Halfway down the Danube

Romanian 101

So we're all learning Romaneste. Knowing that Romanian is a close relative to Italian and Spanish, you'd think it's easy, eh? Not so.

OK, it's not as hard as Serbian. But it's definitely not as easy as Italian or Spanish. That's because Romanian is a Romance language with a twist. Let's hear it from the experts:

Romanian is a Romance language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European family.

[...]

Romanian is an inflected language comparable to other Romance languages. However, unlike other Romance languages, Romanian has retained a case system. It uses two nominal cases: the nominative/accusative and genitive/dative. A third and rarely used case, the vocative, is a Slavic influence and is in the process of disappearing. Three grammatical genders, masculine, feminine, and irregular (masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural) are distinguished. Word order is Subject-Verb-Object, although OVS also occurs.

Romanian has seven vowels and three diphthongs. Consonant clusters occur at the beginning of syllables, which is unusual among Romance languages. Stress can occur on any syllable. Varying the stressed syllable can change meaning.

Romanian has borrowed vocabulary from the surrounding Slavic languages, most noticeably in the religious sphere. Turkish and Greek words entered the language during the period that the Greeks rules Romania on behalf of the Turks, from 1711-1821.

The UCLA Language Materials Project

You got that? Cases. Stresses that shift meaning. Slavic loan words. Irregular genders. Diphtongs.

If that's not enough, there is also the confusing reform of the Communist orthographic reform: nowadays, you can choose whether you want to spell the word for "bread" pîine or pâine.

Which brings us to pronunciation. The mysterious "î" and "â" are pronounced the same way. Just purse your lips to say 'ee' but say 'oo' instead. (The Eastern Europe Phrasebook by Lonely Planet). Yay, right. The letter "ã" which is really not an 'a' with a tilde but an 'a' with an upside down circumflex, is pronounced like a mixture between "a" and "e". (I couldn't find that one on an ISO chart.) "i" isn't pronounced at the end of the word. At least, that's how it sounds to us. No, say the Romanians, it is pronounced but only very slightly. If I listen very closely, I hear some sort of very aspirated nothing.

Indefinite articles are in front of the noun, definite articles and plurals are added to the noun as suffixes:

- un taxi: a taxi
- taxiul: the taxi
- taxiurile: the taxis

The suffix changes to indicate whether the noun is singular or plural, masculine, feminine or neuter. So, instead of "la" and "le" and "un" and "une", one painstakingly has to learn the plurals of every single word. There are rules but there are also exceptions to the rules, so it's really much easier to learn all the variants of the noun you're just trying to memorize. Or forget about the plurals and articles and stick with your indefinite singular -- people will understand you anyway.

I have to say that Romanians are very charmed by a stranger trying to speak their language and react enthusiastically. Now, if that stranger happens to be a not-quite-2-year-old with blonde hair, green eyes, and a big smile, he'll get free pastries for saying "buna!" (hi!) in the bakery, while his mother struggles with "pâine". There is no justice.

There is no Vessel like a Book

Alembic is the blog of Maria Benet, a Romanian-American poet and writer. Most of her writing is about, well, writing, but she does have some interesting posts about her girlhood in Transylvania:

Growing up under communist rule, with our every move controlled and documented in booklets filled with the quilt of hieroglyphic stamps, we dreamt of travel the way Odysseus dreamt of going home. Though our borders were closed and we were shipwrecked, the world was still wide open to us in words.

So we ventured, back and forth, between the languages, whispering words from one or the other to crack open the doors to a bit of fresh air and to another view, as the stuffy discourse -- the official language of some situation or another -- threatened to suffocate or blind us...

This might explain why I keep meeting so many middle-aged polyglots here.

(Link from Language Hat, the blog for language lovers. Scroll down to the comments section of that link for some discussion of matters Romanian.)

Serbia, cont'd

Some people were paying attention to the New Hampshire primary yesterday. Others were watching London, where Tony Blair's government narrowly survived a challenge in Parliament, winning by just five votes.

But a few of us were looking to Belgrade, where the newly elected Serbian Parliament was trying to form a government.

Trying without success, I must add. They weren't able to agree on that or anything else... in fact, they couldn't even choose a Speaker Pro Tem; the job ended up defaulting to the oldest legislator present. (Yes, really.)

The problem is, the non-evil parties can't form a government unless all of them agree; and the Democratic Party won't agree unless it gets something; and nobody wants to give the Democrats anything, at all, because they were the previous ruling party and have become the scapegoats for everything that's gone wrong in Serbia in the last three and a half years.

So, much yelling and finger-pointing, but no government.

A surrealist touch: while most parliamentarians showed up in suits and ties (or the feminine equivalent thereof), all 81 members of the Serbian Radical Party showed up wearing t-shirts. Identical t-shirts, all bearing the image of Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj, who is presently imprisoned at the Hague awaiting trial for war crimes.

Addendum to Blizzard of '04

Ice Fishing

Romanian hospitals revisited

Ploiesti is a city in Wallachia. It has a population of 254,000, oil fields, four train stations and a McDonalds. Whatever you plan to do in Ploiesti, it better not involve the maternity ward of the local hospital.

Apparently it all began with an eerie series of 18 dead babies between December 2003 and January 2004. Although hospital officials tried to explain this high number with the fact that many of those babies were premature, it was found that the newborns had actually died from bacterial infections. The culprits are called Klebsiella and Acinetobacter -- nothing you want to find in a hospital, let along in a newborn section.

Prosecutor Dan Ghita, who is investigating the deaths, unveiled what the Press Review called "a true nightmare" at the maternity ward - negligence, poor hygienic conditions, criminal activities.

He found out that of 68 babies who have died at the clinic, 23 have been incinerated without any documents, 11 have been returned to their families for burials, in six cases there is no documentation of whatsoever action. Some of these babies are believed to have been trafficked. Others may have died from infections or poor care. We might never know.

But this was not the last of it.

In January, two families were asked to pick up the babies they had "abandoned" four months earlier at the maternity ward. It turns out that the families had been told that their babies had died. Now those babies turned up alive and well. One family requested DNA testing because they can't believe their child is alive. The other family took their baby home.

As far as I know, the director of the clinic has resigned this week. 65 doctors and nurses are being prosecuted.

My friends from the infant orphanage here in Bucharest are distraught. "We need people to help us but when they hear such stories, international money will stop coming in. It's the worst publicity one can imagine."

Right he is.

Playing with numbers

"Don't trust any statistic you haven't faked yourself."

Even though, I like stats and graphs because sometimes, they can throw your own prejudices back into your face. Or haven't you heard that there are more car thefts in Romania than in Germany? Huh? Everybody knows that, right?

At NationMaster.com one can generate graphs about all sorts of odd things. They get their numbers from the UNO, UNESCO, CIA, WHO and so forth and put them into neat little graphs.

I've played around some, comparing Romania to OECD countries unless otherwise indicated. Here are some of the -- sometimes rather surprising -- results:

1. Maternal mortality per 100,000 births: Romania 42, USA and Germany 8. Romania is ranked no. 3 after Turkey (130) and Mexico (55).

2. Infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births: 1. Turkey (45.77), 2. Mexico (24.52) and 3. Romania (18.88). USA is ranked no. 8 (6.69) and Germany is no. 21 (4.65). The average mortality rate worldwide is 37.08. On this worldwide scale, Romania ranks on place 129, the US 184 and Germany 210.

3. Pupil-teacher ratio, primary level (average number of pupils per teacher in primary education): 1. Turkey (27.7), 5. Romania (19.2), 12. USA (15.4), 14. Germany (14.8).

4. Pesticide use (1996) in kg/hectare cropland: 21. Germany (2085.00), 22. Romania (1617.00), 23. United States (1599.00), and, because it's ranked up front so many times, 25. Turkey (1145.00). No. 1 is Italy with 19288.00 kg.

5. Car thefts per 1,000 people: 1. Australia (7.12), 9. USA (4.09), 22. Germany (1) and Romania, surprise!, comes in last this time: 26. Romania (0.2).

6. Birth rate per 1,000 (2002 estimates): 1. Mexico (22.36 births), 2. Turkey (17.95 births), 3. Ireland (14.62), 7. United States (14.1 births), 17. Romania (10.81 births). Last ones are 30. Germany (8.99 births) and 31. Italy (8.93 births).

I like the car theft one best. Of course, maybe it's so low here because everybody has a car alarm? Go figure.

A bit more on Serbia

Meanwhile, whatever government eventually takes over in Belgrade will have nine weeks (until March 31) to produce another batch of war criminals for the Hague. If they don't, they will lose all of the American aid scheduled for 2004-5 -- about US$100 million.

It gets better. This time, they're supposed to locate and turn over General Ratko Mladic. Mladic is wanted in the Hague in connection with genocide in Bosnia, the massacre of several thousand civilians at Srebrenica, and miscellaneous and assorted war crimes. Unfortunately, he's still pretty popular in Serbia, and is believed to have been living in Belgrade on and off for the last three years. So finding him probably won't be too hard, but handing him over will be.

