In which we spend a chilly few days in Budapest.

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The chilly weather continues here in Eastern Europe, and days are shorter. In Budapest, just over the time line, the sun sets at 4:30 pm these days. We took a five hour train to Budapest for a week as Eric was giving lectures there at Karoli University. Our train was set to leave at 8 am, and in typical dad fashion, Eric wanted us to be there as early as possible, and contemplated us getting there the night before JUST TO BE SURE.

Train travel, however, is not like plane travel. There’s no indoor comfortable lounges to wait in, just a small heated room if you’re lucky, with cracked plastic chairs. We watched our breath come out in puffs, and I played games of Simon Says with the kids, partly to give them something to do and partly to prevent hypothermia. I was excited to spend time there. I’ve dreamt of going since I was a kid, playing Carmen SanDiego and reading “Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is formally two cities Buda and Pest separated by the Danube River” about a million times. (My other memory from Carmen SanDiego the computer game (not the TV show because of course that is Rockapella) is that Port Moresby is the capital of Papua New Guinea.)

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sunrise at the station, feels like it’s 50 years ago looking at the trains

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Train interior…threadbare seats, perfect for this bum

Along this trip, my phone died. For a while it could be resuscitated with a series of twisting maneuvers and then by doing a soft reset, which I likened to doing chest compressions and then pulling out the paddles. Sadly, the constant stress of twisting finally resulted in a large diagonal crack along the entire screen. I had to call the code and get a new phone. This meant that our first stop in Budapest was … the mall. I don’t know what it is about our family that we end up at a mall basically everywhere we go. Sigh. Eric and I headed to the mall, leaving the kids to rest at home for an hour. On our way out, we noticed a Lego display and play area on the first floor. Giving each other a glance of sad resignation, we knew we’d have to tell the kids and we’d then be spending more time at the mall. I used to feel bad about having to use travel time for errands like this, but the reality is its stuff that you need to do for life, like getting a winter coat or new underwear (yes, the kids finally needed more) we just happen to have to do it somewhere else!

 

We thought to beat the chill with a visit to one of Budapest famed hot springs baths. I was picturing something along the lines of Glenwood Springs, though hoping for something that resembled the Japanese onsen, sitting in a pool of hot bubbling water until the icy feeling left me. Instead we found ourselves walking on a mats with ground in dirt, sitting in a huge, slightly lukewarm, outdoor pool so filled with people that it was almost difficult to move around easily. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was sitting in a sparkling clean onsen, hot springs and plants around me. It didn’t work. There were dry saunas inside, but these were so packed that people were standing in the middle of the floor. There were hotter pools inside, but these did not allow kids under 16, so back to the tepid water it was. Eric tried to go for a swim in one of the larger, colder pools, and shivered for the rest of the night.

 

The next day, yes, we went back to the mall. We left the kids in the cage of Legos, supervised play area and walked around a bit after which we had to head back home and move to our new place at the University dorms for the rest of our time there.

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That evening we went to the Hungarian National Museum, an excellent museum detailing the history of Hungary. I’ll give you the reader’s digest version: Hungary has basically been under the thumb of another Empire for much of its life. It’s had several failed revolutions, crushed by its overlords of either Austria + Russia (1894) or the Soviet Union (1956). Coming from Vienna, home of the Habsburg empire and seeing how history is presented there – with the Empire as a unified state, and with its subjects loyal to the Empress, it’s quite different in Hungary. WWI and II are somewhat glossed over in terms of Hungarian actions, but mostly to say that they got roped into participation because of the Empire, not because Hungarians wanted to.

For those of you that live in Denver, when you drive along Speer Blvd south towards Cherry Creek, look to your right along the way. There’s a memorial there dedicated to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising.

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I’ve looked it up before because I was curious, but it hits home here. Hungarians, upset over continued Communist rule and oppression had a student uprising which spread and broke the government. The Soviet Union initially said they would work together to dismantle the system, but just essentially rolled in with tanks and massacred thousands over the course of 2 weeks. Mass arrests and executions followed for months, and the Communist system remained in power until 1989.

The next few days, Eric was teaching so it was just me and the kids traipsing about Budapest. Walking around Budapest, surrounded by things in the Hungarian language we were again mostly illiterate. Hungarian is not Latin or Germanic based, so there’s little word similarities to help along. Fun Fact – The two closest languages to Hungarian are Finnish and Estonian!

