Halfway down the Danube

The Kindness of Strangers

Bucharest is being hit by snow again, and this time it's almost worse than the last time. Our car pool broke apart because the designated driver couldn't get his four-wheel-drive to move out of the masses of snow. So Doug and I shoveled the car out of half a meter of snow in record time and I set off to take Alan to school with my mini-van and the summer tires. I had almost no problems (barring horrible traffic). I got stuck once at the school where a nice stranger helped me and gave a good hard push.

Then I heard it's going to continue to snow for three days and thought it would be better to stock up on groceries. Just in case.

So off I went to the Billa supermarket. And I got stuck again. It was a little hill and I would have made it if not for four other cars which got stuck. Once stopped, there was no more going forward -- or backward, because I had cars backed up behind me.

Two young men offered to help me. How nice! They said something about a taxi which I didn't understand. Instead of speaking slower and using simpler words, they did the universal thing: THEY JUST SPOKE LOUDER. Stupid foreigner that I am, I still didn't understand. However, they proceeded to push the car and I slowly got a grip with my poor, old, worn down summer tires. Then the two young men hopped aboard and it dawned on me that they wanted a ride in exchange for pushing. OK. Fair deal.

All of a sudden, I remembered that I had had my wallet on the front passenger seat. I know, it's a stupid place to begin with and not a habit of mine. It was a hectic and unusual morning.

Anyhow. I said I wanted my wallet, the wallet turns up, I want to take it but the guy behind me proceeds to put it into the glove compartent. OK. I was distracted by traffic and the wallet was safe.

The guys hop off at the next intersection, I go to the supermarket. At the cashier, I open my wallet and it doesn't contain the 100 Euros I had in there this morning.

The kindness of strangers, indeed.

The serpent eats its own tail

I am fighting off a cold, and so decided to watch the full line-up of cartoons this Saturday morning. Usually I only watch Yu-Gi-Oh!, which is your average Japanese-card-game-dropped-into-the-world-of-a-Tim-Powers-novel anime. (Last Call or The Anubis Gates, either.) It's like the old Steven Wright joke: "I stayed up all night playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died." Weird, occult subplots about Atlantis and deranged geniuses who build their own amusement parks filled with killer traps! And the voice actors manage to be both campy and earnest at the same time, which is rather hard to do. (The US voice actors on the WB network are different from the ones I've heard used for English language, American dialect dubbing on Yu-gi-oh elsewhere, and in my opinion much more professional.)

But today, I decided to watch the earlier shows. The DC properties, the new Batman animated series -- yes, there's another one -- and the Teen Titans, were amusing but not striking. (No, Doug, Speedy does not deal with his heroin problem in this version.) Pokemon continued to prove that the Japanese are at least a generation ahead of the rest of the world at the cutting edge of cute. And I didn't realize that cartoon Standards and Practices had shifted enough for the bathroom humor of Mucha Lucha Gigante.

The really weird one, however, was Xiaolin Showdown. First off, its theme song. If I'm not mistaken, it's a direct riff on the old Captain Beefheart song, Electricity. Do we really have a cartoon on American television with a Captain Beefheart theme song? I'm still not sure I believe it, and I've played both versions a half-dozen times now.

Secondly, its villain is an evil boy genius named Jack Spicer. That's an unusual name, no? It was also the name of a leading figure in the San Francisco poetry scene. I feel this is unlikely to be a coincidence.

So I am wondering: has some superannuated beatnik turned his or her hand to the production of an entertaining half-hour of cartoon choppy-sock with a subversive subtext? Or what?

Mulţumim!

I really have a good sense of orientation. I can drive into Budapest and find Keleti station without a map, having been to the city only once before. Give me a map and a street name and I will find just about any place in Bucharest. I do that regularly and I rarely get lost. Unless... unless I'm somewhere close to Calea Plevnei.

Calea Plevnei is one of those strange places like Stonehenge or Salisbury Hill. It has it's own magnetic distortion field and no sense of orientation will help you. Even messenger pigeons get lost when they come close to Calea Plevnei. I swear that's true.

Yesterday evening around 6:30 the boys and I were on our way back from a play date. Going up Magheru Boulevard, Alan spotted one of those giant posters with a hamburger and the familiar "M" on it and cried out: "Mommy, I want French Fries!"

Now, I am not wont to give in to these demands when we are at home. We eat horrible food enough when we're traveling but at home, we eat sensibly. I mean, sensibly enough.

[Cough.]

It had been a tough day for Alan, though. He'd had a bad accident at school and looked like the loosing party in a major boxing event. His right eye black and blue and swollen almost shut, he elicited cries of woe and sympathy wherever he went. And both boys had been very good this afternoon, I had no idea what we could possibly have for dinner, Doug wasn't coming home until late... oh, what the hey.

Now, there is only one McDonald's I know of in the relative vicinity of where we were that had parking. The one on Calea Buzeşti. There are a couple ways of getting from here to there and I could have avoided Calea Plevnei easily enough. I don't know why I didn't. It was a nice evening after a nice day, I felt at peace with myself and the world, I had a map... come on, I can do that! I didn't even want to go on Calea Plevnei itself, just in the vicinity - up Berzei and then Buzeşti, easy-peasy.

Hah.

It was easy getting close to the neighborhood itself. Zip, zip, and we were there. And then it happened. All of a sudden, I lost my orientation and couldn't tell east from west or north or south. Hadn't I just come from this direction? Didn't I need to go in a 90 degree angle now? But this street was tilting backwards, or wasn't it? And before I knew what happened, I found myself - on Calea Plevnei.

I pulled over, with flashing lights, and pulled out the map.

Alan said, "Oh-oh. We are lost."

Calea Plevnei makes an odd turn in the middle, and it... oh, it's just a mess. We were far from where we wanted to go. And since I was in the center of magnetic distortion, I had no hopes for escape. Calea Plevnei is the Bermuda Triangle of Bucharest.

Guess what. A young man knocked on the window. Asked me where I wanted to go. Well, Calea Berzei. No, Buzeşti, really. Actually, the McDonald's on Buzeşti. Oh, he said. Come on, just follow me.

I don't usually do that. Who knows who this guy is, what he really wants. And my perception was distorted enough that I couldn't fathom which route we were taking. Past the Gara de Nord? But... And then right, and left? But wasn't that taking us away?

But all of a sudden, there it was, the big golden M right in front of us, the kids shrieked in delight (and what does that say about my cooking, I wonder?), the nice young man declined any money I offered him and disappeared with a nod and a smile into the night.

Mulţumim, stranger. This is why I love Bucharest.