This deadline is nothing new, by the way. The US government does this every year. By each March 31, the State Department must certify that Serbia is giving reasonable cooperation to the Hague... or, slice, all American aid gets cut off. (And the US stops all support for Serbia in international organizations too, so that World Bank funding starts looking iffy.)

In 2001 this provision led to Milosevic being handed over to the Hague at the last moment. In 2002 it led to some complications, but produced a few more war criminals. Last year they more or less got a bye because of Prime Minister Djindjic's assassination (he was killed on March 12). But now the calendar is swinging around once more.

I'd love to see Mladic in the Hague, and I'd really hate to see Serbia lose that aid. But it's not going to be easy for any Serbian government to give him up.

Update on Serbia

The new Serbian Parliament will convene tomorrow, but the parties have still not agreed on a government. (If you haven't been following this story, you might want to go back and look at this post. It's three weeks old, but not much has changed.)

DSS, G-17 and the Serbian Renewal/New Serbia coalition are all willing to form a government, but they don't have enough votes for a majority. And the Democratic Party is now refusing to support their minority government. The Democrats have hinted that they'd change their minds if suitably compensated (i.e., with the position of Speaker of the Parliament), but the other parties are too annoyed with the Democrats to consider this.

Complicating the picture is the fact that the Democrats are undergoing a vicious internal faction fight between supporters of former PM Zivkovic and Defense Minister Tadic. The other parties would be willing to deal with Tadic, albeit at arm's length, but Zivkovic and his friends are persona non grata. This is supposedly because Zivkovic allowed corruption to flourish; in fact, I suspect it's because he's become the scapegoat for all the ills associated with the previous government. In any event, the Democrats are not speaking with one voice, which does make things that much more complicated.

The various parties have about twelve more hours to come up with a solution. If they don't, Serbia will enter upon a period of what could charitably be called political uncertainty. If they really can't agree, then new elections will have to be called at some point... but even that gets complicated, because calling new elections is really the President's job, and there is no President. And, of course, it's entirely possible that new elections would simply produce the same results all over again.

I'm not sure when was the last time a European country faced this sort of political deadlock. Is it unique? Does anyone know?

More about Ion Ardelean

A couple of weeks back, I mentioned the Ion Ardelean case, involving the beating of a journalist in the western city of Timisoara.

Update: the case is still open, and no arrests have been made. However, there has been a great deal of international attention, including a visit to Timisoara by the American ambassador, Bill Guest.

The police and the prosecutor's office have said that they expect an arrest in February. Why in February? I don't know either; but I'm not holding my breath.

Moving right along.

Sundays at home

So we shoveled some snow today.

"We" here means me and Alan. Alan still doesn't like to touch snow, but he's discovered that it's fun to fling it around with a dustpan. Unfortunately, he's still a bit unclear on the purpose of the flinging; he's as likely to throw it onto the newly shoveled and swept front walk, as back onto the drift. But we're both having fun, so, really, who cares.

There's supposed to be a requirement that every house in the neighborhood shoud clear the adjacent sidewalk. A few people do; most don't. I've heard that there's some sort of warden or neighborhood watch officer who's supposed to enforce this rule, but he seems to have taken January off. December too, come to think of it.

Other than going out to shovel and sweep, we've spent most of the day indoors. Alan is starting to develop preferences in television: he likes animal shows, especially "The Crocodile Hunter", and anything involving big machines and noisy engines. The Discovery Channel has a show called "Scrapheap Challenge", in which two teams compete to build some improbable machine -- a monster truck, a speedboat -- in a few hours, from what's available in a junkyard. It's a big hit. "Vroom! Vroom!"

The next day

The blizzard is passing, leaving more than 30 people dead across the region -- including at least one man who went off the road last night near Galati. So my unpleasant experience was, unfortunately, far from unique.

I should add here that the road was not the problem. The road was actually pretty good -- smooth, straight, and usually well engineered (no blind spots, well drained, etc.). It wasn't a very big road, no; in the US or Germany it would be considered a good country road, not the main link between the capital and the nation's third largest city. But the road was OK.

And so was Galati. Having heard that it was an industrial town -- steel mills, shipyards -- I was expecting a larger Calarasi. But parts of Galati are actually quite nice. I even got a view of the Danube for about 30 seconds from the city esplanade, before the snow closed in again.

One interesting difference between Galati and Bucharest: there are a lot of Moldovans in Galati. Moldova is the little independent country that used to be the Soviet Republic of Moldavia. It was part of Romania before 1944, and most of its people are ethnically Romanian. Arguably it ought to be part of Romania now, but for a variety of reasons it's probably going to stay a separate country for at least another generation.

Many Moldovans come to Galati as students, many more come to find work (with varying degrees of legality), and there's even a little cross-border trade. It makes sense; Galati is right on the border, with easy access by rail, road and river, and it's bigger than any city in Moldova itself. Moldova is part of the city's natural hinterland.

And the Galatians seem to like the Moldovans pretty well. There's a certain amount of looking down the nose, but it's not nearly as bad as in the rest of Romania -- where I've noticed a strong tendency to view the Moldovans as dumb country cousins, good only for unskilled labor, if that. It's a relationship that's probably going to get worse before it gets better, since Romania is sure to join the EU a long time before Moldova ever will.

Anyhow. I said the road was OK, but one thing was really annoying: the plows. Romania has plows, but seems curiously reluctant to use them. Once again, we passed at least eight of them, but not one was actually plowing; they were just driving around with the blades held daintily 20 or 30 cm off the road. This got rather irritating after a while, especially once the snow started drifting in long white fingers across the pavement.

The roads were still closed today, but the worst seems to be over; the blizzard is now blowing itself out over the lower Balkans. It was a huge thing, with tentacles extending as far west as Venice (several cm of snow in St. Mark's square) and as far south as the Suez Canal (closed for several hours because of the gales; very unusual). And large parts of Turkey and Bulgaria are still in a state of emergency.

The worst of it seems to have passed Bucharest by [crossed fingers]. We've had a slow sifting of flakes all day, amounting to another cm or so on top of the 3 or 4 that fell last night, but no heavy winds or freezing cold.

The Blizzard of '04

Eight people are dead in Istanbul so far, and maritime passage through the Bosporus has been stopped until further notice. A ship has been reported sunk by gales off the coast of Crete. Much of northern Greece and Bulgaria has shut down.

And in Romania... well, about a third of the roads in Romania are closed right now: in the northeast and east, from the Carpathians down to the Danube Delta. Exactly where I was a couple of hours ago.

It was unpleasant. Maybe I'll go into detail later, when I'm a little less shaken. Short version: heavy snow with gale force winds, what an American forecaster would call "extreme winter storm conditions".

Worse than Tuesday's drive from Pitesti -- much, much worse. Near total whiteout on the road, with multiple skid-offs and accidents. Wind chill below -18 C (0 Fahrenheit). Repeated episodes of slowing down to a few kph, barely over walking speed, because visibility had shrunk to zero -- just howling whiteness in front of the windshield -- with sharp drop-offs on either side of the road, and nothing beyond that but empty, empty countryside and the black wind screaming down from the Carphathians. And that was before the snow started drifting across the road, and the car began sliding in slow, dreamlike curves from one lane to the other and back, giving only the vaguest and most reluctant responses to my increasingly frantic manipulations of brakes and steering wheel.

It was the worst storm I've seen in many years, and maybe the worst I've ever been driving in for long. We seriously considered turning back and spending the night in Galati. Even though we made it through, I still wonder if that wouldn't have been the smart thing to do.

This storm seems to have a calm center, by the way, and Bucharest seems to be at or near it. We drove out of the storm around Buzau (about 100 km northeast of Bucharest) and into a completely different world, with a light sprinkling of flakes falling gently out of a calm sky. About 4-5 cm of snow have fallen so far tonight in Bucharest, but the winds are light and the temperature hasn't gone below -3 Centigrade (28 Fahrenheit) or so.

In a year or two I may look back on this as an adventure. Right now I'm just glad to be home, warm, and in one piece.

On the road again

Well it looks like no snow tomorrow, so we're off to Galati.

Galati is supposed to be pronounced Gah-lahts, but most people seem to compress it something like Glatts or Glotz. It's a big industrial city at the far eastern corner of Romania, where Romania, Moldava and the Ukraine come together. From Bucharest it's about 160 miles/260 km, but it's all two-lane country roads, so we're probably talking about 3+ hours.

Galati stands on the edge of a couple of really fascinating regions. East and south is the Danube delta, the largest wetland left in Europe. North and east is lower Moldova, which is now the Gagauz Autonomous Region, or Gagauzia. The Gagauz are a strange and unique people: they're Turks who converted to Orthodox Christianity hundreds of years ago.

But as for Galati itself... well, it's another steel town, like Calarasi. However, the Galati steelworks (and the other associated industry, like the shipyards) was too big to walk away from, so the government has been keeping it alive. It's anybody's guess how long that can go on, though.

