Snowy Mix = Beer and Cards

Freezing hands? Whatever, at least the beer will be cold.

Snow started to fall on Friday evening around 6…and it just stopped last night. I don’t think I’ve ever been witness to snow falling heavily for 2 days straight. Needless to say, this weekend was kind of a wash. After aimlessly looking for a restaurant close to the apartment on Friday night, we ended up at an Italian place back in Unirii Square. We thought about going out, but it was just one of those nights where the only thing we wanted to do was go home and get in our pajamas. My sweatpants were definitely calling my name. So we got some Tuborg (equivalent of Yuengling) to go, hence the picture above where I’m carrying them. A good half an hour later, my hands were thawed enough to play some cards.

Marya taught us how to play Slap, one of those fast paced games where you need to slap the pile, kind of like Slapjacks, but way more fun. Ok, we’re dorks, but whatever. I was warm.

"My hand is SO underneath yours."

Got Milk?

Katie Reed posing for Milk in Romania

Yes, my friends, that plastic bag I'm holding contains milk. The majority of Romanian's aren't big on "fresh" milk; they tend to like the condensed/evaporated kind that isn't refrigerated. Like the kind you would use for baking. Ew.

As you can see, they're also not very big on their cartons either. And a variation of skim, 1%, 2% or whole? Forget it. It's either 1.5% (+/- .5%) or 3%. Never thought I'd see a margin of error on a sack of milk, nevertheless a sack of milk. Good thing I majored in statistics, who knew I'd need my PSU skills to decipher a milk description.

Another Day, Another Lei

"Thank you for choosing Wendy's, can I take your order please?"

The singular term is actually leu, but then it wouldn't rhyme and sound as cool. Here I am at the office! We have this software installed on our computers so coworkers in the U.S. can reach us by dialing our laptops. That's the video conferencing equipment behind us. We're ready to go! Our first Romanian associates start on Tuesday, so we're getting prepared for training.

What else has been going on...let me see...last night we ordered Chinese and I offered to place the delivery call. Ordering was difficult, she was kind of speaking Romenglish and it's a lot harder to understand people over the phone than in person. At least in person, I can point and make faces. We played Spoons and War (card games) while we were waiting for our food to come. I lost both.

-photo displayed only for the sole purpose of Greg Baran's enjoyment

Ceausescu's Palace

Me at Ceausescu's Palace

Sunday we checked out the Parliament house, otherwise known as Ceausescu's palace. You can google Ceausescu if you want, but just breifly, he was a communist dictator taken down from power in the late 80's for his corrupt leadership. This building is the second largest in the world, exceeded only by the Pentagon. Michael Jackson was the only person ever to give a speech from the balcony, in which he addressed the crowd saying "Hello Budapest!" (yeah, we're in Bucharest...woops).

My stomach was making the loudest noises during the tour. Of course everyone was super quiet so it sounded ridiculous. The building was cool, but they only showed like 10% of it, so I guess it could have been cooler? It's early. Anyway, I half ate a chicken sandwhich on the way back, at least that's what the label said, but it tasted strangely similar to fish.

It's Laundry Time

Letters, temperatures, and butons, oh my!

Then...it was laundry time. We managed to get the machine running after setting it to all the right letters and temperatures...as you can see we were thoroughly enaged in the process. Dryers aren't common in Europe, so we had to use the next best thing, our heaters. I can't knock the system though, my clothes were nice and dry after we got back from watching the Eagles game, even if they were a little stiff. Maybe that's why Romanians are so big on their fabric softener. Good to know.

Key...money...CLUTCH

My first gogoasa

Saturday afternoon we walked the streets of Bucharest again. I decided to try one of the supposedly popular gogoasa (pronounced gogosh) from a street vendor. My choices were cheese, chocolate or plain, so thinking it might be like the yummy Entemann’s cheese danish back home, I opted for cheese. Huge, and I mean GINORMOUS mistake. Speaking of ginormous, you should have seen the dog we saw later on, but I’ll get to that some other time. Anyway, I had eaten the top and it tasted pretty good, but I hadn’t got to the cheese filling yet. I asked Marc if he wanted to try it out and he took a decent sized bite, cheese and all. The look on his face should have told me that it wasn’t going to be pretty, but I took another whopping bite out of this so called donut-like delicacy. EW. It was super salty and totally gross. Good thing Marya got the yummy chocolate one so we know what to get next time. A gogoasa and coffee only costs 20,000 lei which is approximately $0.75. Amazing.

After sightseeing in the Piata Revolutiei, we popped into the Bistro Tormen for some quick eats. However, we’ve discovered that quick eats don’t really exist. A meal takes at least an hour everywhere, if not three.