Pope Watch 1458, part 7: the ballot

Ever wonder what a papal election is really like? From this blog's search logs, I know that someone out there does. Anyway, for those of you joining us late, the year is 1458 and you need a two-thirds majority in the conclave to become pope: twelve votes. The following is taken from the commentaries of the winner, Pius II, also known as Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini. Parts in bold were removed from publication for four hundred years; here are links to parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

When Pietro, cardinal of San Marco, heard about the conspiracy of the French, he despaired of getting the papacy himself. Then, spurred equally by patriotic fervor and hatred of Rouen, he went round all the Italian cardinals, urging and cajoling them not to abandon their country. He did not rest till he had gathered all the Italians, except Colonna, in the cell of the cardinal of Genoa. There he revealed the conspiracy made in the latrines. If Rouen obtained the papacy, he said, the Church would be ruined and Italy a slave forever more. He implored each and every one of them to act like men, to protect the interests of Mother Church and miserable Italy, to put aside their rivalries and make an Italian pope, and not a foreigner. What was more, if they cared for his opinion, they should prefer Aeneas over any other. Seven cardinals were present: Genoa, Orsini, Bologna, San Marco, Pavia, Siena, and Sant'Anastasia. They all accepted Pavia's plan except Aeneas, who thought himself unworthy of such an honor.

Then they went to mass. Once that was finished, they began the scrutiny. A golden chalice was placed on the altar and three cardinals were appointed to watch over it to prevent any fraud. These were the bishop of Kiev, the presbyter of Rouen and the deacon Colonna. The other cardinals took their seats. Then, rising in order of rank and age, each approached the altar and deposited in the chalice a ballot on which he had written the names of his choices for pope. When Aeneas came up and tried to cast his ballot, Rouen blanched and trembled and cried out, "Aeneas, look! I commend myself to you." It was a rash thing to do at this point, when no one was allowed to alter the choice he had made. But ambition overcame prudence. Aeneas replied, "You commend yourself to a worm like me?" and, without another word, dropped his ballot in the cup and went back to his seat.

When every vote had been cast, a table was set up in the middle of the room and the same three cardinals emptied the chalice full of ballots onto it. Then they read the ballots out, one after another, noting down the names written on them as they went. And there was not a single cardinal who did not likewise make notes of those named, so there could be no possibility of fraud. This proved to be to Aeneas's advantage; for when the votes had all been counted, Rouen, who was the teller, announced that Aeneas had eight. The rest said nothing about another man's loss, but Aeneas did not lot himself be cheated. "Look more carefully at the ballots," he said to the teller, "for I have nine votes." Then the others agreed with him. Rouen said nothing, as if he had merely made a mistake.

The ballots looked like this: each wrote in his own hand, "I, Peter (or John or whatever his name was) elect as pope Aeneas, cardinal of Siena and Jaime, cardinal of Lisbon." It is permitted to submit one or two or even more names, on the understanding that the one first named is the one preferred, but if he should not get enough votes to be elected, the next is to be counted in his place. This way a consensus can be more easily reached. But some people will exploit a useful device for their own advantage, as Latino Orsini did that day. He wrote down seven names in the hope that those he named would be swayed by the favor, either to accede to him in that scrutiny or to vote for him in another. But cheap tricks don't do much for one who is known as a cheat.

When the results were read out it was ascertained, as we have said before, that nine cardinals had voted for Aeneas: Genoa, Orsini, Lerida, Bologna, San Marco, Santi Quattro Coronati, Zamora, Pavia, and Portugal. The cardinal of Rouen had only six votes, and the rest far fewer. Rouen was petrified when he saw himself so far outstripped by Aeneas. All the rest were amazed, for no one in living memory had ever polled as many as nine votes by scrutiny. Since no candidate had a clear majority, they decided to resume their seats and try the method that is called "by accession," to see if they just might elect a pope that day. And here again Rouen indulged in empty hopes.

Next: the denouement, or Pius Aeneas.

Silence is golden

"Wir haben uns verständigt, nicht immer darüber zu sprechen, wo wir unterschiedlicher Auffassung sind, sondern darüber, wo wir uns einig sind."

(We have agreed not always to talk about issues we don't agree on but about those that we do agree on.)

Chancellor Schröder in a joint press conference with President Bush, February 23, 2005

Treacly sweet

I know. One of these days, I will make another substantial and valuable post. I promise. Until then, why not post another picture that my son can use as evidence for psychological abuse - or, as One Good Thing puts it, "This blog is what my children will use as evidence when they sue me for emancipation." Right.

In my defense: it happened at the nursery school and I had nothing to do with it. And, after the event, Alan insisted on switching roles. That picture I'm reserving for blackmail when he's 16. The traditional one is under the fold.

Warning: it's treacly sweet and will stick like toffee to your teeth for days.

Pope Watch 1458, part 6: Interview with a Borgia

A big shout-out to all my (two) readers! For those of you just joining us, here are links to parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. If you've liked what you've read, you should really buy a copy of the I Tatti edition of the Commentaries of Pius II (which will make one of the two very happy).

A very brief summary of the story so far: our hero, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, cardinal of Siena, fears that an ethically challenged French cardinal, Guillaume d'Estouteville of Rouen, is about to be elected pope. He decides to twist some arms so this will not happen. Next on his list, Vice-Chancellor Rodrigo Borgia, the previous pope's nephew. (All of the following was cut by redactors.)

Then, at first light, Aeneas met the vice-chancellor, Rodrigo, and demanded to know whether he had sold himself to Rouen. "What would you have me do?" he replied, "The thing is settled. A lot of the cardinals met in the latrines and decided to elect him. There's no point remaining with the minority and out of favor with the new pope. I've considered my interests and I'm joining the rest. I won't lose the chancellorship; I have a note from Rouen promising me that. If I don't vote for him, the others will elect him anyway and I'll lose my post."

Aeneas said to him, "Young fool!"

Rodrigo Borgia was twenty-seven years old at this time. For my gentle readers' future use, the Latin here is, "O stulte iuvenis!"

Aeneas said to him, "Young fool! You'll put an enemy of your country in the Apostle's chair? And put your faith in a note from a faithless man? You'll have the note; the chancellorship will go to Avignon. What you've been promised, he's been promised, too, and he's had confirmation. Will Rouen keep faith with him or you? Will a Frenchman be a better friend to a Frenchman or a Catalan?"

Huh? Catalan? you may be asking. But the Borgia family -- originally, de Borja -- were from the Valencia area, and as a cardinal Pope Calixtus III was called 'Il Valentino'.

Will he care more about a foreigner or his fellow countryman? You inexperienced boy! You fool! Take care! Even if you think nothing of the Church of Rome, even if you have no regard for the Christian religion and despise God -- whom you'd provide with such a vicar -- at least take thought for yourself, for you will find yourself among the last and least, if a Frenchman becomes Pope." The vice-chancellor listened patiently to the words of his friend and then reversed his decision completely.

Um, OK. Thirty-four years and several infamous children later, Rodrigo Borgia would be elected Pope Alexander VI. The legend that he bought the papacy with four muleloads of silver is apocryphal.

After this, Aeneas saw the cardinal of Pavia and said to him, "I hear you too have fallen in with those who are going to lect Rouen. Is it true?" He replied, "You've heard correctly. I've agreed to give him my vote so as not to be left by myself. The matter's already decided, you see. So many cardinals have declared for him."

