Into Romania

PICTURE TIME

I discovered I had some more Sarajevo pictures on the camera, they're now in the album.

And here are the first of the Romania pictures.



INTERVIEW WITH SAM SOLOW
This is a picture of Sam as he said "Dance, fat boy, dance!"

[Sam was my host in Clug Napoca, Romania.]

Sam has lived here two and a half years doing med school. He said that in Israel, people are like sheep in that they 'followed the pack'. The pack of Israeli med students was headed toward Hungary. In Hungary, med school is 10,000 Euros per year. While he was there, a friend told him that in Clug Napoca, it was 3,000 Euros per year. He was happy with his decision to move - even more so after Hungary raised their rates to 16,000 Euros per year. In Romania, there are ten different universities for the medical profession. Sam likes the school in Clug Napoca as they have very good clinical studies.

Sam had always wanted to be a doctor. As a teenager, he had volunteered in the 'Red Star of David' which is like the Israeli 'Red Cross'. When Sam was doing his mandatory service in the Israeli army, he was a combat medic.

Sam's father had attempted to persuade Sam to go into his chemical business, but Sam was already sold on being a medic.

Sam accepts the 'opening vodka' challenge. Total time elapsed, 5 min, 34 seconds. I'm sure he's better with his hands as a surgeon...

He likes Clug's historical areas, the pavement and the architecture. The worst part - it's not your home. Sam's home is a coastal city a half hour outside of Tel Aviv, Netanya.

He has two more years of schooling in Romania than six years more of specialization. Sam is contemplating specializing into a medical career in the states. After that, he is undecided. He knows he won't work in Romania.

[Logan: Sam is a smart guy. It will be interesting to see how his medical career goes and what he eventually decides to specialize in.]

Is the curse of Jana spreading?



ROMANIA IS GUARDED

Lots of security guards, especially in the malls wandering around in scary looking vests. They are made to look like police officers bullet proof vests but if you look closely, you'll see they're just cloth.

What hidden secret has Logan discovered within Romania?



COSTS IN CLUJ NAPOCA, ROMANIA

Taxi across town, say 4-5 KM (?), 16 RON

Movie ticket for a 3D movie, 22 RON

Kind of crappy meal at a sports bar with two .25 liter sodas and a pack of smokes because I had forgotten mine like a dumbass, 35 RON

Socks - 3 pair, 22 RON

An extra packet of ketchup at McDonald's (no, I didn't eat there but Sam's friend Amir got some while we were at the mall), 1.5 RON. Sam instructs me to let everyone know this is 'highway robbery'.



MOVIE REVIEW - THE HANGOVER

Logan gives this 8/10. It started off a bit slow - the bitchy girlfriend, the guy who is going to be getting married in just forty eight hours, the creepy new brother in law, the bachelor party. All of the normal crap we've seen in other movies. But it all starts to change when they have a drink on the roof. After that, it gets good and stays good till the end with a relatively fast taper off and resolution. While it is good, I laughed (really out loud - not this LOL shit) many times. Give it a try. As people know, I am not a huge fan of waiting for a movie to get good but in this case, I'm glad the remote was just a bit too far from my hand to get without moving. Or, just fast forward to them drinking on the roof, assume that everything else is as I said and you're in.

The best part is - they've made a second one. It hasn't made it to Romania yet or I'd have a movie review for it. But I do intend to see it.



MOVIE REVIEW - PRIEST

Well, it starts with a cartoon that is needed to explain why the world is the way it is. I have yet to see a good movie that had a cartoon before the movie started to explain shit. It's very much a facepalm thing to let you know that if you are seeing this movie in the cinema and are quick, you might be able to sneak into a different movie. If you are at home with Netflix you are screwed - it will take time to get a new movie. If you are watching it on .avi then you can delete it and say "I've just saved eighty seven minutes of my life!"

This is the story of stupid people (settlers), badass but stupid people (priests) and dicks (the clergy) and how they all come together with vampires. These aren't the glittering body ("I'm a monster!") angst ridden guys that women drool over - these are some weird eyeless science fiction monstrosities that could only loosely be termed vampires.

I do see the irony of seeing a vampire movie while I am in the Transylvanian region of Romania.

But the natives weren't really impressed.

It's another big spoon of 'look at how cool this CGI kill shot in slow motion can be' yawn movie. I suspect I'm giving it 5/10 instead of 4/10 just because I saw it in 3D which makes everything look just a bit cooler. It wouldn't make 'the collection'.

Sadly, it appears the movie ends in such a way that they expected it to do well enough for a sequel. Lets hope it doesn't come to that.



AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Thanks to Erika on Facebook for finding this.