Update to Q9: Shaorma de Pui

Earlier, I answered Dan's question about Romanian food by describing some of the meals we had in the countryside. I haven't stopped eating, though, so I figured this topic could use an update:

Behind only pizza and pastries, shaorma (sometimes "shwarma," but never "gyro" as it's known elsewhere) seems to be among Romanians' top three fast-food choices. At its most basic, Romanian shaorma is flatbread wrapped around ribbons of meat (shaved off a vertical spit), shredded cabbage, fries and mayo. I've had a few of these and they're decent -- filling, cheap and easy. But nothing to write home about ... until I tried shaorma deluxe.

We were in Bucharest ten days ago so that Kim could attend a mandatory training session. I had an atypically sunny day to myself to wander around town. I had resolved to get shaorma for lunch since a Romanian friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend we met in Brasov said that the shaorma in Bucharest were the country's best. By my very unofficial reckoning, he was right.

The "shaorma de pui mare" (great/grand/big chicken shaorma) from Rotisserie Beller fundamentally re-calibrated my internal sandwich scale. The Beller foundations were solid: atypically fresh lavash, juicy but not too greasy chicken and creamy fries. A pile of tangy coleslaw, sour pickles, light mayo and ketchup filled the lavash to the brim.

I ate my shaorma on a bench in charming small park, but fully enveloped in thoughts of bread, chicken, semi-vegetables and vinegar. One hour later, still walking around northern Bucharest, I felt a brick in my stomach but I didn't mind it much.

Update to Q5: Brasov and Bran Castle

Kristina wanted to know about vampires and Romania. I only partly answered her question earlier but promised more information upon visiting Transylvania. On Friday, Kim and I took nine-hour train from Iasi to Brasov, Transylvania, where we spent the weekend.

One of Kristina's trio of questions was whether the countryside in Transylvania was spooky. Far from it. My primary memory of the train ride is of the gentle, undulating hills as we approached the Carpathian Mountains. Old Brasov -- a Saxon town nested between two mountains -- is yet more charming. (The Communist concrete housing outside old Brasov is less than charming, and the Hollywood-style BRASOV sign is just amusing.) On Saturday, one of Kim's colleagues led us on a walk around the former fortifications of old Brasov and to the base of the mountains, where many locals come for jugfuls of spring water. Rather than spooky, this part of Transylvania is the most beautiful area I've seen in Romania.

On Sunday, we took a bus out to Bran Castle, a.k.a. "Dracula's Castle", and were thoroughly underwhelmed. The castle is a very large fort-house at the top of a hill, but it's not the least bit spooky, and only tangentially related to Vlad "Dracula" Tepes. The museum inside the castle does not even mention Dracula, and instead highlights the possessions of Queen Marie, one of the castle's final residents before the Communist government seized the property.

The surrounding tourism industry, however, has made a mountain out of the razor-thin connection to Dracula; you can buy all sorts of fanged, bloody and batty paraphernalia at most of the several dozen kitscheries just below the castle, or you can stay at Vampire Camping 1km down the highway. Sadly, we did not have time to visit Sighisoara, which supposedly has much more legitimate Dracula connections.

A couple of photographs from Brasov, courtesy of Kim:

Update to Q6: Another surprising thing about Romania

I wrote earlier about a few things in Romania and Iasi that have surprised me. I'll continue to update this blog with more surprising, beginning with this consistently mood-lifting feature of Iasi (and many other cities in Romania):



And this is only the second-raddest type of pedestrian signal -- there are a few in town that also show the time left until you can cross again, which lets you think about something besides that question while you're at the crosswalk.

Public works projects are pretty solid in Iasi -- more of these signals are being installed, the parks are well-maintained, there are several trash-bins (neat little swiveling ones that the collectors can just swing upside-down to empty) per block, and whole sections of the city seem to be getting new overhead electric wires.