Aeneas replied, "You're not the man I thought you were. How far short you fall of your forebears! Think of your father's brother (or was he your mother's?), Branda, the cardinal of Piacenza. When the papacy lay beyond the mountains in Germany, when John XXIII convened the Council of Constance and conveyed the entire Curia across the Alps,

Not the recent John XXIII, who was a sweetheart. This was the Antipope of that name.

he never rested until he had brought the Holy See back to Italy. It was thanks to his diplomacy, devotion and skill that, when the contestants for the papacy all withdrew, Martin V was elected pope, a Roman of the house of Colonna. Branda brought the Apostolic Curia back from Germany to Italy; will you, his nephew, take it from Italy to France? Will an Italian prefer France over Italy? Rouen will put his own nation's interests before those of Italy; this Frenchman will fly to France, the supreme office under his wing.

Yes, Aeneas is talking about Italia. Contrary to Metternich's later quip, the idea of Italy was definitely present, even then.

"You say, 'He has sworn. He will not leave the province without the college's permission, and if he asks to go, we will not consent.' What cardinal will dare to oppose him once he is seated on the apostolic throne? You'll be the first, once you've secured some rich benefice, to say, 'Go where you will, Holy Father.' And what is Italy, our country, without the bishop of Rome? We have lost the empire but we still have the papacy; in this one light do we see the light! And now we're going to lost it, with your support, your persuasion, your help. A French pope will either go to France, leaving our beloved country bereft of its splendor, or he'll stay among us, and Italy, the queen of nations, will serve a foreign master. We'll be slaves of the French. The kingdom of Sicily will fall into French hands. The French will possess all the cities and strongholds of the Church. You might have learned from Calixtus, for when he was pope, there was nothing the Catalans did not get. You tried the Catalans, and now you want to try the French? You'll be sorry if you do! You'll see the college full of Frenchmen and we'll never get the papacy back again. Are you too stupid to see that this will lay a yoke on your nation forever?

"And what can I say about the man's life? Have you no shame? To entrust Christ's succession to this slippery character, a man who'd sell his own soul? A fine bridegroom you've chosen for the bride of Christ! You're trusting the lamb to the wolf! Where is your conscience, your passion for justice, your common sense? Will you completely betray yourself this way? Haven't we heard you say over and over that the Church would be ruined if it fell into Rouen's hands and that you'd rather die than vote for the man? Why have second thoughts? Has he changed overnight from a demon to an angel of light? Or have you changed (from angel into devil!) so you now adore his lust and filth and greed? Where is your love for your country, your consistent support for Italy over every other nation? I used to think that even if everyone else abandoned their devotion to her, you never would; but you've failed me. No, rather you've failed yourself and your country -- Italy! -- unless you come to your senses."

Pavia was stunned by these words and burst into tears, overcome by grief and shame alike.

Um, OK.

Then, stifling his sobs, he said, "I am ashamed, Aeneas. But what can I do? I've promised. If I don't vote for Rouen, I'll be accused of treachery." Aeneas answered, "As far as I can see, you're at the point where you'll be guilty of treachery whatever you do. The choice is this: do you want to betray Italy, your country, and the Church, or will you betray Rouen?" Pavia was convinced: there would be less shame in failing Rouen.

Aeneas later replaced Pavia with his protege, the humanist Jacopo Ammannati.

Next: the ballot.

What happens when you leave the kid and the Play-doh alone

... is this:

I'm sure he ate some of it too. Before you freak: it's home-made Play-doh. Flour, salt, oil and food coloring. Now I need to find more food coloring in Bucharest. Any ideas?

Manhole attack!

A couple of summers ago, when we were living in Washington DC, there was a problem with exploding manhole covers. It was actually not funny. Those manhole covers are very heavy, and they would explode unpredictably -- it had to do with the antediluvian electrical wiring in the Georgetown neighborhood.

Now that Dubya has descended upon Germany, we get manhole cover fear in a different way:

Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung

This is only one of the thousand little requests the Secret Service had of the German government to secure Mr. Bush's person. Others were that citizens living along the official traveling route were asked to remove their mailboxes if they exceeded a certain size. It was rumored that the mobile phone net in Mainz was going to be turned off for a day (which was denied, then cautiously de-denied). House owners needed special permits to enter their homes and were kindly informed not to go on their balconies. (I wonder, are there any snipers posted to deter the bold and uncooperative?)

The university hospital is not accepting any normal patients today (other than in the internistic department), being "on hold" for Bush and his team. The schools are closed. Public transport is largely suspended. Streets are closed off. Shipping on the Rhein is discontinued. The garbage is not collected and the streets are not being cleaned. The underground parking lots are closed. The Opel plant in Rüsselsheim stopped production for the day since they anticipated supply problems (all those blocked roads and bridges and cancelled trains). Employees and workers in the area have been asked to take a day off since the anticipated chaos on the streets would only bring them in very late anyway. Etc. Etc.

Mind you, these are not voluntary measures by the Germans. These are imposed restricitions from the US side. (Makes me wonder about the independence of my country, frankly.)

Since this is paid for by the German taxpayer (which we are), and the trip is being paid for by the American taxpayer (which we are), Mr. Bush's visit to Germany is suddenly heavily sponsored by our family.

I'm not sure I'm liking this thought.

Free Montenegro! Or maybe not.

I'm working at home this morning, and there was a brief piece on the TV (which plays downstairs from the office, but can be heard in the background) about how Montenegro was thinking really really hard about declaring independence from their union with Serbia. In fact, the Montenegrin President and Prime Minister have presented a petition for independence (sort of) to the Serbian and federal leadership.

More below the fold.

Serbia: medium-small country, population about 7 million (not counting Kosovo).

Montenegro: very small country, population about 600,000. Poorer than Serbia. Mostly mountains, though with a nice seacoast.

Serbs and Montenegrins speak the same language and have been united in one country since 1919. They stayed together when Yugoslavia broke up. Currently they're joined in a federal union as a single country called "Serbia and Montenegro". This began in 2003 and is supposed to last until March 2006, at which point the two countries will reconsider their options. Very broadly speaking, the international community would like to see Serbia and Montenegro stick together. (The region has enough countries already.)

Here's what I wrote about Montenegrin independence the last time Montenegro made loud noises about it (eight months ago, in July):

Montenegrin independence is a deeply silly idea. And most Montenegrins know it!

What's going on here is Montenegro holding itself for ransom. See, if they make a really convincing case that they're about to bolt for independence, then (they think) the Serbs will give them a better deal when it's time to renegotiate the S&M union in a couple of years. Hey, it's worked once already — the present deal is far better for Montenegro than it should be. (Frex, M'gro has 8% of the population but 50% of the ambassadors and diplomatic staff. A Belgrade acquaintance of mine dryly asked if they could find that many M'grins who could read…)

Of course, sooner or later they're going to miscalculate, and push the Serbs too far.

