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Home in Ploiesti
This is where we are living for nowUpon arriving in Romania after a long and uneventful flight, Alecia and I were among the lucky that had all of out luggage arrive. Funny enough, the hardest part of the trip was flying through Philadelphia, but after traveling around that fair city I can honestly say that all of my less-than brotherly feelings from the airport have been assuaged. Thank you Erika and Rob for being stellar hosts!
Upon our arrival in Bucharest, we were greeted by friendly Peace Corps staff members. They loaded us on to a bus, and we sped off to Ploiesti (60 k from the Capitol), our home for training. The town is roughly 250,000 people and is known for its historical significance as an oil town. The first oil refinery in the world was established here in the late 19th century and, subsequently, it became the testing ground for the Allied-forces “carpet-bombing” technique as they interrupted the German supply lines. Oil is still the big player in town with three large oil companies including LukOil which used to be a part of the Yukos empire before Putin dismantled it. Other highlights include a great clock museum (which houses clocks, watches, phonographs and other odd
Street in Ploiesti
A street near our house mechanical devices), an oil museum (no surprise there) and several square miles of nondescript block apartments. All in all, the town is very dense and would probably take 40 minutes to walk across. Much of the center of town, including our area is dominated by turn of the century architecture with beautiful molding. About a block from our house is the “Bulevard” which is the major thoroughfare and runs from the south station (trains departing for all points Romanian) and the center of town. This street is lined by chestnuts which were in bloom when we arrived and is closed on weekends during the summer with cars replaced by cafes, people playing soccer or roller-skating and a general place for quality family perambulation. There are also festivals almost every weekend including Ploiesti days with fireworks, rock and roll concert etc…
At present we live with our gazda (host) Aurelia in a house with a great courtyard where we do our homework (see picture). Also here are her daughter Maria (a chemist at one of the plants) and Luminitza (an economics student who boards here). Aurelia is a pensioner and used to manage restaurants. This has its ups and downs. The
The clock museum
Local clock museum food is incredible but in the true spirit of Romanian hospitality, there is almost always too much. Four or five courses too much. It is great food, don’t get me wrong. Staples are:
1. salad (unlike Mongolia thankfully)
2. ciorba or supa (stew or soup with any variety of meat/noodle/vegetable)
3. mamaligutza (cornmeal mush - similar to grits, with sharp sheep cheese and eggs)
4. a meat dish (usually pork) or something stuffed (peppers, eggplants, tomatoes)
5. bread (always. If you like Adkins diets, shy away from RO)
6. fruit and desert
The house itself quite lovely - especially compared to the bloc apartments. Inside are colorful rugs, cabinets of china, lovely plants and flowers and many, many religious icons. Early on, I found a gym to burn off the delicious (and substantial) Romanian meals, and Alecia does pilates in the formal living room under the watchful eyes of the Orthodox Saints. Our gazda mother is quite religious - but to our surprised furnished Alecia with a pea soup colored exercise mat to keep her off the floor when doing yoga and pilates. Much to our chagrin, sitting or lying on the floor is quite a no-no here - as
Classic hotel sinaia
A hotel off the Orient Express is walking bare foot. It’s considered by many to be un-sanitary, puts you at risk of freezing your ovaries.
Living here has been great, though we have had a few rough moments. The most dramatic so far was last week when we were using the washing machine on a particularly sacred sabath and Aurelia returned from church. Apparently this was a huge offence and we were soundly scolded. Generally we are pretty good though and we try to help as much as possible. These endeavors are, sadly, curtailed by Romanian hospitality and tradition. Hospitality makes it hard for Alecia to go into the kitchen and tradition makes it sinful for me to be there. I did have a good moment explaining to Aurelia that men in America do indeed do laundry, which she accepted and then promptly told to all the neighbors. Somehow though I am lauded as a good and enviable husband for knowing how to cook, iron, launder etc…this does not translate into being allowed to do any of these things in the house. As they say here “asta e” that’s life…
We have also provided our share of cross cultural humor for the heartache caused
Cafe
At a cafe with Gazda Aunt and Sister by the washing machine incident. For instance the night Alecia, a friend of ours and I, got home about two hours late because we were chatting in a classroom after school and got locked in. It took a while to get out because even though there were kids in the courtyard below it was not as if we knew what to yell…then tonight when we came home the gate was locked and Mama came out to just in time to see some mysterious hand (Alecia’s) sticking the fence. She had dropped the key on the other side much to Gazda mom’s amusement.
