In case it wasn't already clear, we're back in the US.
And oh yeah: we're getting married on Sunday.
In the meantime, Happy Easter! The video was taken while climbing the mountain on the right.
The one on the left seems especially tragic, due to the mixed messages it sends to young women with a weight problem:
Diet all you want, but you'll never really belong.
After we woke up on Friday, cousin Adriana (one of my favorite people) took us into the city for a driving tour. The major stop was in front of Palatul Parlamentului (Palace of the Parliament). We would return the next day with Tilda's friend Silvana to take the official tour. First though, some background.
To give you some idea of the scale of the place, let me just point out that the cars passing in front of the building are maybe 100 meters from the front of the building. It stands 86 meters tall (and extends 92m underground, including a nuclear bunker) and has a surface area of 330,000 square meters. It stands twelve stories tall and contains 3100 rooms.
Short YouTube video of this side of the building. (Shows little you can't see in the photo on the right, but gives a better idea of scale.)
One sixth of Bucureşti was bulldozed to make way for this building, originally called Casa Poporolui, or "The House of the People," which is ironic since the general public was forbidden entry. More than 700 architects and three shifts of 20,000 laborers worked on the building 24 hours a day from 1984 to 1989. At the time of the Revolution, it was 70% complete. Today, it is 90% complete. The building was intended to house the Central Committee, Ceauşescu's offices, and state ministries. His thinking was that he could, for all intents and purposes, house the entire national government in one building. It was intended as a showcase for Romanian craftsmanship and as a statement on the greatness of Romanian culture (for the last part of which you may safely substitute the words "for the aggrandizement of that lunatic Ceauşescu.")
How much did it cost? No one can be sure, since no one was paid. The materials used (almost entirely of Romanian origin) were "donated" and the laborers were "compelled" to work on the giant edifice. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of FOX Media, reportedly tried to purchase it during the 1990s for $1 billion dollars (for the purpose of making it into the world's largest casino) and was refused.
Okay, anyway, the tour...
The tour of the Palace of the Parliament cost just 10 lei per person (about $4), though we were told we'd have to pay an additional 30 lei to be permitted the use of a camera. (This is not uncommon in Romania.) We paid it, but ended up part of a tour group so massive that our young tour guide was never able to take the time to determine who had or hadn't paid, so we ended up breaking out both the photo and video cameras.
The tour itself was fairly dull. Our guide made only token efforts to talk about the history of the building and its construction, and the context in which it came to be made. Instead, she repeatedly pointed out mundane details like carpet patterns that matched drapes or the name of the town where a particular piece of marble originated.
One interesting thing she went over actually did relate to patterns. There is a secret hidden in the tiles and carpets in the building: a map. Ceauşescu was so afraid of being made a fool in his own building by getting lost that he had a diagram of the building artfully arranged into a floor pattern that repeats throughout the palace. If you know how to decode it, you can tell where you are at any time.
Still, the building itself is impressive, however maniacal its construction might have been.
You can take a tour of our Palace photos on Flickr.
I'll add some of the video footage we shot later tonight.
So for those of you following along, our timeline basically goes like this:
- March 11 - plane from Chicago to Munich, losing 7 hours to time zone change, landing on...
- March 12 - plane from Munich to Budapest, maxitaxi to Cluj, greet family, sleep
- March 13-15 - hang out in Cluj with Mama and cousins, Jeff asks Tata's permission to marry Tilda
- March 15, evening - catch overnight Rapid train to Bucureşti
- March 16-18 - Bucureşti, visit cousins, see Silvana, ending with InterCity train home to Cluj
- March 19-23 - hang out in Cluj again, including seeing opera, Hazsongardi Cemetery, art museum
- March 24 - catch ride with Silvana and her American friend Maurice to Sibiu, overnight there
- March 25 - we all drive to Braşov, then spend night there
- March 26 - spend morning in Braşov, afternoon in Poiana Braşov with Silvana & Maurice, then leave on our own to Sighişoara via InterCity train, spend evening there, Jeff proposes
- March 27 - InterCity train back home to Cluj
Then, I'll be getting to some of the attractions we saw in Bucureşti, including the Palace of the Parliament, the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, and the Village Museum. And then, finally, we'll get to the crazy insane club cousin Cosmin took us to, Bamboo. (And yes, that's where the videos of half-naked dancing girls come in.)
After that, I'll catch up on the rest of Cluj, including more street food, some restaurants, and the like. This period included our trip to the opera, which has already been chronicled here.