Last week, I’d handed the kids a tourist map and guide of Budapest and told them to put together an itinerary. Readers, they did a great job. We started with a walk over the Danube, then up to the Citadel (a fortress built on a high hill after the crushed 1884 rebellion for the Habsburgs to prove their might), walk along to Buda Castle, then back over the Danube. Along the way we found little delights like slides set into the hill, different narrow staircases to climb to visit the Castle, pretending like we were enemy ninja stealthily invading.

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The view from the top!

We wanted to go to the pinball museum, alas it is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so we found ourselves at a game pub instead! A wall of board games awaited us, and we spent a few happy hours in competition.

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crazy complicated D&D board game…the boy was chafed he didn’t win

The next day we checked out St. Stephen’s Basilica and the Parliament building. Both are absolutely stunning, and interestingly made as complements to each other. Richly detailed and decorated with carvings and tilework throughout, we just kept looking at the beauty. They are both exactly the same height, as the tallest buildings in Budapest, and are meant to symbolize a balance between religion and governmental thought. In the back room, a sign let us know that the holy hand was available for viewing. Huh? We thought. Off we went to look, and in a glass case is…a mummified hand. Purportedly the “incorruptible” right hand of Stephen himself (first Hungarian king c 1000 AD not of the Bible) was found on his final battlefield and has been preserved. I can’t lie, it felt a bit creepy. Okay, a lot creepy.

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The holy hand in all its dessicated glory

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Parliament main hall

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Parliament voting chamber

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Parliament at night, so pretty

On our last full day in Budapest, we awoke to the election news and while it’s no secret that I’m not happy about the result I won’t dwell on it here. Fatigued after waking early for election results, but managed to head to the Hungarian National Gallery for some art and a break from politics for a bit. I found this so interesting because it’s mostly Hungarian artists who we’ve never heard of in the West, but were part of the same artistic movements and created beautiful pieces. Many traveled to Paris and were inspired by Gaugin and Picasso. My favorite was a piece by a Hungarian artist named Jozef Rippl-Ronai, titled “Woman Holding a Bird Cage.”

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Another exhibition focused on Hungarian art through time. I skipped the Renaissance galleries, since they usually seem to be of identical pictures of Jesus and Mary with the gilt halo around Jesus’ head (Nothing against them, I just find them repetitive) and headed for the more modern era, starting around 1900. Moving from the impressionist/art nouveau era, through to socialist realism, then to more modern and abstract pieces, you can see the national mood at the time reflected in the art.

 

Too tired to do much else, we made it to the Flipper Museum, where an entrance fee of about $9 gives you unlimited playtime on rooms of pinball machines and a few video games. We whiled away a few hours playing pinball, and I introduced the kids to Mortal Kombat. Man, that game used to seem so, so violent when I was 11, but playing it now it feels tame given the grainy graphics and the current world of hyperrealistic high def point-and-shoot games. Using the internet as our friend, we looked up special moves, trying to get frozen ice to shoot out of our hands. At some point we sounded like right fools, yelling “Up Up down high punch! No! Up UP DOWN high punch!” over and over then going “oooooooh” when the trick worked!

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An early morning train ride back to Timisoara, and we’re back in our little flat here. Guess it’s time for me to head back to the mall, it’s been a few days.

-s

long lost relatives

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A few weeks ago my family and me went to (in this order) through Hungary, in to netra (one night), to Bratislava (two nights), out of Hungary, in to, Wien (Vienna) (two nights). Then we went home to Romania. besides the reason of just going to other places we went for a very special reason… our long lost relatives! the cool part is that they were really long lost to! My sister and I (as well as our Mom and Dad) had only learned about them before the trip! Dad had amazingly contacted her via his blog, which is quite amazing. after getting back in Romaina Mom told me that Eva was my, first cousin twice removed. Best of all I always wanted a first cousin twice removed.