Talos, of Histologion, replied that it didn't seem like a bluff, if only because a lot of Montenegrins had turned out for public support. To which I said:

It's a bluff. It's not hard to rent a crowd of flag-waving patriots in M'gro. (Or anywhere else in the former YU.) But sooner or later Serbia will call the bluff, and then Montenegro will suddenly be in a very interesting situation.

Note that this is rather similar to the way Slovakia split from the Czechs.

Djukanovic [the Prime Minister of Montenegro for the last decade or so -- ed.] is a clever, amoral opportunist. (I know, I know… the very last thing you'd expect to find running a republic of the former Yugoslavia.) Like some other clever, amoral opportunists, he's had a good long run, with some remarkable accomplishments. But he's nearly painted himself into a corner in the last year or so. The economy isn't growing, FDI isn't flowing in, the Serbs can't stand him, people are getting unhappy about things like dead journalists, and the international community is no longer charmed by his 'look at me! I'm a plucky democratic patriot from an appealing small nation' act.

So, time to play the independence card again, and see what more he can screw out of Serbia.

I think the Serbs will grit their teeth and let him get away with it one more time. Losing M'gro would be a huge psychological blow, and the fragile coalition government in Belgrade might not survive. But I can't see this working too much longer.

That was eight months ago. Today... well, I'm still not sure Montenegrin independence will happen. (And I still think it's a deeply bad idea.) But it's looking more likely.

One straw in the wind: the term of the federal Parliament of Serbia-Montenegro expires on March 3. There should have been elections last month to choose a new Parliament. However, neither Serbia nor Montenegro could be bothered. The legislators' terms will expire without anyone being elected to replace them. So in two weeks Serbia-Montenegro will move into constitutional limbo. Not a good sign.

Montenegrin independence would probably happen without violence. That's about all that can be said for it. It would further traumatize Serbia; meanwhile, little Montenegro, poor and isolated, doesn't make much sense as an independent state.

More on this as it evolves.

Your ad here!

I don't mention the Brooklyn crew here much, because a) they're weirder than I am, and b) they have even less Balkan content. But now that they've entered the blogosphere (as opposed to the Internet, which they've already taken over), I figure why not? Here, then, is a link to Carrie McLaren's modest proposal.

Based on the eBay screen shot, I have to wonder why South Carolinians in particular are so fascinated by this idea.

Slush

The first half of January, we had weirdly warm weather.

Then we had three weeks of snow and bitter cold.

Then, for the last week, it's been weirdly warm again. Almost all of the snow has melted. (Dropping a month's worth of frozen dog crap on the sidewalk all at once. And filling all the potholes with dirty slush that cars can splash on you. As Tina Romano pointed out the other day, late winter is not the time to fall in love with Bucharest.)

Today was grey and foggy, but well above freezing. This morning we say the first pale green shoots poking tentatively out of the soil of the garden out front.

The blue Aegean: just 250 miles that way. Look in the other direction, around the corner of the Carpathians, and it's steppe all the way to Siberia.

There are some obvious metaphors, which are left as an exercise for the reader.

The adoption thing again

We're talking about orphans again, and the ban on international adoptions out of Romania.

No, not here. It's happening over at Randy McDonald's LiveJournal.

Pope Break 2005

A wise man once told me:

I've tried to put this tactfully before, Carlos. The fact is, there are *limits* to cynicism.

I have my doubts. Via Matthew Yglesias comes this sparkling transcript of an open online chat with Newsweek's Baghdad bureau chief, Rod Nordland. Some excerpts:

London, England: Divide and rule is what the simpleton Americans use to control other weaker nations. What a pathetic, bullying, ruthless, cowardly lot you are!

Rod Nordland: E tu madre.

Grand Rapids, MI: If WMDs don't exist in Iraq, where are the destroyed ones?

Rod Nordland: I think they're in Atlantis.

Lenore, WV: I have a question. Why don't you liberals join the American side on this matter?

Rod Nordland: I'm not a liberal, sorry. You must have me confused with someone else.

Hellowell, ME: why does Bush care so much about what happens in Iraq when there are so many poor, sick, poverty-stricken people in the U.S.?

Rod Nordland: Who said he cares?

Irvine, CA: Newsweek has joined Ted Kennedy as the pro-insurgent party.

Rod Nordland: Another reader who has comprehension problems on the primary-school level.

Bucharest, Romania: Hi! Do you really think that democracy is the best thing for Iraq? I mean it's obviously the best thing for some countries (like the U.S.), but is it the best thing for others? Maybe democracy and voting just doesn't fit them, just as royalty for example wouldn't fit U.S. And is that what democracy is all about: who isn't like us is against us, therefore we should try to impose democracy everywhere (by force!)?

Rod Nordland: We're going to invade Romania next, so just watch out.

Back from Budapest

So we decided to go to Budapest for Valentine's Day weekend.

No, no real reason. Just that we hadn't travelled for the hell of it since... oh, since that weekend trip to Szekler land, back in October. Well, and we had to visit an IKEA.

We took the overnight train there and back. Can I just say that I love travelling by overnight trains? So sometimes the toilets aren't as nice as they might be. Who cares? You get to lie in bed and watch a continent unroll outside your window. Watching the stars from a train window on a clear winter night? Reading in your bed with the little reading light, and then you're jolted out of your book for a moment because another train has gone RUSHING PAST OUTSIDE, and then it's gone and you go back to your book? I just love that stuff.

Of course, when you travel with an almost-three-year-old and his 19 month old younger brother, it has an effect on the experience. Yes. More on this anon.

But anyway, we went and we came back. With a big boy bed! For Alan! Which came from IKEA, of course, and which weighed rather a lot more than the 20 kg it said on the website, but more on that too anon.

Good to go, good to come back.

A few scattershot observations:

-- Wow, there are some spectacular shopping malls in Budapest now. The "West End" would shine in any city in the US. The southern mall with the Oceanarium would, too.

-- The Red Bus remains the best second-hand English language bookstore in Eastern Europe. Utca Semmelweis, right downtown. We spent an hour and a bit. The limiting factor was not money but load.

-- Budapest has a very nice zoo. In fact, that whole central park complex is really something. Say what you like about the Habsburgs, but they left a lot of nice parks behind.

-- We rode a lot of public transport, buses and metros. They're good. Come every few minutes, fast, reasonably clean, not too crowded. (Alan loves the metro now.) Only quibble: no elevators or ramps, so not stroller-friendly.

-- There was ice in the Danube on Saturday. Quite a lot of it. By Monday it had mostly melted, but there were still chunks. It's been a cold February.

What really struck us, though, was how cold a wind gets when it blows across icewater. I love the Buda esplanade, but we couldn't take it for long.

-- Budapest has a pooper-scooper law, and it's enforced. This makes a huge difference in the urban experience. You can walk while looking /up/.

Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!

Happy Valentine's Day from, um, me (Carlos) at Halfway Down the Danube. In the immortal words of former US Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, may you all have good sex, comfortable shoes, and a warm place to go to the bathroom.

PS Death to trackback spammers.

