have all been barricaded. Snipers are already practicing their drills and finding suitable perches on nearby buildings (not a comforting thought, or perhaps it is supposed to be a comforting thought...); stray dogs are being "removed" from their usual pooping and sniffing routes to who knows where; they are reinforcing the windows of the local McDonald's and KFC (American businesses are famous targets for protestors); and all the million man-hole covers in town have been sealed with bright rubber tape, to indicate whether or not they have been pried open. The reason for that last precaution is fascinating: Ceausescu and his evil Securitate forces honeycombed the city's underworld with elaborate systems of tunnels, primarily for the purposes of spying upon the citizens of Bucharest. Since these tunnels connect the most important buildings in town, they are an obvious security concern.

What does this mean for us? For the first time since we arrived in Bucharest, it was QUIET last night...almost too quiet to sleep. When we make our rounds to the nearby playgrounds, low-flying helicopters buzz overhead (are they watching us?). There are police of every variety huddled around walkie-talkies about every hundred yards on every sidewalk here in the city center. There are gangs of men in dark suits and dark sunglasses standing around very fancy cars with darkened windows. In short, we feel very much like we are being watched, like we might be under suspicion just for stealing out to buy another jug of drinking water and two more of the ever-insufficient containers of milk that we go through at an alarming rate.

It also means that our city is looking very spiffy all of a sudden: in a few short days of uncharacteristic efficiency, our square was dug up, landscaped, and festooned with shrubs and flowers. Everywhere you look there are fresh coats of paint, and supernaturally green sod where there was mud or dust just last week. There is the illusion of cleanliness where there was only a moment ago the reality of urban filth. In contrast, new kinds of graffiti (see a photographic example, above) are beginning to appear on the walls of just-scoured buildings.

Post-Communist Bucharest, we have seen, bustles with capitalist energy and its citizens now almost take for granted their personal freedoms...even if we do frquently note on the faces of the older citizens (those who knew the hard realities of the Ceausescu era) a hardened look of suspicion and weary stocism that just won't go away.

So this week's NATO Summit and the security explosion offers us just a taste of what it must have been like to live under constant surveillance. It's not a little ironic that the summit is being partly headquartered in Ceausescu's monstrous palace, now re-dubbed the "House of Parliament," or the "House of the People," which could only be built after bulldozing a huge portion of the old city, including monasteries and churches.

As for us, well we're heading out of town for the summit itself. If what we're seeing now is merely security "practice," we'd rather be storming the remote villages of Maramures in our rental car....far, far, away...where no dignitaries are likely to mess things up.

Christopher

Triple Archeological Invasion by the Bacchic Bambini

Each day on our Italian sojourn, we enjoyed (or endured, depending on the mood of the little Bacchae) an archeological adventure. Our neighborhood site was Paestum; our agritourism rooms looked out over the plains upon which Paestum (one of the great cities of Magna Graecia) was founded. The massive temples were especially stunning set against the gunmetal skies of early spring, with an icy wind blowing hard from every direction at once, it seemed. Nevertheless, the old stones were surrounded by profusions of green--and the kids frolicked among the first flowers of the year and rolled around in the grass when they were not tight-roping along the marble refuse. Luckily, there was a great little "enoteca" across the street from the archeological site, where we could retreat to reheat ourselves after our ramble. On Easter Sunday, we roamed the ruins of Velia, a smaller Greek (then Roman, then etc.) site in a specatcular setting, with its series of Medieval towers and walls propped high up on a breezy acropolis overlooking the Greek and Roman layers beneath. The site was very beautifully labelled, with nice bridges yawning across mosaic floors and lots of spots for thrilling toddler gymnastics. Monday we stopped in at Pompeii for a look around. Obviously, there's not a single day of the year when the place isn't crawling with tourists, but the place is so massive that it hardly matters. Alas, it had just hailed and then rained, so the kids (very, very cranky after several days of travel) were as interested as jumping into every pool of muddy water between the Roman cobblestones as they were gazing upon what is in essence a beautifully intact Roman city. About a half an hour and several tantrums into our visit, the kids' Chuck Taylors entirely saturated in Pompeiian mud (don't people pay for such treatment at spas across New England?), we'd all had enough, so we beat a quick retreat into Naples in search of pizza. Photographic evidence of our little pagan bambini above... Ciao, Christopher

The Bakkens Jet to Italia for the Easter weekend

The Bakkens Jet to Italia for the Easter weekend

We just like to say that. Weekend in Italy? Fly to Rome from Bucharest for cheap and in an hour and a half? Okay. So we had to fly on an airline called WizzAir and had to fly on a pink and purple airplane (though Sophia declared it the best possible colors in the world for our skyway adventures), and that we had to leave at 4 am and ply the kids, who stayed away from 4am on, with M & M’s, we actually did land at Ciampino Airport at 7:30am and were out on the Autostrada headed South towards Naples by 8:45.

