this evening, as i sat on a wall overlooking Sighisoara (steps away from the house where Vlad Tepes aka Vlad Dracul aka Vlad the Impaler aka Dracula was supposedly born) I was approached by a drunk young man with piercing green and bloodshot red eyes and a plastic jug of white wine. he introduced himself as a poet, bemoaned the fact that I couldn't speak Romanian (apparently if I could understand him he would make me fall in love with him by the power of his words), and told me "you have such white skin....but your blood, it is red in your veins....and your heart", baring his teeth a little at the mention of blood.
shivudder.
Monday, July 30, 2007
eating perogies from a jar at the Moldovan border
it's a labour of love, boiling up bowl after bowl of perogies when it's 35C outside and 41C in the kitchen. but you see, i knew i was leaving the country soon.
so in Odessa I would have perogies for lunch, then go to the beach and swim and watch the characters (an old woman standing around with seaweed carefully smoothed over her nose and chest...an old man with Einstein hair, two teeth, two pairs of glasses - one over the other - standing with his hands on the waistband of his shorts as though he's getting ready to tear them off at any moment), and then come back and eat some more.
in Kiev and Lviv i was able to go to cheap restaurants and point at a vat of dumplings or cabbage rolls and get what i wanted, but in Odessa i decided to go a different route (more adventurous or less adventurous? can't decide) and buy them frozen at the grocery store.
problem of course is I can't read the writing on the package (ok, i've mostly figured out the Cyrillic alphabet and could sound out the words, but wouldn't know what they mean).
day 1 - brought home a package, boiled it up, got REALLY excited, smothered them with butter and sour cream and...bit into a dumpling filled with ground beef hearts and potato.
day 2 - another try, this time they were stuffed with sweet cottage cheese. more acceptable than the vile beef heart variety but still not the potato and onion goodness i was hoping for.
day 3 - third time's a charm! it's the GREEN package. that's all I can tell you.
my last night I boiled up a full bag and stuffed the leftovers into an empty pickle jar, and took it to eat on the bus to Moldova the next day.
My neighbour on the bus was looking at me a bit funny, but he turned out to be the kind of guy who isn't allowed into the country even when he hides 70 griven in the back of his Georgian passport and slips it to the border guard. we left him behind at the Moldovan border.
Luckily I was able to get through no problem as I took a bus that bypasses Transnistria (daily at 11am from Odessa->Chisinau) in order to avoid the bribe shakedown and hours of wasted hours at the border. It still took about 6 hours (for two cities that are less than 200km apart).
then of course i was supposed to meet my CouchSurfing host, Irina...unfortunately my cell phone was dead and there was no internet around so i tried to get to the centre on my own. normally this isn't a problem but for some reason i missed the centre and ended up at the end of the minibus line. so the drivers put me back on a bus in the opposite direction and seemed to say they would tell me where to get off this time. but then, after we'd been driving for about 5 minutes the driver got off his cell phone, stopped the van, took my bags out and put them in someone's driveway, and gestured vaguely toward the garage. then drove off while i stood there gaping like a fool in the middle of nowhere for about 5 minutes, waiting for something to happen. finally another bus came by.
so in Odessa I would have perogies for lunch, then go to the beach and swim and watch the characters (an old woman standing around with seaweed carefully smoothed over her nose and chest...an old man with Einstein hair, two teeth, two pairs of glasses - one over the other - standing with his hands on the waistband of his shorts as though he's getting ready to tear them off at any moment), and then come back and eat some more.
in Kiev and Lviv i was able to go to cheap restaurants and point at a vat of dumplings or cabbage rolls and get what i wanted, but in Odessa i decided to go a different route (more adventurous or less adventurous? can't decide) and buy them frozen at the grocery store.
problem of course is I can't read the writing on the package (ok, i've mostly figured out the Cyrillic alphabet and could sound out the words, but wouldn't know what they mean).
day 1 - brought home a package, boiled it up, got REALLY excited, smothered them with butter and sour cream and...bit into a dumpling filled with ground beef hearts and potato.
day 2 - another try, this time they were stuffed with sweet cottage cheese. more acceptable than the vile beef heart variety but still not the potato and onion goodness i was hoping for.
day 3 - third time's a charm! it's the GREEN package. that's all I can tell you.
my last night I boiled up a full bag and stuffed the leftovers into an empty pickle jar, and took it to eat on the bus to Moldova the next day.
