ROMANIAN SWEARING

YOU ARE WHAT YOU CARRY

This is a nice article from the couch surfing site. Aside from the laminated copy of the passport with the current stamp on it, I carry all of this stuff.



QUOTE OF THE DAY

From my host and evil wizard, Sauron, on day two of me being there directed at Logan: "You evil, evil man."



SWEARING IN ROMANIAN

Romanians have ultra creative swears that sound very odd when translated into English but when said in Romanian have a big effect. Some examples would be "I'm going to take your mothers (grave) cross and make skis." Or, "Fuck the carpenter who built the drawer that the condoms were stored in one of which broke and caused you to be born..." (etc - it goes on and on). Another is along the lines of "I want to jack off on my foot and kick your mother in her pussy and..." Again, it continues on and on. I had no idea they were so creative in their swearing. If the Soviets here were as creative in their building of inexpensive public housing, I might be living in a giant tree right now or some weird shit. Just like the Keebler Elves.



MOLDOVA

Diana and Sauron's friends also told me that in Cricova they have a giant underground winery. By giant I mean 200 KM of tunnels giant. Like bigger than the VC tunnels giant, though hopefully not armed with booby traps and pits with tigers.



STRANGE DRINKING HABITS

When people want to drink for a long time, they add Coke to wine. This is commonly done with red, though I have seen it done with white. I suspect this is because the price of wine is so cheap that the people basically are just trying to get the alcohol out of it.



ROMANIA MEAL TIMES

In Romania, they eat mind bogglingly late - like 8PM to 10PM, depending. Fortunately, for my dining, they have a weird time thing going on here so for me it subjectively seems that time is going by faster than it probably is. Possibly because I am having a great time. Or am getting old. Either way, it is working for me.



RESTAURANTS

In Romania, all restaurants have what they call a 'menu of the day'. In reality, this is their 'daily lunch special'. This daily lunch special is served at only certain hours of the day and generally ranges between 12-15 ROM. You can either order this special - which typically includes three small courses (soup and/or salad, meal, desert) or off of the normal menu at full price.



WHERE LOGAN IS STAYING

At the time of the writing, it is my third day with Diana and Sauron. Sauron cast an evil spell on me to pass me his cold. Sauron likes to cook for me and his cooking is pretty good - simple, wholesome dishes. Sadly, the crap you go buy in restaurants here isn't as good as what he cooks. Seriously - if there is good restaurant food here I haven't found it yet. Their traditional foods are rather bland and the same stuff as neighboring countries have. I've also tried a couple Romanian beers. They should just import more Czech and German beers. Aside from the wine, all the food and drink in Romania has been a letdown.

So far, honestly, Romania has been a bit of a letdown for me as well - aside from the people I've met. In addition to the hosts I've been staying with, the current ones also have a very large (10+?) circle of friends and I've been meeting them. Their friends seem to like to get together and talk. And drink, naturally.

One thing that Diana and Sauron have been doing that I really appreciate is keeping the conversations in English. If it goes into Romanian, they'll give me a 'Cliff Notes' version so that I can keep up on what's going on. That's really nice of them and doesn't make me feel excluded.

Because of the people here, I'm having a great time.



PEOPLE'S SPIRIT

I've noticed that there is no nostalgia for the good old days of walls and restricted travel to keep people in or secret police (AKA Communism).



PRICES

Bottle of Romanian wine, 14 ROM

Bottle of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum, I think 40-50 ROM.

Kahlua is difficult to get here.