The Blaus - South America and Europe

17th of September - Bucharest, Romania

Friends of ours (Steve and Amber Golik) who traveled in Romania a few years ago hooked us up with friends they made in Bucharest, so we got in touch with Liviu before arriving in Romania and he offered to pick us up at the train station and let us stay at his house while we were in town. We had no idea what was in store for us in Bucharest. Liviu and his family and friends treated us like old friends and showed us Romanian hospitality to the extent that Jen cried at the train station as the train pulled away when our visit had ended. We were so touched by his generosity and the time that he and his wife and daughter took to show us their fine city, cook for us at home, treat us to wonderful meals in traditional Romanian restaurants, take us out on the town to experience the nightlife in Bucharest, stay up all night drinking wine and talking with Billy, introduce us to his friends who were also incredibly welcoming, and include us in a special countryside wedding.

Our first night in Bucharest Liviu, his wife Yvonne, and his daughter Becky took us out to a great restaurant for an introduction to Romanian food and we were thoroughly impressed with the wine and the tasty traditional dishes. We had the freshest produce in salads to start the meal followed by things like mamaliga (a cornmeal polenta side dish that accompanies most Romanian meals) and pork meat wrapped in cabbage leaves (another Romanian specialty). Liviu's friend Vlad met us after dinner and the guys took us to a club for a beer and then on to see a popular Romanian live band that played covers and weaved in a comedy act. We slept so soundly that night and then woke up to a lovely breakfast that Yvonne prepared for us of meatballs, green salad, fresh veggies, cheeses, coffee (and vodka)...all presented like a professional chef would plate dishes. Yes, we were off to a very good start, but it only got better...

Liviu took us on a walking tour of Bucharest starting from his apartment in the center of the city. He showed us his office, where he runs a recruiting business for Bucharest's job seekers and a couple of content/lifestyle web sites. It was inspiring to see the kind of drive and determination that has ignited in people of Liviu's generation who are flourishing in a country that has recently broken free of Communist leadership. Liviu told us that there is so much opportunity in Bucharest today because there are so many things that have not yet been done there. He is one of the people spearheading business in his industry and he seems to keep a close eye on what is going on in the States, the rest of Europe, China and India for his own vision of Bucharest's future. With Romania on the short list for accession to the EU, everyone is a buzz with the possibilities and the changes to come.

We continued our tour and Liviu pointed out all the sights as we walked around the city...the impressive Hilton hotel in an historic building, the National Theater, the ornate Opera House (outside of which al fresco concerts were being held in celebration of the great Romanian composer Enescu), the government buildings and parts of the city where Ceausescu's protesters gathered and 1,000 people were killed before he was overthrown and he and his wife were executed on Christmas Day in 1989. We were captivated by the historical and personal accounts of life in Romania during the tumultuous 1980s. We walked to the commercial center of Bucharest, which was once the center of the Communist regime and is now a bustling shopping mall with upscale stores, McDonald's and other international franchises. We made our way to the House of Parliament, which was ambitiously commissioned by Ceausescu, has been under construction for 20 years, and is still only 90 percent complete today. We strolled past city block after city block of fountains as we got closer to the large and looming House of Parliament. Out in front of the Palace of Parliament underneath a tent a car show was being held with expensive cars on display. Everywhere we looked there was evidence of a rapidly growing free market economy. Capitalism is alive and well in Romania's capital city. We could see how the explosion of growth here has impacted everyday life in Romania. For example, the city dwellers are talking on their cell phones in nice cars while speeding past horse drawn carriages on country roads just a few miles outside of the city center.

We got really lucky and were able to participate in a guided tour of some of the rooms inside the Palace of Parliament. This monstrosity of a monument to the Communist government under Ceausescu was as overwhelming on the inside as it was daunting from the outside. Each room was larger than life and so lavishly decorated with materials crafted in and extracted from Romania alone. Beautiful silk and velvet draperies adorn the windows, tons of pink marble decorate the walls and floors, special made rugs require 25 men just to roll them out over the gargantuan ball room floors, huge Romanian crystal chandelier hang from the ceilings of each room, state of the art technology and architectural techniques heat and cool the building and amplify sound in the meeting rooms. Every detail was attended to and money was not an object in the conception of this insanely opulent palace. This is the 2nd largest building in the world (only the Pentagon in the US is bigger). When we asked how much it cost to build, our guide was not able to give us an answer. It seems a bit strange that a communist leader would be so demonstrative with wealth, and we thought it was a pity that the building didn't seem to be fully accessible to the public or utilized by city officials whose offices reside somewhere inside.

