What happens when the ice melts?

I am currently suffering through an incredible euphoria. Somehow, the weather here is so predictable that the school year calendar (standard at all Romanian universities) perfectly coincides with the weather. So as the new term starts this week, we're having sunshine all day and temperatures are creeping up - today it got up to 70 (Fahrenheit, of course).

Last week was the one week semester break, and included the following weather:

Monday: Freezing temperatures, overnight snow.
Tuesday: Snow all day.
Wednesday: mid 50s, melting snow dripping off of rooftops.
Thursday: mid 40s. Nothing special.
Friday: Cold but sunny.
Saturday: Cold but sunny, with rain at dusk. (Not cold enough to snow)
Sunday: mid 40s and sunny.
Monday: mid 50s and sunny.
Tuesday: 60s and sunny.
Wednesday: 70 and brilliantly warm sunshine all day.

I've heard that now that the days are getting longer, the good weather is here to stay. "This is the best time of the year," I was told today. Sweet...

So, what happens when the ice melts?
Feet jump into roller blades and roll through pot-holed sidewalks and empty lots of dirt. Bodies of all ages jump onto bikes and pedal on pedestrian streets. Old people and others lacking full mental capacity roam through lanes of busy traffic while horns honk and cars swerve around them. The cool kids come out to play. Young men don denim shorts while walking dogs. Old men go running in black spandex suits.

Somehow I find all of this incredibly invigorating - not the shorts or the spandex, but the people outside doing things. So even though the old people who stare at me are still staring the same way, I somehow smile back instead of getting frustrated. I think it's just because it's so much easier to be outside now! And I really do love being outside - this country is beautiful!. It's not freezing, my fingers won't fall off, I won't get bruises from falling down icy trails...these things are important.

So as much as I enjoyed skiing and watching the dirt and potholes get covered in the whitest snow, I'm stoked that the ice has decided to melt.

Now, the only problem is the brown trees on Mt. Tampa. When does spring turn green?

Religious Matters

I've been debating whether or not to write a post about religion. Reason against: I don't have much to say beyond my own limited encounters. Reason for: I like the photos.

Photos win. Perhaps this post is more aptly titled something like "Buildings I like: Houses of Worship in Eastern Europe." But getting on with it...

When in Romania, start with the Romanian Orthodox Church (right), of course. The majority of Romanians identify as members of the Orthodox church. It's interesting to see how that plays out in people's lives. For many people, going to church, etc. doesn't seem as pressing as other parts of daily life. Yet people still seem to incorporate their faith by explaining things that happen through a spirituality.

It's interesting to watch Romanians that I know as they visit a church or monastery - they usually light a luminary inside or outside and approach the icons. Usually inside the church there are many elderly people and some young ones as well, coming and going or simply sitting and contemplating. The most noticeable practice outside the church is something I see all the time - whenever people pass a church (walking, or on the bus, etc.) they cross themselves three times. I like watching people on the bus as they clean off the window to see when the church is coming. You have to know where they are, and which buildings are churches, after all! I've only been to part of one service, which was at the Patriarch's Cathedral in Bucharest. There were several priests standing near different chapels inside the church. Groups of people crowded around them in order to be blessed. It was interesting to see how the crowd would move if a new priest arrived. Someone (I think it was a student of mine) told me that services are generally "come and go" like this; services might have a starting time, but the only people who arrive then are the old women. In the hours that follow, more people show up. There are no pews (and relatively few Jews - sorry, that is a joke I swear but maybe not in this context); instead everyone stands. Traditionally the men stood on one side and women on the other.

Other Christian groups I've encountered include Jehovah's Witnesses (they come to my door regularly and one of them knows my name), Seventh Day Adventists (I wrote about this in October) (above left, tall building), Mormons (mostly Americans), and the evangelical Christian student group. Most of these churches have ties to Americans, either directly (having an American minister), with clergy trained in the U.S., or affiliated with American congregations.

Now let's leave Romania. Watching the Serbian protests on CNN this week, I saw the protests at Saint Sava, the huge white "temple on the hill" that is a symbolic landmark in Belgrade (white church above right). I was just there a few weeks ago - it's so strange to think of how different it must be now. When I was there, at the church specifically, there were a few groups of people walking in and out, but inside the main action was the construction (above left). The church is almost completed but there is still some interior work to do. Outside it was just like a park with families playing and abandoned leaflets blowing in the wind.

In Istanbul, there was a mosque - or five - in every possible direction. The Blue Mosque was the only one we visited, if my memory serves me correctly (small photo above right). The Blue Mosque attempts to out do the Hagia Sophia (which was converted to a mosque with the addition of minarets, among other things), and from the outside it definitely impressed me more. But the interior of the Hagia Sophia is just awesome (and cold) (small photo above left). So, like I said. I like buildings.

