Halfway down the Danube

Extremadura

Extremadura is a dry, brown-coloured land which is at the same time, a land full of water. Thanks to its many reservoirs it provides a great deal of electricity and water for irrigation. It is also a rich and fertile land that has for centuries supplied much of Europe with fresh produce. The region covers an area of 41,602km square and consists of two provinces, Caceres and Badajoz. The region borders Portugal to the west, Andalucia to the south and Castilla la Mancha to the east. The total population, which has suffered over recent years due to emigration, is estimated to be just over one million. The regions capital is Merida which has just over 51,000 inhabitants.
IdealSpain.com

We're about to leave for Caceres where my brother is getting married on Saturday to one of those above mentioned emigrants. They are both physicists (doctors of their fields, no less) and of course simply adorable.

We're flying to Madrid tomorrow morning, will stay there over night and explore town a bit, then attempt the 3+ hour drive to Caceres on Friday. We hope to have a great time and I mean time since the place will be full of relatives fighting to take care of the kids. Yeah.

So. Internet access might be a bit spotty but we'll try to report. (The last hiatus was connected with that cup of coffee that defied my hand and landed on the laptop... took me a while to get it going again.) The hotel in Madrid advertises with free highspeed internet. We'll test it, of course.

NATO

Today Romania -- along with Bulgaria, Slovenia, and three other countries -- joined NATO.

It wasn't a big deal. Nobody mentioned it in the office, and it didn't generate much by way of headlines. (I can't really read Romanian newspapers, but I usually pause to look at the headlines on the kiosks. Headlines, I can usually understand. And if I don't see any flattering pictures of President Iliescu or PM Nastase, I buy a package of chewing gum.)

That seems a bit strange when I think about it. Romania has been chasing NATO membership since 1997. In 1999, the Contantinescu government put itself in a very tricky diplomatic position in order to support the NATO intervention in Kosovo.

Right at the end of that conflict, Boris Yeltsin's Russia had send a few hundred troops into Kosovo, occupying Prishtina airfield. That raised the unpleasant possibility of Russia sending further reinforcements into Prishtina by air. But this couldn't happen without the Russians flying their troops across Bulgaria, Romania or Hungary.

Sure enough, Moscow asked each of these countries, one after the other, for permission to overfly. One after the other, at NATO's urging, they refused.

A diplomatic tug-of-war ensued, with Moscow leaning heavily on its former satellites, and NATO pushing just as hard in the opposite direction. Hungary had the protection of NATO membership, but for the other two countries it was a tense few days. And at one point, former NATO commander Wesley Clark says, he got a phone call from the Romanian Minister of Defense: if the Russians went ahead with a troop flight anyway, he wanted to know, what were they supposed to do? Shoot it down?

Well. It didn't happen, and now Romania is part of NATO. The Russians don't like this much, but they've grudgingly accepted.

In theory, at least, this should resolve Romania's security issues for a long time to come. But, as I said, nobody seems to care too much.

Maybe this means Romanians aren't too concerned about security issues these days; and maybe that's a good thing.

I don't know.

A whole universe fits into my head

One reason why I couldn't wait for Alan to speak was that I wanted to know what was going on in his little head. Slowly now, as he gets more and more words, this world is unfolding. Mostly, it consists of simple urges like "nani!" (cuddle with me!), "lata!" (chocolate, and pronto!) or "Mine!" (and don't even think about touching this, OK?).

Sometimes, though, he surprises us. In our front yard, there are two manholes with manhole covers. Don't ask me what they are for, I have no idea. Today, Alan was outside, impatiently waiting for his Dad to get his shoes on so that they could take their customary stroll to the construction on Calea Dorobanti. He stomped around, discovered the manholes and stamped his foot on one of them for a moment. Then, he looked up and shouted: "Daddy! BIG plug!"

Age of Dinosaurs

Two weeks ago, for Alan's birthday, some well-meaning soul gave us a large package of little plastic dinosaurs.

They're about 3 or 4 cm long. All the usual species are there: brontosaur, stegosaur, raptor, triceratops. They come in a variety of bright colors.

And they are everywhere.

I found one in my shoe this morning, and one under my pillow last night. There's a diplodocus in the bathtub and some sort of carnivore -- an allosaurus, I think -- lurking under the dining room table. There's a small colony of them under the couch. A T-Rex was sitting on top of the TV for a while; it's disappeared for the moment, but I'm pretty sure I saw a duckbill peeping timidly from under the refrigerator.

What makes this odd is that I've never seen Alan playing with the dinosaurs. David puts them in his mouth sometimes, but Alan (at least when I'm around) seems to ignore them.

Yet there they are.

I guess having kids means accepting a little mystery into your life.

Scolded

There's always a beggar or two outside the bakery. Maybe there's something about walking out of a bakery that puts people in a generous mood? Or maybe it's just that we're likely to still have change jingling in our hands.

Anyhow, the beggars are almost always old women. Outside the NIC supermarket it always seems to be the same old women; there are maybe five of them, and they show up one or two at a time. Outside the bakery, though, it varies. I don't know why.

So I was going into the bakery with David in the stroller and Alan on my back, and the old beggar lady -- who I hadn't seen before -- went to open the door for us. Since my reflex is that I hold the door for old ladies, not vice versa, this resulted in a bit of a scramble. In the fracas, Alan's head got lightly bonked on the door frame. He didn't cry -- it was a very light bonk -- but he said, "Owah!"

And the old lady pointed at him and said something very sharp to me in Romanian.

"Um, okay, right," I replied, and escaped into the bakery.

A few minutes later, burdened with bread and two different sorts of tasty little fruit pastry, I stepped out. The old lady was still there, still holding the door. And I still found myself reaching for the door to hold it for her. It was worse this time, though, because I had one hand still holding the package of bread and whatnot, and the other hand trying to get a few lei for her out of my pocket, and we were going down the bakery steps.

So, what with one thing and another, I almost lost control of David's stroller -- it bounced down the last couple of steps, making him sit up and wave his arms around -- and I bonked Alan's head on the door frame a second time. (Lightly, people. Just lightly.) "Owah!" he said again.

And this time the old lady just let me have it. An absolute torrent of Romanian, accompanied by a shaking, stabbing, pointing finger. What kind of father was I? How stupid and clumsy could I be? Where was my wife, allowing me outside with these precious children? Didn't I see that this was a baby, a baby? Why was I being allowed out without a leash?

I gave her 10,000 lei. She took it with a scowl that clearly said, I'm taking your money because it's my job, but don't think this lets you off the hook -- and continued her tirade.

I left about as fast as a man carrying packages and pushing a stroller with a two year old on his back could leave.

Now I'll be worried that she'll recognize me if I go back. And it's the good bakery, too.

O Brownie Ultima

I ate the last brownie today. "O brownie ultima?" I asked, pointing. This is the last brownie?

"Da, brownie ultima," said the girl behind the counter.

"De ce... uh... nu sunt numai brownies?"

"Cine stiu." Who knows. A very useful phrase, that.

-- It was at the Snack Attack, a little local store that sells sandwiches and soda and, until today, brownies. The Snack Attack is on Piata Dorobant', just four minutes from the house and six or eight from the office. So Claudia and I have been regular customers.

The Snack Attack serves pretty good sandwiches and salads, wrapped to go. It gets a lot of lunch-time office business. But for me, the brownies were definitely the high point.