My neighbour on the bus was looking at me a bit funny, but he turned out to be the kind of guy who isn't allowed into the country even when he hides 70 griven in the back of his Georgian passport and slips it to the border guard. we left him behind at the Moldovan border.
Luckily I was able to get through no problem as I took a bus that bypasses Transnistria (daily at 11am from Odessa->Chisinau) in order to avoid the bribe shakedown and hours of wasted hours at the border. It still took about 6 hours (for two cities that are less than 200km apart).
then of course i was supposed to meet my CouchSurfing host, Irina...unfortunately my cell phone was dead and there was no internet around so i tried to get to the centre on my own. normally this isn't a problem but for some reason i missed the centre and ended up at the end of the minibus line. so the drivers put me back on a bus in the opposite direction and seemed to say they would tell me where to get off this time. but then, after we'd been driving for about 5 minutes the driver got off his cell phone, stopped the van, took my bags out and put them in someone's driveway, and gestured vaguely toward the garage. then drove off while i stood there gaping like a fool in the middle of nowhere for about 5 minutes, waiting for something to happen. finally another bus came by.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
it is HOT here.
it was hot in Lviv.
it was hot in Kiev.
it was extra hot in Odessa.
it was hot in Chisinau, and it's freaking crazy dry sauna hot here in Iasi.
unfortunately photos from all these places will have to wait till i get them developed but some fragments:
Lviv - very beautiful. full of weddings on summer weekends, hordes of gleaming new brides roam the pretty parts of town, chased by frantic photographers and bewildered husbands.
old men play chess on the benches in the park, small crowds gather around the exciting games.
as an added bonus the guy who runs the hostel (the big hostel not the small one) is frequently intoxicated (frequently in the early morning), and might let you do your laundry for free. while showing me the machine he ashed his cigarette inside of it.
Kiev - i really liked Kiev although the accommodations (an HI hostel, no hot water, none of the advertised amenities like internet, train ticket office, etc etc) were too expensive and a bit dreary. it's a big city, a real city, you can walk forever. The Saint Sophia Cathedral is impressive (and 1000 years old!). I drank a lot of coffee, walked 7 hours every day, sweated.
Odessa - first off i got very nerdily excited about seeing the Odessa Steps (aka Potemkin Stairs) due to 4 years of film studies and repeated viewings of the Battleship Potemkin. I just kept seeing that baby carriage careering down the stairs....
Later met some people at the hostel and spent the next several days wilting in the heat or rejuvenating in the sea.
it was hot in Kiev.
it was extra hot in Odessa.
it was hot in Chisinau, and it's freaking crazy dry sauna hot here in Iasi.
unfortunately photos from all these places will have to wait till i get them developed but some fragments:
Lviv - very beautiful. full of weddings on summer weekends, hordes of gleaming new brides roam the pretty parts of town, chased by frantic photographers and bewildered husbands.
old men play chess on the benches in the park, small crowds gather around the exciting games.
as an added bonus the guy who runs the hostel (the big hostel not the small one) is frequently intoxicated (frequently in the early morning), and might let you do your laundry for free. while showing me the machine he ashed his cigarette inside of it.
Kiev - i really liked Kiev although the accommodations (an HI hostel, no hot water, none of the advertised amenities like internet, train ticket office, etc etc) were too expensive and a bit dreary. it's a big city, a real city, you can walk forever. The Saint Sophia Cathedral is impressive (and 1000 years old!). I drank a lot of coffee, walked 7 hours every day, sweated.
Odessa - first off i got very nerdily excited about seeing the Odessa Steps (aka Potemkin Stairs) due to 4 years of film studies and repeated viewings of the Battleship Potemkin. I just kept seeing that baby carriage careering down the stairs....
