Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Observations on the Road

I must be recovering from my as yet unidentified illness (strep? virus? something altogether more sinister?) because I can finally sit down and face a keyboard with an ounce, albeit exactly one ounce, of enthusiasm. The boys have been whisked away to a cabin in the mountains for an evening of cool mountain air. It is just me and the laptop with our newly acquired wireless connection, which a neighbor has generously allowed us to filch.

Things I have learned/observed on this foray:

1. Do not allow your Italian hotel to do your laundry, especially without even looking at the price list. 5 euros for a pair of skivvies. Not worth it. Another 6 euros for a "sweater" i.e. a t-shirt. Lesson learned.

2. Italian woman are advised to drink one glass of wine per day after the first trimester. One woman was told that she was putting her baby at risk if she didn't drink red wine because you can't get the same health benefits from any other source. American women are forbidden to drink any alcohol.

3. If you thought you were shocked when the six-year-old gypsy boy asked for your half-eaten package of crackers, wait three minutes. In that time he will have fended off his little sister and crammed all the crackers in his mouth. Then he will return and beg for the half-consumed bottle of bodza soda. I didn't give him my soda. I was horrified. Is it acceptable to allow a child to drink from a bottle that had my germs and spit? (Every year I have relearn how to live in a city with children for whom begging for my snacks is considered acceptable--to both the child and the society that tacitly allows it.)

4. Air conditioning is good. Even though not everyone here shares this opinion (see note in number 6 regarding cold water, tiles). And in fact I abhor the abuse of stale frigid air in the States. Yet this past week and a half has been unbearably hot AND I had a fever. I have spent entire days languishing in my undies trying to catch a breeze. Air conditioning is good. All things in moderation.

5. Romanian medical care is scary for me. Okay, medical care in a foreign land is always nerve-racking. I have a throat infection of some kind. We go the doctor (I won't mention the line or the envelope of cash) who can't take a throat culture because I ate crackers. (Is that the case in the US?) Besides they only take cultures before 10:00 am and not to mention that it would then have to be transported to the hospital in the oppressive heat. In the meantime, the doctor prescribes something to soothe my throat. When L. goes to the pharmacy, the ladies say "Oh, we only give this with a doctor's prescription....use this instead." And he bought what they recommended. Note: we had a doctor's prescription. (And the lozenges are manufactured in Bombay, a city whose fantastic lack of public hygiene is central to the book I am reading, Maximum City by Suketu Mehta.)

So, the next day we go to the hospital. Downstairs there are hordes, those exiting press cotton onto their open wounds where blood was drawn, and it costs 2 lei (less than one dollar) for the test. Upstairs there is no line and it costs 13 lei (roughly four dollars). We go upstairs. I had been instructed: no food, no brushing of the teeth. After a rough night of mouth-breathing and coughing, my breath had its own zip code. It was 8 am. The woman gagged me. It is Tuesday. If negative, they will know by Wednesday. If positive for strep, it will be Thursday or Friday. Did I mention the peeling paint, the windows propped open on chairs, the dust, the crowds?


6. In Transylvania common knowledge dictates that you must NOT drink cold water or you may catch a cold or make your cold worse. (You also can't walk barefoot on tile, even in a freakish heat wave, for fear of catching a cold.) In my mothering, I was given ICE CREAM when my throat was raw and swollen. I have to bypass Grandma and the kindly neighbor lady to sneak a glass of chilled water from the fridge. Where are my saltines? Where is the 7 UP? Where is my vanilla ice cream?

7. Transylvania lacks a restaurant culture. Home cooking is supreme. (I miss salad. I miss tall, cold glasses of 2% milk.)

8. They iron underwear. It is not a fetish. It is because all the clothes are dried on the line. They dry into hard lines that must be ironed. Even the undies. (I haven't worn several items of clothing that I brought because I don't have the heart to request their ironing, which leads me to number 9....

9. Hired domestic help is not an option. We couldn't make it on our own here. The massive amounts of time it takes to shop, cook, clean, iron, and make order in the house overwhelm us. Yet I am still shy about it. Hence, the unused clothing I carted all the way here.

10. Language is personality. Or, rather, lack of language is lack of personality. I glow in English. I flounder and sulk in Hungarian. I understand most of what I hear, when I try. Now I need to produce in a second tongue.

If I had the energy to go back and reread some of my former entries while traveling in Romania, I would surely find that I repeat myself. Yet, this is part of the lessons learned. We have to relearn them.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Csikszereda

We arrived by overnight train to Csikszereda. The train seems to be leaving earlier and earlier from Budapest each year. This time we left Budapest at 3:30 pm and arrived here at roughly 4:30 am. It is pity that we arrive before the sunrise. I used to covet the last 45 minutes on the train when the view from the train was spectacular despite my sleep/caffeine deprived brain: all hills, fog, green pastures, shephard's huts, gypsy settlements, and forest.