See, Eastern Europe doesn't do brownies. And, I have to be frank, these weren't great brownies. They were pretty crumbly, and perhaps a bit too sweet. But they weren't bad; and hell, even an OK brownie was something to look forward to, in a country that knows not the chocolate chip cookie and has only the vaguest concept of "muffin".

I would eat them with yogurt. Drinking yogurt, yogurt de baut as they say here. I really got to like that, actually. Brownies with thin yogurt are even better than brownies with milk -- the sourness of the yogurt sets off the sweetness of the brownie.

Brownie plus yogurt became my standard snack. At least twice per week, I'd take a short break from the office and walk briskly up to the Snack Attack to get a brownie and a yogurt. The brownies were a good size, and the yogurt was something like 300 ml (12 ounces), so it was substantial -- enough to replace lunch if I was in a hurry, and willing to be hungry at the end of the day.

But then the Snack Attack announced that it was cancelling the line of brownies. Why? Cine stiu. Not enough people were buying them, I suppose.

It just happened that, by complete accident, I was in the Snack Attack today with Alan. (I had him in the backpack. A group of university age girls came out as I was going in, and surrounded me for a minute to coo and wiggle their fingers. Apparently something about that little blond head peeking over my shoulder turns him into Mr. Chick Magnet. Nothing to do with me, of course.) And there, under the glass, I saw... one last, solitary brownie.

I bought it and took it home, and Alan and I ate it.

And that's all.

Apple lattice cake

It seems that these days I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, baking. All those March birthdays, I'm sure. So here is a recipe for the bakers among our readers. This is the best ever apple cake. It's a bit time-consuming (the apple cutting takes time) but it's well worth it.

Note to US American bakers: I've calculated the cup-equivalents for you guys and they are, of course, not always "fitting". It came out as something like "a cup plus three teaspoons". We Germans believe in precision in our baking, that's why we prefer the metric weight system, you see. ;-)

The dough is what we call a "Mürbteig". My dictionary gives me "short pastry" as the English expression. I'd appreciate a pointer whether this is the correct word. OK, let's begin with a list of ingredients:

Dough:
300 g all-purpose flour (2.5 cups, plus a tsp)
200 g butter, cool (5/6 cups)
175 g fine sugar (1 1/3 cups)
1 egg
lemon peel to taste

Apple filling:
1 kg tart apples (2.2 pounds)
1 lemon
50 gr rasins (1/3 cup)
50 g sugar (1/3 cup, roughly)
cinnamon

Royale:
2 eggs
3 Tbs milk
1 Tbs sugar
1 Tbs instant pudding powder (vanilla)

Sift the flour into a bowl and make a little ditch in the middle in which you place the egg (without the shell, of course). Sprinkle the sugar around, then cut the cool butter into little pieces and add around the ditch as well.

Beat the egg a little with a fork and work some flour into it. Then, I suggest you use your hands. Dig right in and knead until you have a nice, firm dough. Work quickly so that the butter doesn't get too warm -- the dough will get very sticky then. Wrap the dough with plastic foil and let it rest in the fridge for at least an hour, better two. You can also prepare the dough a day in advance. The trick with this dough is that it should never get warm, so work swiftly and always place those parts of the dough you're not working with back into the fridge.

For the filling, peel, core and slice the apples into small pieces -- roughly the size of a quarter. Mix with lemon juice, sugar, raisins (if you like, I usually leave them out), a dash or two of cinnamon. The recipe doesn't call for it but I like to add some crunch in the form of some crushed almonds or other nuts. Also, a dash of cloves works well. Set the apples aside and prepare the royale: In an extra bowl, mix eggs, milk, sugar and pudding powder well. Set aside.

Butter a 26 cm (10 in) spring form. Divide the dough into two equal halves, put one half back into the fridge. With a rolling pin, roll out the dough to 2-3 mm thickness (0.1 in). Using the spring form as a template, cut out a 26 cm circle and place it into the form. Dab a couple time with a fork to create small vents.

Again, place the leftover dough back into the fridge and use half of the cooled dough next. I know, this whole dough-cooling seems excessive but I swear, handling is very easy as long as the dough doesn't get too warm. Then it will be all sticky and you'll curse me for putting you through this. So bear with me and use cool dough only.

So, use half of the remaining dough and roll it into one or more little sausages, about 2 cm in diameter (0.7 in). Place those into the spring form around the edges of the dough circle, and press slightly upwards to create the outer rim of the cake. Dab a fork into the rim a couple of times.

Fill in apples and spread evenly. Cover apples with a lattice of dough -- roll out the dough, cut it into strips and arrange those strips on top of the cake. Then pour the egg-milk mixture over the apples, using a brush to make sure the lattice is nicely coated with the mixure.

Bake at 200 C (390 F) for 50-60 minutes or until the top of the cake is nicely browned. Done!

This cake is best eaten the day after, when the apples have softened the crisp dough a little. Serve with whipped cream -- yum!

Sărut mână!

One of the most endearing greetings here in Romania is "săru'mână" or "sărut mână". Literally, it means "I kiss [your] hand" which is similar to the Austrian "Küss die Hand". Like in Austria, it's both a verbal greeting and an actual hand kiss.

In Bucharest, one mostly encounters it as a verbal greeting -- from men to women of any age. It's very, very polite and Romanian women consider this to be very charming. (That's the feedback from the Romanian women I know but there might be some among our readers who think differently?) Occasionally, though, one does encounter that rare species of man who does follow up with a hand kiss. I have to say, the first time this happened to me, I was quite baffled -- and felt very special. It's like something that you only see in the movies and suddenly you meet it in real life.

I've also heard it said by younger children to me -- so maybe it's not a custom that is dying out, as so many others are. In the countryside, so I've been told, younger folk of both sexes use it to show respect to older people.

Isn't it nice? I just love it. Sărut mână!

But then, a beautiful Sunday

Gorgeous weather here today, like a day from early May come six weeks early. Sunny, light breezes. Kids on bicycles and roller skates suddenly everywhere. In the garden, a single yellow blossom opening timidly at the end of a forsythia branch. The first flies of the season buzzing slow and lazy around the living room.

Alan and David are loving it. Alan... well, there has been construction on Callea Dorobants (the big street that runs a block from our house) for the last couple of days; they're scraping and resurfacing. This involves lots of heavy equipment: scraper, grader, bulldozer, backhoe with... um... the smash-the-tarmac attachment thingy. Anyhow, they're all big, loud, smelly, dirty and dangerous, and Alan wants nothing else than to stand on the sidewalk and watch them all... day... long.

-- There's a guy down the street from us who is an auto mechanic. It's love, not work; when he's not doing it for money, he's chopping an old Citroen Deux Chevaux into an off-road vehicle, with which he competes in races across Romania. (Yeah, there are off road racers in Romania. Who knew?) He doesn't win -- if you're serious about off road racing, you need to chop something a bit more powerful than an old DC -- but he has fun, and that's what matters.

Anyhow, he says that the repaving of Callea Dorobants is a gigantic scam. The road surface gets scraped up, remelted, mixed with some new asphalt, sprayed back on the road, rerolled... and in a year, after another winter, it will be exactly the same. He's not sure what the point of it all is, but he suspects it has something to do with EU money.