Later met some people at the hostel and spent the next several days wilting in the heat or rejuvenating in the sea.
Friday, July 20, 2007
the trains in Ukraine are mainly a pain
actually the trains themselves are fine, a little slow but very cheap for 2nd class and pretty comfortable.
however I have discovered one of the outer circles of hell, right here on earth...it's the main hall of the Lviv train station. It looks great from the outside (as all gates to hell probably do) but then you walk inside and are trapped in the sort of nightmare where you have a task to perform but you can't read any of the signs and you can't communicate with any of the people, and you know you want to get a ticket for the 8:11 train to Kiev and you have it all written down on a piece of paper in Cyrillic even so you go to a cashier and wait in line for a long time and then she looks at your paper with disdain and pokes at her computer and shakes her head and writes 8:54, but you can see the 8:11 listed on the departures board so you go to booth #2 and try there and she says No No No so you go to information and wait in line and they say "go to #2" so you go back and she says no, and points at some sign you can't read, so you go back to information and they look at you like you're a complete idiot moron and say NUMBER TWO so you go back to number 2 and she won't even look at you anymore so you give up on the 8:11 and decide to get a ticket for the 8:54. so you go to the booth you THINK should sell tickets for the 8:54, because that seems to be what the sign taped up on the glass indicates, even though you can't actually read it, and you wait in line for a long long time and an old man tries to sidle in front of you in the queue, like you won't notice, and then you get to the front of the line and the ticket seller won't sell you anything for the 8:54, and writes down 12:33, and you start to feel like you are losing your mind so you go back to the first booth, and wait there for a long time, and ask for the 8:54 and wait for what seems like an eternity before the woman behind the glass nods and ACTUALLY SMILES and you feel like crying you're so relieved. and of course because this is a nightmare you are carrying a 25kg weight on your back the whole time.
however I have discovered one of the outer circles of hell, right here on earth...it's the main hall of the Lviv train station. It looks great from the outside (as all gates to hell probably do) but then you walk inside and are trapped in the sort of nightmare where you have a task to perform but you can't read any of the signs and you can't communicate with any of the people, and you know you want to get a ticket for the 8:11 train to Kiev and you have it all written down on a piece of paper in Cyrillic even so you go to a cashier and wait in line for a long time and then she looks at your paper with disdain and pokes at her computer and shakes her head and writes 8:54, but you can see the 8:11 listed on the departures board so you go to booth #2 and try there and she says No No No so you go to information and wait in line and they say "go to #2" so you go back and she says no, and points at some sign you can't read, so you go back to information and they look at you like you're a complete idiot moron and say NUMBER TWO so you go back to number 2 and she won't even look at you anymore so you give up on the 8:11 and decide to get a ticket for the 8:54. so you go to the booth you THINK should sell tickets for the 8:54, because that seems to be what the sign taped up on the glass indicates, even though you can't actually read it, and you wait in line for a long long time and an old man tries to sidle in front of you in the queue, like you won't notice, and then you get to the front of the line and the ticket seller won't sell you anything for the 8:54, and writes down 12:33, and you start to feel like you are losing your mind so you go back to the first booth, and wait there for a long time, and ask for the 8:54 and wait for what seems like an eternity before the woman behind the glass nods and ACTUALLY SMILES and you feel like crying you're so relieved. and of course because this is a nightmare you are carrying a 25kg weight on your back the whole time.
Friday, July 13, 2007
i'm not sure how I ended up in Ukraine already...
I'm travelling with Franck from France, the CouchSurfer I met in Budapest. We met up in Cluj two and a half days ago and since then we've:
1. hitchhiked from Cluj through northern Transylvania and the Carpathians to Borsec...originally planning to go to Sovata and then head south, it was raining off and on all day so we decided to stay in the truck as long as we could.
We drove through incredible valleys filled with gorgeous little villages, orthodox churches, silver scaled rooftops and women in scarves.