One day someone will explain to me why the Guardian keeps publishing this stuff

Raoul, in a recent comment, pointed me to an article in today's Guardian.

The teaser: "Reformers blame problems on the legacy of 40 years of communism. But could it be that the reform process itself is responsible? Far from being a panacea, as claimed by eastern Europe's political elite, following the IMF-EU economic prescription has caused hardship for millions."

Ah hah, said I to myself, said I. Before I even clicked on the link? I knew it was going to be one of two people: Mark Almond or Neil Clark. So I clicked...

Ding! You've got Neil!

Well. It's difficult for me to overcome my revulsion to Clark. He's an old Milosevic fanboy. Slobo, says Clark is a "prisoner of conscience", a man whose "worst crime was to carry on being a socialist". His trial is "a travesty".

I guess I could get past that, but then there was the Djindjic piece. Written just a few days after Djindjic's murder, it positively crowed over the killing of "the Quisling of Belgrade". Djindjic, you see, was an American puppet, the "State Department's man", who "enriched himself by selling his country to those who had waged war against it so mercilessly only a few years earlier." Worse yet, there was "evidence that underworld groups, controlled by Zoran Djindjic and linked to US intelligence, carried out a series of assassinations of key supporters of the Milosevic regime". Because of all this, "Djindjic will be mourned by few in Serbia... there are many... who would willingly have pulled the trigger."

'Djindjic will be mourned by few in Serbia'. I was in Belgrade when Djindjic was shot. And I walked in his funeral procession, along with over half a million other people; roughly a tenth of the country's population. And I remember the thousands of candles people set outside Democratic Party headquarters for weeks afterwards; and the flowers, piled higher every day, until we could smell them far down the street.

Well. Raoul wanted to know what I thought of the latest Clark piece.

Not much. The first half is a recitation of statistical bad news about Eastern Europe. Nothing new there. Oh, it's true, and it bears repeating: the '90s were a bad, bad time in this part of the world. Like the Great Depression in the US; in some places, worse than that.

A lot of Americans, and even some Europeans don't get this. Communism fell, and there was an adjustment period, and now we're all happy shiny EU members! Well... no. The adjustment period went on for a decade, give or take, and it was seriously bad news. And it's not completely over yet.

But then Clark gets into the whys and wherefores and, well, you can guess. It's the West's fault; it's NATO's fault; it's foreign capital's fault.

Do I have to say that there are legitimate criticisms to be made of how the transitions were handled? But this isn't it. Nothing in the article is backed by anything but assertion. "These bad things happened; clearly it was the fault of *this*!"

There are also some goofy errors of fact. (N.B., this is pretty constant with Clark.) "The EU's 3% budget deficit rule for euro members means that a fresh wave of deflation is on its way for populations which, since the late 1980s, have known nothing else." This will come as a surprise to Romanians, who have seen two bouts of hyperinflation in the last 15 years; inflation here was at 100% just five years ago, and has still not dropped out of double digits. Similarly, the Poles saw double-digit inflation pretty much every year through the nineties, as did Hungary ; the Baltic States all had terrifying inflation until around 1996. Does nobody at the Guardian fact-check this stuff?

Then there are bits that are true, but don't seem to mean what he thinks. 27% youth unemployment in Slovakia: that's bad, but then it's over 18% in the EU generally, and several new EU members are doing better than that. (Hungary, 15%; Slovenia, 14%. As opposed to 21% in Spain, 22% in France.) And he's aghast at the NATO requirement that new members spend 2% of GDP on defence. Yet this is much less than former Warsaw Pact members used to spend, and it's less than Greece (4.3%), France (2.6%), or socialist Sweden (2.1%) spend today.

And, you know? This is a guy who went to Belgrade in 1998 -- at a time when living standards were far lower than they are in Poland or Hungary today, and the country was being methodically looted by Milosevic and his friends -- and burbled that "what a truly wonderful place was Belgrade!" Because, you see, "state-owned department stores abounded". The poverty, the blackouts, the refugees, the pensioners standing in line for hours for cooking oil, the hyperinflation, the pervasive corruption, the bogus privatizations, and the soaring income inequality as Milosevic's friends and family distributed state-owned companies among themselves... those escaped Clark's notice, back in Belgrade in 1998. But his "delight turned to ecstasy" when he discovered that he could buy books by Tony Benn.

Given this, I'm not too surprised to find that his ray of hope in Eastern Europe's miserable gloom is... an alliance between Marxists and right-wing ultranationalists. Yeah, that's generally worked a treat in this part of the world.

And that's about all I have to say just now. Back to the ICG thing tomorrow, if time permits.

Pope Watch 1458, part 5: A late night encounter

In which the cardinal of Bologna seeks to give our man Aeneas a hot tip on the upcoming election. As before, this section was written in the third person, sort of like the royal 'we'; and as before, this section was suppressed. Go figure.

It was past midnight when the cardinal of Bologna rushed into Aeneas's cell and roused him, saying, "Aeneas, what do you say! Don't you know we've already got a pope? A group of cardinals met in the latrines and decided to elect Guillaume. They're only waiting for morning. I think you should get out of bed and offer him your vote before he's elected, for if he makes it without your support he'll never let you forget it. I'm not falling into that trap again. I know what it means to have the pope against you -- I endured the reign of Calixtus, who never gave me so much as a friendly look, and all because I hadn't voted for him. It's best to curry favor with a future pope well in advance, it seems. I'm giving you the advice I'm going to take myself."

Aeneas replied, "Away with you, Filippo, and your advice! No one's going toget me to vote for a man I think totally unfit to follow Peter. Far be it from me, such a sin! If the others want to elect him, let them look to themselves. My hands will be clean of the crime, my conscience won't prick me. You say it's hard to have the pope against you. I'm not worried about that. He won't murder me because I didn't vote for him, that I know. 'But,' you say, 'he won't be kind to you, he won't give you presents, he won't show you favor. You'll feel the pinch of poverty.' Poverty isn't hard for one who's known it well. I've been poor in the past, what does it matter if I die a poor man? He won't take my muses away, and they are all the sweeter when fortunes are low.

"Still I can't believe God would let the Church, his bride, perish at the hands of the cardinal of Rouen. What could be further from the preaching of Christ than a vicar enslaved to simony and lust? Divine Mercy will not turn this palace, the house of so many holy fathers, into a den of thieves or a whoring brothel. The apostleship is bestowed by God, not men. They are men who conspire to commit the papacy to Rouen; and human thoughts are but a breath -- who doesn't know that? It was well their conspiracy was made in the latrines; their plots will go down the drain! Like the Arian heresy, these most foul machinations will have a very filthy end."

(I am not making this up. The Latin is: in loco foedissimo finem accipient iniquissima machinamenta.)

"Tomorrow it will be clear that the bishop of Rome is chosen by God, not men. As for you, if you are a Christian, you will not promote to be Vicar of Christ a man you know is the arm of the devil!" Hearing these words, Filippo was too frightened to accede to Rouen.