I don't know; but certainly something is terribly wrong with the roads of Bucharest. They're in horrible condition. And in the eight months since we arrived, they've gotten worse.

The sidewalks are pretty awful, too, I'm afraid. Up at Piatsa Dorobants there's a hole in the sidewalk that's big enough to hold a two-year-old child. I know, because it held our two-year-old child. Alan climbed into it and it was up to his chest; when he stood up straight, it was like half a child growing out of the pavement.

(For some reason I'm reminded of Plunkett of Tammany Hall, and his lecture on honest and dishonest graft. Honest graft gets the road built.)

Anyhow. Bad roads and sidewalk holes notwithstanding, it has been a Sunday to make you glad to be alive. Spring in the Balkans tends to be short -- last year we went from snow in the middle of March, to sweltering by the end of April. We can hope it will be different this year, but meanwhile we will enjoy it as best we can, while we can.

Sad Friday Night

A steady drumbeat of bad news from Serbia. I've been blogging about it over at tacitus; you can find my first post here and a followup over here.

I've been in touch with friends there, and everybody seems to be OK. But it's not good news. This is going to force Kostunica to take a more nationalist stand -- not that he'll need much forcing -- since otherwise, the Radicals will eat his lunch. Which they may do anyhow.

So, don't lie awake nights waiting for any more Serbs accused of war crimes to be deported to the Hague. Instead, watch Kostunica and his government play the nationalist card, hard; and never mind what it does to Serbia's image abroad, or its hopes for European integration.

At work this afternoon, I got a call from Claudia. She was watching the rioting in Belgrade on Euronews. "They trashed the McDonalds," she said. "Our McDonalds? The one on Terazije?" "Yep." We'd been in that McDonalds just a month ago; I took Alan downstairs, where he played for half an hour on the jungle gym while I drank coffee and read the paper.

"Oh, now they're showing the mosque," she said. "It's burning. They're burning the old mosque." In the background, I could hear Alan, obviously watching the TV too, saying, "Fire! Fire!"

It's not a happy day.

Bad News from Kosovo

Six people are dead there today. Or maybe more. Reports are confused, but it looks like a major clash between Serbs and Albanians is under way.

Apparently some Serb boys chased some Albanian children into a river, and two of the children then drowned. Mayhem then ensued, with vengeful Albanians attacking the Serbs, the Serbs counterattacking, and so forth.

This is the worst clash in the province since 2001, when Albanian terrorists killed 30 or so Serbs at one go by blowing up a bus. But there's been a steady background drumbeat of violence, with incidents every few months. Children have been involved in a number of these, unfortunately; for instance, several Serb teenagers swimming at a water hole were shot by a sniper last year. No arrests, of course.

Kosovo is already divided along ethnic lines, and has been since the end of the NATO campaign five years ago. The northern quarter or so of the province is about 90% Serb, the rest of it is about 95% Albanian. Re-integration of the two groups has never seemed particularly likely. The best case scenario was that the two would at least tone down the mutual hatred to the point where a small relict population of Serbs could live in relative peace in Kosovo, and Serbs could travel there safely to visit the many Serbian religious and historical sites -- cathedrals, monasteries, the Kosovo Polje battlefield.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be happening.

What happens now? I don't know. The Serbs and Albanians are limited in their ability to reach and hurt each other, in part because they're mostly physically separated, in part because of the presence of an international peacekeeping force. So larger scale violence is unlikely. But the fact that they're still managing to regularly have "incidents" ranging from sniper attacks to full-scale race riots, even under these circumstances, is depressing. It's like watching two guys who have been handcuffed but are still straining to reach each other with their teeth.

Bad news: for Kosovo, for Serbia, for the region.

More in a bit, probably, unfortunately.

In sickness and in health

I think it was Laura from Apt. 11D who once commented on how challenging it is to be a mother and a patient at the same time (I hope I'm not misattributing here; in any case, Apt. 11D is always worth a look or two). When I still lived at home, it would puzzle me no end why my mother was not able to adhere to doctor's orders and stay in bed when she was running a 40/100 degree fever. She was feeling lousy, shaky, and horrible, but there was no keeping her from getting up at her usual time in the morning to prepare breakfast. I actually used to be quite indignant about this -- did she not trust me, at the age of 9, 13, 17, to work the coffee machine?

Now that I'm a mother myself, and on strict bedrest, I finally understand.

Doug is a wonderful father and he's well able to get the boys through a day without my help. However, he does do things differently than I and while I am able to cope with this when I'm out of the house (out of sight, out of ear-shot), I'm completely unable to deal with this when I'm in the same house.

It's not a question of not trusting him, it's a question of wanting to have things done my way. Over the years, I've worked out a way of dealing with the kid(s) and the household which minimizes my efforts. Like, I pick up things as I walk around and don't less them mass up. I find it much more time consuming to clean up a big mess than to bend down ten times in the course of an hour while I walk past. It's a habit I've developed but not one that Doug has. So, he lets the kids play to their hearts' content, strewing toys and kitchen cabinet contents all over the first floor -- living room, dining room, kitchen, pantry... after a while, it gets hard to walk without stepping on things.

I suppose I could just let it happen. I'm upstairs, I could just close my door. Also, since I'm on bedrest, I'm not expected to walk around, thus not being in any danger of stepping on things. Doug will eventually make Alan pick up everything. But am I able to do that? No. Why? I can't explain this any better than my mother was able to explain the coffee machine mystery to me.

Also, apart from strict bedrest being organisationally impossible (Doug being at work all day, I have to get up at some point and cook or my kids will starve, etc.), it's psychologically stressful. Lying in bed listening to one of the kids whine because Doug is paying attention/feeding/changing the diaper of the other kid, is really hard. It's much easier to ignore whining when you are the one paying attention to the other child.

All this can be summed up thusly: Advil is your friend.

What the Minister said

"The national vice of Romania is pessimism."

So said the Minister to me this afternoon. Which Minister? Never you mind. I don't want to get anybody in trouble. But he -- or she -- was making a point about expectations, and how the perceived difficulty of reform can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's not a new idea, mind you. Here's the late Emil Cioran -- philosopher, essayist, absurdist, friend of Ionesco and Beckett -- on his native land:

To concieve destiny as exterior to ourselves, sovereign and omnipotent, a vast cycle of failures is necessary. A condition which my country fulfills to perfection. It would be indecent for Romania to believe in effort, in the utility of action. Hence it does not believe in them and, out of propriety, resigns itself to the inevitable.

I am grateful to it for having bequeathed me with the code of despair, that savoir-vivre, that relaxation in the face of Necessity... Prompt to sustain my disappointments and to initiate my indolence into the secret of preserving them, my country has further offered me, in its eagerness to make me into a wastrel who keeps up appearances, the means of degrading myself without compromising myself too much.

I owe it not only my finest and surest failures, but also the talent for masking my cowardice and hoarding my compunctions.

Ouch. Beautiful -- I particularly love those last two sentences -- but ouch.

But then, at the end of the conversation the Minister said to me, "I am an optimist."

"I hope you're not too lonely," I said -- a little daringly, because one does not wish to upset Ministers, but I hoped he wouldn't take it wrong.

He didn't. "I am, sometimes, a little," he said. "But I must insist on hope."

I must insist on hope. Emil Cioran was a great writer and a very clever man. But... hope is just preferable, somehow. Putting aside the fact that resignation to inevitable failure makes failure inevitable, it just gets old after a while.