And from there, we'll cover our whirlwind tour of Sibiu, Braşov, Poiana Braşov, and Sighişoara. I posted a bit about the proposal in Sighişoara, along with a pair of photos, but we haven't really had time to cover that lovely city in proper detail.
And by the time I get done with all of that... I'll probably have photos and stories from Torocko (Tilda's mother's home village), Deva, Hunedoara, and Turda.
And we may yet make it to either Vienna, Salzburg, or Rome before we leave for Hungary.
Whew.
It was nearly two weeks before when I asked her father's permission--in Romanian, mind you--alongside his hospital bed in Spitalul CFR. It was only the second time I had met him, so when we found ourselves alone for a minute while Matilda dropped off a prescription, I think he was startled to hear me say, "Doresc să-ţi spun ceva important." ("I have something important to say.") He answered in what I can only assume were heartfelt, carefully chosen words.
I can only assume this, as I don't speak Romanian, and the four sentence speech I'd used to ask Matilda's hand had taken me days to learn.
Although the tone in his voice and the smile on his face made his feelings clear, I still couldn't stop myself from checking to make sure.
"OK?"
"Foarte okay," ("very okay") he said, grinning.
This picture, already shown here before was taken maybe 10 minutes after that.
The unfortunate part is we'd planned on eloping and returning to the States as husband and wife. But the information we'd obtained from the Cluj-Napoca municipal office proved woefully inadequate in helping us prepare our paperwork and there was just no way we could pull it off.
We'd found out the morning I spoke with her father that not only would we need my birth certificate (which I'd had frantically UPS'd to Romania after finding my original lost while packing), as well as my divorce papers from my first marriage, but we'd also need "Apostile" stamps from the state capitals of Kentucky and Tennessee, respectively, verifying the papers as legitimate for foreign government acceptance. (We'd heard of apostiles and knew they were needed in some Romanian cities, such as Bucharest, but were confident based on our research that we wouldn't need them in Cluj. We were wrong.)
Worst of all, they wanted an apostile-stamped copy of the wedding certificate from my first marriage which was something we'd never seen as a requirement in any informational materials for any Romanian city. Furthermore, we'd have to pay to have all of this professionally translated and notarized. And hire a certified translator for the wedding.
Even with all of this, we'd face prenuptial medical exams and a state security check that could take up to two months. A simple non-binding religious ceremony was out of the question, too, as Romanian law requires that no wedding of any kind may be performed on people who have not been legally wed in a civil ceremony at the municipal building of their designated city of residence.
Eastern European bureaucracy.
Rather than spend our entire trip racking up international calls and sending friends frantically from state capital to state capital, assembling our paperwork and having it FedEx'd over at great cost, with no guarantee of us ever being approved, we decided to simply come back engaged and figure out the wedding in the US. We'll get wed there and come back to Romania next summer to celebrate our first anniversary with a Romanian wedding reception.
Matilda had to wait a bit for me to find the right place and time to propose, and I had to carry the ring around in my pocket for days on end. But last night in Sighişoara, on the last night of a four day jaunt through Romania's old Bavarian towns, everything fell into place. After a beautiful meal at Casa Wagner and a lovely stroll through the old city, I asked, she said yes, and like that, I'm the happiest man alive.
PS
I wasn't kidding about getting down on one knee.
In the post below, we referred in passing to a fellow passenger on the train to Bucureşti we met named Ştefan Gladin. He had, as we mentioned, given us a web site from which we could download his films. Having now actually watched some of them, we now feel compelled to recommend him as a documentarian of remarkable editing abilities.
In particular, his mesmerizing short film "Să facem totul!" ("Let's do everything!") presents an acid look at the reign of Nicolae Ceauşescu. Through sharply edited period footage and careful use of music, he's able to come up with biting juxtapositions. Ceauşescu at the receiving line at Buckingham Palace... Romanians in the bread line at home. Watch for the "Parliamentary votes" in which all members vote in public under Ceauşescu's watchful eye... and every vote is a unanimous one.
Absolutely no Romanian is needed to appreciate this film.
I would even go so far as to upload it to here or to YouTube, but a) it won't fit (it's ever so slightly too long) and b) it's not mine to distribute. It's a big file but it's in Divx, so you'll get bang for your buck.
Să facem totul! divx/avi file, 136 MB, 17 min.
No, not those Bâzgăs. The other Bâzgăs. The Bâzgăs in Bucureşti. Tata Nicolae's brother Gigi, his wife Oli, their son Cosmin, daughter Adriana (who I had met when she visited Chicago), daughter Tina, Tina's husband Gabi, and Tina & Gabi's kids Maia and Vladimir.