Our daily schedule usually consists of breakfast around 7:30 (see picture). Showers and off to school with lunch in hand (see leftovers + bread). Half of the day is language class where we learn the ins and outs of Romanian. Romanian is a very interesting language and can be beautiful. Once in a while that beauty is lost as we strive to remember conjugation of verbs and tenses/agreements between nouns, adverbs, adjectives and assorted participles. With 80% of the language having Latin roots the number of cognates is high and after a month of language here we
Old Home Sinaia
Old Home in Sinaia are definitely further along than after a month of Mongol. This can also be frustrating as we catch an increasing number of words but are not able to respond as we might wish.
The other half of the day is spent in a practicum (read internship) where we learn about Romanian organizational structure. Alecia has been assigned to the mayor’s office of Berceni (a small village outside of town) and I am with the Prahova County EPA.
Alecia: Although assigned to the mayor, my colleges and I discovered early on that with no English speakers in the office, little would happen with out some creativity. After a few days of visiting and a raucous picnic, began working with a dynamic young woman (14 yrs) to develop community awareness about littering and recycling. We formed a team of students and teachers, and with support from the mayors office, cleaned the school yard, held an art contest, created and distributed a poster educating townspeople about littering and recycling issues, led a project planning workshop and wrapped up with a town clean up. It was an amazing experience, and I can only hope that in the next 2 years I can
Doorknob
A door knob at Pelesh accomplish half as much in my new site. I was completely un prepared for the warm welcome we received, and for the strength of the young woman that led our project. I don’t remember much from being her age, but I certainly wasn’t leading a town clean-up and discussing human rights issues. It was a gift to work with her, and to offer her the support she needed to turn her pipe dream into reality. Plus we had a lot of fun hanging out, picnicking, dancing, and playing ball in the forest.
Back to Chris:
I have been developing a PR campaign for the EPA. So far my group has run a couple of organization analysis meetings, designed a flyer/contest for school kids, a poster campaign for the general public and accompanying press packet and fundraising templates. This has been an interesting process for a variety of reasons. One of the things we hear a lot about is the post-Communist depression and lack of communication. Pre-revolution, anything you said could and probably would be used against you. This makes internal communications hard and external communications tricky as well. Additionally, the bureaucracy and control of the era seem to have
OutsidePelesh
Outside Pelesh led to a serious issue with negativity. This nearly fatalistic attitude seems to be one of the main things Peace Corps successfully addresses. We were told several times on the way over that though Romania may be known as the Posh-Corps for its technologically savvy state, it is an incredibly challenging assignment because the real service is delivered through being a catalyst in the change of social attitude. The can-do positive tenacity of Americans is nearly completely lacking here. Here, no means no in some of the strangest situations. Alecia ran into a situation at her work where they gave up on applying for loans because the first bank told them no. Finally, a positive outlet for American arrogance.
On the other hand, while most Romanian organizations and agencies struggle with problem solving, communications and planning, the population is incredibly well educated. The county EPA here has 65 employees of whom 50 have advanced degrees. It has been a pleasure working with all of them and they certainly know how to do what they do incredibly well. All in all, I would say it is a fortuitous partnership. They have a lot to be proud of and I am
Mountains By Pelesh
Mountains and Pelesh glad I can help them work on garnering public support which makes their public policy arm functions easier.
And with the rest of our time…studying takes the vast majority. But we do get out once in a while. The first weekend we were here we went to our Gazda Mama’s church (built with the profits from a house she sold). We went on a Saturday which seems to be when the services remembering the dead are held. After a Romanian dies, they are commemorated with parties after 9 days, 30 days, 6 months, a year, 3 years and (I believe 7 years). I don’t understand all of this but it is very important to folks here and the parties can get quite elaborate. The church is a beautiful wood structure and had some fantastic icons. We stayed for 30 minutes or so, were blessed by an inquisitive looking priest and came home. Sunday we went to Sinaia, a stop on the Orient express and a local favorite mountain destination. There we visited a monastery and Pelesh castle (see pictures). This was the summer home of the Hapsburg family king. Romania has been politically fractured since the Romans pulled out
PeleshTower
Pelesh Tower with little unity other than national pride since. The Ottomans, Hapsburgs, Russians, Polish, Greek, Hungarians, Bulgars and Germans all had stakes here and made political unity very difficult. The Romanians decided to elect a king after their first real bid for a unified country began in the mid 19th century. A Hapsburg was brought in and though this did not ensure a stable parliament (it came and went) it did put Romania on the road to modernity. Pelesh is beautiful once one puts aside thoughts like “man, how much did this set of furniture cost the average Vlad in taxes…” The setting is serene and the art (including a cinema with wall frescos painted by a young Gustav Klimpt) fantastic.
The following weekend, we headed to Busteni and Bucegi national park. Highlights of the trip included the tram ride up from which we saw mountain goats, sledding on the glaciers at the top using plastic bags, beautiful wildflowers on the hike, a good picnic by a monastery in the valley below, the snow and hail on the way back up, and almost getting struck by lightning. I look forward to the next trip when I can spend a few
Guard House
Guard House By Pelesh days out and do some cabin to cabin backpacking or skiing up there.