Oh, that reminds me: on the road to Craiova yesterday, we saw a large aluminim processing plant. (This was in Slatina, a small city about 40 km NW of Craiova.) Well, I don't normally get excited about aluminum plants, but this one was obviously operating at full capacity: smoke coming out of the smokestacks, parking lot full of cars. "World Class Production!" boasted the sign out front, and I was glad to see it. The aluminum plant was a legacy of Communism, but it's survived the transition and seems to be prospering.

Part of this may be because Slatina is a logical location for such a plant. It sits right on the river Olt, which makes moving ore and output cheap and easy, and it's near Pitesti, which can provide natural gas to produce electricity. This is in contrast to the Calarasi steel works, which seemed to have no reason to be where it was.

But also, the whole Craiova region just seemed a lot more prosperous than the area around Calarasi. Even the villages looked better -- more cars, more fresh paint. There's a feeling of more economic activity. So maybe that helped too... a more robust regional economy, more suppliers and service providers, a better local labor pool, and so forth.

Anyhow. On to Galati.

(Oh, and: whenever I'm inclined to complain about the travelling, I think about this guy, who is hitchhiking across Siberia. In January. Mustn't grumble.)(via language hat.)

Much excitement

We had a really exciting day today. David slept through for the second night in a row, and he can sit up now without toppling over after a minute or two. Practically overnight he went from 60 seconds to 15 minutes of leisurely sitting on the carpet and playing. Since he doesn't like to lie on his back 90% of the time, this is making our lives much easier.

Then, Alan asked his first real question. "Mo' yogut?" he asked me, ready to spoon more yogurt into my breakfast bowl. Heh. Made me happy.

And finally, we had our first real potty experience. I'm sure you want to know all about it but I'm being shy. Let's just say that there was much congratulatory applause and yelling, then a little triumphant march to the toilet where the contents of the potty were flushed by the producer himself, waving bye-bye after them.

I just wished that Romanian potty had a, hm, front guard.

Hoping for Snow

Yes, that's very unusual for me. I don't much like the cold white stuff.

But I'm supposed to drive to Galati tomorrow, and frankly, I don't want to. I had three hours of driving Romanian roads on Monday, five hours on Tuesday, and seven hours -- two of them in blinding, can't-see-the-marks-on-the-road snow -- yesterday. My enthusiasm for driving in Romania, never high, is at an all-time low. And it's a 3+ hour drive to Galati, each way.

But they've invited the prefect of the judet, which is sort of like a US state governor, to meet us. So we can't simply beg off.

Oh, well.

If we do go, I want to look at the Danube. Galati is right before the Danube Delta, and the river is supposed to be over a mile wide there. Watch this space.

The other one

David complained about not getting as much exposure as Alan. So here's a picture of him:

Meanwhile, Doug is in Craiova in Wallachia, about 3 hours drive from here. In good weather. However, it has begun to snow seriously again here in Bucharest. I wonder whether he'll make it back today.

Addendum: He did make it back. Much complaining about snow ploughs that don't plough and not seeing the road for snow ("kind of aiming at the most likely bit of flat whiteness"). It was worst around Pitesti, apparently. In the meantime, it has stopped to snow here in Bucharest. More snow announced, though. We'll see.

Calarasi

I went to Calarasi today.

Calarasi -- it's pronounced kuller-osh, don't ask -- is the poorest city in Romania. Here's what the Lonely Planet has to say about it:

"The surreal entry by road from the northwest beneath an ungainly 'bridge' of rusting conveyor belts forming an intricate maze to the city's steel works, says it all about this city. Largely industrial, the town offers absolutely no reason to come here except to catch the next ferry out -- across the Danube to Ostrov, from where you can cross into Silistra in Bulgaria."

This is perhaps a bit unkind. There are at least two reasons to visit Calarasi.

One is the aforementioned steel works. This is something that is really, truly amazing. It's an enormous industrial complex, covering many hundreds of acres. There are great vast factory buildings with thousands of windows; miles and miles of enormous metal pipes; huge conveyor belts, big enough to drive a truck along, hanging suspended dozens of meters in the air. Off to one side is a dock -- the quay is 600 meters long -- designed especially for the steel works; cranes dangle over a canal dug especially for the factory, reaching several kilometers to the main branch of the Danube. Sitting in the middle of it all is the cooling tower of a power plant -- not nuclear, I don't think, but big as hell anyhow.

And, holy weeping scrod, it's all dead dead dead. The factory windows are broken and the cold January wind blows snow through them. The special canal is covered with an unbroken scrim of ice. The immense pipes are brown with rust and have collapsed in several places. Pieces of the conveyor belts have snapped and are hanging off. It looks like the set of a movie -- a bad, but extremely expensive movie -- about a post-apocalyptic future inhabited only by vampires and mutants.

I'm not usually one to wax sentimental over the lost achievements of communism, but the sheer boggling scope of the waste here is truly jaw-droppingly eye-poppingly vast. It's hard to meaningfully estimate costs under a Communist system, but you can try to get a handle on it by looking at production. In the years of its full operation, from 1981 to 1992, Calarasi produced about seven million tons of steel. Trying to work backwards from that, I get a figure of about $1.2 billion US dollars. That seems high, but not grossly so. I'd believe half a billion.

So: half a billion dollars, slowly crumbling into rust flakes and blowing away into the greay January sky. That's worth going out of your way for, I'd say. In fact, if I ever go back to Calarasi, I'll leave early so that I have time to stop, get out, and walk around a bit.

(Surrealist bonus points: the road from Bucharest to Calarasi goes right through the complex, but you can see that it didn't always; it used to swing wide around. The complex was once surrounded by a high wall, and the road dead-ended at a large gate with a guard post. The complex was a sensitive State enterprise, and only employees and carefully screened visitors were allowed in. Today the gate has been removed and the road blasts right on through.)

Asking about the complex in Calarasi got contradictory responses, with comprehension made more difficult by the fact that no one in Calarasi speaks much English. A couple of people claimed that there was still some sort of life going on inside the complex. Could be -- it's big enough that you could hide a few hundred people, no problem. But it's clearly operating at some tiny fraction of its old capacity, and most of its physical plant is shot beyond hope of repair.

The other reason to visit Calarasi? The Museum of the Lower Danube. No, I haven't been there -- didn't have time. But, come on. The Museum of the _Lower Danube_. It doesn't even have a web page, that's how cool it is. If I get back to Calarasi, for sure that's the other thing I won't miss.

Maybe more about Calarasi in a bit -- but it may have to wait a day or two; it's off to Craiova tomorrow, weather permitting.

Letter from Belgrade

I got a letter from a friend in Belgrade yesterday.

My friend -- I'll call her Anna-- is Serbian, a lawyer, and thirty-some years old. She's an intelligent, lively and (I think) perceptive observer of the political scene there.

If you haven't read this post about the elections in Serbia, what follows won't be that interesting. Me, I'm still fascinated by what's going on there, because Serbia seems like a country that's balanced on a tipping point.

So. Here follow some of her comments, slightly edited, and my responses.

The problem with the Government is not only that DSS [Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia] and DS [the Democrats, Djindjic's old party] can`t get along, but also that G17 and DS can`t get along.

True. At the moment, pretty much everyone hates the Democrats. Well, when they were the ruling party, they were pretty high-handed, and there really was a lot of corruption under them. And, of course, they're unpopular because they're blamed for high unemployment and poverty... which wasn't really their fault, but helps make them wonderful scapegoats.

Actually G17 heavily attacked DS and the current Government before the elections.They started the famous Kolesar - Janjusevic affair and the whole story about false votes in the Parliament when the new Governor of NBJ was elected. I do not even think that after all of this they can sit still in the same room.

Kolesar and Janjusevic were two high DS officials who were implicated in money laundering. Prime Minister Zivkovic (who took over after Djindjic was killed) defended them for weeks before accepting their resignations.

The false votes story was... interesting. It took place last summer, after the old government fired the head of the National Bank of Serbia. There was strong opposition to this move in Parliament. So when the time came to vote on his replacement, the vote was very close. Afterwards, there were accusations that the government had used vote fraud -- for instance, by having one legislator enter the password and press "yes" for another DS legislator who was absent (and, in one case, actually in Italy).

If I remember correctly, the DS and the government vehemently denied any wrongdoing... but then, shortly before the election, the DS made some sort of confession that, yes, they did engage in some vote fraud in Parliament, but it wouldn't have affected the outcome. Uh huh. Anyhow, there are indeed reasons for people to be annoyed with DS.

The latest version on the possible structure of the Government is that DSS and G17 Plus and SPO/NS will form a minority Government, supported by DS. I`m not sure how such a mix could function for a week, not to talk about longer period, but this is a widely spread idea.

Actually, Serbia's neighbor Croatia has exactly this sort of government -- one formed by a minority coalition, with one other party sitting outside the coalition but giving "silent consent". Croatia's Peasant Party occupies the outside position, the role that DS will (probably) fill in Serbia's new Parliament.