After a few hours of down time back at the apartment, we attempted unsuccessfully to catch a movie. Apparently you have to arrive super early to get tickets for anything. Yes Danielle, even earlier than I normally like to be there. We ended up following Marc's lead to the Amsterdam Cafe, a place we had read about in some guide books. All I can say is excellent food, faster than "normal" service, casual atmosphere, not overly smoky, and a menu entirely in English. This place was key. This place was money. This place was...CLUTCH. The wine was tasty so we took a bottle to go and went home to try and watch to some English TV. No success. I started feeling ill and knew I was going to get sick. Yes Danielle, I chummed. I think those paprika psuedo-fries really just didn't agree with me. I swear, it wasn't the alcohol, but Dan, you can chalk this one up however you like. Do I still hold the title? ;-)
(most chums in 24 yrs)

Count Dracula & Club Kristal

"This is thriller, thriller nights...."

SCARY. In all honesty, I don’t think I’ve ever been freaked out while out to eat, but I guess there’s a first for everything. At first, it seemed like we were going to have a normal dinner at the Count Dracula Club. Well, almost normal. I think we first noticed that something was up when some dishes on the menu were listed with very awkward descriptions that didn’t refer to any ingredients. The description of the meal Marc ordered, Renfields Dish, included something along the lines of Renfield being the Count’s slave and crying out “blood is the life” and how his eating habits included flies and rats. Marya and I stuck with dishes that actually had the word “chicken” in it just to be safe.

The fun began upon the departure of the table of 6 in the room next to ours. The lights started changing colors to an eerie blue and Halloween type sounds became our background music. We ordered our drinks and I almost fell out of my chair when our waiter came back and opened Marc’s beer with an overly loud popping noise. That’s when I decided it was time to switch seats. No way was I going to sit with my back facing the entrance so that anything or anyone could sneak up behind me.

All of a sudden, the lights go out and one candle on our table lit the entire room. Marc of course is trying to blow it out, while Marya and I are trying to protect the flame like it’s one of the most valuable things we own. Our waiter told us that Count Dracula himself would be visiting us in a bit. And visit us he did. A man fully cloaked in Dracula gear gave us his meant-to-be-scary spiel. Ok, so it was cheeseball, but it was still fun.

When it was time for our meals, the lights came back and all eyes were on the presentation of Marc’s dish. The opening of the lid revealed a chicken breast breaded and shaped like a rat. He was instructed to cut it in the center and sure enough some red looking juice came spilling out. Hilarious. My dish didn’t taste very good, but since the waiter could tell I hadn’t really enjoyed it, he gave me glass of some type of alcohol. Not sure what it was, but it was tasty. Maybe some kind of brandy? No idea. Well, that brought us to midnight so we decided to get a recommendation from the waiter for our next destination. He suggested Club Kristal so off to Kristal it was.

I always thought Europeans were good dancers, but wow, was I wrong. They dance like my Mom (no offense Mom). They just kind of stepped back and forth and made this push and pull motion with their hands curled into fists. Surprisingly, Marc does a pretty good impression of them. Who said white boys can’t dance? The house music was pretty good though, not really my scene but I couldn’t complain. I was in a club in Romania! The event was sponsored by Kent. We honestly had no idea what Kent was, until the ride home when our taxi driver (who by the way has been driving taxis for 60 years, and he’s probably not even 40 years old) explained that Kent was a brand of cigarettes and he was so surprised that we had never heard of them. He was yelling, “KENT, you know KENT, Tsigare!!” Do we even have Kent back in the states? Oh, I forgot to mention earlier, everyone in Romania smokes. Everyone. Packs are about a dollar. No wonder why they’re so freaking skinny; their metabolism must be through the roof. So anyway, that was Friday night, Saturday to come next.

Our first...

Vampire bite!

So, we've got a list going of "who will be the first to...." and so far step in dog crap is me, fall on the stairs is me (actually fell up the stairs, but same difference, although we've all had incidents on the "twisting terror" as Marya calls it), and lo and behold, yesterday we encountered our first vampire bite! Shown above is Marya's trash can wound (don't ask), but it's more fun to say she's been bitten by a follower of Count Dracula...speaking of which, we might be going to a place called Club Dracula this evening. Should be interesting.

A little subway story for ya: This morning I was about to get on so I put my pass in the reader and went to go through the turnstyle but it didn't budge. Marc and Marya had gone through ahead of me and they said I looked like a dear caught in headlights. It was a little nerveracking considering the guard pointed at me and sternly told me to stay where I was. At least that's what I think he said. Marya and I have a tendency to magically translate Romanian to English even when we have no clue what they're saying. Seems to work so I think we'll stick with it. I've been trying to speak a lot more Romanian now that I'm getting the pronunciation down for common words so I can at least function in a normal everyday conversation. Most people are pretty receptive to us when we at least attempt to speak in their language. I'm sure that sometimes we're slaughtering it, but at least we're having fun!