So at the end of the day, the weather has been good, the food delicious, the people great and we are ready to get to work.
Bucharest:
We spent this weekend in Bucharest - capital of RO and not to be confused with Budapest which happens. While visiting we walked a good 30 km when not taking the quite clean underground. Our first stop was the Village Museum (Museul Satului) where there are recreations of village homes from around RO. This was certainly an interesting stop in that it provided a good snapshot of the regional variations. It was also the first time, for better or worse that we ran into a bunch of American tourists. One of them looked at me and pulled her purse closer which I take as a great compliment. If Americans are mistaking me as a Romanian than the Romanians can’t be that much further behind, right? Another highlight was when we were walking through one of the many beautiful parks and our gazda asked a woman for directions. In very clear English the lady said “sorry, I don’t speak
SinaiaMonastery
Sinaia Monastery Column Romanian”. For once the tables had turned and we were not the children. The rest of the first day was spent trekking from park to park and getting lunch at a American-esque fast food joint. Our gazda was so excited to take us there. Just like home right? Not really and it would not have been our first choice but asta e. After lunch we visited a couple of good art exhibits and a few more parks before dinner with family friends. One of dinner’s more enlightening points was the linguistic tendencies of Romanian flora. Dogs don’t bark here, they “hom.” Frogs don’t ribbit or croak, they “oac.” This came up after one of our dinner partners asked if, considering Alecia’s partially French ancestry, she had eaten frog legs. At the time we did not know the word for Frog and so they decided to act it out for us. But as the frogs speak a different language we just ended up with 6 adults in a restaurant making a wide variety of animal noises in different languages … good times.
Day two involved beautiful old town Bucharest and the People’s House - Casa Popului. This is the second
Teeter
Alecia and Maria on Teeter-totter largest building in the word after the Pentagon and a lot prettier. The façade can be found on the net but fewer pictures of the interior. The whole building is made from Romanian materials including several million cubic feet of marble. The project was Ceacescue’s but was unfinished when he, as our guide put it, died from lead poisoning (for those who do not know, he and his wife were the last executions conducted in RO). It is actually still only 90% complete but has been decorated and I thought it was quite beautiful. I have gone back and forth on this count with numerous Romanians and Americans. On one hand, yes, it is beautiful but on the other, many folks here do not see the beauty through the massive consumption of resources and/or personal experience as a “volunteer” on the project. Also interesting to me was the apparent dichotomy between the fact that this was constructed by a communist who’s other architectural blessing upon the land was the bloc apartment, but it is incredibly decadent. I think it is worth appreciating for what it is now and as an interesting glimpse into the psychology ad history of the era.
Busteni Town
Town of Busteni Surely easier for me as an outsider.
Regarding psychology and architecture, Bucharest is a fantastically interesting reflection of Romania. Pre-communist, communist and post communist architecture are all extant in close proximity. Pre-communist with its beautiful, somewhat Austrian/somewhat Turkish influence next to communist bloc, next to post communist revival of pre-communist architecture or futurism. Blocs that have been redone and other buildings use blocs as a theme… all, I thought, very interesting to see contextually as the country deals with its history and decides its future.
In the end, we need to go back. We saw Bucharest through the eyes of our gazda and though we saw many parks, there is a lot we missed. Not to mention the restaurants … next time.
Pitesti -
Alecia and I spent our fifth weekend here working on a Habitat for Humanity trip in the north-central Wallachian town of Piteshti. Piteshti is the home of the Dachia (Romania’s national car for the last 50 years). Interestingly, Dachia was built on a French car design and a few years ago the French auto company Renault bought Dachia back. They put $50 million into the company and reportedly another $20 Million into community
Alecia on Mountaintop
Alecia on Mountaintop development which may explain the stunning cleanliness of Piteshti. We stayed in the Hotel Muntenia right in the middle of downtown. Other than the split-pea soup green carpets and matching phones, the place was quite nice and provided a good lookout onto the pedestrian mall at the center of town. On Saturday we (and about 30 of our colleagues) drove to the site in a small village about 20 kilometers outside of town to begin work. Our job was to dig a trench for a water line around an old army barracks that was to become a group of apartments. Once we moved several decades’ worth of broken glass, furniture, syringes and other trash we made fairly quick progress on the trench. Lunch was our first experience with Romanian fast-food (unlike the American-esque fast food in Bucharest) and included one of my new favorites here, shwarma. This middle-eastern treat includes chicken, french-fries and cucumbers all wrapped up in a cross between pancake and tortilla that I am assuming was meant to be a pita. After several hours in a trench (or fac trenche - to make trench) anything would have looked good but these really hit the spot.