When It Snows, Photos Say It Best

It's snowing again (finally), and this is why I'm excited:

Above: My back yard in Brasov (sometime pre-now)

Above: Busteni - I'm going up there soon! (Dec. 2007)

Above: Brasov from Mt. Tampa (Dec. 2007)

Above: Brasov, from the walk to the White Tower (Dec. 2007)

Above: Skiers at Poiana Brasov - me soon enough! (Jan. 2008)

Tales from the Train

Last Friday morning my 5 o'clock cross-country train pulled out of the Sibiu train station. Two hours later we rolled into an anonymous station and the conductor left the train. The employees of CFR, the national train company, had gone on strike demanding higher wages. As I sat with the other passengers, wondering what the rest of the day would bring, one woman nicely summed up the general sentiment with her statement that we could be waiting there ten minutes, three hours, or three days. Naturally, some of the passengers made motions to organize a bus ride to our destination, while others crowded around the door to make sure the arriving media crews would hear their opinions. They encouraged everyone to join with invitations of "come, come!" Three hours after stopping we started moving again with the apparent resolution of the wage dispute. So that was that.

The recent surge in my time spent traveling may need an explanation - it's currently semester break. Well not really; it's currently the exam period. Exam period lasts 4 weeks, but most exams are held during the last week of class, or the first two weeks of Exam period. So next week is the actual semester break. But, for most, it's a 5 week break from class or anything related to school. Many students head home as soon as their exams are over, and few are interested in spending this time period learning about studying in the U.S. (interest is particularly low when it comes to learning about standardized admissions tests, which is what I had scheduled for this week). So, I have some time.

One way to fill that time is to plan for next semester's classes. Unfortunately, just like in the fall, I won't know what I'm teaching - or who I'm teaching - until possibly next week. I just hope that unlike in the fall, I find out before the first day of the semester. I'm planning nonetheless.

But last week I went traveling. In addition to Belgrade (below), I hit up Sibiu for a few hours overnight, Timisoara for less than 24 hours but including some sunlight, a trip to their massive mall, and dinner at a Greek place, as well as Bucharest for a whole 3 days.

If you look at a map of Romania, you'll see that traveling to these cities on the same trip doesn't really make sense. That's cause sometimes, that's just how we roll...

But here's my story, in trains:
Thursday night: Brasov to Sibiu, 19:30 - 21:01
Friday morning: Sibiu to Timisoara, 5:00 - 13:00 (delayed half way through for above strike)
Saturday morning: Timisoara to Belgrade 6:03 - 8:54 (one hour time change)
Monday afternoon to Tuesday morning: Belgrade to Bucharest via Timisoara, 15:55 - 5:39
Friday evening: Bucharest to Brasov, 18:50 - 21:27

No, no, that's not a story. My apologizes. The highlights from the train rides include the strike, which Nicole and I (en route to Timisoara) slept through for an hour before I woke up, read a text from Meghan, and realized that we hadn't left the station we pulled into an hour before. With our phones and other passengers we pulled together the story, which included that Cristina's train (Bucharest to Timisoara) had also stopped, like all trains across the country, but hers unfortunately stopped in the middle of a field. (Luckily, she speaks Romanian.) The strike was apparently announced the night before because a few people knew it was going to happen, yet most people on my train had no idea.

Another highlight - the overnight adventure (indeed) from Belgrade to Bucharest. There were a lot of uncertainties heading into this trip - would Meghan and I get into Romania with our temporary residence permits (pieces of paper with writing)? Would I be able to go all the way to Bucharest, even though I'd originally bought a ticket to Timisoara? Would the customs agents check under our seats for smuggled blue jeans? Do we actually need seat reservations even though the ticket agent said we didn't?

Questions we should have been asking were more along the lines of:

Are we waiting at the right track? (A: no)

Does this train go to Timisoara? (A: yes, but only after traveling west for 5 minutes, stopping at another Belgrade station for 20 minutes, then proceeding east toward Timisoara with another 20 minute stop at a teeny tiny station a few minutes outside of Belgrade)

Why does this train take 5.5 hours to travel just over one hundred miles? (A: why??)

What's it like to travel 2nd class overnight on a train to Bucharest? (A: freezing cold or stiflingly hot, depending on whether you've crossed the border yet)

Do we actually need seat reservations even though the ticket agent said we didn't? (A: undetermined)

The Belgrade ticket agent said we didn't need the seat reservations. On the train, we had to buy seat reservations because the conductor said we needed them. We grudgingly scraped together our remaining dinars as they scribbled on official looking receipts and assured us we were all set. As our train pulled out from Timisoara, the Romanian conductors came through and informed us that the reservations were no good. And yet, we didn't have to buy another. That's one of those times when Romania makes you feel good.