The long lost relatives we met were, Eva, Eva’s mom Anna, her dad William, two of Eva’s children and one of their husbands. All six of them were very nice to us and gave all sort of gifts! We felt bad because we did not bring any gifts our selves.  😦

-Hf

In which we have a typical day  of school and city wandering

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The weather here has been a bit funny, or so the locals tell us. Instead of typically warm, 70 degree October days we arrived to relative gloom and chill. One of those where it was okay if the sun was shining but the minute it disappeared, an icy chill wind would blow through and freeze you. We only left with summer clothing and so have, out of necessity, had to acquire more fall and winter appropriate clothes. I had hoped to find funky, 80’s era clothing here which we would feel okay ditching at the end of the year, but alas, it wasn’t to be. The shirts and jackets were all of the truly ugly 80s variety, think bright yellow with small pink and green isoceles triangles. Moreover, I had the opposite problem I had in Japan – everything here is about four sizes too big. I did find this cool leather jacket for $10, but everything else has come from H&M. The kids have new weather appropriate shoes, the thin Chuck Taylors having worn out with so much wear and growing too small for them anyway at the rate their feet expand. I’ve started knitting for need as well as pleasure, making hats, fingerless gloves, and scarves to shield us from the cold. 

Made with a deliciously springy merino picked up in Vienna


It’s been sunnier lately, and the other day was a crisp sunny fall morning. I think often of the Ray Bradbury short story about the Mars colony, where the sun only comes out once every seven years, focusing on a classroom of kids who lock a girl into a closet and forget about her, dooming her to miss the sun for another seven. Not to lock my kids in the closet, though I have often dreamed of it for other reasons, but to make sure that we enjoy these days among the gloom. Our days here are relaxed in general. We wake up around 8, and the kids snuggle in the living room under duvets and read whatever they’ve lately downloaded from the library for fun. 
At some point, we have breakfast (eggs & toast for the boys, Toast & yogurt for the girl, granola & yogurt for me). Eric and I have coffee, drinking instant nescafe. I’ve always quite liked nescafe, it reminds me of being in Mali, where breakfast was hot sugary milky nescafe and fresh baguettes under a canvas tarp outdoors, waving away flies who wanted a taste too. After we’ve all settled ourselves, we have the kids read their assigned reading – thus far we’ve read “One Crazy Summer” by Rita Mae Brown, “Number the Stars” by Lois Lowry, and are currently reading “The Shakespeare Stealer” by Gary Blackwood. We’ve downloaded lesson plans and have the kids write out answers to them. Sometimes they have to rewrite the answers, and then there may be tears and wailing. I do my best to ignore those, but sometimes fantasize about the aforementioned closet locking. 
They then switch to math, we’re using an online program called Dreambox which both kids like, though the boy will sometimes change to Khan academy instead. This needs occasional supervision but for the most part they’re on their own. We also do Geography, using online maps and quizzes, and while my kids now can identify all the countries in Europe and South America, this is the one place where I struggle in that there’s a lot of screen time involved with this type of learning. 
At some point during the day, we’ll sit down and have a discussion about the book, usually in the morning after math time. Eric is much, much better at the literature teaching than I am, given that he actually knows how to guide them to think and write and I just stare at them goggle eyed and say helpful things like “I know you can do this, why aren’t you?” Still, it’s where we try to mix in history of the times and places of the books – so far Civil Rights and Black Panthers in the 60s, World War II, and now Elizabethan England. Next up we want to read “the Wall,” a graphic novel about growing up in the Communist Era. The girl protests, saying “I’m SO SICK of learning about Communism! It’s always just communism in Vietnam and communism in Cambodia and bad things happening to people!” We will persevere. 


Afterwards we took advantage of the lovely day, playing in the fall leaves at Kids Park, picking up ice cream, wandering through the open squares and painted alleys, and finally finding our way to Viniloteca for a taste of a delicious IPA homebrew and some good conversation. 

-s

In which I go grocery shopping and face a wall of mustard and some guy named Bob Lung

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Grocery shopping in any foreign country is always an adventure. First of all, you’re not sure where anything is and since you can’t just scan signs or aisles because of the language, you have to actually walk down each one and look at the pictures on merchandise to figure it out, given that you’re a functional illiterate. As a result, it takes three times longer than usual shopping. Most of the time it works out in the end, but sometimes you can end up with surprises like the time we thought we purchased tofu onigiri in Japan and it turned out to be mashed tuna. Things that you take for granted as being a typical food just isn’t so everywhere. Cheese in Japan was relegated to a small corner, and here in Romania things like fresh cilantro are nowhere to be found. On the plus side, Japan had more choices for noodles than I’ve ever seen and fresh sushi at the market and Romania has a ton of choices for sour cream, paprika and chocolates. If they’re on the shelves, that is.

In fairness, most shelves are well stocked.