Next: part 6, Aeneas gets Chicago on cardinal ass gluteus.

The ICG report on Kosovo

So I just finished reading the International Crisis Group's report on Kosovo.

The report can be found here. (That's the .pdf version. MSWord file on this page.) It's 41 pages long, but reads faster than you might think. Though, as I told Talos at Histologion the other day, I was slowed by scribbling notes in the margins.

Here's the short version: it recommends that Kosovo be given independence sometime in 2006.

Unfortunately, IMO it doesn't make a very convincing case for this. I went in wondering why this would be a good idea; I finished, and I was still wondering.

That said, it's worth reading. Very much so. It doesn't whitewash either the Albanians or the Serbs, and it has several modest but plausible ideas for improving relations between the two groups. In fact, the more modest the ideas, the more plausible they become IMO.

I want to post about this in a little more detail, time permitting. (Which it doesn't right now.) Meanwhile, I encourage anyone who's interested to check it out and comment.

Pope Watch 1458, part 4: Smoking in the boys' room

The story so far: King Alfonso of Aragon and Sicily is dead. King Alfonso wanted his illegitimate son Ferrante to succeed him. Pope Calixtus III did not care for King Alfonso, and so at his death Pope Calixtus claimed that Sicily was Rome's to dispense with. Then Pope Calixtus died. Oh, the embarrassment.

Thus the Vatican sent out an APB for all cardinals in the area to converge on Rome for a snap papal election. Nineteen showed up, one of whom promptly died. By the rules of the time, a new pope needed a two-thirds majority of votes: twelve cardinals.

The French were looking to install their own ringer in the papacy, for reasons both theological -- the faculty of the University of Paris was getting restless -- and temporal -- Rene of Anjou had his own claim to Sicily. Their man on the spot was one Guillaume d'Estouteville, cardinal of Rouen.

Our narrator is Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini of Siena, soon to become Pope Pius II, who happened to be at a nearby spa at the time of Pope Calixtus's death. For some reason, Pius's posthumous editors decided this section of his memoirs was inappropriate for his readership, and removed it. So imagine the following gently crossed out with black marker:

A large group of cardinals gathered in the latrines. Here, as if in a secret, private meeting place, they worked out a plan to elect Guillaume pope, binding themselves with oaths and written pledges. Guillaume felt he could rely on their support and within no time was promising benefices, offices and positions of power, and dividing provinces among them. A perfect place to elect such a pope: where better to strike a filthy bargain than in the latrines!

The cardinals who had definitely decided for Guillaume included the two Greeks, Genoa, San Sisto, Avignon, Colonna, Pavia, and the vice-chancellor.

This is rather an unholy coalition. Alain of Avignon we have already met. The two Greeks are Alain's previous nemesis John Bessarion, and the cardinal of Kiev. (Yes, Kiev.) Pavia has already made his play for the papacy in the accession phase. And the vice-chancellor is Rodrigo Borgia, the late Pope Calixtus III's nephew.

Orsini and the cardinals of Bologna and Sant'Anastasia were wavering and it seemed the slightest pressure would make them accede.

And it gets more complicated. The Colonna family and the Orsini family were two of the leading names in Rome, and they got along about as well as you might expect. Think Montagues and Capulets, or Hatfields and McCoys. Also, the Orsinis did not much like the interloping Catalan Borgia family; after Calixtus died, the Orsinis drove out his other nephew, whom Calixtus had made Captain-General of the Church, from Rome to Civitavecchia, where he died of a fever.

We've already encountered Filippo, cardinal of Bologna. A little unsteady, our friend Filippo.

Already Rouen felt his hopes were practically assured of success. And now, as it seemed they had eleven men confirmed on their side, they were certain they would get a twelfth straight away. For when it gets to this point in the process, someone is always ready to jump up and say "And I make you pope," to win the favor those words always bring. So they thought the matter settled, and were just waiting for dawn so the vote could be taken.

Next: part 5, a late night encounter.

Cold

It's cold outside.

Snow and cold all this past week: a few degrees below zero during the days, down to -10 or -15 at night. That's Celsius. Fahrenheit, say high 20s day, single digits to low teens at night.

And before someone from Finland or Wisconsin jumps in and tells me that's not cold: it's the coldest we've been here yet, okay? And I think it's quite respectably chilly for a place that's just 250 miles from the Mediterranean.

The streets are very icy. Yesterday I dragged the boys around the block on their little green plastic sled. There's still lots of powdery snow on the ground, too. Wow, does Alan love to shovel snow. No, really. Claudia bought him a child-sized snow shovel, and he just charges to the attack. He likes snow.

No, I have no idea either. Recessive genes? Cosmic rays?

Faucet Roulette

We've been living in this house for over a year and a half now. And for all that time, I've been scalding myself at least twice per week. I'll go to a faucet, turn it on, and YOW hot hot!

Understand that I'm not complaining. There are a lot of people in Romania without hot water. In fact, there are still plenty of people in Romania without functional indoor plumbing. We like our apartment just fine.

But: am I stupid?

So today I finally checked. There are six faucets in our apartment: kitchen, shower, tub, and three hand-sinks. Of those six, three have the hot water on the left... and three have it on the right.

Mind you, there are worse things:

Our first apartment in Serbia had odd wiring and plumbing issues. Very odd. When one flushed the toilet -- I am not making this up -- the lights in the kitchen went dim. Subsequent investigation showed that the electricians had adopted a novel technique for grounding the apartment's electrical system: they had simply run the ground wire over to the plumbing. Hey, pipes are made of nice conductive metal, and they run right down into the ground. Makes sense, right?

The Serbian electrician who made this discovery got very thoughtful. "He says this was probably done by Montenegrins," said the translator. "He says he has heard of these Montenegrins."

"Oh... and?"

"He says he will come back in three days and fix it. He says, until then, you should not use the shower."

I had been using the shower for a couple of months at this point. I looked at it thoughtfully. "Why not?"

The electrician spoke at some length. Eventually the translator (the neighbor's daughter) turned and said, "He says that might not be safe, especially if someone flushes the toilet while the stove or some other heavy appliance is turned on."

Me: "Might not be safe?"

Electrician: "Ne! Ne ne! Smrtni!"

Traslator: "Not so safe, no."

At this point I understood a little Serbian. And I was getting the idea that the neighbor girl -- a nice girl, but shy -- might be translating a bit liberally So I mentally made a note to check just what the word smrtni meant; the electrician had used it at least half a dozen times, and with a certain emphasis that had caught my attention.

Twenty minutes later, on a mobile phone: "Hey, Mira, what does smrtni mean?"

"Smrtni? It means lethal, deadly. Like a mafia hit man, or a poison snake. It's from smrt, death. Why?"

"Oh, no reason. Just curious."

So, there are worse things than being occasionally surprised by hot water.

Still, a question for our Romanian readers: is this just a peculiarity of our apartment? Or is all Romanian plumbing sort of random this way? I suppose I can check, in rest rooms and so forth, but it may take some time to collect the data. So, has anyone else noticed this?