And so to bed.

New teeth and old disks

David is finally cutting those six teeth he's been working on the last six months. In compliance with this, the nights are getting more restful. Or should. Because I ruptured a lumbar disk. Or should one say - I have a ruptured lumbar disk? A lumbar disk inside me ruptured? (Heh, I heard the pop, OK? Plop! Just like that.)

In any case, it's very painful, I'm on strict bedrest and on strong medication. Not that the meds seem to do anything and how "strict bedrest" is supposed to work with a mother of two small children still boggles my mind.

I had to take a break from said bedrest to cook dinner for the kids, change various diapers, and supply the necessary cuddling. I said silent prayers of gratitude to the makers of Cartoon Network, the friend of the sick mother.

Now I have the baby sitter here to help me put the kids to bed -- I'm not allowed to lift them into their cribs and in any case, I couldn't. Since Doug is working late, I'm really OK with being an evil exploiter and let paid help help me.

I hear "Mama" screams from downstairs, so I better toddle off. You guys all take good care of your backs and always bend your knees when picking up heavy weights, OK?!

What we meant to say, was

In updating our blogroll, we inexplicably missed not one but three of our favorite blogs. So, here they are.

First, The Glory of Carniola. This is an excellent new blog about Slovenia. I particularly like today's post. Something about the expression on Europe's face...

Second, Perfectly Imperfect. One woman's life here in Bucharest. Tina has been one of our loyal readers for a while now, so we were delighted to find that she had a blog too.

Third, @rgumente. As far as I know, this is the only English-language blog dealing with Romanian business and economic issues. And it's good.

Check 'em all out.

(Meanwhile, I have the nagging feeling that we've still forgotten someone. Damn. This is what having small children will do to you. Well... please don't be shy, whoever you are.)

At large

The BBC reports that yet another Karadzic search ends in failure. This is no surprise but time is getting short. Serbia has to produce Karadzic until the end of this month or all international aid will dry up instantly (which is to say, no new projects will begin after March 31 -- those which are running will continue to do so.)

Personally, I think he's in Belgrade. Hint for those searchers: Look on Golsvortijeva. We've lived around the corner from presidents and prime ministers all the time since we came to the Balkans. Golsvortijeva was the only exception. I've always wondered whether that meant that there is someone important living around the corner that we just don't know about.

I don't know. It seems as good a guess as any...

Blogging

Doug announced some days back that he is guest-blogging over at tacitus. We were also invited to blog at a new outfit, Living in Europe. Since we're pressed for time at the moment, we'll probably start out by recycling posts from here over there but eventually we might just post about topics which don't quite fit here but would there (like, politics in Europe, etc.).

In the course of this, I'm also updating our blog roll. [I was tempted to throw out everybody who is not linking back to us -- but alas, we're just a small blog and can't really afford vengenance. ;-)].

So, I've added Living in Europe, of course. It's a group blog, currently in Beta test mode, about -- the name says it all -- living in Europe. Check it out, you'll get a very good impression how diverse and wonderful this continent is. (Says the proud European.)

Then, I started reading a German blog, Ostblog. If you understand German, it's an interesting blog about the former DDR and today East Germany. Very interesting and educating.

I have thrown out the link to Instapundit. I linked to him because everybody does which is a bad reason to link to someone to begin with. I also do so not agree with his political views that I can't actually justify a link. (Why didn't I do this earlier? Oh, I'm a mother -- short memory deficiency, lack of time, short attention span, the works... )

Happy reading, everyone.

Another birthday boy

It's Doug's 40th birthday today. As he deserves it, it's a lovely spring day and we'll be having friends over later today to devour the chocolate cake I made for him.

Happy Birthday, love.

A little sad, the staircase

I was downtown today for a lunch meeting -- yeah yeah, Saturday, don't ask -- and afterwards I had an hour or so free.

The History and Art Museum of the Municipality of Bucharest was right across the street. (It's just off Piatsa Universitate.) I had walked past it a dozen times and never thought it very interesting. I guess the title had turned me off. Maybe it's hard to get excited about anything that contains the word "municipality". But this time, on a whim, I crossed the Piatsa and went inside.

Here's where I stop and say: visit this museum. If you're in Bucharest, and you're near Piatsa Universitate, take half an hour and do it.

Why? Well, it's not the collections. Though I suppose I should describe them. There's a modern art exhibit on the ground floor, which is pretty forgettable. Upstairs, there are modest exhibits of Neolithic and Roman remains. Nothing amazing there either. There is a nice suit of armor, and a sword that belonged to Brancoveanu.

Things pick up in the next room, when the visitor reaches the 18th and 19th centuries; lots of cool old books, very beautiful, and paintings and pictures of the city from back then.

-- No, actually that got pretty interesting. There was a painting of the Great Fire of 1832, when most of the city burned down. I never knew that even happened. But there was the fire, and lots of very upset looking guys in fancy uniforms on horseback waving swords at it. Kinda cool.

And then the collection got downright intriguing when it reached the late 19th and early 20th centuries: old street signs and adddress plates, the public water pumps that stood in crowded neighborhoods before running water came into the houses, the gas lamps that used to adorn the whole city.

Then, probably the high point of the collection: The old office of the Mayor of Bucharest. Complete with 1890s telephone handset, wood-and-leather swivel chair, massive clawfoot desk, and the Mayor's ceremonial regalia in a glass case. (When did Mayors stop wearing ceremonial regalia? A hundred years ago, the Mayor of Bucharest looked like Sergeant Pepper... and that was a good thing.)

There were also a lot of old maps, which is always nice. Our part of town, up around Piatsa Dorobants? In 1916 it was the edge of the city. There was a "Velodrome" just north of us -- I think that was for bicycle racing -- and a big orchard started just on the other side of what's now Strada Washington. Across the street from us stands a house that was built in 1896; as recently as 1918, that house was standing near the edge of that orchard, with not much but countryside beyond it.

The neighborhood we live in was laid out in the 1920s, the streets named after the capitals of friendly countries -- Strada Paris, Strada Londra, Strada Bruxelles, Brasilia, Roma... actually, come to think of it, I believe the streets were named after countries that were Romania's allies in the First World War. Huh. I never realized that before, but it fits.

Anyhow. The exhibits, taken as a whole, are pretty good. But if the exhibits were all, I'd be only mildly enthusiastic. There are only half a dozen or so rooms; at least half of the building seems to be closed, presumably for lack of money. So it's not going to keep a visitor occupied for more than half an hour, tops. There are no labels in English, and even the Romanian labels are pretty skimpy. And the exhibits stop in 1941... just as things were getting interesting. There's absolutely nothing about Bucharest in wartime or under Communism.

So why do I say you must see this museum? Because of the staircase.

The Museum occupies the Sutu Palace, which is a neoclassical townhouse built for the Sutu family in 1835. From the outside, the Palace is architecturally nice enough -- there's a particularly good ironwork awning around the door -- but nothing too amazing.

But when you step inside...

The staircase is two stories high, and it faces you as you walk in the door. It goes up from the ground floor, splits in two and does a dramatic double loop backwards. It's rather steep.

It is made of black iron with rivets, like a Victorian railway bridge. But the stairs and risers are wood -- some sort of dark hardwood, long since polished to a brown glow. The banisters are wood too, smoothed to a sheen by generations of hands. They would be perfect for sliding down -- steep, slippery, dangerous.