You can use google translate, but other times even that doesn’t help. I wanted to get arborio rice to make risotto, but none of the “orez” was labeled as such, just had labels like “bob lung” written on it. Who’s Bob Lung? I wondered. (Means long grain, I’ve since figured out). Ten minutes of examining each individual clear plastic bag of rice to see which one looked like a short grain starchy rice, and found one called “camolino.” A google search and translate of camolino yields that it translates as….camolino. All the other pages were in Romanian. Another tricky one is the cheese – in the cheese section you’ll find a whole row of “branza,” “cascaval,” and “telemea.” Google will tell you that these are all “cheese,” so then you have to spend five minutes searching for the difference between them, staring at your phone like a moron in the dairy aisle while literate Romanians walk around you, grab their cheese and get out in ten seconds. (Telemea and Branza are feta like cheeses made from sheep and cow’s milk respectively, cascaval is a cheese akin to colby with a smoother taste in case you were wondering.)
As in Vietnam, you have to weigh your own produce at scales in the produce section, which spit out a sticker with the price on it. Thankfully, these are coded with pictures as well as words so it’s not entirely impossible. Fail to do so, and the checkout clerk will snap at you in disdainful Romanian, leaving you shamed in front of the line. God forbid you mistakenly identify your produce. There was a funky pear like thing here which I thought would be fun to try. I couldn’t find the sign for it so I just picked the picture that looked most like it on the scale and hoped for the best. The checkout clerk looked at my lone fruit in the bag and chattered at me in Romanian, clearly saying “This isn’t a pear, you fool! It’s a (something)!” And then she called a different clerk over who took the fruit away. I thought maybe he would weigh it correctly and bring it back, but no, it was simply not to be. No fruit for you! (I’ve since learned that it is a quince.)

Produce is all largely unrefrigerated here, woe is the endive

The scale for weighing

The stores are not arranged in any logical order either. You enter and to the left is a section for produce, behind it bread and wine. In the center of the store and seemingly blocking your path to the other side is a labyrinthine section of spice packets and some noodles. Beyond those are school supplies. Between the school supplies and some cookies there is a narrow entryway leading you to the other side of the store where you’ll find the dairy section, rice, and beer. It makes absolutely no sense and half the time is spent trying to figure out where the hell you have to go to get something in the first place.

Special offers in the front, like a wagon of cabbage. To tthe left is an electronics section. The actual produce section is clear on the other side.

Even in different stores, the illogical ordering of stuff persists. One “hipermarket” which I think is akin to our SuperTargets has an aisle with plastic wrap, tinfoil, but also hideously ugly bathmats, bath towels, and random plastic toys. One cool thing – they sell the plastic wrap rolls and such separately from the boxes, which is a brilliant way to reduce waste, I think.

Bulk frozen food!! Genius! Saves on packaging.

There are walls of mustard, yogurt, cheese, wine and beer at most places too. I love the “foreign foods” aisle, which stocks “oriental” food next to Swedish and British.

THE WALL OF MUSTARD

THE WALL OF OF PLAIN YOGURT. there isa nother wall for flavored yogurt.


The final gauntlet is the checkout line, which I have yet to see be less than five people deep, no matter the time. The clerks pick up each item, rotate it maddeningly slowly to find the barcode, then slide it over the scanner before moving it to the other side where you bag your own groceries. I have never missed the self checkout lines more.
Despite all this, I’ve managed to make some nice meals here with some twists! I couldn’t find ground coriander at first, so I had to make do with a meat tenderizer and a plastic bag. No chocolate chips exist, but that’s easy to do with just chopping up bars of chocolate. I don’t have any real measuring cups but using mugs works just as well and estimating spoon sizes has been fine too.

Coriander smashing technique

Quiche!

Butternut squash risotto, turns out camolino works just fine.

Curried vegetable and tofu soup

No poli to be had, so I made some! Not bad for a first try

Granola, of course

In which we go back in time a bit and chat about Slovakia

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Eric did a moving write up about our family in Slovakia and how wonderful it was to meet them. They greeted us like we were close friends who they hadn’t seen in a while, not like people whom they hadn’t before met. I’m still blown away by how welcoming and generous they all were to us and hope that we are able to reciprocate in the future. 
I would like to write a bit about Bratislava itself though, to keep up with the travelogueing. 
Before I get into the time there, though, I feel I must go back and tell you about our Romanian taxi driver who got us to our car rental agency. All four of us had walked out of the flat early morning of our departure, hoping to find an easy taxi. None seemed to drive by so we walked over to the nearby grocery store, where you can usually find a waiting taxi, but not today. Just as we were contemplating walking over to the mall taxi stand instead, one drives up. Eric walks over and asks if he is free, and he burbles back to us in Romanian that he is here on a call and that if you wish for a taxi you must call one. Dismayed, we started to walk off but he signaled us back and told us to wait for a moment as he would call a cab for us. “How nice!” we thought. 