Mind, it's not a perfect comparison, because the DS is much bigger than the Peasant Party. And in Croatia, the last government is firmly in opposition, not holding the balance between the new goverment and an empowered lunatic fringe. Still, it's an interesting parallel.

DS would love to see DSS and Radikali forming the Government, but it`s unlikely to happen. Although I believe that many of the DSS supporters would not really mind such coalition, I think that Kostunica is aware that it would provoke the slow agony with deadly consequences for his party and he won`t go for it.

Anna is quite right. (Although I think there has been some wishful thinking on the part of Serbian liberals here -- the idea being that a DSS-Radical coalition might act as a purgative, discrediting both parties and making things so bad they could only get worse. Not this time.)

Actually, Kostunica would prefer to see the others forming the Government so that he does not have to take any responsibility for anything, but stay in his 3 bedroom apartment, play with his dog (no more cats) and be soooooooo clever. And wise. And honest. And clever. And wise.

I agree. Kostunica has been very happy in the role of The One Honest Man, staying on the sidelines and holding the moral high ground. Being Prime Minister will make this impossible. I think he realizes this, which is why he wants to be President.

(I note that if he wants to take strong action against corruption and organized crime, it won't be easy for him to keep living in that same apartment. Claudia and I used to live aroud the corner from him, and it's not a great security situation.)

So, we`re still a nice country without the President, the Parliament and the Government, which, I believe, suits perfectly the majority of Serbs. Cause essentially we`re anarchists. And we like the chaos, it is always a good cover for the laziness.

No comment...

Talking about SPS being a descendant of Tito`s Communist Party, well, he certainly inherited some very valuable things like the infrastructure, property and network that used to belong to the party. He also learnt how to maintain that network and how to manipulate people. On the other hand, he never called for Tito`s time, he distanced himself from communists and became popular by presenting himself as an "honest nationalist". Which, of course, he wasn`t. Ideologically, he was neither a communist nor a nationalist. Just an ambitious, rigid dictator, obsessed with power and with no visions at all.

Okay, point; I withdraw the comment. (And I agree with Anna's description of Milosevic, BTW.)

His wife was often talking about greatness of communism, but her party July, as you know, was just a cover for a bunch of thieves, criminals and greedy mediocrities (she qualifies in all categories).

Mrs. Milosevic is widely disliked in Serbia, even among defenders of the old regime. But liberals really hate her -- always did and still do now. Because no only was she a greedy, ruthless opportunist, but she just had no class; she was rather stupid, had no taste, and has always been much too pleased with herself. Slightly reminiscent of Elena Ceaucescu, although Mrs. Milosevic never had the opportunity to do quite so much damage.

Her "July" party used to be the junior partner in Milosevic's coalition. Until October 2000, it received almost as much fawning media attention as the ruling Socialists, and got the same sort of thinly disguised government subsidies and special treatment.

"July" disappeared without a trace in the last election, getting something like 0.1% of the vote. So there's that.

Well, it`s fun to read your blog, although the part on kids sickness was rather sad then fun. I hope that everything is fine by now. It`s so frustrating when the kids get sick and expect you to help them, while in fact you`re not really able to do so. At least you can comfort them a bit.

Thanks for the kind words. We really hope they don't get sick again any time soon!

Problems with Press Freedom

Romania has some problems with freedom of the press.

You don't have to speak or read Romanian to realize this. I can read only a couple of hundred words of Romanian... but I can look at a newsstand and count how many flattering pictures of Prime Minister Nastase and (especially) President Iliescu I see every day. Iliescu smiling, Iliescu looking thoughtful and wise, Iliescu accepting flowers from little girls: it's clear that these papers think that they need to give the President favorable coverage, and lots of it.

Romanian TV news, same thing. I don't watch it that much, but when I do, Mr. Iliescu is there too, looking good.

And I do read the English language press here; and it's... tame. No investigative journalism that I can see, and a strong tendency to rely heavily on government press releases.

On the other hand, Romania is not a police state, at all. Opposition parties function openly, and their activities do make the news. I see articles that are openly critical of the government. Editorials and letters pages are full of lively commentary and debate. Problems like corruption are universally acknowledged. There are lots of very feisty internet sites. So, glass at least half full, right?

Well... maybe.

At the beginning of December, a journalist named Ivo Ardelean was attacked and beaten in the city of Timisoara, in the west of Romania. Ardelean had written a number of stories critical of local politicians, especially members of the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD). Several of these stories implied or stated that the politicians were involved in illegal trafficking of various kinds. Ardelean's most recent report, published just a week or so before he was attacked, was about a local PSD representative who was also a school director, and who was allegedly forcing pupils to work for him for no pay.

Ardelean was beaten viciously about the head; his jaw was broken and he was left unconscious. His wallet, watch and ring were untouched, so it wasn't a robbery. In fact, it seems as if the attackers were making a point that it wasn't a robbery.

I had an indirect connection with the Ardelean case: one of our local contractors is a native of Timisoara, and he knew Ardelean well -- so well that he took a plane back to be with him and his family.

It turns out that this is far from the first episode of violence against journalists here. There have been a about a dozen of these incidents over the last couple of years, including at least one where the reporter later turned up dead. In almost every case, the journalist had been investigating or writing articles about local politics, and usually ones critical of the PSD.

(In fact, I found out that Ardelean isn't even the most recent case -- another journalist, Csondy Szoltan, was attacked and injured at the end of December.)

However, the Ardelean case has gotten more attention than the others. It even seems to have gotten a bit of international attention. SEEMO, the Southeast European Media Organization, is a Vienna-based media support organization; it has publicly protested the authorities' seeming lack of interest in pursuing these cases. And an international watchdog organization, Reporters without Borders, has written a letter to the Prime Minister.

"The growing number of physical attacks on journalists who investigate corruption within the political class in power, especially in the provinces, is extremely worrying," said the letter, and warned that, if nothing is done, "the enemies of press freedom, who are increasingly concerned to protect their image in the run-up to the 2004 legislative and presidential elections, will think that they can, with impunity, use violence against the journalists they consider troublesome."

The chairman of the organization then gave this interview, which was translated and picked up by Transitions Online. That link is to the Transitions Online website, which moves most of its content to a subscribers-only archive after a week or so; so if you're coming late, here's the money quote:

Q: Doesn’t this picture, with its beaten journalists, place Romania more
in line with countries from the former Soviet Union, such as Ukraine and
Belarus?

A: There is this perception that … there are several countries of Central
Europe, such as Poland, Hungary, [the] Czech Republic that have joined,
to put it this way, the camp of democracies and Western Europe, and
another country, Romania, that is still hesitant and is employing methods
that do not meet European standards, and, because of that, it looks more
like Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia rather than Belgium, Spain, and Great
Britain.

WIll this make a difference? On one hand, the present government is quite sensitive to international opinion -- especially now, when the European Union is about to decide whether Romania will be admitted in 2007 or forced to wait. On the other hand, it's also an election year here. That's bad for uppity journalists in a couple of different ways: it makes local politicians even more sensitive, and also makes the government more reluctant to crack down on local politicians (whose help they will need in the general election).

More on this in a bit, I think.

Stupid Mozilla

Something about Mozilla interacts with Claudia's laptop in a way that, now and then, causes slowdowns and freezes.

A few minutes ago, it started again, just as I was finishing a long post. Alarmed, I hit 'Save'... and the whole damn thing froze solid. I gave it about fifteen minutes before I finally gave up hope and hit Ctrl-Alt-De. Whoosh, gone.

I thought it was a pretty good post, too. It was about Ivo Ardelean, the investigative journalist who was beaten in Timisoara last month; my indirect connection to him; and the international attention that his case (and others like it) has attracted.

But I just can't bring myself to do it over again.

Well, here's a link, and here's another. No arrests have been made, nor are any expected. I'll write about it again sometime, maybe.

Stupid mozilla.

Bah.

Picture, again

Alan woke up at a quarter to five this morning and wouldn't go back to sleep. I expect the resulting brain freeze on my part to last all day, so here's just another picture of the little monster. (Oh, well - at least he's my little monster!)

Two Good Books

When I was in the US over New Year's, I picked up some books. I would have liked to pick up more, but there was only so much room in the suitcase. (I pulled a muscle as it was.)

Since the kids are (cross fingers!) not sick any more, I've had a little time for reading. Last night I managed to finish Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson.

This is a... really good book, though it may not be to everyone's taste. It's a historical novel about the early days of the Scientific Revolution, from about 1660 to 1688. It's eight hundred pages long. There are quite a lot of digressions... most of them, I think, fascinating. The main characters are fictional, but Newton, Hooke, Leibniz, King Charles II of England and Louis XIV of France all play major roles.

And it's really funny, though some of the humor is rather dry, and some is very black indeed.