As for smuggling blue jeans (or other things), we didn't get accused, although it would have been fun. Basically, the seats on these trains lift up and apparently there's some storage space below. The customs agents checked the seats in surrounding compartments and the ceiling of our car, but left us alone. When one guard came through (I can't remember if he was Serbian or Romanian) he looked at my passport, and saw that we were American. In English, he asked (allegedly), "Do you have anything to declare?" but as I didn't hear that at all, I stared at him blankly, as did my traveling companions. He then looked suspiciously at my passport again, peered at me oddly and slowly said, "Do you speak English?" Oh yes, of course. "I asked you a question." (You did?) "Do you have anything to declare?" Oh oh sorry, um, no.

The last "highlight" was my trip back to lovely little Brasov from Bucharest. Being so close to Bucharest, I've traveled this route many many times before. This train originates in Bucharest (like everything) and heads all the way to Budapest. Nicole was joining me in Brasov for the night, so we bought our tickets together and made the journey to our car. Wagon 1. 1 of, I dunno, 20 or so? The last one was 462, but I'm pretty sure there weren't 462 cars. Our trek to wagon 1 took a good 5 minutes at a fast pace - that's a long time to get to your seat. But sadly when we got to wagon 1, the hallways were crowded and our seats were taken. We peaked next door and found seats in a nearby car, only to be uprooted by a distraught Romanian woman a few minutes later. We considered kicking people out of our seats, but instead found two seats in a car with a few other passengers. I'm not entirely sure what happened during the rest of the trip (I was in and out of dozing after a nearly sleepless night before this), but basically I was woken up 1o or 12 times as our fellow passengers climbed over us to get out of the compartment and into the hallway, and back. In the hallway they joined dozens of young Romanians (mostly men) sipping stinky beer and clustered into piles around suitcases. When they returned to our car, they would stare at Nicole and I, who made no attempt to appear anything other than American (by having a conversation in English). We were glad when the train pulled into Brasov at 21:30 on the dot. Nicole commented that of all her train trips, my "ride from Bucharest to Brasov was the most interesting." I assured her this was not normally the case.

Overall, train traveling this time around was a success. Basically, if you make it to your destination, it's a success. And don't take that as a complaint - I'm just being optimistic. After all, it's not like Amtrak's got anything on Eastern European trains.

Beyond Moravita and the Border

I sort of unintentionally ended up being invited on a trip to Belgrade. So I was lucky. My travel companions had their own reasons to go: living a few hours away, a best friend who lived their for several years, a course a few years ago in Serbo-Croatian, not to mention the exciting election they were all looking forward to. So I boarded the train with them and headed off on my first international train adventure since arriving in Romania.

Belgrade, it turns out, is beautiful (which tends to be my opinion of any city I visit). The people are ridiculously friendly – I felt like someone visiting the U.S., awestruck by the comfortable anonymity combined with the overwhelming approachability of the people around me.

We spent two days (well, one day and half of the next one) wandering around the city, stopping in restaurants for massive meals of meat, cheese, yummy bread, and lots of tomato and cucumber salads. Somehow, being vegetarian became an issue and every Serb I met told me I wouldn’t find anything to eat. But cheese revealed itself as a true staple of my eastern European diet, in every form. Srpska salad, svopska salad, and Greek salad also pulled through once again. But to be honest, I wasn’t there for the food…

Belgrade has this strange combination of feeling like a totally developed city (compared, at least, to Romanian cities) while demonstrating a visible history of degradation. In spite of the fact it was bombed less than a decade ago, its churches, theatres, government buildings, and squares glitter in the sunlight. Families fill up the parks surrounding them, playing with “guns” (twigs from trees) or on playgrounds. The fortress (which we unfortunately did not get to visit during daylight) somehow explains that resilience – its strategic location in a way shows how Belgrade has survived as a city for so long. Yet in spite of all that seeming glory, there are some remnants of bombed buildings.

The thing that really attracted me to Belgrade is the construction that I saw everywhere. This is the same thing that attracts me to Berlin, which is an entirely different city but I think this link is somewhat enlightening. Both of these cities have fluidity to them – the construction signals change. In Berlin it’s on an entirely different scale, but in both cities you can tell that people are not giving up. People have a claim to their city and have somehow created the energy it takes to carry out all those projects.

With those thoughts, here are some photos from the city – mostly street art and sunlight.