When his customer came over, holding a bag of groceries, she got in the back of the cab and I expected they would take off. Instead, he began to chatter with her in rapid Romanian which I could hear through his open window, and she then proceeded to get out of the back, get into the front seat, and then he opened the trunk and gestured for all four of us to squeeze in the back. Apparently, the plan was now that he’d drop the woman off at her place and then take us since it was kind of on the way. The girl squeezed onto my lap and off we went. Eric soon switched into the front seat and for the rest of the ride, in broken Romanian and English helped along with Google translate, we had a fun ride and a conversation, focused on the kids, life in Romania. At one point he looked at us and asked, “George Bush?” To which we gave a horrified “No nononono!”response . Along the way his phone rang and he had a short conversation in Romanian, though we could make out the words “America!” and “Obama!”amongst the palaver. When we told him that the kids liked Romania, he answered “super!!” in such a sweet way (pronounced “su-PEAR!”), genuinely delighted that our family was enjoying his country. All this to show one example of the great interactions we have had here. 
Alright, back to Slovakia! We drove across Hungary to get to Slovakia, and I mused that it no longer seems strange to just drive across an entire country in one day. It was about 5 hours of driving, which barely gets you out of most states back home.


Eric’s relative Eva lives in Nitra, which is a bit outside Bratislava, the main city and capital of Slovakia. A pretty small European town, the only real sightseeing we did there was to see the castle, interesting chiefly for its opulent cathedral, touted as one of the oldest in Europe. It really is stunning inside, though I have to admit that sometimes cathedral interiors feel a bit overdone to me. Everything shines about in gilded facades and every surface is painted with saintly scenes, sometimes it can be visually overwhelming, like a bad “after” from an episode of Trading Spaces. 


We made it to Bratislava in the evening and met up with Denisa and Edmund, Eva’s daughter and son-in-law, or Eric’s third cousin. I looked up a chart of those weird relationship things and discovered that Eva is technically a second cousin twice removed! I’ve always wanted to say that and now I can! Eva had gone through some trouble to find us the perfect flat in the middle of Old Town Bratislava, so we were well situated. Side note: I really much prefer the old name of Posovny. Bratislava just sounds so…brutal…and like the name of a country, not a city. Posovny is so much more romantic! Perhaps the civic leaders will take heed of my blog and take the appropriate steps.


Old town Bratislava is lovely, with narrow pathways through old stone buildings. Once you leave the picturesque old town area, though, Bratislava reverts into a fairly typical landscape of paved streets and commercial buildings, so we scurried back to old town as quickly as we could. We rounded a corner and stopped to see a man coming out of a sewer grate! The tourists posing with him were a bit curious, until we got close enough to see that it was a statue! There are several such statues around the old town area and we made good fools of ourselves for pictures like everyone else. 



That evening Eric’s cousins treated us to the UFO, a saucer like structure on top of a bridge pylon, which overlooks the entire city & Danube river. We wandered about on the top deck, open to the elements and looked over the view. The kids played about on a set of stairs, which made me a bit nervous given that we were, oh, 300 feet above the water. Afterwards we went into the thankfully enclosed space below and had a cocktail and cheerful conversation with our new cousins, watching the sun set over Bratislava. 


-s

In which we learn to say, “Ah, Vienna!” Like everyone else.

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[Side note: This is part 2 of a special Fretz 2 part blog crossover EVENT. Check out the first part of the Vienna trip over at ericfretz.wordpress.com]

Vienna! I remember when my parents visited Europe many years ago, and when they returned they waxed poetic about the beauty of Vienna. Yesterday we saw the summer palace in the outskirts as Eric mentioned but didn’t get much of a chance to see the city during the daytime, so today was devoted more to that.