At the first floor landing there is a mirror. The mirror is about twelve feet wide and fifteen feet tall. It's the original; the Sutus ordered it specially from Vienna. It's Merano glass and doesn't look a day old.

Reflected in the mirror is a large clock face. The clock hangs from a balcony on the upper floor. The reflected clock tells the correct time, because the real clock is reversed -- it's a mirror image clock, with the numbers and the hands going backwards. The Sutus had that ordered specially from Paris.

Walk up the staircase, and you're in a sort of atrium. You've turned 360 degrees; the clock hangs below you, the mirror is in front of you, and you're looking down into the staircase. Twenty feet above your head is a very high domed ceiling. Around it, four windows let light into the atrium. The glass in the windows is stained, so colored patterns of light fall across the walls.

In the dark corners of the atrium stand four massive 19th century coal heaters.They are dull green except for their doors, which are some reddish metal -- copper or bronze. Their ceramic surfaces are decorated with frowning Greek masks.

The total effect is... quite something. I walked up and down the staircase several times, and then stood at the top for a few minutes, just trying to imagine being a child in this place. How wonderful, I thought, how great, how absolutely cool it must have been, to be a kid here. To play on that staircase. To read a book huddled next to the monstrous glowering coal heaters in the winter, or in summer to watch the colored patches of sunlight strike wild reflections from the mirror. To contemplate the great backwards clock. To have that staircase to yourself.

But then I found out: the Sutus never had any children. They were very rich, and they were famous for their parties and balls, and they were active in politics and the arts, and they lived in that house for more than 40 years. But when they died, they left it to the city. It became the Mayor's office for many years and then, eventually, a museum.

So: no child had ever claimed that atrium as her private playground or reading space. And no child had ever slid down the wonderful, smooth, deliriously dangerous bannisters.

It seemed a little sad, somehow.

(The Museum is at #2, Bratianu Blvd, just south of Piatsa Universitate. Admission is 25,000 lei, or about 75 cents.)

Because one blog is not enough

I've joined the team over at tacitus. I won't be blogging there every day, but I expect to post at least occasionally.

It's a much bigger and busier blog than this one, so it'll be an interesting new experience. We hope.

One Year Ago Today

I was sitting in a cafe in downtown Belgrade, when everyone's cell phone went off at once. The Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, had been shot twice in the chest and abdomen with a high-powered, large-caliber rifle.

Two minutes later, the network crashed from overload and everyone's phone went dead. But the news followed quickly anyhow: Djindjic was DOA.

It's hard to describe just how shocking and sad this was. Outside Serbia, it was a brief headline, a bit of tut-tutting -- the Balkans are a violent place, you know -- and then forgotten. But in Serbia the reaction was convulsive: an outpouring of shock and grief, half a million people at the funeral procession, then a massive strike, with all the power of the State, against the forces that had organized the assassination.

Djindjic was not very popular when he died. His approval ratings were in the single digits; basically, he was blamed for everything bad that had happened since Milosevice fell, and (perhaps more to the point) everything good that hadn't happened. Serbia's high unemployment, the steady drumbeat of indictments from the Hague, the continued dominance of the old criminal elites in business and society... people blamed the guy in charge.

When he died, of course, the pendulum swung the other way; he became, for a little while, a hero and a martyr. That was wrong too, I think.

Me? Personally, I always liked Djindjic. I only met him once, but he left a very favorable impression: charming, intelligent, energetic. Sure, giving a good impression is part of a politician's job, but that was part of the point; he was a good politician, in the sense of being technically good, and I respected that.

And he had the right ideas, for the most part. He realized that Serbia had to break away from its past and chart a new course, towards reconciliation with the region and, eventually, towards Europe. That he wasn't able to make much progress was mostly not his fault. He made some difficult and, frankly, dirty compromises; but it's hard to see what else he could have done.

A year later, I think we can see more clearly what was lost. Djindjic himself was a great loss to Serbia. If he wasn't a visionary or a healer, he was a sensible and pragmatic political technician with a firm grasp of what Serbia actually needed.

Serbia needs more like him.

Djindjic's leadership was replaced by the clumsy and short-lived Zivkovic administration, which collapsed last November. Today Kostunica, who was first his ally and then his despised rival, is presiding over a rickety new government. Some of Djindjic's assassins are on trial (though the trial itself is deeply troubled and troubing). At least one major suspect, the Special Forces chief-turned-gangster "Legija", remains at large.

I suppose I should add something here about the greater significance of it all and what the long-term impact may be, and such. But I find that it still makes me really sad to think about it.

And we go on.

Birthday Boy

It's Alan's 2nd birthday today. He got lots of presents, blew out the candles on his birthday cake, and wants to be sung "Happy Birthday" all the time.

Two years ago today, it was spring in Germany. The croci were in bloom, the daffodils were peeking out, the sun was shining. It was a very warm and sunny spring day one year ago in Belgrade, T-shirt weather. It's cool and drizzling today in Bucharest. I wonder where we'll be for this birthday next year. Poor guy, having expats as parents is not easy.

Anyway. Here's a picture of the birthday boy:

Rats

Today, I met a very nice American woman. She runs a drug testing company here in Romania.

Strictly speaking the company is based in the US. But it is very active here in Romania, and she is running their Romanian (and Bulgarian, and Serbian) drug testing programs. As in, giving experimental drugs to Romanians (and Bulgarians, and Serbs) to see what happens.

Yeah, it got my attention too. Here's how it works.

A big drug company (we'll call it BigDrug) has a new drug to test. Let's say it's a drug against... oh... blood infections. They contact this woman's company, which we'll call TestCo.

TestCo has developed a network of contacts all across Romania (Bulgaria, Serbia, etc.). They get in touch with hospitals and clinics, who agree to work with them on the testing.

Then: a Romanian comes into a clinic here in Bucharest. He diagnosed with a blood infection. Aha, says the clinic, blood infection; there's this new drug for that! They ask him if he would like to be part of the drug test.

If the patient says no, that's fine -- treatment proceeds in the normal Romanian manner. If he says yes, he gets a second choice: he can either take the experimental drug, or get the "best level of care". The "best level" means he gets treated as if he was in a Western hospital or clinic, with the best non-experimental drugs and treatment available there. TestCo pays for all this, although the ultimate payer is of course BigDrug.

Then the folks at the clinic monitor the outcome of the treatment -- whether with the experimental drug or the "best level" -- under TestCo's supervision.

When a sufficient number of people have taken the experimental drug, and been monitored, the results are collected and sent back to BigDrug. BigDrug is of course financing many other test runs in many other places; at the end, they have some statistically meaningful results suggesting whether the drug works or not.

Okay. So, why do this here?

1) It's cheaper. If the equipment is available (and it isn't always), low labor costs mean that it's less expensive to provide that "best level" of care. For a moderate fever, for instance, "best level" may mean just a clean bed in a quiet room, cold compresses, and a nurse checking you every hour or so. In the US or Germany, that might cost hundreds of dollars per day. Here, much less.

2) More patients. More in three ways. First, Eastern Europeans are less healthy than Westerners. So it's often easier to find people with blood infections (or whatever). Second, one legacy of socialism is a very centralized health care system. Except for rich people who can afford clinics, most folks end up going to a handful of big hospitals, where they're easy to locate. And third, health care here isn't as good as in the West. So people are more likely to be interested in participating in the tests -- whether to take the experimental drug, or to get the "best level" of care.

