Pilgrims’ Progress

Brasov, Romania

You might meet a bear and you could go by cable car.
But true to our tradition, we walked.
And when you’ve walked to the top, you don’t want to take the cable car down; you want to run, trip and tumble your way through the brown leaves, across the stony ground, zig-zagging twenty-two times to the bottom. The path criss-crossed the mountainside, making a much longer path than a direct one would have been. We observed that the hills we climbed in Thailand were no less steep – but there our guide just led us straight up!

Threats of Bears Who Should Be Hibernating (but just might not be) kept us on the paths. We had watched a video of bears scavenging through the dumpsters not ten metres from Leo and Lili’s apartment, we had heard of the young man mauled to death by a bear as recently as last summer on the very hill we were climbing, and today we saw his memorial at the edge of the path.
Perhaps understandably, Bear Conversation accompanied us up up up to the top.

Wouldn’t it be cool to meet one? What if we DO see one? Should we climb a tree? Where do they sleep? How long do they sleep? Can you wake them easily? Would they be hungry if they woke up now? How big are they? When do they have cubs? Wouldn’t it be great to come back here on a day that we had lots of time and there were bears around and we could watch them and if they didn’t come out we could come back the next day coz we wouldn’t be in a hurry and maybe then we could watch them and it wouldn’t be dangerous because we’d stay at the bottom of the hill and we could get away if they came near and don’t you think that would be fun?

You should try walking a hill with a five-year-old!!!! Thankfully she then raced forward to Jgirl15 and the last thing I heard before I slowed my pace to put a few more footsteps between us was, “I was just saying to mum that wouldn’t it be…..” At that point Mboy6 returned to my last-man-on-the-trail position with the loving declaration that, “I like walking with you coz time goes so much faster when there’s someone to talk to.” I think what he really meant was, “No-one else grunts back at me when I chatter on almost as endlessly as my little sister, and they certainly don’t even *attempt* to answer my questions, especially the one about do raisins help ulcers get better, and if they do, how?”  
When we returned home we decided a google search was in order to discover whether it’s an urban myth that bears can’t run fast downhill and that you shouldn’t climb a tree. We are none the wiser. We read four websites and discovered five opinions. Bears have poor smell. Bears have excellent smell and sight. Climb a tree if you have time to get higher than ten metres. Don’t ever climb a tree, unless of course you wish to be stuck up there with two cubs while the Mama waits at the bottom for you all to come down. Fight back a black bear, even with bare hands if you have to, but don’t play dead. Website three says play dead. They all agreed never to make direct eye contact. That’s a start I guess! Good thing we didn’t meet a bear.

Not that they were hibernating. We have now discovered that they simply enter a state of “winter lethargy” – they do not truly hibernate. Real hibernators (like squirrels and frogs) zip into dream land quickly and drop their body temperature significantly (frogs can freeze completely). Bears doze off slowly, cool down only a little and are EASILY aroused from their zzzzzz-ing.

But our knowledge all came later.
For the better part of the day, we climbed the hill (3km to get to the base, an hour and a half to get up the two-and-a-half-kms to 960m, lunch at the top in the biting wind, views appreciated – Brasov town is so pretty from atop the hill and there was snow on the distant mountains – forty minutes to get back down, and then another 3km back home again. Only two kids had the energy to manage the trek to market for food, and although the Father boasted he could walk for another week, he was discovered prostrate on the couch upon our return <wink> )

We didn’t take a picture of the Brasov Hollywood sign from a distance, but that’s where we walked up to, and we DID get a picture to prove *that* - lucky for us some other traveller took a pic that we have commandeered:

pic removed due to copyright - we’ll pop out and get our own today

up up up

up and turning another corner

and up some more

“Looks like a 3-D map,” one of the kids said.

If you’d like to see the bears foraging for watermelon and other goodies right outside Leo and Lili’s apartment, you can watch this video – it was shot by their friends just a few months back.

Krakow, Poland

Look how nippy it was this morning:

And last night it was –11*C in Brasov, where we are soon headed, so everyone is hoping the forecast snow will be a biggie!

Anyway, I digress, before I even begin.

Boys need their daddies.
Where did that come from?

We have a boy (not the youngest and not the eldest, which is saying little enough to ensure anonymity for the offending party, and he also happened to be the taker of the above photograph, which adds nothing further to his identity), who was sent down to the street yesterday to check the temperature on the display outside one of the shops (yes, the same one as in the picture above). It was warmer yesterday. 4 degrees C. You really can’t tell just how cold it is by simply looking out the window, and as our window does not have an outdoor thermometer like most other windows around town, we rely on the one up the road. We know to believe the thermometer. We learnt that lesson twenty years ago. One day in the middle of winter, a clear blue day greeted us, and we did not, for a moment, believe it could possibly be the minus twenty-something that our thermometer claimed it was. After weeks of murky grey, when we had needed the lights on all day long, the sun was now shining brightly.  It *had* to be warmer than that. In fact, we decided it must be over zero and so just donned jackets and headed out. It took less than a millisecond for us to be racing back up the stairs to find thermal underwear, an extra pair of socks, thick hats, long scarves, woollen coats and our sheepskin mittens to put on top of our standard gloves. Believe the thermometer.
Today I told everyone they would need hats and gloves. Said boy suggested *he* would be fine. I informed him no-one would be going out without a hat.
”Are YOU going to wear a hat?” he enquired of his Dadda.
I don’t recall if the Dadda merely grunted an affirmative or declared enthusiastically, “I’m definitely wearing one” – but that is irrelevant. The matter for the boy was now settled. His Daddy would be wearing a hat, and so he would too.

Boys also need daddies to teach them to be strong. To arm wrestle and promise that the day a child beats the adult in such an activity, there will be a celebratory dinner. That was the day before yesterday. The promise, not the beating.

Boys need daddies to teach them to be gentle. Gentlemen even. They need to watch someone, who will open the door for the girls, who will stand back and let the girls go first, who will carry the heavy load. It’s just not the same if it’s the mother always harping on at the boys to give preference to the girls – mainly, because then the little girls start demanding, “I’m a lady, you need to give way to me”, but also because the boys seem to learn so much more quickly if it’s their revered Daddy teaching the lesson. I’m not sure if this is normal behaviour, and I *do* know that it’s not desirable, but it’s the way it is in our family, and so the task of teaching the boys in particular to respect and honour their mother, to listen to her and accept she knows a thing or two that they don’t (like when it’s four degrees you need a hat, for example)  falls mainly to the Daddy.

Boys need Daddies.

Time for one more story.
Once upon a time about twenty years ago there was a young man, who lived on the seventh floor of an apartment block. One day in the middle of winter he pulled on his socks, fastened his hat under his chin, buttoned his long woollen coat, wrapped his scarf around his neck, ready to pull up over his nose before opening the front door….and out he went. This particular day the lift was a) working and b) on his floor, so he took it to ground level. As he emerged, he noticed it was cold, and he pulled his scarf up almost to his eyeballs. He opened the door that led from the stairwell to the little heat saving foyer, and closed it behind him, before opening the very front door. Even by now he was aware of something happening to him, but it would not be until he stepped out into the snow that he realised he was still wearing his slippers and his toes were snap-freezing.
Boys need daddies, who have funny stories to tell, daddies, who are not perfect, but can admit their failings and laugh at their mistakes.

I’m glad our boys are blessed with such a dadda.

As for the story behind this picture, you’ll have to wait til tomorrow to read that!

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