If you have read of my travels here in Transylvania, then you may be aquainted with my tendency to succumb to the somnolent powers of the mountain air and fresh mineral waters. This Kansas girl fills her lungs with crisp, cold air (yes, even in July) and it plum tuckers me out. The naps here are first rate.

Ate stuffed peppers, drank mineral water, drank bodza, saw Bodza the dog (named after the drink), ate the local cheese, took a nap, strolled the city. I am in the husband's hometown thick of it.

I am reading Catcher in the Rye, I believe for the first time. Very caustic. And very scary when traveling with an 11 year-old boy soon to be a full fledged teen fed up with all us phonies. I finished Peace Like A River by Leif Enger while in transit and also Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham, the latter being a real jewel. That Cunningham rocks my world.

Not much else to write here. But I am writing, which feels good. Although the air is rank and smoky in this internet cafe filled with gamers. Alas. No more cushy wireless internet connections for a while. If I want to go online, I must actually leave the apartment and head into the city center and hang with the local boys.

For a look into a local expat's blog perspective on this town:
http://szekely.blogspot.com/
(There are some good recent photos about town.)

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Sardinia, Rome then Budapest

We are eleven days into our summer travels. I should have written much sooner. We had internet connections sporadically, but I have been lazy. It is so easy to relinquish all writerly urges to the hot summer sun. And the sun has been relentless. Yes, even I--she of the 75 spf--have a tan line now thanks to the hours spent on the beach and strolling the sunny streets of Sardinia and Rome.

We flew into Rome and immediately caught a connection to Sardinia. All three of us had separate cities of origin. Nonetheless, they managed to lose all of our luggage. Thus began some frantic shopping trips for overpriced undies and bathing suits in the town of Pula. Luckily, all of our luggage had arrived the day before we were set to return to Rome. Sardinia was beautiful and even I swam in the warm waters. (I hate being cold.) L. had a conference and was busy in the days. D. and I swam, read, ate pasta, swam, read, ate pasta, and of course developed the habit our afternoon siesta and dinner at ten pm. By the time we left Italy, we had had the art of the siesta mastered. There was one day in Rome that I required two siestas.

On last Friday we headed to Rome. I hadn't been to Rome in ten years and it had been twelve years since I lived there as a student. I was eager and nervous to see how my imagination would compare to the city of today. It was a thrill to be back on the cobblestones.

The historic center, where we stayed in the Hotel Tiziano, has exploded with stores and restaurants. As a student in Rome, I tended to stay out of shops and restaurants and so maybe I hadn't noticed their abundance before. Yet I think there are more stores than ever before--the streets were absolutely packed with people, many of whom were tourists of course. We hit all of my former haunts--Pascucci's, L'insalata Rica, Cafe San Eustachio, Cartoleria Pantheon, as well as visited the Pantheon, Spanish Steps, Vatican Museum, Saint Peter's, the Forum and the Colloseum. We ate pizza or pasta or both for just about every meal. We drank smooth frulatti for energy. And the the gelato. . . Della Palma and Giolitti, to mention the best. . . is dreamy and so much yummier in the shade on a hot summer day. Our favorite flavors: green apple, orange, creme, banana. The chocolates were good, but the fruit flavors exploded in our mouths.

Let's see, my fellow Rome program students might appreciate the following: we rode bus 64 to the Vatican (new buses, less oogy), we sank to Delfino's on Sunday in a fit of hunger and tiredness, we ate pizza at that little place near the Campo D'Fiori, many of the same faces are working at Pascucci and the Tiziano (which did give us a special rate as a former SMCer on the program), and the room we stayed in at the Tiziano was gorgeous and did not resemble our former student rooms.

These days I am caffeine and alchohol free. Hard to imagine, right? Even more of a challenge in the land of espresso and vino. I was in Italy. I indulged in one caffeinated espresso in Rome at San Eustachio. It was a chemical orgasm. The froth. The color. The texture. I inhaled deeply from L.'s red wine at dinner one night. It was a posh, cheap, and traditional place near the Spanish Steps. And yes, all three of those adjectives as suggested by a Roman friend were accurate. The wine smelled rich and vibrant. I ate pesto three times. I never did find a linguine al limone though, which is a pity.

Dani tried his first cappuccino. We picked Pascucci's for the event. He hated it of course. Never got past the foam. But he has his first cappuccino in Rome and that is pretty cool.

These are random thoughts and recollections. It is the best I can do as I squeeze in this entry from my hotel room in Budapest. Thankfully it has been rainy here an cool. We leave this afternoon on the overnight train to Transylvania, where we will spend the remainder of our summer trip at home with family. Tennis courts here I come. Home cooking and long naps and Hungarian lessons and afternoons writing and spending time with friends, here I come. Summer is good, very good. Never mind that when we return to the real world, we still need to find an apartment in a new city halfway across the country and start an entirely new era in our lives. There will be time to worry about all that after vacation.