I can't do this book justice in a blog post, but if you like historical novels, or just want a really long book that's intellectually challenging but also entertaining and fun, check this out.

Then: I'm about half way through Paris 1919, by Margaret MacMillan, and I'm liking it a lot. It's a fairly straightforward history book about the Paris Peace Conference after the First World War, which led to the Treaty of Versailles. Since the book is only 450 pages or so, it has to skim a little (it's a huge topic), but it manages to cover most of the important points with verve and an eye for the telling detail.

There's a complete chapter on Romania, by the way -- a short one, but well worth a look. The author clearly has a very low opinion of Ion Bratianu, the Romanian Prime Minister; she has damning quotes about him from various delegates ("Bratianu is a bearded woman, a forceful humbug, a Bucharest intellectual, a most unpleasing man... He makes elaborate verbal jokes, imagining them to be Parisian.") There's a particularly pithy one from Romania's Queen Marie: "A tiresome, sticky and tedious individual."

Marie was entitled to a cheap shot or two; if anyone made sure of Romania's gains in 1919, it was her. She charmed Lloyd George and Clemenceau (though she alienated the straitlaced Woodrow Wilson by talking about love, and then arriving half an hour late to lunch), provided a welcome distraction to bored reporters, and overall made a much more positive impression than the histrionic Bratianu.

One detail that seems to catch every reader's eye: the author asserts that, before the First World War, officers in the Romanian Army were quite fond of wearing makeup. Since the rest of the book seems pretty well researched, I'm willing to consider this, but I'd like to see some collaboration before accepting it. I've read one book on Romania in the First World War, and this quirk was not mentioned; on the other hand, it was a book of political and military history, and didn't much discuss issues of culture or, um, fashion.

Anyhow. There are also individual chapters for Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Czecheslovakia, Poland, and the Arab Middle East, among others. This is an interesting way to organize the material... and it also makes it a very convenient read for parents with small children, who may only have a few minutes here and there!

_Paris 1919_ is a very good book, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys history.

Next up: _The Uprising_ ("Rascoala") by Liviu Rebreanu. I'm trying to catch up on my Romanian reading...

An artist in the making

Alan started experimenting with the camera today.

Self-portrait:

The cleanest toilet in the Balkans

Is located at the Shell gas station on Route 5 from Ruse to Sofia in Bulgaria, about 8 km from the border to Romania.

Why do I know that?

Well, it's been three months since we last went to Ruse and the car needed to leave the country again - obviously we haven't been able to organise a Romanian registration so far. We forgot over the business with the kids and only remembered last night -- and discovered that we were already two days past the magic date. Since Doug had a big meeting today, it was up to me to drive across the border, turn and come back with a shiny new stamp in my passport.

Let's not dwell on a very unpleasant drive in unpleasant weather on unpleasant streets. We've described the road to Ruse and it hasn't improved much. The only good thing was that the streets were almost deserted, so I didn't have to pay too much attention to other drivers.

The countryside was the same color as the sky, a dirty gray-white, so that one couldn't tell where which ended and begun. I'd been looking forward to seeing the Danube again - a real river, at last! I even stopped smack in the middle of the bridge, left the car, scrambled over the snow that rose up about a meter on the sides, only to take a picture of the river for Doug. I needn't have bothered:

I crossed into Bulgaria, found that Shell gas station, used the meticulous bathroom, had a Bulgarian style sandwich (three cuts into the bun, filled with ham, sheep's cheese and dry cole slaw, then heated - yum!), turned back and left Bulgaria again. When the Bulgarian border guard asked where I'd been, I said "Ruse". Why? "Tourist". Ah, he answered and grinned, to get a stamp, eh? Well, yes. What else should I have said?

I have to add that everybody at the border(s) was super-nice. Single woman traveling in the Balkans. Well, yes.

Slush

Unseasonably warm today. If it were the end of February, I'd be delighted; but since it's the first half of January, I know better. This is just an intermission, and we still have at least six more weeks of winter.

Anyhow, point is, it was all slush today.

You commentors who pointed out how much fun snow was, how invigorating and fun: you come to Eastern Europe and slog through several inches of cold, dirty water to the office and back. With drizzle falling all around, the drains plugging up, and a month's worth of dog droppings and cigarette butts bobbing in the mix.

If you've been reading this far, you know that we like Bucharest. It's just that the city wasn't showing its most lovely face today.

The American Heritage Index of Economic Freedom

Every year, a US think tank called the American Heritage Foundation publishes something called the "Index of Economic Freedom". The Index claims to measure the economic freedom of the economies of almost every country in the world. Thus, it should give you an idea of whether (say) a Bulgarian in Bulgaria has more economic freedom than a Mexican in Mexico.

The Index rates almost every country in the world on ten categories, including things like "Trade", "Regulation", and "Monetary Policy". It gives each category a numerical rating between 1 (best) and 5 (worst). Then it averages the ten and comes up with a composite rank between 1 and 5. This lets it rank the world's countries from best (Hong Kong) to worst (North Korea). Finally, based on the numerical score, it states whether they are "free", "mostly free", "mostly unfree", or "unfree".

The Index just came out with its 2004 edition, and Romania didn't do so well. Its overall score was 3.7, it came in 129th out of 180 or so countries, and its rating was "mostly unfree".

This has caused a certain amount of consternation here in Romania.

Is the Index an accurate reflection of how things are here? Well, it says that it is. "The internationally acclaimed Index of Economic Freedom remains one of the world?s most reliable and authoritative guides to economic growth: an essential resource for anyone who wants to understand why some countries prosper while others still lag behind." Or so says the website.

Unfortunately, at least with regard to Romania, the Index is pretty worthless.

I think I'd have to do a longer post to explain why in detail, but here are a few reasons.

My biggest problem with this index is that it's so damn crude. It uses a lot of really arbitrary figures, most of which seem to have been chosen for how easy they are to find rather than how relevant they are to economic freedom or economic growth.

Here's one example: "Monetary Policy". (You might want to open up Romania's entry in the Index and follow along.)

MONETARY POLICY
Score: 5.0
From 1993 to 2002, Romania?s weighted average annual rate of inflation was 29.08 percent.

"Monetary Policy", according to the Heritage Foundation, consists of just one thing: average inflation over the last ten years. I checked the entries for several other countries and, yep, this is how they do it for everyone.

Since Romania had a couple of bouts of heavy inflation -- on in the mid-'90s, another around 2000 -- it's cursed with a bad score until at least 2010 or so.

This is particularly stupid, because Romania has had pretty decent macroeconomic and monetary policy for the last two or three years. Inflation is down, interest rates are falling slowly, the leu is pretty stable. And this has been the case for a while.

But it doesn't matter how good monetary policy is. It can be good, and stay good, for the next five years; but the score won't come down from 5.0.

That's just dumb; and it doesn't say anything meaningful about Romania in 2004.

Here's another example:

REGULATION
Score: 4.0
The Financial Times reports, based on a U.S. Agency for International Development study, that ?it takes anything from 49 to 102 days to register a new company: 83 pages of forms have to be completed, weighing half a kilo?. Small to medium-sized enterprises have between 11 and 23 inspections a year?. A business start-up needs between 23 and 29 authorisations and approvals.?

I know the study that they're talking about. It's the IRIS study, done in May 2000. You can find it here (.pdf file -- click on "English version" and then on "Red Tape"). It was a pretty good study, but it's nearly four years old, and much has changed since then. The fact that these turkeys are using it as a basis for their study is... suggestive.

And then there's this:

GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION IN THE ECONOMY
Score: 2.5
The World Bank reports that the government consumed 6.3 percent of GDP in 2001, down from the 12.5 percent reported in the 2003 Index.

Pause right there. Is it just me, or does that seem a really suspect figure? How did government consumption drop by 50% in just one year?

GDP grew only by about 4%; goverment expenditures went down by only about 2%. So... is it possible that there might be an error here?

Based on the decrease in the level of government consumption, Romania?s government intervention score is 1.5 point better this year.

Apparently the Heritage Foundation doesn't give it a second thought.

I could go on. There are ten categories, and I'd say at least half of them are suspect, and two or three are really completely worthless. But, really, the whole thing is just crap.

This wouldn't bother me if it was labelled honestly. If it said, "Here's a very rough, crude measurement culled from easily assembled secondary sources. It applies the same methodologies to the United States, China and Congo, but hey -- we had to cover 180 countries, and this was quick and simple" -- if it said that, I guess I'd be OK with it.

But it says it's "one of the world?s most reliable and authoritative guides to economic growth"; an "essential resource for anyone who wants to understand why some countries prosper while others still lag behind".

And, you know, that's just not so. The more I stare at this thing, the sloppier and lazier it looks. Puffing it up as "authoritative" and "essential" is just adding insult to injury.

Unfortunately, the Romanians appear to have taken it pretty seriously; it got major articles in all the respectable daily newspapers and was mentioned on national TV. More's the pity.

The Train Station, Again

Sunday morning Alan and I went to the Gara de Nord again.