Tonight's our first full weekend here, so we're planning to check out some of the night life. It's been a long week and I'm exhausted, but I think I can stay up for a little Romanian clubbing/bar hopping :) Based on our past week, I can only imagine what's going to happen when we're out, but I'm sure it will make for some amusing posts.

Causing a Scene

"Going up?"

Fitting more than three people in this elevator can be a real challenge. I guess I never really thought about the size of elevators before, but the smallness of this one cannot be ignored.

So for those of you that know me pretty well, you know that I like my diet soda. Well, it's not diet here, it's Coca Cola light. It's similar to Pepsi One, with one calorie. I really like it, I don't think I can go back to diet! Anyway, the point of me telling you that is because yesterday was the first day someone got really upset with me, and it was over Coke light. We went to CarreFour (equivalent of Target, but more like a mini-mall) and I went to get one of these delicious sodas from a pizza shop. I asked her for a regular (for Marc) and a light. So she rings me up for it, I pay for it, and they only bring me the coke light. So I tell her I want a regular one too, she rings it up on the register and then brings me another coke light. I'm trying to explain to her that I want regular, the blue can, but they keep saying they don't have it. Then someone else comes over and explains to me that the blue can is Pepsi Max, and it's more like diet with no calories, no sugar, etc. So, then I ask for the fountain one because I can see that it's there (and I know it is because Marc got one a couple days ago), but they keep insisting that they don't have it. So, finally, I'm like, "then I don't want it". The woman at the register starts yelling and is probably cursing me out in Romanian. Way to cause a scene Katie, like I don't stick out like a sore thumb in the first place. So I just walk away and pretend like nothing happened. Slick.

I ate authentic Romanian food for the first time last night and it was pretty good. I had sausages and fries. They put like a grated cheese on their fries (not melted) and it's awesome. I tried Marya's carne musaka which is kind of like a meat and potato pie and that was pretty good too. We also did a shot of some kind of bottom shelf Romanian liquor that they give to you before your meal. Let's just say it's definitely bottom shelf. Ew. Oh, and I won't give you full details, but let's just say the female waitstaff were very friendly.

Gotta get to work, but first an update on the dogs...one full-tilt charged Marya this morning on our way to the subway. It looked like he was about to tackle her, but he stopped and just kind of sniffed. A little scary. We've named the dog behind our apartment Cujo, he's ok in the morning on our way to work but walking back home is a crap shoot. Last night we started to take the longer, more well lit path to avoid him, but I think Marc is a little upset :)

Buna Dimineata! (Good Morning!)

View from my room

Temperature: 0 degrees Celsius (32 F)
Time: 10:40 (7 hours ahead of you)
I love it!

I was just answering the three questions I’ve been asked the most since I’ve been here from peeps back in the U.S. to get them out of the way :)

Marc, Marya and I have had our fair share of adventures since our plane landed in Bucharest, Romania three days ago. I must say that the randomness of the stray dogs (and the occasional scares when they trot behind us in a dark alley) account for most of our culture shock. Marya and I probably think it’s a good idea to start walking around the front of our building to avoid such situations, but Marc thinks it’s “more fun” to walk in the scary alleys. I’m just waiting for one of us to get bitten and develop a fun case of Rabies. Pictures on this topic to come…oh, and I forgot, I already stepped in some stray dog crap. Marc’s luggage rolled through some on the way in too, so we really haven’t had the best of luck in the poo area.

The majority of Romanians can speak a little bit of English or at least get the general gist of what we’re trying to say, but the barrier can be difficult at times. We already met a potential friend because I was at a register in a supermarket and apparently the woman was asking me if I had a club card and I had no clue what she was referring to. So I’m shaking my head and saying sorry while she’s looking at me like I have three heads when the girl behind me says, “Say Nu”. So we struck up a conversation and she (Korrin) was telling us how she moved here from Canada to open up a coffee shop, which, turns out, is right near our office. I’m pretty sure we’ll be stopping by there some day this week, so I’ll keep you posted on our new city guide.

One of the most hilarious things I’ve seen so far is Amit (co-worker) open a coke bottle with his teeth. Yes, his teeth, and we’re not talking a twist off. I think you could hear Marya and me gasp from a kilometer away. So, what else? Let’s see…controlling the length of a toilet flush, the tiniest elevators you can imagine, yellow/brown Money Pit-style water, X-rated commercials/advertisements, crazy cab drivers, leaky backpacks…and the list goes on.

Oh, almost forgot, the picture is of one of the views from my room overlooking the Dambovita River. We live in like the Times Square of Bucharest so if you follow that curve of the road backwards, there is a square called Piata Unirii, which is more or less the hub of the city. More to come soon…