3) Competent clinicians. Africans (say) get sicker much more than Europeans. Why not test drugs there? Because in Africa, it would be much harder to find hospital and clinic workers who can properly explain the tests, inform the patients, and then keep careful and accurate records. Eastern Europe, on the other hand, has lots of good doctors, nurses and medical technicians. These people can observe carefully, record meticulously, follow protocols, and provide good results.

4) Not much competition (yet). TestCo might approach a hospital in France, say, only to find that they were already doing testing for a blood infection drug for some other company. (This actually happens more often then you think, because drug testing companies tend to cluster around certain hospitals and clinics). But nobody else is doing testing in Romania right now, although other testing companies are interested and will probably move in soon.

One obvious question: Is it clean? Are the patients really informed and free to choose, will they get the "best level" of care anyway, do the doctors really report back good data?

Well, TestCo follows EU and American protocols. (They have to, otherwise the test results wouldn't be accepted by the US Food and Drug Administration and/or the Europeans.) They say that everything they do is transparent and subject to oversight by both the Romanian and Western regulatory agencies. Their business depends on their product, after all, and their product is good data.

Let's say for now that this is true, and that corruption and corner-cutting plays little or no part in this. What should we think?

Ms. TestCo had no doubts. "This gives Romanians more choices," she says. "Nobody has to participate. But if they do, then they get access to Western level medical care, subsidized by the drug companies.

"In addition, the testing is pumping millions of dollars into the Romanian health care system. We pay the clinics top dollar for their data collection, and we also purchase supplies and equipment that stay with them after the studies are done. This is saving lives."

Perhaps. I got a different reaction from a Romanian colleague.

"They're here because we're poor and because our health care system is screwed. They do the tests, maybe we get a little money -- how nice. Then the drug company makes the drug and gets rich off of it. The drug company gets the money, Western patients get the drug, we get nothing.

"We're rats."

(Me? I don't have a clear opinion on this yet. Still thinking about it.)

Belgrade Flashback: White Jeep and Blue Camry

This morning I was at the OPIC conference downtown. OPIC is the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and it would take a while to explain what that's all about, so never mind. The key thing here is that Romanian President Iliescu was giving a speech, so there was a lot of security. Metal detectors, people frisking you with wands, and guys in dark suits with the little radio thingies in their ears standing along the wall.

For some reason it made me think of Belgrade in the fall and winter of 2001.

At that time Claudia and I were living in central Belgrade, in a little apartment on a street called Dositiyeva. That's in the Dorchol neighborhood, which is right downtown, near Republic Square and the National Theater.

It was a nice enough neighborhood and a nice enough street, but there was nothing special about it. Except that right around the corner lived a guy named Vojislav Kostunica, who at that time was President of Yugoslavia.

Kostunica had been a law professor, and he'd never made a lot of money. He lived in a little two-bedroom apartment in a pretty ordinary apartment building in a good but not great neighborhood. After he became President, he kept on living there.

Part of this, I'm sure, was to continue to project the image of being a simple, honest man of the people. That was part of the reason people voted for him: because they were sick of Milosevic's arrogance and corruption. But part, I think, was because he was a conservative sort of guy, and stubborn, and just didn't feel like changing his ways.

Anyhow, because he didn't want to move, the security had to come to him. So every day I would leave our apartment and walk around the corner and there would be two security vehicles, parked right in front of Kostunica's apartment building. (Which was literally two doors away from us -- one building down, turn a corner, cross the street.)

What made this interesting was that there were two completely distinct sets of security for him: the white jeep guys and the blue Toyota Camry guys.

The white jeep guys sat in a big white jeep, and they were goofs. They spent all their time smoking and reading magazines. Sometimes they rolled the windows down and started conversations with pretty girls who were passing by. They always had the radio on. I never actually saw them sleeping, but sometimes they'd be obviously and visibly bored, slumped in their seats, morosely nursing a cigarette, staring vacantly out the windows. Mostly, though, they read the sports pages of the newspaper; it really seemed like they spent several hours each day doing that.

After a while I started waving hello to them. They always waved back. I think they welcomed any diversion, however trivial.

The blue car guys were something else again. They wore dark suits and they sat in a blue car with tinted windows. I think it was a Toyota Camry, though I couldn't swear for sure now. It was a nice car, anyhow, but sort of nondescript. And the guys inside never moved, so it took a few weeks before I even realized they were there.

When I did, I started watching them. They didn't play the radio. They didn't smoke. They didn't read the newspaper. And they never rolled down the window to yell greetings to pretty girls. They just... sat. Sat in that car and watched.

I never even considered waving to the blue car guys.

Obviously these were two sets of bodyguards, but who was hiring which? The Republic of Serbia vs. Federal Yugoslavia? Municipal Belgrade police vs. Secret Service? The military?

I never found out. Eventually Yugoslavia liquidated itself (it's "Serbia and Montenegro" now, with both countries having an option to leave after 2006). His country having disappeared, Kostunica lost his job and became a private citizen for a while. The goofy guys in the white jeep went somewhere, and the motionless watchers in the blue car went... somewhere else.

But lately Kostunica has won election as Prime Minister of Serbia. And he's still living in that apartment.

I wonder if they're all back again?

Timisoara (1)

Ah, Timisoara.

It's in the very far west of Romania, in the area called "The Banat". The Banat is a perfectly flat plain, like a Balkan Iowa. It was part of Hungary for many centuries, but in 1918 it was divided between Romania and Serbia.

There aren't any natural boundaries on the Banat, so the border was somewhat arbitrary. Thousands of Romanians were left on the Serbian side, and tens of thousands of Serbs, Germans and Hungarians were left on the Romanian side. So Timisoara was one of the more ethnically mixed towns in Romania.

(It still is. Wandering around in the evening, I asked for directions from a random stranger. He answered in German.)

Now, Romania had plenty of ethnically mixed towns. We've mentioned our trips to Brasov, and encounters with the Hungarians and Germans there.

What made Timisoara unusual was that the different groups got along surprisingly well. Ceausescu had a very deliberate policy of setting Romania's ethnicities against each other. I'm not sure how much of this was Romanian nationalism on his part, and how much a very deliberate policy of divide et impera. Whatever the reason, though, it did painful and lasting damage.

But it didn't seem to work so well in Timisoara. The 1989 Revolution started there, and it started because Romanians and others joined in a protest supporting a Hungarian priest. Everyone stood together, and together they were the pebble that started the avalanche.

That's very encouraging, isn't it? What's... somewhat less encouraging, is: one of the things that still seems to unite Timisoarans is that they all look down on the rest of Romania.

"Giurgiu? Calarasi?" said a taxi driver to me. "Oh, holy God. Why would you ever go down there? The people are no good. Very dirty. Very poor.

"If I have to drive to Bucharest, I always go north -- through Sibiu. Never south, through Craiova. The roads are better, and when you stop to eat, you don't worry about what you're eating."

And what was the taxi driver himself? "Oh, Hungarian."

So, you speak Hungarian? "No, very little. My mother is Romanian, so we mostly spoke Romanian at home."