### Click here to ask another question! ###

Update to Q8: More on Romanian Politics and the U.S. Election

I mentioned earlier that one of our Romanian friends, Silvia, was pretty pessimistic about politics. She said that most people she knew considered the government ineffective and easily persuadable, if you will.

I thought you might want to read a slightly more optimistic assessment, from a man we met over the weekend. (We spoke in rudimentary French, so I might have missed some of his nuance, but hopefully not too much.) During the Communist era, he had been sent from rural Bucovina to Bucharest to work as a mechanic. Now, at age 40 or so, he lives with his wife in a small, bucolic town. The source of much of the distrust in the government is the perception that the 1989 Romanian Revolution was not a 'real' revolution, he said. While the the revolution brought new freedoms, the politicians of post-Communist Romania were -- and continue to be -- culled from the same elite circles that produced the recently-deposed officials, he said.

Yet, to fulfill my promise of optimism: this same man said that popular trust of the government may gradually improve as idealistic young adults begin to interrupt the conglomerations of old power. Perhaps of more interest for readers back home, our acquaintance opined that the election of Barack Obama would mean more for Romania than Romania's own legislative and local elections later this month. He quickly conceded that he was partly joking, but only partly: U.S. foreign policy will determine much of the economic health and political stability of Romanian and its neighbors, he said.

### Click here to ask the blog a question. ###

Q10: "What is the most scenic sight in Iasi and can I get it on my postcard?"

Roger asks, "What is the most scenic sight in Iasi and can I get it on my postcard?"

This is certainly not the definitive or final answer to your question, but I enjoyed this view from the Botanical Gardens in Iasi on recent morning:



I haven't found a postcard of it, but I'll keep an eye out for one of the Botanical Garden or something equally scenic.

I'll be posting more nice views from Iasi soon...

### Have a question? Ask it here! ###

Video Bonus -- Adorable Romanian Schoolchildren at the Botanical Gardens! :

Q9: "How's the food in Romania?"

Dan asks, "How's the food in Romania?"

Nice timing on this question, Dan. I saw it just before Kim and I left for the weekend to the countryside, where traditional Romanian food seems to have remained a staple. (In Iasi, pizza and pastries seem to have trumped most else, although there are still some pretty good traditional restaurants.)

We wanted to see the painted monasteries of the Southern Bucovina region, so we took a train north to Suceava, where we rented a Daewoo Matiz. From Suceava, we drove the itsy-bitsy blue car in a loop, stopping to see the monasteries at Humor, Voret, Moldvita and Sucevita. The monasteries were impressive -- the exterior paintings have lasted 500 years in some instances, and the illustrations of biblical and historical scenes are very attractive -- but the food was equally memorable.

During our two nights on the road we stayed at cozy "pensiunes", the Romanian versions of bed and breakfasts that also serve cornucopian traditional dinners. We spent the first night at at Casa Ancuta in Humor, where dinner included:

- Homemade blueberry liqueur, as an aperitif
- Vegetable soup, served with bread and sour cream on the side
- Shredded cabbage salad
- Mashed potatoes
- Veal cutlets in a mushroom and cream sauce
- Homemade pickles
- "Gogoasi": Romanian-style doughnuts (no hole in the middle, no icing) with blueberry jam
- Coffee

We shared all this with just one other guest. (During the summer, these pensuines are extremely popular with Romanian city-dwellers who come to the countryside for vacation, but we learned that during the winter most pensiunes are either closed or deserted.) Breakfast was only slightly less overwhelming:

- Eggs, omelet-style
- A bunch of small pieces of five types of cured meat, each about the size of a pat of butter: 1/4-inch-thick bacon; slices of sausage; slices of some cut of veal; a mysterious, marbled meat; and cured lard, still on the pigskin.
- Crepes filled with sweet cheese and cinnamon
- Bread with butter, blueberry jam, and a jammy applesauce
- More doughnuts
- A feta-like cheese
- Coffee and tea