2. spent 5 hours in Romanian Orthodox masses and slept at a monastary...In Borsec another trucker picked us up, we were planning to have him drop us off at a lake about 60 km away, but again the rain intervened. the trucker was saying something about monastaries and how we could sleep at one. So we said "ok", thinking he was going to drive us there.
The rain was pretty biblical and every village we passed featured people standing outside, staring at the river in concern. Then he stopped the truck and let us out, pointing down a road and saying "two kilometers". It was getting dark and we had no idea where to go. Plus we were at the edge of the forest and had been talking about bears all day. This was a small dirt road in the middle of nowhere so we stuck our thumbs out at the next car that came by and miraculously she stopped. A very well dressed woman in a very nice car filled with flowers and garment bags and all white interior STOPPED for a couple of muddy hitchhikers and offered to drive us to the monastary. We didn't even know which one we were going to go to, so she said she would take us where she was going and see if they would let us stay.
We drove up to Sihastria in the rain and twilight and as we got out of the car were struck by the sound of drums and chanting monks. Franck and I just stared and grinned as Florica pulled an extra headscarf out of her car and tied it around my messy head.
She went in to consult with the priest and eventually we were called in to meet him, a man all in black with a long black beard. They spoke and spoke in Romanian and asked us if we were hungry and conferred some more. The priest blessed us and then held onto my arm with an iron grip. We had no idea what they were talking about but finally the priest gave Florica a key and she took us to our room so we could change.
Then dinner, wonderful simple soup and bean stew and wine and vegetables all from the monastary, and then the mass.
By this time it was already 10pm but the mass would continue until 11:30 or 12. It was still pouring rain so Florica pulled me under her umbrella (poor Franck was exposed to the elements) and we walked through the dark and cobblestones toward the basilica and the sound of the chanting. We walked around a corner and suddenly saw one of the most cinematic views i've ever seen with my own eyes...a vast white courtyard under a black sky, illuminated by the light coming out of the basilica.
This is the place. Imagine it at night in a flooding rain.
We sat in mass for an hour or two, kneeling on the floor, I trying to keep the scarf on my head (a constant struggle). It was very beautiful but I had no idea what was going on so just tried to blend in as much as possible.
Next morning, same thing. Florica and her friend told us to be at the basilica at 9 am (while they didn't show up till 10!) and again we sat through the multi-hour Byzantine sort of mass. Again, fascinating watching the monks come and go, old ladies kneeling and praying, young girls scratching their noses and looking around and obviously wishing they were elsewhere...
Then more amazing food, all made at the monastary - vegetable and cheese soup, bread, polenta with soft mild cow's cheese and cream, their own white wine, turkish coffee.
Then Florica and her friend took us for a tour of a couple other famous monastaries in the region, Secu and Manastirea Neamt; bought us souvenir picture cards and small icons to carry with us; and took us to the bus station in the nearest town.
Did I mention that nobody charged us a penny for all of this?
3. Hitchhiked across the Ukranian border, not sure about visa requirements...
From Targu Neamt we hitched to Suceava, and from Suceava to the Ukranian border. Incredible luck with our rides, both times it was the first car that passed that picked us up.
We had no idea what the visa requirements were for Ukraine (my LP from a couple years ago said i must have a visa, but an american guy i met last week said he thought the rules had changed). No internet anywhere, frantically texting anyone we thought would be at a computer to see if they could check, finally just ended up getting in the car and seeing what happened.
And they let us through, no problem, no visa, no money, no nothing. A very long line at the border but we were allowed to ride through with a Ukranian family who then drove us to a 'hotel' (see: Everything is Illuminated) in the nearby town. 3 Euros a night, each.
4. Trying to get to Lviv...today we jumped on a small local bus bound for Chernivtsi (still very near the Romanian border) and I thought we were going to get lynched for taking up two people worth of space...just when i thought they couldn't get one more stout old lady on the bus they managed to cram one on.
So we are now in Chernivtsi, waiting for the next bus to Lviv, looking forward to perogies for lunch. It's pretty nice here, but the language barrier is a serious problem. We're still pretty intimidated by the Cyrillic, but people are generally nice.