Pope Watch 1458, part 3: Rouen's Rules of Order

Oddly enough, this whole section was edited entirely out of the early editions of Pius's commentaries. I think they call it 'redaction' nowadays.

It was the custom for the cardinals to sit and talk together after the result of a scrutiny had been announced, in case anyone wished to change his mind and transfer his vote from one to another. This is the method called "by accession," for it is an easier way to reach an agreement. This procedure was not used after the first scrutiny, for those who had received no votes objected, for they could not now be candidates for accession. They adjourned for lunch, and then a great many private conferences took place. The richer and more influential members of the college summoned others to their presence. Seeking the papacy for themselves or their friends, they begged, made promises, even tried threats. Some threw all decency aside, spared no blushes and pleaded their own cases, claiming the papacy as their right. Among these were Guillaume, cardinal of Rouen; Pietro, cardinal of San Marco; and Giovanni, cardinal of Pavia; nor did the cardinal of Lerida neglect his interests. Each had a great deal to say for himself. Their rivalry was extraordinary, their energy unbounded. They neither rested by day nor slept at night.

Rouen, however, feared these men less than Aeneas and the cardinal of Bologna, for he saw that the majority of the votes were tending toward them. But he was especially afraid of Aeneas, for his silence, he was sure, would prove far more effective than the snarling of the rest. And so he would summon now some, now others, and berate them: "What's Aeneas to you? What makes you think he deserves the papacy? Will you give us a pauper and a cripple for a pope? How will a destitute pope restore a destitute church, or an ailing pope a church that is sick? He's only just come from Germany -- we don't know him! What if he transfers the Curia there? And look at his writing! Shall we set a poet in Peter's place, and administer the Church by pagan laws? Or perhaps you think we should choose Filippo of Bologna instead? A stiff-necked fellow, without the wit to rule himself nor listen to those who counsel right? I'm the senior cardinal. You know I'm not stupid. I'm trained in pontifical law and I can boast of royal blood. I have many friends and great resources I can draw on to relieve the Church of her poverty. What's more, I have quite a few church benefices, which I'll distribute among you and the others, when I resign them."

Then he would pile on appeals or, if they had no effect, resort to threats. If anyone brought up his past record of simony, suggesting that in his hands, the papacy would be for sale, he would admit that his earlier career had been tainted with that stain, but would swear that in future his hands would stay clean. He was supported by Alain, cardinal of Avignon, a reckless, grasping character who lent him every assistance, not so much a Frenchman aiding a Frenchman as a man who expected, at Guillaume's election, to obtain his house in Rome, the church of Rouen and the vice-chancellorship. A good number of cardinals were swayed by Rouen's splendid promises; like flies, they were victims of their own appetites. And the tunic of Christ, without Christ, was being sold.

Incidentally, according to Pius, Alain, cardinal of Avignon, was the fellow who prevented Bessarion, cardinal of Nicaea -- a Byzantine humanist whose life's dream was healing the schism between the Orthodox and Catholic churches (preferably on his own terms), who helped kickstart the Italian Renaissance by sponsoring Greek scholarship there -- from becoming Pope. Instead, the Church got a Borgia.

Next: part 4, a fine and private place.

Pope Watch 1458, part 2: the conclave

The story so far: Pope Calixtus III (Alfonso Borgia) is dead in Rome, and all the cardinals in the immediate area are reacting to the news. The suppressed parts are, as before, in boldface.

Filippo, cardinal of Bologna, was spending the hot days of summer at Bagnoregio when he heard the news. He went to Viterbo and from there traveled with Aeneas to Rome for the election of the next pope. As they approached the city together, they found the entire Curia and most of the populace waiting to meet them outside the walls. All agreed that one of them would be elected pope. Every other cardinal within a hundred miles of Rome also returned, making nineteen in the city. In the course of the funeral ceremonies, however, the cardinal of Fermo came down with a slow fever. He had aspired passionately, excessively even, to follow Calixtus, and so he did -- to the grave. This was a man who could have been a model of virtue, had he not let ambition and a violent temper master him. His life was pure, his learning and experience great, but he was too fierce a partisan of the Ghibellines.

Ten days after Calixtus's death the other eighteen cardinals entered the conclave. The whole city awaited in suspense for the outcome; but it was common talk that Aeneas of Siena would be pope. No one was held in higher esteem.

On the conclave met in the apostolic palace at St. Peter's, where two halls and two chapels were cordoned off for the purpose. In the larger chapel they constructed cells where the cardinals would eat and sleep; the smaller, called the chapel of St. Nicholas, was reserved for deliberations and voting. The halls were places where all might walk about freely.

The day they entered, they did nothing about the election. The next day they issued certain capitulations which all agreed should be observed by the new pope. Each swore that he would abide by them should the lot fall to him. On the third day, after mass, they took a vote and found that Filippo of Bologna and Aeneas of Siena had received an equal number of votes, five apiece. No one else had more than three. On this ballot, whether from strategy or dislike, no one voted for Guillaume, the cardinal of Rouen.

We will see more of this Guillaume d'Estouteville, Cardinal of Rouen, in the next installment. The magic number of votes is twelve.

Brother, hast thou a shovel?

This was by far the nicest aspect of the recent heavy snow fall: all the neighbor men helped together to dig the cars out of the snow. They even helped me, although I was whimsical enough to start the digging process two days after everybody else. Thanks, neighbors.

Pope Watch 1458, part 1

Only one pope has ever written an autobiography, Pius II, in the 1460s. It's in Latin, of course. What's worse, the good parts were suppressed for four hundred years. C'est la vie. I include them in boldface, like so. Pius writes in third person, and why not? I will use Florence A. Gragg's English translation and Margaret Meserve's contemporary revision.

The story so far: Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, humanist and erotic poet turned apostolic secretary, is on the fast track in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, having been made bishop of Trieste in 1447, bishop of his hometown Siena in 1451, and cardinal of Santa Sabina in 1456. At this point in time, he is fifty-two years old, half-lame from gout, but intellectually still vigorous. The Pope who appointed him cardinal, Calixtus III, has allowed him to take the baths in Viterbo:

While taking the baths, he began his History of Bohemia, which he dedicated to Alfonso, king of Sicily and Aragon -- inauspiciously, as it turned out, for the king died before it was finished. He had fallen ill of a slow fever while Aeneas was at the baths and lingered forty days between hope of life and fear of death. Finally he paid his debt to nature, having designated as his heir his illegitimate son, Ferrante, whom Popes Nicholas and Eugenius had declared eligible to rule. The king died in sanctity, for he confessed his sins like a Christian and received the sacraments before he passed to the other life. He charged his son to give the Pope 60,000 gold ducats toward the crusade against the Turks and left large legacies to pious causes. He directed that his bones should be taken to Aragon.

