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do not worry about what you will eat or what you will wear

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Brasov, Romania

Our clothes are wearing out a bit. We’ve been living in the same two long-sleeved tops, two short-sleeved tops, two long pants and two short pants for over a year now. Handwashing gets things really clean, but it is also much harder on clothes than a fancy-schmancy washing machine (which I have missed far less than I anticipated – probably due in large part to the fact that the older five children wash all of their own clothes and Rob seems to squish the rest around the sink. He’s my hero!)
Romania is full of second-hand clothes stores, which in turn are full of reasonable clothes at more-than-reasonable prices. And so I’ve picked up a few pieces. If we had more time to sift through and try things on, we could get even more, but I’ve spent almost the whole day in front of the computer screen, tidying up the blog.
I realised I was waaaay behind on our Room With A View pictures. Not any more. If you really have nothing better to do and want to have a look at the 153 different places we have slept in so far, you can do so RIGHT HERE. Or if you’d like to see just a small selection from a hilltribe hut to a beachside spot, you can CLICK HERE.
While I was at it, I updated the DRESSED TRADITIONALLY page. It is about as sparse as our own wardrobes. We had a vision of taking lots of traditional dress pictures, but it just didn’t happen. I think we got a bit caught up with food pics! If you don’t mind slobber all over your keyboard, I’ve added lots and lots and lots of pictures to the NOURISHMENT TRADITIONS page. Warning: if you are on dialup, you’ll need to go and bake your bread for a whole week and pickle some gherkins while the page loads.

Exciting note for the sock-knitters, who follow this blog.
We brought along a few pairs of shop-socks and a pile of handknit socks.
Guess which ones have worn the best – by a looooong way. We don’t have one pair of shop socks without a hole (the last pair surrendered on our walk on Saturday). Only one pair of handknit socks has got a hole – and that was not made with proper sock wool. So there ya go. Keep on knitting.

PS It’s one month ’til Christmas!

Posted in 2008/09, dress, food, housing, postcard: Romania, tradition | 2 Comments »

asking the right questions

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Brasov, Romania

You’ve got to know what questions to ask.

On both Saturday and Sunday I asked different people how Romania has changed over the past hundred years. You could ask that question in New Zealand and likely receive a response about the introduction of automobiles and electricity, and the disappearance of outhouses and suburban vegetable gardens.
Here people threw their hands up and claimed, “That’s much too long!” (never mind that they have a much much much longer history than kiwi-land!)
In each instance, they then turned to talking about post-89.
When I pressed for a longer timeframe (what about the fifty years before that?), it turned out that fifty was an inconvenient number. Time had to be counted in terms of pre-communism versus during-communism. It occurred to me that life is very politically driven here. I had expected answers to do with the availability of commodities, but I was fed worldview. What sort of apples or apartment you can buy pales in significance when freedom is at stake.

One younger lady commented that it was easier during communism as *everyone*  could get an apartment, whereas now it is virtually impossible for the likes of her. Those not even a decade older than her felt differently – instead of being just eight years old at the time of the revolution (89), they were double that, and while they are also unable to buy an apartment, they would choose freedom any day.
An even older man, one who has seen pre-communism, communism and post-revolution commented wryly, “During communism we were not allowed to talk, now we are allowed, but we don’t.” He also observed, “During communism we were not allowed to think. Now we have to learn to think again, individually and as a nation.” I would have loved to ask more questions on this – did you actually stop thinking? how did you raise your children? did you view people with suspicion? do you today?
But the conversation moved on to other matters. Patriotism, as I recall. Are Romanians patriotic? Apparently one in ten is leaving the country, so this made the answerer think NO. But we see far more Romanian flags flying here than we would see kiwi ones in New Zealand. There are hints of patriotism that are completely missing in New Zealand. I wonder if this is because we have more-or-less had our country given to us. We have not been overrun by marauding hordes, we have not had kings fighting over us, dividing up our land, we have not lived under and fought to get out of the control of a dictator. (And perhaps that explains, if simplistically, why the Maori have a stronger sense of identity – they may well feel overrun and subjected to live under a different value system.)

In such a politically-driven country you’d expect to see crowds thronging to the voting booths. Yes? No. Yesterday was presidential election day. Twenty years ago about 95% of the population cast their vote. But twenty years on, not enough has changed, corruption is still rife (no-one seems to know where the bulk of the EU money disappears to, and neither do they expect to be able to find out), and politicians are not to be trusted. Just a quarter of the population turns out to have their say. The vote is close – 31.17% to 32.42%. It will go to a second round, but the average man on the street feels unaffected by the result.
As for *who* they wanted to win, this was a taboo topic!

Posted in 2008/09, history, justice, postcard: Romania, tradition | 2 Comments »

when everything goes wrong in the kitchen…

Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Brasov, Romania …you end up with a lot of corn. A LOT! Perhaps it all started last night. Someone burnt the rice, but salvaged a fair portion of it. En route to the table he dropped it. Someone else put the oats on to ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in 2008/09, food, health, language, learning, money, postcard: Romania, tradition | 4 Comments »

a stroke of culture

Monday, November 9th, 2009
Krakow, Poland What do you do when you turn up in a country where you don’t speak the language and very few people speak English? Well, I don’t know what you would do, but we went from door to door in ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in 2008/09, children, craft, food, history, language, postcard: Poland, tradition | 2 Comments »

grey

Sunday, November 8th, 2009
Krakow, Poland

Our ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in 2008/09, children, history, postcard: Poland, quote, tradition, weather | 1 Comment »

Best. Ever. Bigos. (OR “I never cooked with vodka before”) * and also an addendum about pickles just for the fun of it *

Saturday, November 7th, 2009
Krakow, Poland

 

Prepare at least three days before needed! Preferably make a huge portion and leave it sitting on your balcony all winter long. 1kg fresh white cabbage, shredded finely 1t salt    Place in a heavy pot ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in 2008/09, food, postcard: Poland, tradition | 3 Comments »

All Saints’ Day

Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Krakow, Poland To be Polish is almost certainly to be Catholic. To be Catholic means, among other things, following church traditions and one that happens every year on the first of November is honouring the deceased. We took a chilly walk this ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in 2008/09, God, postcard: Poland, tradition | 3 Comments »

we’re gonna get fat! (every day a birthday)

Monday, October 26th, 2009
Krakow, Poland Who would have thought that we’d be eating out in Europe? It’s meant to be expensive, right? But look……we’re managing to find cheap eats wherever we go, all of them decidedly Polish, all of them things we said we ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in 2008/09, food, history, postcard: Poland, tradition | 11 Comments »

Sunday

Sunday, October 25th, 2009
Krakow, Poland Down the flights of stairs, across the courtyard, through the front building, and we burst out the door onto the busy bustling street. Only it isn’t busy. It’s quiet. There are no trams running, no cars passing, not ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in 2008/09, God, history, postcard: Poland, tradition | 2 Comments »

to (another) market (again)

Saturday, October 24th, 2009
Krakow, Poland Apologies about the recurring WhenWeUsedToLiveHere theme, but here goes the next edition…..

The first year we lived here (we arrived in 1990) we did not see ANY Western products at all. The choice ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in 2008/09, food, history, money, postcard: Poland, tradition | No Comments »

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