Anyway, now we come to our recap of Bucureşti. After finding out that Tilda's best friend Silvana was having her birthday party this weekend, we decided there was nothing to do but grab a train and head on over. We had a standing invitation from the aforementioned cousins and a weekend out of town sounded like just the thing.
And so, we bought our tickets from a CFR agency for the overnight train from Cluj to Bucureşti, packed our things and grabbed a train over to the train station. Cluj's train station is mostly closed for renovations for the time being, except for one, dusty old wing that absolutely reeked of communist design. And, as you can see from the photo, the inside rafters were positively loaded with pigeons.
Maybe the strangest thing to me was that, while smoking was prohibited both in the station and on the train, drinking apparently was not. As a matter of fact, they actually sold beer in the concession area of the station.
And what beers!
The next time you find yourself amazed and appalled at American winos, sipping from brown-bagged 40 oz. bottles, I ask you to consider a nation where there are dudes chugging from two liter bottles of 5% strong beer riding right next to you on the train.
Did I buy one, you ask? For crying out loud, no! I enjoy drinking beer, not pouring it down my throat until I don't remember my own name.
Geez.
The train ride itself was a bit odd. We had missed the tonier Intercity train and had to settle for first-class on the Rapid. This train was older, had fewer amenities, and rattled such as to unsettle your bowel.
Having my video iPod helped a bit, as we were able to watch movies on the way there. There were only two other men in our car for the bulk of the ride, and of course Matilda made friends along the way. One of our companions, it turns out, was a documentary filmmaker, who cheerfully provided us a link from which we could download his films. Internet speeds being as they are here, we haven't gotten around to downloading them yet, but should you be so inclined we're told one of them intercuts footage of Ceauşescu with Mickey Mouse. So there you go.
We slept all we could, but as the sun came up, there was little to do but sit and wait. One of the last stops before Bucureşti brought aboard a new passenger, an insane guy with a price tag stuck to his nose, who mumbled to himself and giggled all the way into Gara de Nord, Bucureşti's main train station.
Based on Matilda's previous experiences and a bevy of warnings from guidebooks, we were ready for Gara de Nord to be the worst kind of shady, rundown Eastern European cesspool of gypsies, tramps, and thieves.
Imagine our surprise then, when we came to find a shiny, clean, well-policed station in mid-renovation, complete with McDonald's. Apparently, the station has taken to admitting only those holding a valid ticket (just as we do at US airports), thus greatly improving its internal security.
Cousin Cosmin showed up in short order and whisked us away to the factory in his unbelievably swanky Audi. Though we passed any number of sights on the way there, but as tired as we were, they hardly registered.
At the apartment, Oli, Gigi, Adriana, and the kids were there to greet us with breakfast, which we ate quickly. Then it was time for a tour of the factory and the massive new home being built next door for all of them.
Then, to bed. We'd need the rest, because as we'd soon discover, Bucureşti is a brutally fast-paced town.
Flickr Set: "Our Cousins in Bucureşti"
We're skipping ahead here, past the Bucureşti trip, but I promise we'll get back to that...
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Wednesday, Tilda and I stopped by Agenţia Teatrală and bought tickets for the National Opera Company in Cluj's one-night-only performance of Verdi's La Traviata. I continue to be in love with exchange rate (though there are limitations... more on this later), as each of our orchestra level seats was just 20 lei, or about $8.
We dressed up in our finest and walked the mere 50 meters to the opera, eventually finding our way to our seats and settling in for the show. This being the sole performance, and the evening marking some kind of Italian cultural tribute, the house was packed. Despite the fact that we'd bought our tickets only hours before, we were seated near the middle only about a dozen or so rows back.
Honestly, I had suggested the opera mostly as a way to see the inside of the absolutely beautiful building. Once inside, when I felt how warm it was inside, well... I honestly expected to sleep through at least part of the show.
Lo and behold, though, I actually enjoyed the show. Suffice it to say, if you replay your mental tape of the last time you heard someone give the "No, really: opera is fantastic" speech, it would safely encapsulate my feelings on the matter. I didn't sleep a wink. The singers were outstanding (and reasonably young and attractive, stereotypes be damned) and with a little help from Matilda (who translated the summary for me from the program) I was able to follow the story well enough.
Recent Comments
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lucif said:
salutare, acum doua zile m-am gandit la tine oare ce s-a mai intamplat in ultimii 7 ani de cand nu... read more
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tequila mockingbird said:
what fantastically fantastic news. congratulations...all things work out in time. all the best - julia read more
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wilsey said:
At least in Macedonia, crap is actually the fish you refer to in English as carp. read more
on As Seen at the Supermarket in Cluj
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