It's about 3 km (a bit less than two miles) from the apartment. Usually that's about half an hour's walk, but with the snow it was closer to an hour. We bundled him up in multiple many layers of clothing, plus blanket and little footwarmer, and put him in the big three-wheel stroller.

He couldn't really move, but he rolled his eyes around a lot.

It was fairly quiet at the train station -- Sunday morning, I suppose. I bought this week's Economist, then I took Alan out of the stroller and put him up on my shoulders, and we went and looked at trains. Alan watched the loading and unloading with interest, and then waved to the trains going away -- bye bye!

After half an hour of this, we went to the McDonalds in the station, and had a cup of coffee (for me) and a large fries (for both of us). Alan is still rather thin after his illness, so I encouraged him to eat; he wasn't terribly interested, but took a dozen or so fries in a spirit of companionship. Then we went and looked at trains again.

Two changes at the Gara de Nord. One, there were a couple of security guards at the entrance to the coffee shop, charging the 4000 lei "station entrance" fee. I guess they finally realized that the coffee shop was a loophole in, uh, station security.

Second, there was an interesting new train. It's called the Blue Arrow, and it's the "snow train" to take skiers up to to the mountains. It's a small train -- just two cars -- but it looks very modern, all streamlined white plastic. And when it left the station, it left fast. And apparently it gets up to Brasov in less than three hours. Maybe we should give it a try.

Alan fell asleep in the stroller on the way back. I put stroller, Alan and all in the quiet spot under the staircase, and he slept for a couple of hours there.

And that was Sunday morning.

Others suffer too...

Apt. 11D -- The story of her son's diarrhea is worse than our experiences. Look under January 7th and following.

Alan and David are both on the mend, after last night's visit to the hospital. We all hope for a good night's sleep now and a restful and healthy Sunday. Wouldn't that be nice for a change!

In the Clinic

"Please tell me that wasn't the reset button."

"Well, I don't know... what's 'reset' in Romanian?"

"Well, what does the damn button say?"

"It says... 'reset'. And the screen just went dark."

We are standing in the doctor's office, staring at the computer. Alan's finger has just lashed out, quick as a chameleon's tongue, and hit the tiny button on the back of the doctor's CPU. We thought we were watching him; we weren't watching him closely enough.

"Oh, crud, it shut down. It shut down."

"Well... 'reset' is 'reset', right? It should start up again in a second."

[pause]

"In a few seconds."

[pause]

"Come on... Alan! No! Not again!"

[parent snatches small child away from CPU] [small child squirms, whines]

"Hold him!"

[small child begins to wail miserably]

[SFX: Microsoft startup chime]

"Yes!"

[long pause]

[child continues wailing]

"Come on... come on... holy smokes, what is this thing, a 286? What's taking so long?"

We have been standing in the doctor's office for about half an hour, with the kids growing steadily more whiny and squirrely. Since we brought them to the clinic mostly because they were already whiny and squirrely, this is not so good. Alan is literally bouncing off the walls, which is one of those things that you consider a figure of speech until you see it happen. David's crying has begun to take on that ugly rasping sound that suggests no amount of parental jiggling and cooing will stop the incipient meltdown.

"'Improper shutdown detected, Scanning drives for --'" [Claudia slaps the 'Enter' key] "Ooh, good one, wife."

"Thank you -- No! It wants a password!"

The clinic is overcrowded, the doctors and nurses are obviously overworked and underpaid. The floor needs cleaning and the tiles on the walls are chipped. The interior of the clinic is a weird maze of temporary rooms and recently added partitions; the room just outside of ours is half file cabinets, half sink-toilet-shower. Nurses and doctors duck into the bath to change clothes and scrub, pulling a curtain across to give them a few square feet of privacy.

The clinic smells faintly of disinfectant and the wordless fears of tired parents. Somewhere outside a baby is crying -- another baby, I mean, not ours. The doctor has been gone for a long time now.

But: the doctor spoke English and seemed to know her stuff. She gave David a swift but professional examination, pronounced him slightly dehydrated, and prescribed electrolytes and carrot soup. Alan was something else: she heard sounds in his lungs, found inflammation down his throat, and stared long and thoughtfully at his flushed cheeks. Then she ordered an X-ray, which was done in just a few minutes down the hall. (Without any apron or protection for Claudia, but we're getting used to that.)

But then she had disappeared, leaving the four of us in her tiny office. With her computer.

"Hit 'Enter' again."

"What?"

"Do it. Sometimes people don't bother with the password."

"Oh... yes!"

Just above the computer, a sign announces -- in simple Romanian that even I can read -- that smoking is really, truly forbidden in pediatric emergency wards, because the government has passed a law against it, with fines of up to two million lei ($60), and they really mean it this time. The effective date of the law is June 1, 2003.

"Stuff coming up on the screen... Microsoft Instant Message?"

"Close it."

"Looks like some sort of virus update notice."

"Close that too."

I've lifted Alan up onto my shoulders and am swaying from side to side across an arc of thirty degrees or so. Sway, sway, swaaaay. Usually he finds this amusing, or at least soothing. All it's doing now is taking the edge of his whimpering. If I sway any further his head will bang into a wall, a lamp or the edge of a medicine cabinet.

"Umm... I think this is the desktop."

"Okay. So now what?"

"Well... I guess we wait until the screensaver comes back on."

I can't say this clinic is terrific the way that, say, German health care is terrific. It's not a cheerful place. The waiting room in particular is... grim; a small bare room, no toys or books or magazines, no cheerful paintings or prints on the walls, just worried-looking parents sitting on benches holding children.

On the other hand, it is, dammit, health care. We may have to wait for the doctor to get back -- we've been waiting for about 45 minutes now -- but we got in the door, and into her office, in ten minutes or so.

And, in the end: the screensaver came back on, the doctor came back in -- not giving the computer a second glance, bless her -- and looked at the X-ray. She said it was viral but not too serious, probably; and then she gave us prescriptions and instructions, and then wouldn't take the extra couple of hundred thousand lei that I tried to give her.

It's not a Mercedes, but it has four wheels and an engine. I'd go back.

I do wish they'd paint that waiting room a more cheerful color, though.

The Elections in Serbia

Serbia held Parliamentary elections on December 28. That was almost two weeks ago, but hey, we've been travelling and the kids were sick.

Besides, not much has happened since then. You think a Serbian government can form in just two weeks? They're just starting the negotiations.

Anyhow, it's generally agreed that the elections did not have a very good outcome. Somewhere between "disappointment" and "catastrophe" is the consensus.

I'm now going to discuss the election results in a little detail. If you want to jump overboard and start swimming for shore, now's your chance.

Okay, let's take a look at what happened. The election was for the Serbian Parliament, which contains 250 seats. Serbia has a fairly typical Central European system of government, meaning Parliament appoints the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. So any group that can get a majority in Parliament -- 126 seats -- controls the government.

Voting for Parliament is not by district like the US Congress. Instead, voters vote for parties. Each party gets seats in Parliament depending on the proportion of the vote that they received. So, if 20% of the people vote for a party, that party gets (20% x 250) = 50 seats in Parliament.

Simple enough, no? There is one minor wrinkle. To get any seats at all, a party must receive at least 5% of the vote. Otherwise, votes for that party are lost. This is to prevent every dinky little fringe party from getting into Parliament. Most countries with Parliamentary/party vote systems have similar provisions. In this election, this provision had some unforeseen consequences... but we'll get to that.

When the votes were counted, six parties had gotten over 5% of the vote. So these six parties got seats in Parliament. The winning six parties were as follows:

1) The Serbian Radical Party: 82 seats (27% of the popular vote). The Radicals are the populist ultra-nationalist party. They've been described as "neofascist", and that's a reasonable shorthand. They are the only party still committed to the idea of a "Greater Serbia" including parts of Bosnia and Croatia. Their leader, Vojislav Sheshelj, is presently in prison in the Hague, under indictment for war crimes in Bosnia.

The Radicals are really pretty odious. Back in the early '90s, Sheshelj founded a paramilitary group called the White Eagles. The Eagles were involved in all sorts of abominable activities in Bosnia. The Radicals deny any connection with them, but they are very proud to be connected with Sheshelj -- a man who liked to send his bodyguards out to beat up journalists who wrote bad things about him, and who once publicly boasted that he'd gouge Croatian eyes out with a spoon. And while the Radicals did try to soften their image a little for the election -- emphasizing their populist economic platform, and saying they'd only try to create Greater Serbia by "diplomatic means" -- they're still the party of ethnic cleansing.

The Radicals are a pariah group as far as the international community is concerned; and if they ever get into power, Serbia will probably once again become a pariah state. And the fact that the Radicals got a whopping 27% of the vote does not bode well. True, a lot of this was probably a protest vote... things have been tough in Serbia lately, especially in rust belt towns and the countryside. But when one person in four is voting for a party of malignant malcontents led by a thug, it's just not a good sign.