Vienna has a LOT of museums. You can choose from Jewish history museums, music museums, several art museums of different foci, architecture museums, children’s museums, museums dedicated to Habspurg rulers, a globe museum, and even more. We again found ourselves in a country capital on its National day, which we seem to have a knack for. Luckily, in Austria this means free or reduced museum entry and everything is still open. We opted for the Haus der Musik (Sound Museum) and the Albertina (art museum) and then would see how we felt afterwards.
The Haus der Musik is more than just music – it’s really more like four floors of sound games. A few of our favorite games were a musical dice rolling game where you replicated Mozart’s version of this to create new waltzes, another similar game based on your name. Another was this cool exhibit on how your brain makes sounds that aren’t actually there to fill in the gaps of sound waves that may be discordant. I can’t entirely explain it, because I don’t know that I entirely understood it, but it was cool nonetheless! One room was dedicated to simulating life in the womb, with a pulsating light in the center of the room, whooshing sounds around you and heart beats, and a floor which vibrated under your feet. It was oddly soothing. There’s one floor dedicated to the great composers, where you can see some of their original compositions written in their hand, but other than that the floor is a bit dull otherwise unless pictures of bewigged men makes you swoon.


After this it was off to the Albertina, a more traditional fine arts museum. There, they had an exhibition showing the evolution of pointillism and how it morphed from the style of Seurat all the way to Mondrian style color blocking, passing through Van Gogh along the way, who had little patience for pointillism because it just took so damn long. They blamed this on his mental illness, but I think it shows a particular moment of sanity on his part. I particularly liked an exhibition on woodblock prints as well – they were so precise, and such a difference after seeing the rooms of impressionism and soft colors.
After this we were done with museums and ready for a break, and we found one with some tasty pastries! We ate all of them.

We strolled through the crowded main square we looked around briefly at the museums in the MuseumQuarter, though I was too tired to enjoy them at that point. The kids amused themselves on the walk through by trying to catch giant bubbles being blown by a woman on the square, though “didn’t hear us” when we called them to move on and needed to be corralled. I swear, the number of times I wish I had a sheepdog to round them up.


That evening was spent in, tired as we all were from walking around and still having a cold. I went to a panini place across from our hotel for takeaway, and while waiting at the bar for our food struck up a conversation with a college student from England in Vienna to study art. Within the EU this is relatively easy, as college prices are low across the board and you can move about. With Brexit, though, this won’t be possible and I began to understand why young people in Britain were truly dismayed at the possibility of having a closed border.

I miss playing trivia while travelling, so we played Austrian trivia. Lu did the best with this and beat the rest of us hands down.

The answer was A, in case you’re wondering.

Vienna was delightful overall, and we hope to make it back someday. The people were incredibly friendly and welcoming, the food was tasty and there was so much to see and do we left feeling as if we barely scratched the surface.

-s

In which things start to look up in Timisoara, if we can figure out the elevators

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We’ve been here a few weeks now, and have started to enjoy it here a lot more than those first sad days.  
People still stare at me everywhere we go, and doubly so when we’re out as a family. At one point, a woman dressed in head to toe skintight cow print stared at me for a full twenty seconds. I thought to myself, “You look like you need to be milked, but I’m the weirdo here?” I don’t notice the public staring as much because I simply don’t make eye contact with anyone as I walk by, instead choosing to look straight ahead as if I’m on my own personal catwalk. There’s also some freedom knowing that no matter what I do, people will look at me as a freak so I may as well do whatever I want. This includes rapping Nelly lyrics out loud as I jog outside. 
Why do they stare? I think this is due to a combination of several factors. First, is that I look vaguely Roma, or gypsy, so there are some who regard me poorly this way as the racism towards the Roma runs high here. Secondly, the impact that Communism and the repressive dictator state had on the national psyche can’t be underestimated. When you’ve lived most of your life not knowing who to trust and learning to be wary of others, it’s not a lesson easily unlearned. The regime only fell in 1989 so most people here have deep memories of that time. Third, is that Romania is not on the typical tourist beaten path so there aren’t as many outsiders here as there are in other cities. While I may joke above, I have to be honest that it still makes me uncomfortable. I never feel like I am in any personal danger, but it feels unwelcoming at the very least.   I’ve been into some stores where I was clearly not welcome, and I felt like coming back waving wads of lei saying “Remember me? I was in here yesterday,, you wouldn’t wait on me? Big mistake! Big! Huge! I have to go shopping now.” 
Onto nicer things – there are plenty restaurants and lovely open squares here, and why we were sent to the mall on our first day is beyond me, as there were delicious places just a block or two south of where we had happened upon. We’ve met up with friends ((who Eric met online before we arrived)who’ve given us some great pointers on living here, most importantly the word “sec” to be used when ordering wine of any type, else you will be served with something bordering on the syrupy taste of Manischevitz.  
Timisoara started as a fortress town surrounded by a swampy moat, which has since been filled in. The area was still well watered, so they’ve replaced the moat with a ring of verdant parks that surround the city center. 