We stayed the second night at Pensiune Felicea in Sucevita, where we were the only guests. (The friendly owners weren't expecting guests at all: it took an hour of cleaning and heating the wood-burning stove before our room was ready. They kindly gave us tea and some lemon-walnut cake while we waited.) Dinner here was a healthier but no less bountiful meal:

- Homemade blueberry liqueur
- Beet, potato and bell pepper soup, served with bread
- "Mamaliga": a dense cornmeal polenta, served with sour cream
- "Sarmale": pork-and-chicken dumplings wrapped in steamed cabbage leaves
- Red wine
- Apple tart/cake

Breakfast, however, was just tea, bread, raspberry jam, butter, honey, and a pepper-mushroom spread.

On our drive home, we passed a small town which no doubt grows the most cabbage per capita, enough to wrap a country's-worth of sarmale. Almost every home seemed to have a field of cabbages growing or recently harvested, and I counted no fewer than five horse-drawn carts burdened with what looked like a half-ton of cabbage heads each.

### click here to ask another question! ###

Q8: "[...] what is the election coverage like in Romania? [...]"

Aliza asks, "I know we had talked about this before you left, but what is the election coverage like in Romania? What do Romanians think of President-elect Obama?(also, sorry to hear your baggage got lost...probably because I accompanied you to get your visa)."

It's been somewhat difficult to directly gauge Romanian coverage of the U.S. election, since my vocabulary consists of roughly 30 words. But I asked Kim's pentalingual* friend, Silvia, about the coverage of the presidential race and election. Some interesting things she said:

- On Nov. 5, most news shows mentioned the results of the election, but Romanians generally don't care much about presidential elections, since they have little faith in their government. (A recent poll supposedly found that only 9% of Romanians trust the government as an institution.)

- The international students, and especially the French students, were much more excited about the election than the Romanian students were.

Since the election wasn't decided until around 6 a.m. on Wednesday here, newspapers printed the results on Thursday, with a few giving Obama above-the-fold, front-page treatment.

Romania's satirical weekly comes out on Wednesdays, however, so they jumped the gun to avoid being a week late. They picked the political winner correctly, but politically incorrectly:




Here's what I can glean from an online Romanian-English dictionary:

Headline: "A new feature film about the colored White House: Afro-american beauty"

Bubble on right: "Mr. President, rumor has it that your grandmother died. My condolences. So, if our grandma also dies, can I become President?"

Middle bubble: "You ate the rainbow, boss, so you get to pledge yourself to the "Glow-worm Sea". Now, with a glow-worm afro-american, with her neither so panicked." [I clearly mistranslated a lot of this. "Licuriciul Mare" literally means Glow-worm Sea, but it's an idiom I can't figure out. Anyone have a clue?]

Bubble on right: "I understand very well why we are going through hard, economic contraction. Problems with the lion. I know this. America is here to help! Even my father had trouble with the lion! It ate three business partners!"

Text on bottom: "Important people of short-to-medium stature rush to present their offerings in front of the new Grand Chief of the USA's GDP."

Yup.

* Silvia is conversational in Romanian, English, French, Spanish, and Italian. (She's at Cuza for a Master's degree in Letters.)

p.s. Thanks for your concern about my luggage, Aliza. I finally received it last night -- seven days and one hour after I arrived in Romania.

Q7: "Are Romanians surprised that you, an American, have come to visit the country? [...]"

Abe asks, "Are Romanians surprised that you, an American, have come to visit the country? Or, more specifically, to visit Iasi?"

Yup. Most Romanians I've met -- really just a handful at this point -- are surprised that an American is in Iasi, and some are surprised that an American would even visit Iasi.

When I first got off the plane at Otopeni Airport in Bucharest, a dozen aggressive cabdrivers chirped "Parlez français?" even though we were arriving from London. When they realized that my French was pretty weak, they turned to English, which most of them spoke very well.