Let me say that we did not know that we had chosen a region of Italy famous for its Mozzarella di Bufala and at every turn of the road there would be someone grilling baby artichokes stuffed with parsely and green onions and bathed in olive oil. We only intended to eat ourselves silly on genuine Neopolitan pizza and dive into the Amalfi coast for Spaghetti a la Frutti di Mare. So the fact that all these storefronts were devoted to fresh buffalo mozzarella was sublime. We ate the mozzarella every which way: a whole round ball drizzled in olive oil and set atop grilled bread with sweet cherry tomatoes; generously sliced on top of our many varieties of pizzas; straight from our own little plastic baggie picnic-style on the table in our room at our farmhouse in Paestum.

One of the funnier food “mistakes” of our trip: at a lovely Ristorante built into the ancient Greco-Roman walls of Paestum, we ordered what we thought were small meatballs (polpettini) in sauce for Alexander and Sophia. What we got? Baby octopus in a tomato-bean ragu. Alexander devoured them—tentacles and all—nonstop. And at our seafood Ristorante outside of the coastal town of Positano, the kids both CHOWED a cross between baby cockles and sea snails. They scientifically jabbed their toothpicks into the shells, tugged out the nubbin of meat, then popped it into their mouths. Afterwards, they spent the better part of an hour playing with “Monster Fish” with emptied out mussel, clam, and shrimp shells while our charming waiter told us stories of Sophia Loren (who used to live in the "neighborhood," just down the cliff from the restaurant) and plied us with contorni.

In four days, we put approximately 500 miles on our little rental Peugeot. On the first day we wound our way along the coast down to the Greek site of Paestum. Unfortunately, while there were some pretty Mediterranean stretches, it seemed like most of the road took us through the Italian version of past-its-prime beachside condo hell. Lots of boarded up bars (advertised as “American style bar!) and discos and shady looking espresso stands. Of course, it was Italian style so this meant there were also panini stands. We stopped off at one grocery stand advertising Mozzarella di Bufala intending to buy just some to sample. When Christopher returned to the car (after abour half an hour...since he'd made friends with the cheese-making owners and was threatening to just stay there for the entire weekend) he came carrying a plate of bread drizzled with olive oil, some varieties of Gaeta olives (Gaeta being a town we would soon pass), and a hunk of what we took for a regional ricotta salata. His bag was full with a spray of ripe cherry tomatoes, a litre of homemade wine, two balls of Mozzarella di Bufala, two logs of the spicy ricotta salata, aged pecorino, and two bags of olives. Snacks a la Campania.

Our Agritourismo Casale Giancesare was located up a hill overlooking the sea outside of the ancient city of Paestum. We were greeted with espressos and cappuccinos and a glistening Irish Setter called Milli who was happy to scamper around the lawn with Sophia and Alexander. Milli even tried to scarf down Sophia’s Hoppy bunny at one point, and a mouthful of Littlest Pet Shops toys. Our kids were in need of serious doggy-time though—they’ve been missing our dog, Daphne, so this was an excellent diversion for them and they, in return for chase-the-dog-who-stole-the-toys, they received, in return, slobbery licks.

We have realized, in our jam-packed four days, that there is a limit to S & A’s tourism. Generally in Greece, the weather is warm so they too can scamper about outside. Since this was March, our wanderings around the ancient temples and ruins at Paestum, Velia, and Pompeii consisted of me, Mamma, headscarved and looking like some babushka from the Eastern bloc, and the kids alternately invigorated by the windy-wind and throwing tantrums and complaining about “having to walk.” Papa Christopher dutifully carried both Sophia and Alexander, despite having to content with the deadly affliction of “crunched back” thanks to soccer Romania-style, the squirming weight of our kiddies’ bodies, and poundages of luggage, and a lumpy bed in our Bucharest pad.

Of course, all of this tourism was buoyed by really marvelous food. Our main aim for Easter Sunday was to find some sort of Agritourismo that served a fixed menu. Oh boy did we ever! Outside of the town of Velia—a small sign off the road, down a dirt road, to Agritourismo Azienda La Fattoria. For 30 Euros a person (the kids counted only as one person) we basically were fed like royalty. First: every other table was long, filled with Italian families passing around these enormous chocolate eggs (basketball-sized, nut encrusted). Then we were told that it would be better not to have bread because we had a long, long meal ahead of us. What did this consist of?

Round One: Bruschetta di Pomodoro and a fried bread fritter covered in pomodorino sauce and crumbled local Campania cheese.