We had lunch at the Amsterdam Cafe in the old town part of the city and we discovered house wine in Romania, which is nothing like house wine in the States. The best wine in Romania is the house wine on menus in restaurants...it is fresh, the quality is incredible and the price is right. For dinner we went to Vlad and Maria's house and met the newest addition of their family, a 5 month old named Vladimir. We drank wine as Vlad and Liviu conducted a cook off for dinner. Italian culture and food are prized parts of Romanian life as we discovered when Vlad whipped up a pesto sauce and Liviu threw together a blue cheese sauce for the pasta. Billy and I were appointed the judges of the contest, but we found it difficult to choose, as both dishes were as good as the pasta we ate in Trieste a month ago. We sat outside on Vlad and Maria's terrace watching the moon rise over the spectacular old world European skyline in Vlad's neighborhood. We had great discussions about family, life in Romania and in the States, politics (of course), the conspiracy theories about America staging the Neil Armstrong moon landing in 1969, and the law (a subject in which Vlad is well versed as a Public Notary in Bucharest). We went to Liviu's house and the girls retired while the boys stayed up talking in the kitchen.

The next day we attended a countryside Romanian wedding about one hour outside Bucharest. Liviu's friends Doina and Horia had been married in Bucharest the weekend before and this was a second celebration for their friends and family in the countryside. The wedding began with a procession from the groom's grandma's home to the church as 80 guests followed the wedding party to the small Orthodox church at the center of town. The church itself was made of dark wood and the interior was beautifully painted with gilded scenes of the life of Jesus and portraits of the saints. The ceremony was short and involved blessings of the bride and groom and the entire congregation, so we clumsily participated and noted the differences between Catholic and Episcopalian traditions that we each know. Jen crossed herself the wrong way (Catholics make the sign of the cross by touching their forehead, then chest, then left shoulder and finally right shoulder, but in the Orthodox church they touch their shoulders in the opposite order). Luckily the priest didn't seem to care. After being blessed we walked around the pulpit and kissed each of the portraits of the saints one by one. When the ceremony finished, we ate little sweet coconut flavored ball-like bitesized cakes and then marched back down the street toward Horia's grandmother's house.

On the way back to the house we made noise to notify the neighbors that we were outside and they each came to their front gates and drank tuica (a plum hard alcohol) from a traditional wooden flask and a glass bottle that was offered by the bride and groom. This was the best part. It was great to see the neighbors come out of their homes and wish the newlyweds well. One neighbor in particular was our favorite, her name is Old Lady Banana and she was about 80 years old (we later discovered the nickname was given to her because of her tendency to grab men's crotches while dancing on tables), and she came out of her home and started singing and dancing like a gypsy and was all too happy to take a swig of the tuica.

We met a lovely American couple at the wedding, who were from Tucson, Arizona, and coincidentally the guy (Corneliu or George, depending on who you talk to...we noticed that a lot of Romanians go by two names, one is their birth name and the other is their baptized name) went to high school at Evanston Township High (Billy's Alma Mater) and was born in Romania...he was the cousin of the groom. He showed us around his grandma's farm and recounted stories of his childhood there. He pointed out the hen tree with a ladder resting on its trunk, which we would later see the hens use to climb up into the tree's branches to sleep safely out of reach of any predators. He told us about how the farmland was taken from his grandma and divided up during communist times and how they worked the land and gave 75 percent of the crops to the goverment and kept the other 25 percent for themselves. He told us stories about how he and his cousin used to light fires on the farm for fun and how he tended the potato crops, which were the most backbreaking labor on the farm.

We got to know Corneliu and Jerica well over the course of the day as we ate and drank and danced to gypsy songs played by a live band. They attended the city wedding the weekend prior, so they knew the drill and warned us that we would eat and drink until we were stuffed. The food was indescribably good. Everything was homemade from the sausages to the wine, and all the ingredients came from their farm or from the neighbor's farms. The pig was slaughtered two days before the wedding, and the fruits and veggies were so fresh. We ate coleslaw that was so spicy and tasty, that we didn't believe that it was coleslaw...even the most typically mundane dishes were elevated to a gourmet level. I picked a grape from the vine to taste it and it was so sweet that I thought I was chewing on a piece of bubble gum. We picked an apple from one of the trees on the farm and it was so crispy and tart that it tasted better than any apple I have ever taken a bite of. At sunset the cows literally came home. We looked out on the street in front of the house and saw dozens of cows returning to their homes after being out at a communal grazing spot all day. Each cow knew exactly where to go to be let in through their owner's fences. All the neighbors were either sitting outside on the curb chatting or they joined in the fun at the wedding. They also opened their homes to any of the wedding guests who wanted to stay overnight. Our hosts kept the party going by bringing out new courses of food every two hours and plying us with coffee in between glasses of wine. We learned to dance in traditional Romanian style and felt like part of the family by the end of the night when everyone was dancing on the tables.

We were hoping that our experience of Romania would be special because we are going to visit Sigisoara, where Billy's family is from, to see the old family home and the graveyard where many of the Blaus are buried. We thought that our journey to Romania would be about getting in touch with Billy's roots, but we stumbled upon a whole different experience in Bucharest. We are off to a great start here in Romania.

posted by The Blaus @ 7:04 AM