So, you're half Romanian? "No, I'm Hungarian. My mother was half Hungarian, though she spoke Romanian."

So she was half Romanian? "No, she was Romanian."

Well... er... what about Romanians here in Timisoara?

"What about them?"

Are they... um... like Romanians in places like Giurgiu and Calarasi?

"Oh holy God, no. Those people are like Gypsies. We don't have those kinds of people around here."

I winced. But on the other hand, at least they're getting along out there, in Timisoara.

Random note: everyone over the age of 30 in Timisoara seems to understand at least a little Serbian. This is because, in the 1980s, everyone was watching Serbian TV. Romanian TV only broadcast two hours per night, and it was mostly Ceausescu's speeches and the like. TV Belgrade and the other Serbian stations carried movies, music videos, world news, and all sorts of fascinating stuff.

Random note #2: the Opera House in Timisoara was playing "Medea" (the tragedy by Euripides) and "Dancing Queen" (the musical based on the works of the rock band Queen).

The Big Bananarama

One problem we don't have -- usually -- is getting Alan to go to bed.

This is because we have developed an extremely elaborate bedtime ritual. How elaborate, I'm almost embarrassed to say. But it goes on for a while, and includes a bath, reading books, brushing teeth, songs, a game of hide-and-seek with Mommy, and hitting the bathroom's radiator with a stick. At the end of it, though, he's almost always ready to crash, and he doesn't (usually) wake up until 6:30 the next morning.

The ritual is not absolutely fixed; we are constantly adding (and less often, subtracting) little odds and ends. For instance, recently, I started singing the following nonsense verse to him while putting on his pajamas:

Pajama! Pajama! The big bananarama!
He's wearing the pajamas with the stripes!

This is repeated four times. If you're interested, the tune is that of the theme song from the old "Dick van Dyke Show".

Where this comes from... I have no idea. But Alan likes it, and at every pause in the verse he says, "Yama!" (He's still working on that 'J' sound.)

And that's all.

Random Observations II

Random observation no. 5:
The hotel I stay at in Frankfurt has a mezuzah in the doorway, as does the hotel next door. For me, non-Jewish as I am, it's a reassuring thing. We have a mezuzah in our home (long story) and I am used to touching it upon leaving and entering the house. I love that I can do this here too. It also gives me a pang of pain to think of the rich culture and valuable impact on our society that we managed to destroy. The dark shadow of history.

Random observation no. 6:
A note for a future post: The CSU/CDU candidate for president of Germany, Heinz Köhler, has his roots in the former Romanian region of Bessarabia; his parents have lived there until they were "re-settled" to Poland. I wonder whether this has been noted in Romania yet?

Random observation no. 7:
The Frankfurt metro and regional train system is very poorly marked. I'm a frequent traveller and if I get confused, it must be really hard for foreigners who can't just turn to the next person and ask for the way. Something has to be done about that.

Random observation no. 8:
The streets are getting really bad. I noticed it for the first time yesterday in a Frankfurt suburb. I drove and found myself saying "eep! That's like in Bucharest!"
My Mom, who is a local polititian -- if from Ostheim, not Frankfurt -- drily noted that this is the case everywhere in Germany. Government spending on road construction has been cut due to the general lack of money. Hm.

Random observation no. 9:
In the bookstore yesterday, I counted no less than 14 titles with Anti-Bush contents - both translated American and original German. Boy, they really don't like him here!

Clean up your own dirt!

There is a disussion on domestic help over at John and Belle's which I found by the way of Apartment 11D. Belle has many smart things to say but I still cannot resist to add my own 2 cents.

See, I don't have as good a reason for employing domestic help as Belle does -- I'm not chronically ill like her. I'm perfectly able to clean up after myself, as much as anyone with two kids under two is able to do this. But I have a maid who comes twice a week for eight hours to clean and do the laundry. I also have a fulltime nanny who takes Alan -- and more and more often David -- to the park all day long. They leave at 9 (11 in winter) and come back at 4:30. Rosy cheeks and all.

In the eyes of some, like Chun The Unavoidable, this makes me a total dork. I'm the evil capitalist exploiter. I'm just scum.

Just, I'm not. I'm actually doing a good deed. Doug and I are supporting two families which would be far worse off if we didn't employ those two girls. We pay them above the going rate which makes us evil in the eyes of whole different buch of people -- there's just no avoiding being evil, I guess.

Anyhow, Vali The Nanny adds valuable income to what her husband earns working at the US embassy. They have a kid and they want to be able to buy him things like a computer and such, which they couldn't on the husband's pay alone. Anda The Maid supports her entire family, including mother-in-law, on the wage she brings home.

They both couldn't not find other work in Bucharest. But even if they did, they both actually make more money working for us than working at any job they could get out there in the real world. The real world here in Romania is a dire place for unskilled workers.

We pay sick days, we give holiday bonuses, we give generous tips on occassion, we function as a lending bank in times of dire need, we give gifts like clothes and toys for Vali's boy.

For that, we get two of the sweetest women who are utterly dependable, very trustworthy, absolutely crazy for our children, and very happy with their jobs. In return, we have a clean house which is rare with two kids, I don't have to do the ironing, which I hate, and the kids have a mother who is much better rested (albeit not well rested) and therefor less of a shrew. It's a win-win situation.

Among expats in Bucharest, it's sort of an unspoken rule to employ someone to do the cleaning up and minding the kids. It's developmental aid applied directly.

I dunno. I just can't bring myself to feel as an exploiter. Principles are nice if you live somewhere where people can afford them.

Random observations from Germany

Random observation no. 1:
German beggars (or better, beggars in Germany, they are multi-national) are very aggressive compared to those in Bucharest. Yeah, the gypsies are insistent, and the street kids can pester you. But I never had the impression of being physically hassled. The first beggar (woman) who approached me caught me on the wrong foot (eh, German expression -- does this translate at all?). She came up to me, grabbed my sleeve, and said "do you have a Euro for me?", and I, startled, replied this:

"Oh. Eh. Wow, you look quite good for a beggar. Nice clothes. Bit dirty but warm. You look healthy, if very hungover. I live in Romania and the beggars there are so much worse off. I'm sorry, I just can't bring myself to give you anything. I'll take it back to Bucharest and spend it on the beggars there."

Left her standing with her mouth open.

I don't know. I do like the "I wish you a long life and kiss your hands" which I get from the Romanian beggars. They seem so much more polite. I know that is an odd thing to say, but it is striking.

Random observation no. 2:
Germans have too much money and they complain too much.

Random observation no. 3:
Germans are baffled when someone is nice and friendly to them but they like it. I guess I am very American in my small talk and people approach by now. Meaning, I smile at people without reason. I like to be friendly. What's so hard about that? It seems unusual, though. I actually had someone tell me that I was "such a sympathetic appearance" when I smiled at him at the breakfast table. Germans need to loosen up a bit. (I must say that his remark did much to lift my depressed mood after the troll encounter.)

Random observation no. 4:
There are not enough sit-down cafes in Frankfurt. Can anybody tell me what the sense is in standing cafes? Who wants to drink their coffee standing at a small table? I either want my coffee to go or I want to sit down to read the paper.

OK. That's it for now. I'm off to meet my mom and drive to meet my brothers. I'll report more weird facts about Germans from Mannheim.