The
glacier
Glacier trip included a couple of other culinary highlights that I can blame on the French expatriots in the town. First was the French restaurant (nothing particularly French about it), then the Italian restaurant (wonderful) and last the Chinese place (somewhere in between). These were the first non-Romanian joints we had visited as we do not eat out in our own town and were a pleasant break. Like all things Romanian to date, they each had their idiosyncrasies, however, such as the blue cheese salad I ordered at the French place. Unlike what I was expecting, and what was described on the menu, I received an impressive pile of blue cheese mixed thoroughly with oil, vinegar and cabbage (all in equal proportion). I guess it was a fusion food.
Another point of the trip was our second run in with Romanian anti-Gypsy ism. There are officially 535,000 odd Roma in Romania (unofficially and much more realistically there are closer to 2 million). The Roma were brought to Romania as slaves and have remained a marginalized group ever since. They were slaves (lower even than the serfs) for an additional 500 years and now are widely distrusted and hated. Beyond reports
meadow
meadow of police brutality, there are issues with general racism. The situation has some striking resemblances to American history with African and Native Americans. There are separate schools, a disenfranchised voter population, a lack of social services, outright discrimination in the work force etc… Unlike the civil right movement in the Untied States however, there has been little to no success organizing the Roma as a voting bloc, demonstrators or vocal minority. The whole situation is incredibly complicated and I am certainly not going to pretend to be able to go into it at length, but if you are interested, check out the following sites.
What precipitated the prior paragraph was a Romanian Habitat volunteer talking about the Roma who lived next to our project and their music. Talking about how dirty they all were, the fact that they were all thieves etc… The first time I ran across this was on day three when, while walking down the boulevard and chatting in with a couple of Roma teens, a young non-Roma rolled by on a mountain bike and said, matter-of-factly, “don’t talk to them, they are F-ing tsigan”(Roma). I can honestly say that there have been incredibly few times
MountainFog
Fog on Mountains in my life when a minority group has been referred to in such a knowingly derogatory way right in front of them. Hearing this from a 14 year old punk was one thing, discussing it with a 25 year old, educated and socially mobile individual was another level of depressing. On the bright side, perhaps, there is a lot of legislation demanded by the EU that addresses this discrimination but the legislation is not due to grass roots awareness raising (or riots) and these attitudes are going to take a lot longer to change.
More from Alecia:
To bring this completely up to date, we have this most recent weekend which is the 3 year anniversary of our gazda’s late husband’s death. We woke up bright and early this morning expecting to be trotted off the cemetery, but unfortunately because of rain were made to stay home and eat (very Romanian). A bit later, the car returned and we were whisked off to the family church for a beautiful few hours of singing, praying, blessings, incense, and candle burning. It was really quite moving. The most interesting bit was at the end when everyone (except us, b/c we had
Pasture
Pasture no idea what was going on) and snatched up all the food offerings on the table. They gathered at the front of the church in a clump so that they could all be touching some food item and sang while the priest poured a few drops of home made wine on this stuff called “coliva”. (boiled whole wheat - I think - with sugar, ground up biscuits, ground walnuts and cinnamon. The “coliva” is formed into a mold and decorated with sugar and candles. While all this was happening they were gently bouncing the food up and down. I’m not quite sure what this is all about yet, but I’m aware of similar practices in other cultures where the bouncing is supposed to help the spirit of the dead person go the heaven or not become stuck in this world… After the service, we went to the cemetery and cleaned the grave site and went through a similar ritual with candles, singing, flowers and bouncing. Then it was lunch time, so we retired to the house to start in on the mounds of food the women here have been cooking for the last week. It was a very traditional meal
The snow storm
The snow storm - first cold plates with cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, cheese, olives, and meats. Then these great crepe things that had been stuffed with meat and mushrooms and formed to look like change purses (not traditional, our gazda got the idea on TV). Then mamaligutza and sarmale (ground meat, rice and spices wrapped in cabbage or grape leaves and slow cooked). Then steak and veggies, and finally the all important desert, ice cream with fruit, a traditional sweet bread called cozonac (my favorite) and coliva. All complimented by twuika (traditional plum brandy), home made wine, seltzer, and soda. I could go on for days about all the neat stuff we witnessed and the tasty food we ate, but that’s probably enough for now. I’m off to go eat again.
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Dan MacLaughlin
non-member comment
Freezing Ovaries
Hey guys, Your stories and photos send me back to my PST in Slovakia. Six years and two kids later, Siobhan and I are very pleased to discover that she didn't freeze her ovaries too severely from a lifelong habit of sitting on the bare ground. ;-) Looks like you have a wonderful couple of years ahead of you. I'm holding my thumbs for the both of you. Dan