Yet Americans are relatively abundant in Bucharest compared to in Iasi.

Here, the "Education USA" advising center and the "American Corner" library (which has a surprisingly impressive collection) are both run and principally used by Romanians. The American Corner librarian says there's a Peace Corps volunteer in town, but as far as we can tell, we are the only other Americans here. And Kim says that the English and American Studies departments at Universiatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza (where she is teaching) last had an American faculty member seven years ago.

People are usually interested when they realize I'm from the U.S., but perhaps no more curious than they would be about any other distant foreigner. One exception was the guy in his early twenties who ran the skate-rental booth at Ice Mania -- he high-fived me and asked what part of the country I came from.

To finish answering your question, some Romanians do wonder why I've come to Romania, as many don't seem to think highly of their country. According to Kim, about 40% of the population has moved to other parts of Europe and further abroad since Romania joined the EU last January.


### click here to ask another question ###

Q6: "What is the most surprising thing about Romania?"

Someone (anyone want to claim this?) asked, "What is the most surprising thing about Romania?"

It's hard to pick out just one most surprising thing about Romania. Here are a few early candidates:

- Some Iasi residents burn their trash at night. This was one of the most maddening aspects of life in Senegal, partly because of the smell (saccharine-toxic, with hints of campfire and molten plastic) and partly because of the blatant carcinogenesis. In rural Senegal, trash-burning made some sense, since there was no public garbage pick-up outside of the big cities. But Iasi is Romania's second-largest city, and there are public trash cans and dumpsters on every block.

- Stray dogs nap, swagger, and prowl along every street. People in Iasi seem fairly fond of them, although I hear that some towns (like Cluj) have euthanized (or maybe shot) all their dogs. The mutts -- somewhere between labrador, wolf, and Rin Tin Tin -- aren't terribly menacing but still pretty annoying. (On Friday, one trailed us for a full block because he smelled our bagel chips, and in some neighborhoods they bark and growl all night.)

- Except at supermarkets and other big stores, you rarely get coin change back. So if 3 tomatoes cost 2.60 RON (2 lei & 60 bani) and you pay with three one-lei bills, you don't get the 40 bani back. Fortunately, a lot of items cost X.00 or X.50 RON.

I'll keep you posted about additional surprises as they pop up in the coming weeks.

### I think I've answered all the questions you've asked ... click here to ask some more ###

Q5: "Why/when did Romania become associated with so many vampire legends? [...]"

Kristina asks, "Why/when did Romania become associated with so many vampire legends? Is it just because that's where Count Dracula lived? Does the countryside look adequately creepy? (That's sort of three questions, but apropos to Halloween)"

There were a few minor Halloween celebrations in Iasi on Friday, my first full day in Iasi. In the afternoon, we accidentally walked into a children's costume party at the "American Corner," in the basement of the Palace of Culture. Despite the Corner's name, all the children and parents seemed to be Romanian and the host spoke only broken English.

We were invited to a "pumpkin sculpturing" event at the student center in the evening, but we were exhausted and hungry from touring around town all afternoon (and unsuccessfully trying to pick up my lost/delayed luggage at Iasi's one-runway airport), so we decided to pass on it.

No trick-or-treaters came a-knocking. This wasn't surprising, as it's not a big tradition here and since our apartment is spooky enough as it is. (Although not as spooky as the building across the street, where bullet holes from WWII are the main ornamentation.)

Transylvania is in central Romania, and about a nine-hour train ride from Iasi. I hear many of the castles are as as eerie as Count Dracula's, but His Fangness' 'real' castle (est. 1340s) is in the Transylvanian town of Sighisoara. We plan to visit Sighisoara and Brasov, where there's another (albeit supposedly less 'real') Dracula Castle, in a few weeks. ("Count Dracula - The Truth" seems to be a good resource for this topic, although I haven't done much digging there.) More on the man, the legend and the castles once we return.