Round Two: An antipasti platter. Thinly sliced pancetta. The house's Cappicola. Two different kinds of salami. Baby bell-shaped Riccotini. Pecorino. Lard-heavy pancetta. Artichokes and olives.

Round Three: Fresh Cannelloni Lasagna and "Napkin" Pasta with Asparagus Sauce.

Round Four:
The meats? Slices of Pork, Slice of Beef, and Chicken a la Forno.
La Verdure? Baby Five Beans, Chicory/Spinach/Broccoli Robe in Garlic, Roasted Potatoes with Rosemary, Eggplant Stacks a la Forno, roasted peppers, stuffed baby Artichokes, pickled zucchini Ribbons, and I’m missing something else.

Round Five: Dolci (Ricotta-Lemon-Raisin Torta), Grappa, Ferne Branca, Espresso and Cappuccino.

Round Six: A lovely Easter phone call from Christopher’s brother in California. “Where are you?” he asked. “Ahh, we’re somewhere in the South of Italy with our bellies full and our kids finally asleep in the car,” Christopher answered.

Round Seven: Later, much much much later, two beautiful pizzas for a late dinner. Two kids who thankfully and finally both simultaneously slept through a late dinner.

We all ate and praised the God and gods that be for our four days away from the less-Mediterranean inspired Romanian fare. (Why is it that even industrial poverty and concrete apartment blocks looks better on Italian hillsides than they do in the mountains of Eastern Europe?)

Kerry

From Puferleţi to Poop

Today Alexander came back from the playground with his Romanian babysitter clutching in one hand two small azalea flowers, and in the other hand an enormous bag of Puferleţi Super Prix! At first, I thought he was munching on some Romanian version of Cheetos minus the orange powder. No evidence of the orange stain around the mouth, so I thought: Ah! These Romanians are wiser than us. No more orange shirt collars and fingers.

His babysitter, Andrea, explained that Alexander had made some friends at the playground—shared sand toys and Puferleţi. So on the walk back, he insisted he have his own bag—he, too, wanted to be just like the rest of Romanian toddlers. So Andrea bought him, for all of 2 Lei (approximately 75 cents), an enormous bag of his own puffed, processed nuggets.

To Alexander’s selfish cries of “No, mama,” I swiped one from him. Absolutely tasteless. No, not true. More like some sort of air-puffed wood glue with the merest whisper of sugar. None of the illicit pleasure I associate with eating the junk food of childhood—none of the manufactured salt or onion or cheese flavors. Not even MSG.

Andrea said, “These are the snacks of Communist childhood. Empty of taste and desire. Bland. Filler that is not even filler.”

So Alexander has now taken up Communist nostalgia. Ahh. Puferleţi.

And Sophia, upon seeing the bag, remarked, “Hey, can I have some of those…we get those at school. C’mon, I’m hungry for them.” So she too has been filling her Eastern European kindergarten emptiness with the fullness of popped vegetable product!

But, we have more interesting ways to fill such voids. Lately, my afternoon ends with a stop at our new favorite pastry stand. This one cooks the pastries al forno in the shop. So we bought two "Strudel con Mare"—apple strudels. One for the walk back, one for dessert tonight. The phyllo strudel dough was crispy, the edges slightly charred. The filling was identical to the stuff in good, fresh American apple pie. We ate one—hot and dripping apple goodness—within two minutes, all while navigating a sleeping Alexander through busy traffic in his stroller. Then decided, with one shared look of strudel desire, to eat the second one immediately as well.

Some of the apple filling oozed, then splattered on the sidewalk—which made me wonder if indeed all those splats of dog poop dotting the Bucharest sidewalks aren’t dog poop at all but errant spatters of Strudel con Mare. Which makes me think that rather than take the odd and hazardous detours around such piles and spatters I should just step into them, thereby embracing Bucharest’s sidewalk Strudel con Mare con Jackson Pollock. But no. Sadly, all of Bucharest’s strays and well-tended canines seem to prefer the sidewalk to the curb; and the occasional owner seems disdainful of any sort of poop-scooping. Alas, not spatters of apple ooze but dog poop pure and simple.

That said, the kids devoured what we got them at that same strudel stand: their own freshly baked wood-oven pretzels dipped in poppy seeds and salt. I think, fingers crossed, Alexander has forgotten the Puferleţi for the moment...

Wish you were here in Strudel Land,

Kerry

Blessing of the Icons

This Sunday, people traveled from all over Bucharest to have their household and sanctuary icons blessed at the aptly named Parcul Icoanei ("Icons Park"). After waiting in long lines, they and their icons were showered with holy water and blessings. These photos give you some sense of their reactions to that encounter with the sacred.