I can't access gmail from here but hopefully will be able to get to it in a bigger city.
1. hitchhiked from Cluj through northern Transylvania and the Carpathians to Borsec...originally planning to go to Sovata and then head south, it was raining off and on all day so we decided to stay in the truck as long as we could.
We drove through incredible valleys filled with gorgeous little villages, orthodox churches, silver scaled rooftops and women in scarves.
2. spent 5 hours in Romanian Orthodox masses and slept at a monastary...In Borsec another trucker picked us up, we were planning to have him drop us off at a lake about 60 km away, but again the rain intervened. the trucker was saying something about monastaries and how we could sleep at one. So we said "ok", thinking he was going to drive us there.
The rain was pretty biblical and every village we passed featured people standing outside, staring at the river in concern. Then he stopped the truck and let us out, pointing down a road and saying "two kilometers". It was getting dark and we had no idea where to go. Plus we were at the edge of the forest and had been talking about bears all day. This was a small dirt road in the middle of nowhere so we stuck our thumbs out at the next car that came by and miraculously she stopped. A very well dressed woman in a very nice car filled with flowers and garment bags and all white interior STOPPED for a couple of muddy hitchhikers and offered to drive us to the monastary. We didn't even know which one we were going to go to, so she said she would take us where she was going and see if they would let us stay.
We drove up to Sihastria in the rain and twilight and as we got out of the car were struck by the sound of drums and chanting monks. Franck and I just stared and grinned as Florica pulled an extra headscarf out of her car and tied it around my messy head.
She went in to consult with the priest and eventually we were called in to meet him, a man all in black with a long black beard. They spoke and spoke in Romanian and asked us if we were hungry and conferred some more. The priest blessed us and then held onto my arm with an iron grip. We had no idea what they were talking about but finally the priest gave Florica a key and she took us to our room so we could change.
Then dinner, wonderful simple soup and bean stew and wine and vegetables all from the monastary, and then the mass.
By this time it was already 10pm but the mass would continue until 11:30 or 12. It was still pouring rain so Florica pulled me under her umbrella (poor Franck was exposed to the elements) and we walked through the dark and cobblestones toward the basilica and the sound of the chanting. We walked around a corner and suddenly saw one of the most cinematic views i've ever seen with my own eyes...a vast white courtyard under a black sky, illuminated by the light coming out of the basilica.
This is the place. Imagine it at night in a flooding rain.
We sat in mass for an hour or two, kneeling on the floor, I trying to keep the scarf on my head (a constant struggle). It was very beautiful but I had no idea what was going on so just tried to blend in as much as possible.
Next morning, same thing. Florica and her friend told us to be at the basilica at 9 am (while they didn't show up till 10!) and again we sat through the multi-hour Byzantine sort of mass. Again, fascinating watching the monks come and go, old ladies kneeling and praying, young girls scratching their noses and looking around and obviously wishing they were elsewhere...
Then more amazing food, all made at the monastary - vegetable and cheese soup, bread, polenta with soft mild cow's cheese and cream, their own white wine, turkish coffee.
Then Florica and her friend took us for a tour of a couple other famous monastaries in the region, Secu and Manastirea Neamt; bought us souvenir picture cards and small icons to carry with us; and took us to the bus station in the nearest town.
Did I mention that nobody charged us a penny for all of this?
3. Hitchhiked across the Ukranian border, not sure about visa requirements...
From Targu Neamt we hitched to Suceava, and from Suceava to the Ukranian border. Incredible luck with our rides, both times it was the first car that passed that picked us up.
We had no idea what the visa requirements were for Ukraine (my LP from a couple years ago said i must have a visa, but an american guy i met last week said he thought the rules had changed). No internet anywhere, frantically texting anyone we thought would be at a computer to see if they could check, finally just ended up getting in the car and seeing what happened.