2) The Democratic Party of Serbia: 53 seats (18% of the vote). This is the party of Vojislav Kostunica, the man who defeated Milosevic for the Yugoslav Presidency in 2000. It's more or less a conservative center-right party, although like most Serbian parties it's more about personalities than ideology. They're nationalist, though not malevolently so, and are generally pro-market, although they think the last government screwed up the privatization process.

Kostunica himself is widely popular because he's perceived as being both fearless and honest. (I think this is a correct perception, by the way. We used to live around the corner from Kostunica, and it wasn't because we were living in a ritzy neighborhood... it was because he was living in a small three-room apartment in a modest neighborhood of Belgrade, same as he always had been.)

Unfortunately, even if Kostunica is honest and fearless, he's also pedantic, unimaginative, rather dull, a reflexive little-c conservative, and distinctly inclined to carry grudges. Also, he doesn't really want to be Prime Minister. He'd rather be Serbia's President. That is a separate office, chosen in a completely separate election. It's not to be confused with his old job as President of Yugoslavia. That position disappeared when Yugoslavia was finally, formally dissolved in March 2002, just 16 months after Kostunica beat Milosevic in the "Velvet Revolution" of 2000.

(Yes, it can be confusing. It gets worse, too.)

3) The Democratic Party: 37 seats (13% of the vote). Don't confuse the Democratic Party with the Democratic Party of Serbia -- they're quite different. (I said it would get worse.)

The Democratic Party is the party of Zoran Djindjic, who was Prime Minister for two years or so before being assassinated last March. It's basically a center-left party, pro-market and pro-privatization but vaguely hoping to keep some sort of social safety net.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has been heavily discredited by association with corruption, economic decline, and the failure to achieve any sort of resolution of the Kosovo situation. Me, I think they were lucky to get as many votes as they did. (That's largely because they reshuffled the leadership at the last minute and made Boris Tadic, the relatively popular Defense Minister, their chief.) They made a lot of enemies when they were in power, so a lot of people -- including Kostunica -- don't want to give them another chance, even as junior members of a coalition.

4) G17 Plus: 34 seats (12% of the vote). Isn't G17 Plus just the weirdest name for a political party? I think it sounds like some sort of shampoo. But what it is, is the party of western-educated technocrats. They're the best and the brightest, MBAs and PhDs who will lead Serbia to economic growth and EU membership. Most of their support came from urban voters and what passes for a yuppie class in Serbia.

5) Serbian Renewal Movement/New Serbia: 23 seats (8%). This is actually a Siamese twin, a coalition of two smaller parties, and I admit I have trouble keeping them straight. But if I have it right, New Serbia consists of the monarchists, while the Serbian Renewal Movement is the personal entourage of a very strange fellow named Vuk Draskovic.

About one Serb out of twenty thinks that Draskovic is a mystically inspired, incredibly charismatic visionary who will lead Serbia to renewed greatness. Most of the other 19 Serbs out of 20 think that Draskovic is a vain, self-obsessed twit. (I agree with the 19.)

6) Socialist Party of Serbia: 22 seats (7% of the vote). This is Milosevic's old party, the last remnant of Tito's Communist Party of Yugoslavia. It draws most of its support from the people most unhappy with the way things are: aging pensioners, disgruntled bureaucrats, and the unemployed. In other words, it's a pretty typical post-Communist Communist Party. The only distinctive thing about it is that, like the Radicals, it's aggressively nationalist. Oh, and it still claims Milosevic as its leader, even though he's being tried for war crimes in the Hague.

The Socialists are very friendly with the Radicals. Nobody else likes them much.

Right, still with me? Okay, take a look at those numbers again:

81... 53... 37... 34... 23... 22.

250 seats total, meaning 126 are needed to form a government.

Now, the Radicals -- with that big block of 81 seats -- are pariahs, and nobody but the Socialists will ally with them. (Although it's rumoured that Kostunica considered it.) And the Radicals plus the Socialists only have 81 + 22 = 103 seats, not enough to form a government.

But... if the Radicals and Socialists are in opposition, then it will take all of the other four parties, working together, to form a government. Leave any one group out, and you can't get a majority.

This means that, in order to form a government, the conservatives, liberals, monarchists, technocrats, and followers of Vuk "He Knows the Way!" Draskovic will have to settle their differences. And this will not be easy; nor is it likely to lead to a stable and effective government.

One of the reasons it won't be easy is that the Democratic Party of Serbia (Kostunica's party) and the Democratic Party (the late Djindjic's party) don't get along. In fact, Kostunica publicly said before the election that he wouldn't enter into a coalition with the Democrats. Supposedly this was because they were corrupt, and had bungled running the country's economy in general and privatization in particular. Many suspect that personal resentment on Kostunica's part may also have played a role, as Djindjic and the Democrats repeatedly blocked Kostunica from reaching Serbia's Presidency.

This feud runs so deep that at one point this week Kostunica actually proposed an all-party "grand coalition" government. However, while the Radicals and Socialists love this idea, the other three parties want nothing to do with it -- so it probably won't happen. Probably.

Another problem is that any government involving the New Serbia/Serbian Renewal two-headed calf will have to find a spot for Vuk Draskovic; and Vuk is a notorious prima donna.

And then, of course, any coalition running Serbia is going to inherit some spectacular problems, from Kosovo, to the Hague indictments, to the still-floundering Serbian economy. So there might be a new round of elections in a year or two, especially if the government is a fragile coalition.

There were other parties running, by the way: the Hungarian ethnic party, OTPOR (the student resistance turned political movement), Christian Democrats, you name it. But they didn't reach the magic 5% cutoff, although a couple of them came close.

What makes this unfortunate -- besides the wasted votes, of course -- is that the cutoff used to be 2%. If it had stayed at 2%, then two or three of the little parties would have gotten in. That would have been a good thing, because most of the little parties were OK; they might have been a bit odd, but they weren't about turning the clock back to Tito's time or gouging eyes in the name of Greater Serbia. But it's a moot point now. (Thanks to Dragan Antulov for pointing this out.)

If you've made it this far... well, thanks. I'll keep posting on this from time to time, as time allows.

Snow (1)

It's January, we're in Eastern Europe, there's snow on the ground.

It's not that there's so very much snow. It's only 20 cm (8 inches) or so.

But the streets aren't plowed. (Well, the main streets are, but we don't live on a main street.) And nobody in our neighborhood has cleaned the sidewalk. Nobody, that is, except for the mysterious House Where Someone Important Lives, and I hesitate to walk in front of that house, because it distracts the security guards from their TV. People sweep and shovel from door to sidewalk, but it stops there.

So the walk from my house to the office, which is just four or five blocks, has become a slow, careful shuffle. Like a premonition of old age: in thirty or forty years, I'll walk like this all the time.

It's also cold. It went down to -10 centigrade last night -- that's about 14 degrees Fahrenheit for our American readers -- and it's going down to -12 for the weekend.

Oh, well, at least everyone seems to be healthy again [crossed fingers]. And the snow has brought some interesting changes. The Gypsies who wandered the streets calling for scrap metal and old clothes have gone indoors for the winter. They've been replaced by an old Romanian man who sells brooms. Big ones; he carries a dozen or so over his shoulder, and shuffles slowly along calling out his wares.

And our landlord's mother-in-law, who lives in the apartment under us, has started feeding the sparrows. So now there's always a crowd of them, little feathered freeloaders, lurking hopefully in the front garden.

Alan doesn't much like snow, by the way. Yow, it stings! Get it away from me.

That's my boy.

On the Floor

Last night David rolled off the couch.

This came at the end of The Week That Everyone But Me Got Really Sick. Claudia and Alan and David had been in the hospital, and then they seemed to be doing better, so we all went back to Romania, and then Alan started vomiting, and then David had, um, intestinal issues, and then Claudia started getting nausea and belly cramps. I didn't get sick -- still haven't, yet -- but everyone else was varying sorts of miserable.

(I did have a nasty case of jet lag, and Alan vomited lavishly all over me. So I was trying.)

But after hours of comforting the babies, Claudia had finally fallen into an exhausted sleep. Alan, heavily medicated, was snoring as only a heavily medicated two year old can snore. That left me (jet lagged) and David (fussy).

So I took David downstairs and put him on the couch and played with him for a little while: rattle, tickle, belly blast, rattle. After a while he calmed down and seemed ready for sleep. So I decided to lie down on the floor next to the couch, maybe read a little.

Outside, the full moon was shining on our snow-covered street. (Bucharest does have snow plows, but not for the likes of us.) I could hear Alan's snores echoing down the stairs. David's breathing had gone slow and regular. I closed my eyes for just a moment...

...and WHUMP the baby hit the floor a few inches from my face. I nearly screamed. I had been sleeping, and David... hadn't. And he'd decided to practice his new "rolling over" skill.

He was lying right in front of me, eyes wide open in complete astonishment: he'd been HERE and suddenly he was THERE, and something had HIT him! He opened his mouth...