There’s a rose garden (sad looking now given that it’s October, of course) a botanic garden, and many others. One is called Kids’ Park, seen above in the southeast corner,  which has several play areas, unencumbered by the safety restrictions that exist in the US so are higher and more fun than anything you’ll find back home. Note the trampolines at the park below!


The language barrier makes it hard for any of us to make friends at the park though, so we’re happy that our friends Rob and Dana have a bright and active seven year old that the kids enjoy playing with. I’m hoping that as we spend more time here they’ll get to meet some other kids at the playgrounds, but I’m not sure this will happen.

The city center is the typical European center-cobblestone plazas, outdoor cafes and flanked by churches, with narrow sidestreets leading away. 


We moved flats to one across town – across town being a mile away – this one a refurbished Communist era apartment now made modern. You can see the rows of Communist buildings from our window here, charmless cuboid structures planted in the name of efficiency. Inside though, they are undergoing a revival and quite nice. 

The elevator to get in is a trip. When we first got there, we pushed the button to call the elevator. The elevatorcame down and we waited for the door to open. Nothing happened. 

After a minute of feeling foolish, we realized we had to open the door manually. 

Once inside, you have to close a second set of blue metal doors and then choose your floor. 

Then all four of us squeezed into a tiny tiny space! Clearly, the communists wanted to encourage people to take the stairs. Realistically, electricity was so spotty that the elevators probably were useless most of the time anyway and no one in their right mind would risk them. 

Inside though it is lovely.  It’s a big upgrade from our first place, namely we can sit on the toilet without risking bodily injury from the seat unexpectedly sliding off and the shower allows us to choose the degree of warmth. You know, priorities. It’s also close to an outpost of the best bakery chain in town, Prospero, and every few days we stock up on fresh bread, croissants, apple strudel and cinnamon rolls. Just outside is a vending machine for eggs and milk and next to those is a little shack that sells wine in bulk, so we’ve got the basics covered without having to go into the madness that is the grocery store, which I’ll write about later.

That’s a 2L bottle of wine for $4


So things are looking up overall! 

-s

In which we find that in Romania, the streets walk on you

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Friends, it was a rough transition from Japan to Eastern Europe. After an exhaustingly long, though comfortable flight, to get to Budapest, we had two days there before coming to Timisoara. The first night Eric and I went out to get some pizza for dinner. Whether it was fatigue, or extreme jet lag, or just real culture shock, my whole body felt stunned as we walked around. It was a complete reversal from Osaka to get to Budapest, from the slick cityscape of metal and glass to the brick and cobblestone buildings and streets. Suddenly everything became intelligible again, at least to a degree, as we returned to Roman script. Gone was the extreme politeness and solicitude of Japan, and instead the harsh straightforwardness of Eastern Europe. 
There were parks, open spaces and benches, which were a refreshing change to be sure. 


The next day we took a five hour car ride to Timisoara, driven by a dour man who was clearly agitated at our decision to eat while in his car, and had no interest in even polite conversation. We arrived at our flat in Timisoara, greeted by our friendly host, and settled in. I found the bathroom directly connected to the kitchen, which in and of itself was revolting. I went to use the toilet and the seat slid out from under me and I almost fell on the floor. I noticed that there were five air fresheners in the bathroom, but that did little to cover up the dank odor of stagnant water. The living space and bedrooms were fine, with high ceilings and large windows that spoke to a grander past. The kitchen was filled with pots and pans that were still covered in a layer of grease from whoever was there last. The shower water had two choices, scalding hot or frigid. What a metaphor. It was full of mosquitos, and the girl and I woke up with no less than 14 bites on our faces. 