Grounded

I can't say that Tarom is the world's worst airline. Everyone who claims this has never flown with Merpati Air. But Tarom is not a great airline and when you're left without alternatives, you end up being frustrated a lot.

I am supposed to be boarding right now. Off to Germany for a weekend sans famille to frolic and shop and, above all, sleep.

I buy the Tarom tickets online. It's fast and quick and the frustrations don't begin until you try to get your hands on your ticket. There is an option on the site to have the tickets delivered to your home but for some reason, this never works. Whenever I tried this, I ended up with a call, an apology (no courier available or some such), and a trip to the next Tarom office.

So three days ago I get a call from Tarom. Our flight on April 1 -- to Frankfurt, then on to my brother's wedding in Spain -- is going to be 15 minutes early. However, it will arrive at the scheduled time. No explanation but my best guess is that Tarom decided to make a quick stop at Cluj. Thanks for the info, anyhow.

It also reminded me that I still needed to pick up my ticket for this Friday. I went to the Tarom office on Victoriei, only to discover that my ticket was at Otopeni (the airport). So, could I go then to Otopeni and pick it up there? No, that was not possible. Why not? The ticket wouldn't be ready until Friday. But if it's not ready yet, surely it must be possible to print out the ticket here in the office? No, it wasn't. Why? Well, it just wasn't. Okay then. When did I need to be at the airport to pick up the ticket? 7 am. Surely you jest. No, Ma'am. 7 am. But the flight isn't leaving until 9:35! Yes, but many people pick up their tickets, so there is always a line, so be there at 7 am.

Grumbling, I got up at 5:30 this morning, had lots of coffee, prepared breakfast for the boys, took the taxi at 6:30 to be there at 7 sharp.

There was no line. Just a lone woman in front of me, and the ticket - lo and behold! - was actually printed and ready, so the whole process didn't take longer than 1 minute. I was very favorably impressed, if a little peeved that it hadn't actually been necessary to be there so early. Now check in the empty suitcases (for the shopping spree, you know) and off to the cafe to sit and drink coffee and read the morning paper. When does the check-in open? Oh, not until 11 am.

Eh.

Just a minute. My flight leaves at 9:35.

No, it doesn't. Today it leaves at 12:30.

Eh? EH!!?? But, but... 12:30?? WHY?

Well. It doesn't leave until 12:30. It says so right here on your reservation. (SFX: printer spits out newly minted reservation -- Visual FX: Tarom agent pouting and apparently thinking it's all my fault because I didn't check my reservation)

But it says right here on my ticket that the flight leaves at 9:35!

Well, yes, but today, it doesn't leave until 12:30.

It's frigging 7 am and I'm tired and I will have to wait 5 hours at the airport because you guys weren't able to call and tell me?

I wouldn't have been so mad had I not received the call about the early flight on April 1st. I would have just grumbled about inefficiency and said some bad things about accession to the EU which I can't possible quote here in public because I don't really mean it.

But it just seems logical to me that when you are able to warn about a flight being 15 minutes early one month ahead, you should also be able to call someone when the flight is going to be very late the next day. No? Mind you, this was not a last minute occurance (last minute changes are not announced until - as the name suggests - the very last minute). This was known yesterday, just not by me. Apparently, Tarom has two planes grounded in London for technical reasons. (Not that this information is reassuring!)

They didn't want to route me through Vienna or any other place. They didn't want to do anything, actually.

So I'm back home now. I'll leave again in two hours and see whether or not the flight will leave. I'm missing out on an afternoon of frolicking in Frankfurt (the Palmengarten was on my list and got scratched out again). I might just be there in time to meet my brother.

Why am I getting all worked up over this? I have no idea. You should think I'd know better.

Oh. One more thing: the applications for the Tarom frequent flyer program which you cannot print out from the web but have to pick up at an office? They are all out. Not to be had. Why? Because.

Haircut

I got a haircut the other day.

Getting a haircut here is both a pleasant and a frustrating experience. First, the pleasant part. I've found a place that cuts my hair in a way that I like, or at least don't mind. (I'm not very picky in this respect.) The barber is an agreeable fellow who talks if I feel like talking, and shuts up if I don't. I not only get my hair cut, but a shave and a beard trim too... and if you've never had that done for you, let me recommend it; it just seems terribly civilized somehow. And at the end of the day the whole thing, generous tip included, costs only about $11. Hard to argue with that.

The frustrating part... well, there are two frustrating parts. One is that, while it's all very nice, it's also all very slow. Really slow. Over an hour, start to finish. Even if I skip the beard trim and shave, I'm not escaping in less than 45 minutes.

I suppose I should just relax and enjoy the more leisurely pace of things, but that's surprisingly hard to do. It's all very nice at first, but somewhere around the 35 minute mark I start to get twitchy. Something at the bottom of my brain says this is too long to be spending on a haircut and Ibegin to fidget and squirm. There's no way to hurry things along, though, so I just have to be patient.

The other frustrating thing is the struggle against the elaborate post-haircut procedure. The barber wants not just to cut my hair, but to gel it. To spray it. To style it. To blow dry it. To dust some powder on it. To spray it again. To style it some more.

To slap a pleasing aftershave on my cheeks. To brush me twice, once with a big brush and once with a little one. To offer me q-tips for my ears and tissues for... I'm not sure what the tissues are for.

I'm not up for most of this. When it comes to haircuts, I'm a low maintenance kinda guy. Blow drying is not a part of my life. My gel days are past. Hair spray, get it away from me. It's not really a question of personal style or the lack thereof... well, maybe the lack thereof. But really, I think it's more about not having the time.

Anyhow, my point: an individual struggle with the barber is required to reject each of these. Gel? No? Surely sir would like some gel. Come, it is very good gel. So natural, the gel. Let me just... no? Is sir sure? Really sure? Truly? But this gel is so fine, so... No? Well, now for the spray. What!? Surely not!

This can go on for quite some time. And it gets repeated every time. They know me, they remember me, but they are just not going to acknowledge that I don't want this stuff. And they're so pleasant generally that it's surprisingly hard to say no.

The odd result of all this is that while I like the haircut, like the barber, and enjoy the first half hour or so very much, by the time it's all done I'm more or less running out the door. And then walking down the street with my hands in my pocket and my head hunched a bit, because I smell funny and my hair is full of gel and spray.

Serbia has a government

After three months without a government -- 65 days after the election -- Serbia is about to have a government.

Vojislav Kostunica will be Prime Minister. It will be a minority government, with the support of the Socialists.

Parliament will approve tomorrow, or so we're told.

Marţişor

Today is the first of March and that is a special day in Romania.

Yesterday, we picked up about two dozens of Marţişors which were on sale everywhere at little stands, open late just like the flower shops were all open yesterday.

Marţişor charms are little trinkets -- clovers, flowers, animals -- which are tied to little woolen strings of red and white. White symbolizes winter and red symbolizes summer, together the intertwined threads stand for spring.

Picture from thebans.com

Traditionally, the Marţişors are given by men to their sweethearts, friends and acquaintances. However, women give each other Marţişors as well, and parents may give them to their kids. The trinkets are tied to the wrist or worn on the lapel, the entire week from March 1 through March 8 which is International Women's Day. Additionally, small flowers (snow drops and hyacinths) are given away.

It's an endearing custom. Doug gave away lots of Marţişors today -- including one to the minister of something-or-other. Who knows? It might bring luck for both of them.