...and "Oh, you rolled over! What a clever boy! What a clever, clever boy!" I babbled. "You clever, smart... clever baby boy! Aren't you just the clever rolling-over baby David boy! Yes you are!"

...and he hesitated for a long moment, and then broke into a smile. Yes! he said, I am! I am a clever boy! Maybe I'll roll over some more!

Well.

It has been a long week, especially for Claudia. But it looks, cross fingers, knock wood, it looks like we might be out of it. Alan lost a lot of weight but he stopped vomiting last night and today he was eating and drinking normally. David and Claudia both slept for hours today; David is still fussy but seems pretty much okay.

If so, then maybe we can start blogging again.

(But if you check back in a day or two and we're not blogging... well, you'll know why.)

Election in Serbia

Serbia held Parliamentary elections on December 28. That was almost two weeks ago, but hey, we've been travelling and the kids were sick.

Besides, not much has happened since then. You think a Serbian government can form in just two weeks? They're just starting the negotiations.

Anyhow, it's generally agreed that the elections did not have a very good outcome. Somewhere between "disappointment" and "catastrophe" is the consensus.

I'm now going to discuss the election results in a little detail. If you want to jump overboard and start swimming for shore, now's your chance.

Okay, let's take a look at what happened. The election was for the Serbian Parliament, which contains 250 seats. Serbia has a fairly typical Central European system of government, meaning Parliament appoints the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. So any group that can get a majority in Parliament -- 126 seats -- controls the government.

Voting for Parliament is not by district like the US Congress. Instead, voters vote for parties. Each party gets seats in Parliament depending on the proportion of the vote that they received. So, if 20% of the people vote for a party, that party gets (20% x 250) = 50 seats in Parliament.

Simple enough, no? There is one minor wrinkle. To get any seats at all, a party must receive at least 5% of the vote. Otherwise, votes for that party are lost. This is to prevent every dinky little fringe party from getting into Parliament. Most countries with Parliamentary/party vote systems have similar provisions. In this election, this provision had some unforeseen consequences... but we'll get to that.

When the votes were counted, six parties had gotten over 5% of the vote. So these six parties got seats in Parliament. The winning six parties were as follows:

1) The Serbian Radical Party: 82 seats (27% of the popular vote). The Radicals are the populist ultra-nationalist party. They've been described as "neofascist", and that's a reasonable shorthand. They are the only party still committed to the idea of a "Greater Serbia" including parts of Bosnia and Croatia. Their leader, Vojislav Sheshelj, is presently in prison in the Hague, under indictment for war crimes in Bosnia.

The Radicals are really pretty odious. Back in the early '90s, Sheshelj founded a paramilitary group called the White Eagles. The Eagles were involved in all sorts of abominable activities in Bosnia. The Radicals deny any connection with them, but they are very proud to be connected with Sheshelj -- a man who liked to send his bodyguards out to beat up journalists who wrote bad things about him, and who once publicly boasted that he'd gouge Croatian eyes out with a spoon. And while the Radicals did try to soften their image a little for the election -- emphasizing their populist economic platform, and saying they'd only try to create Greater Serbia by "diplomatic means" -- they're still the party of ethnic cleansing.

The Radicals are a pariah group as far as the international community is concerned; and if they ever get into power, Serbia will probably once again become a pariah state. And the fact that the Radicals got a whopping 27% of the vote does not bode well. True, a lot of this was probably a protest vote... things have been tough in Serbia lately, especially in rust belt towns and the countryside. But when one person in four is voting for a party of malignant malcontents led by a thug, it's just not a good sign.

2) The Democratic Party of Serbia: 53 seats (18% of the vote). This is the party of Vojislav Kostunica, the man who defeated Milosevic for the Yugoslav Presidency in 2000. It's more or less a conservative center-right party, although like most Serbian parties it's more about personalities than ideology. They're nationalist, though not malevolently so, and are generally pro-market, although they think the last government screwed up the privatization process.

Kostunica himself is widely popular because he's perceived as being both fearless and honest. (I think this is a correct perception, by the way. We used to live around the corner from Kostunica, and it wasn't because we were living in a ritzy neighborhood... it was because he was living in a small three-room apartment in a modest neighborhood of Belgrade, same as he always had been.)

Unfortunately, even if Kostunica is honest and fearless, he's also pedantic, unimaginative, rather dull, a reflexive little-c conservative, and distinctly inclined to carry grudges. Also, he doesn't really want to be Prime Minister. He'd rather be Serbia's President. That is a separate office, chosen in a completely separate election. It's not to be confused with his old job as President of Yugoslavia. That position disappeared when Yugoslavia was finally, formally dissolved in March 2002, just 16 months after Kostunica beat Milosevic in the "Velvet Revolution" of 2000.

(Yes, it can be confusing. It gets worse, too.)

3) The Democratic Party: 37 seats (13% of the vote). Don't confuse the Democratic Party with the Democratic Party of Serbia -- they're quite different. (I said it would get worse.)

The Democratic Party is the party of Zoran Djindjic, who was Prime Minister for two years or so before being assassinated last March. It's basically a center-left party, pro-market and pro-privatization but vaguely hoping to keep some sort of social safety net.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has been heavily discredited by association with corruption, economic decline, and the failure to achieve any sort of resolution of the Kosovo situation. Me, I think they were lucky to get as many votes as they did. (That's largely because they reshuffled the leadership at the last minute and made Boris Tadic, the relatively popular Defense Minister, their chief.) They made a lot of enemies when they were in power, so a lot of people -- including Kostunica -- don't want to give them another chance, even as junior members of a coalition.

4) G17 Plus: 34 seats (12% of the vote). Isn't G17 Plus just the weirdest name for a political party? I think it sounds like some sort of shampoo. But what it is, is the party of western-educated technocrats. They're the best and the brightest, MBAs and PhDs who will lead Serbia to economic growth and EU membership. Most of their support came from urban voters and what passes for a yuppie class in Serbia.

5) Serbian Renewal Movement/New Serbia: 23 seats (8%). This is actually a Siamese twin, a coalition of two smaller parties, and I admit I have trouble keeping them straight. But if I have it right, New Serbia consists of the monarchists, while the Serbian Renewal Movement is the personal entourage of a very strange fellow named Vuk Draskovic.

About one Serb out of twenty thinks that Draskovic is a mystically inspired, incredibly charismatic visionary who will lead Serbia to renewed greatness. Most of the other 19 Serbs out of 20 think that Draskovic is a vain, self-obsessed twit. (I agree with the 19.)

6) Socialist Party of Serbia: 22 seats (7% of the vote). This is Milosevic's old party, the last remnant of Tito's Communist Party of Yugoslavia. It draws most of its support from the people most unhappy with the way things are: aging pensioners, disgruntled bureaucrats, and the unemployed. In other words, it's a pretty typical post-Communist Communist Party. The only distinctive thing about it is that, like the Radicals, it's aggressively nationalist. Oh, and it still claims Milosevic as its leader, even though he's being tried for war crimes in the Hague.

The Socialists are very friendly with the Radicals. Nobody else likes them much.

Right, still with me? Okay, take a look at those numbers again:

81... 53... 37... 34... 23... 22.

250 seats total, meaning 126 are needed to form a government.

Now, the Radicals -- with that big block of 81 seats -- are pariahs, and nobody but the Socialists will ally with them. (Although it's rumoured that Kostunica considered it.) And the Radicals plus the Socialists only have 81 + 22 = 103 seats, not enough to form a government.

But... if the Radicals and Socialists are in opposition, then it will take all of the other four parties, working together, to form a government. Leave any one group out, and you can't get a majority.

This means that, in order to form a government, the conservatives, liberals, monarchists, technocrats, and followers of Vuk "He Knows the Way!" Draskovic will have to settle their differences. And this will not be easy; nor is it likely to lead to a stable and effective government.

One of the reasons it won't be easy is that the Democratic Party of Serbia (Kostunica's party) and the Democratic Party (the late Djindjic's party) don't get along. In fact, Kostunica publicly said before the election that he wouldn't enter into a coalition with the Democrats. Supposedly this was because they were corrupt, and had bungled running the country's economy in general and privatization in particular. Many suspect that personal resentment on Kostunica's part may also have played a role, as Djindjic and the Democrats repeatedly blocked Kostunica from reaching Serbia's Presidency.

This feud runs so deep that at one point this week Kostunica actually proposed an all-party "grand coalition" government. However, while the Radicals and Socialists love this idea, the other three parties want nothing to do with it -- so it probably won't happen. Probably.

Another problem is that any government involving the New Serbia/Serbian Renewal two-headed calf will have to find a spot for Vuk Draskovic; and Vuk is a notorious prima donna.

And then, of course, any coalition running Serbia is going to inherit some spectacular problems, from Kosovo, to the Hague indictments, to the still-floundering Serbian economy. So there might be a new round of elections in a year or two, especially if the government is a fragile coalition.

There were other parties running, by the way: the Hungarian ethnic party, OTPOR (the student resistance turned poli