The carrying out of these instructions however was hindered by the outbreak of war; for although at Alfonso's death all the princes and states of his realm acknowledged Ferrante as their sovereign and swore allegiance to him, Pope Calixtus transferred the hatred he had felt for Alfonso during his life to his son and declared that the kingdom of Sicily had reverted to the Church of Rome. It was common talk that he intended to put his nephew, Borgia, on the throne. But what is more uncertain than the plans of men? While Calixtus was unduly elated at the death of his royal enemy and thought that now everything was going to be easy for him, he himself fell ill and being weakened by extreme old age died within forty days.

Giovanni Caimo, the envoy of Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan, who was passing through Viterbo, went to see Aeneas there and in the course of conversation said he had been sent to Calixtus to tell him it was not acceptable to Francesco that Ferrante should be deposed from his father's throne; if the pope had any such intention, he should know that the duke of Milan would oppose him. Hearing this, Aeneas cried, "Your message will be the death of him!" And so it was, for when Calixtus heard that Francesco opposed him in the matter of the kingdom, he soon fell ill with the disease that killed him. His nephews buried him in the basilica of St. Peter in the chapel known as St. Mary of the Fevers, which was once a temple of Apollo. He died on August 6 in the year of our Savior 1458. As is the custom, the cardinals staged a magnificent funeral.

Next: part 2, the conclave.

Oh Stevie, I wonder!

You have to know, he does have some African blood in his veins. Sometimes, you can tell.

Expat living, the final installment

Dragana in Cuba, expat mother of two, wrote and reminded me of the promised book list on expat life and TCK's. If you're only interested in that, just scroll to the bottom of this post and you'll find a number of links there. (Dragana - why my site doesn't allow Cuban ISP's, I have not the faintest clue. Sorry about that.)

Anyhow. There are two more points I would like to make about living the expat life before I wrap this up.

One of the more annoying facts of expat life is that there is no such thing as a class-less society. You might think that all expats are equal but nothing could be further from the truth. Expats are divided neatly into three groups.

The first group and highest class consists of diplomats and high-level CEO's -- they quite intentionally keep to themselves. When I first encountered this, I thought it was a quirk. Alas, no. Especially the American and the German diplomatic corps doesn't like to mingle with us mere mortals. This could be due to the fact that they have privileges which are envied and wished for by corporate people -- the Americans in particular have the commissary where they can buy American products, they get Butterball turkeys flown in for Thanksgiving, they have a medical officer on post.

I strongly suppose that one reason for this closed corps business is that they simply don't want to hear one more desperate plea for cranberry sauce or Cheerios. This is the favorable explanation. One could also reach the conclusion that they are utter snobs. I'm sure that's unfair in many cases -- we have friends in the Foreign Service, after all. (Although they have been friends before they joined the Service, so they don't really count.)

It also very much depends on the country of origin. The Swedes and the Australians are quite casual and we have friends among them. The Germans are friendly but stiff. The Americans are friendly and stand-offish.

The other members of this group are the high-level CEO's. I can't say much about them but we know they exist. I am friends with the wife of one, albeit not with Mr. CEO himself. We know the Italian manager of a Fortune 500 company who lives down the street, nod and greet him and his family whenever we walk past -- and they are smile-and-wave-friendly in return. There is no social life between the four of us, though.

The second group, the middle class, is made up by the likes of us. Managers and consultants, teachers and aid workers -- corporate people. We get paid well - some more, some less. Our moves are paid for, we live in nice houses/apartments, and we have health insurance. We mingle quite freely, and nationality is not an issue. This part I really, really like. My sons get to be friends with litte Israelis, Belgians, Brits, Swedes, Turks and others. No Dünkel, as we would say in German.

The third group consists of all those who don't fit into the other two groups. Free-lancers, washed-up backpackers, missionaries, people who come here to work in orphanages. I know quite a few of them but somehow, we don't really mingle. It's not about condescencion or resentment. It's not about money, although most of these people do make pitiful wages. It seems there is a difference in intentions -- most of the third group are here for the long term whereas we "true" expats keep moving around and often don't interact to a higher degree with the locals. So while they try to fit into the local social life, we mostly keep out of that. They send their kids to Romanian kindergartens while we send ours to the International Nursery School.

Doug and I belonged to both the "low" and the middle class in our expat life. I have to say, I quite like the middle class better, if only because we're paid on time and we have a good international health insurance. Cigna rocks, people.

So much about the class system. You're free to draw your own conclusions.

The other point I wanted to make about the expat life is that some people are born for it. Maybe they are made to fit during their childhood years. Maybe there is some itchy-feet gene. I don't know.

Here's how I found out that I'm definitely an expat-moving-around person: In the last two weeks, we had faint, very faint possibilities for jobs in a. Atlanta, GA and b. Rabat, Morocco. Never mind that both didn't even live past the larva stage, but here's the thing: I was quite dismayed by the Georgia prospect and really excited about Morocco. Yes, I know. I'm German, so technically moving to the US would be expat living again, at least for me. That wasn't it. The idea of settling down and not moving again for umpteen years simply scared the living daylights out of me. I'm such a thrill seaker.

OK. Books.

The first expat living book I read was Culture Shock! by Monica Rabe. I found this book useful and highly annoying at the same time. She's a member of the corporate class and definitely does not offer much advice for people who are not affiliated to a (big) company or the Foreign Service. However, some of the points she makes, I find very valid. The culture shock of not fitting in anymore - not in the new culture but not in the old one anymore, either. The disturbing feeling when your friends just don't want to hear all your stories or view all your pictures. The stressful home visits. If you can get past the corporate leanings, it's a good book.

Third Culture Kids by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken. An eye-opener for parents who have never lived the expat life, and for those who have not grown up as TCK's themselves. I found it full of facts I already knew first hand but I know that the Moms of my baby group really liked it.

Expert Expatriate by Melissa Brayer Hess and Patricia Linderman is a recommended book. It covers everything from information gathering to pet moving and reentry back home. It's sometimes a bit unrealistic -- the appended moving plan assumes you have six months advance warning. Hah. Last time, we had one week. However, it gives you a good idea what to do when and I'm a sucker for lists, so there. It also got raving reviews on Amazon.com.

Moving Your Family Overseas by Rosalind Kalb. I have had no time to read this book yet, so I can't say much about it, other than that my friends liked it.

Those two latter books have a seperate chapter on home leave which I find very sensible. That alone makes them worth their money.

You can find recommended reading on the TCK subject at Talesmag.com. Talesmag is recommended reading for expats and expats-to-be in general, although it is heavily geared towards Foreign Service types.

Some other websites you may want to check out:

K 12 Teach Overseas is not only interesting for teachers. It's packed full with useful information and is for free. Heh. Again, I really like the checklist.

TCK World is mainly aimed at military brats. Now's the time to confess that I left out the military entirely on purpose. I have no great insight into their lives, so I ignore them. Sue me.

An entire book online is According to My Passport, I’m Coming Home[PDF] by Kay Eakin. Recommended.

A list of websites for expats can be found here.

All right. Thanks for reading and if you have any questions I might be able to help with, please let me know.