We all set out to find dinner, looking up some places on our phone before heading out. The streets were dark, desolate appearing and had menacing graffiti tags all along cement block buildings. Whenever we walked outside, we felt cold stares of people on us. I’d look back in defiance, only to find that Romanians feel no need to break a stare when caught in one, and we’d end up staring each other for sometimes as much as 15 seconds while walking past one another, looking over our shoulders to stare. There was no accompanying smile or any gesture of friendliness in the stare. A Ukrainian colleague of mine once told me that in Ukraine, there is a saying, “Why are you smiling? Are you stupid or something?” And I felt that this had clearly bled over into Romania.
We made it to a wide plaza surrounded by outdoor cafes and people having beverages. We walked up to one and asked if they served food, and they simply shook their heads. Where can we find food at three pm on Sunday, we asked? The mall, they told us. Try the mall. So we went to the mall, a byzantine complex of shops and no clear pathway from one end to the next. There are modern stores there like Sephora and H&M, but then next to that will be a store selling mops and brooms. We found a passable Italian restaurant where we kept waving away the dense clouds of cigarette smoke that wafted over us from the other patrons. 
Before we stopped back home, we went to a corner market to pick up some bread and milk and such for the morning, and found this on the shelves. 


At this point, I felt like Romania was literally telling me to eat shit. We settled in for the night with heavy hearts, feeling that the next three months were bound for misery. 
It’s looked up considerably since then, but man, that was an unhappy start.

-s

“these are a few of my favorite things… in japan”

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Among the many things in Japan that I enjoyed were the Japanese 7/11 stores. Usually the food in 7 eleven is not very good or healthy for you. (addictive though) In japan we almost ate half of our meals from 7 eleven. The things we got there were usually onigiri (nori wrapped rice covered seaweed or fish)and hard boiled egg… Both were delicious. Two reasons why you should eat them first to us lowly Japanese food tasters they taste good and they are cheap. Next are the toilets.

Another thing that amused me in Japan were the toilets . . . An odd thing to like to most people, unless they have been to Japan. The first apartment we went to, I spent 30 minutes in the bathroom working out how the toilet worked. And because everything is in Japanese, it’s a lot harder to understand. First, there is always a pink picture with spray coming out of the toilet and spraying onto the person’s butt. Next, there is always a blue picture of two upside down hills (Hmm. . . I wonder what those could be?) with, one could only assume, water shooting out of the bottom of the picture and on to the two upside down hills. These two buttons spayed your butt to wash away the stuff on it. Those were the main buttons. Sometimes there were other buttons such as flushing sound, and air dryer. I now hope you understand why I like Japanese toilets.

Food. All of the food was delicious. My favorite modes of food included ramen vending machines, sushi conveyor belts and vending machines in general. The reason I liked the vending machines is that they are different than ours in the USA and because they serve all kinds of drinks including Coca Cola as well as dashi, a fish oil base for soup. Also, the drinks inside the vending machines were good such as Calpis drinking yogurt, Pocari Sweat and coffee.

Conveyor belt sushi. This form of getting your food transported to you sounds just like it is. There is a conveyor belt going round and round with different types of sushi going around, although you can still order sushi by the means of either a touch screen with the pictures of sushi on it or from the waiters. Most of the places did not have a screen.

Ramen vending machines. They look just like regular vending machines and they sort of are. You push a small button that said which ramen you wanted and in our case we pushed the vegetarian ramen button and then a ticket came out bearing the code for the ramen and then you pushed other buttons to get toppings like more ramen, etc. The ramen was delicious, for coming out of a vending machine.

Public transportation systems. In Japan, public transportation is extremely good. Most of the highways are usually barely blocked up because so many people rely on the amazing public transportation of trains and busses. We relied on it a lot, too. While we were in Japan we didn’t have to get in a taxi or a car once. We could get from Shin-Osaka to Osaka minutes on a Shinkansen bullet train. Or, we could just go across Osaka on the amazing train system.

Lastly, Japan is amazing! The End

 

-HF

Toiletss

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The toilets in Japan have bum guns that you control buttons. The first two buttons are blue. The buttons show where it sprays. The third button is pink and sometimes it moves between your butt crack. Sometimes you have a button to dry your butt. And then, there are two buttons that control the water pressure and someother buttons that you shouldn’t touch. When we got off the plane we all needed to go to the bathroom. Mom showed me how to use the toilets. When I got out, Mom still wasn’t out so I washed my hands and went out and saw brother. He toldme the boys bathroom was full so we went into the handicaped bathroom and I showed him the buttons. Then mom came and we got a free ride to the passports control. Along the way we passed dad and then we went through passport control and then took a taxi to our new apartmen

Lb