And they let us through, no problem, no visa, no money, no nothing. A very long line at the border but we were allowed to ride through with a Ukranian family who then drove us to a 'hotel' (see: Everything is Illuminated) in the nearby town. 3 Euros a night, each.
4. Trying to get to Lviv...today we jumped on a small local bus bound for Chernivtsi (still very near the Romanian border) and I thought we were going to get lynched for taking up two people worth of space...just when i thought they couldn't get one more stout old lady on the bus they managed to cram one on.
So we are now in Chernivtsi, waiting for the next bus to Lviv, looking forward to perogies for lunch. It's pretty nice here, but the language barrier is a serious problem. We're still pretty intimidated by the Cyrillic, but people are generally nice.
I can't access gmail from here but hopefully will be able to get to it in a bigger city.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
now in Cluj-Napoca. just saw a woman at the market unapologetically walking around with a wet cabbage leaf on her head (well, it is hot). i bought half a kilo of tomatoes from two old men and they threw in a handful of peppers and a couple of smiles.
the little girl sitting beside me is staring at me and threatening to throw a tantrum.
more soon.
the little girl sitting beside me is staring at me and threatening to throw a tantrum.
more soon.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
the end of Budapest, hello Romania
it's 10 pm in Oradea, Romania. i'm in a small, somewhat hard to find, exuberantly friendly hostel - 60 minutes after i arrived last night i had already been presented with two shots of palinka, a portion of some house painters' dinner, and was down in the wine cellar drinking a red aszu dessert wine called Cadarissima (fantastic). not only that, but the hostel was actually full so one of the guys who works here gave me his bed (he slept elsewhere).
so far, so good. (okay except for the part where a weird Hungarian guy I can't communicate with just wandered into my room in his underwear and stared at my back for a while...he didn't want to use the computer...I'm locking the door tonight.)
still, it was hard to say goodbye to Budapest and all the amazing people who have befriended me.
if i could split myself into two or three parts i would leave a piece there.
the last two weeks were incredibly hectic and my plans for lazing about the city, visiting museums etc were way too optimistic. packing, cleaning, figuring out trains, deciding where to go (last possible minute), writing reports (last possible minute), recovering from a typical weekend with Sergio and Frederico, cooking up a feast featuring the random remnants of our freezer and pantry (thanks Natasha and Natasha's mum and everyone who ate!), doing all the administration involved in eventually getting paid and trying to send a package home without spending all the money I've earned (UPS wanted several hundred dollars. i've gone with the dodgy postal system instead.) took up all of my time. At least the time that was not being spent at West Balkan and Szimpla Kert. Four nights in a row at the same club? What do I think this is, 1995 at Zaphod's?
On my way home from this evening (Night#1 at West Balkan, with some very fun French Couchsurfers who were crashing at our place):
I saw this view of Andrassy and just had to stand in the middle of the road to capture it. This is Budapest.
so far, so good. (okay except for the part where a weird Hungarian guy I can't communicate with just wandered into my room in his underwear and stared at my back for a while...he didn't want to use the computer...I'm locking the door tonight.)
still, it was hard to say goodbye to Budapest and all the amazing people who have befriended me.
if i could split myself into two or three parts i would leave a piece there.
the last two weeks were incredibly hectic and my plans for lazing about the city, visiting museums etc were way too optimistic. packing, cleaning, figuring out trains, deciding where to go (last possible minute), writing reports (last possible minute), recovering from a typical weekend with Sergio and Frederico, cooking up a feast featuring the random remnants of our freezer and pantry (thanks Natasha and Natasha's mum and everyone who ate!), doing all the administration involved in eventually getting paid and trying to send a package home without spending all the money I've earned (UPS wanted several hundred dollars. i've gone with the dodgy postal system instead.) took up all of my time. At least the time that was not being spent at West Balkan and Szimpla Kert. Four nights in a row at the same club? What do I think this is, 1995 at Zaphod's?
On my way home from this evening (Night#1 at West Balkan, with some very fun French Couchsurfers who were crashing at our place):
I saw this view of Andrassy and just had to stand in the middle of the road to capture it. This is Budapest.
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