ROMANIA

I had my eyes wander over the map of Europe, looking for a country I had not been to. Romania and Bulgaria were the answer.

Strangers

People tell me I am nuts, because for every trip I go online to find locals I have never met in order to crash on their couch. I am told I will run into freaks and psychos. So let me tell you what weirdos I really meet and you can tell me what attitude I should take. My very first host in Sibiu, Romania picks me up from the airport, then takes me to his parents' place, where his mum feeds us dinner. An opportunity to see how an average middle-class family lives (small place, could have been refurbished 20-30 years ago, but kept clean and tidy, living room also serves as a bedroom, tiger print bedspread, mini plates and cups in display in a glass cupboard, some religious pictures, old television blasting). We then go to his apartment, where we talk current living conditions in Romania and he downloads a T.V.-series of my choice. Host number two in Shigisoara is a family of three, and I am offered my own bedroom. I play with the little boy and stay up far too late chatting to her about gypsies and Ceausescu. This couple makes traditional decorated wooden spoons for a living, so I get a whole look-in into that after the dinner we share. They give me the key, so I can come back any time. Host number three in Brasov is also a couple with a baby. Over the dinners we have together, they tell me the whole story of how they met and about their trips through Europe on a motorbike. All these hosts provided me with the tourist information needed and tips. This system of opening both your mind and house upto others has restored my faith in people and makes me want to be nice to other strangers. It makes me look differently at countries;
whilst before it was about the tourist points and perhaps how friendly the staff is somewhere, now it has become for a great deal about the people themselves. What do they tell me about growing up here? What ideas do they share? What do I learn about the culture through them?

 

Dracula

Romania is a pleasant surprise. Transylvania offers small towns with cobblestone streets and colourful houses. The nature does not seem to differ much from what I am used to in northern Europe, except that there are a lot of bears that can be encountered in the wild. I only meet them in an enclosed sanctuary, where abused bears, prior used for performing, are held until their death and hopefully with laws being enforced this sanctuary will die a natural death.

I obviously cannot omit mentioning Dracula, whilst traveling through Transylvania. Dracula’s Castle (Bran) does not quite live up to its expectation (I circle around it until I have the right angle for a more impressive picture), but fiction always lives best in ones imagination. I read the book (from 1897!) on my trip and especially the beginning is filled with adventure. A real pageturner, which becomes more slowpaced once the wise men deliberate for hours to figure out what this phenomena is and what to do about it. This book must be even more exciting not knowing about vampires! What are those two mysterious red dots in her neck?

Bram Stoker based the name on Vlad Dracul, duke of Wallachia (and not of Transylvania), who had received the order of the Dragon from the king of Hungary. The word dragon found no translation in Romanian, but the word ‘dracul’, meaning Satan, sounded mostly like it, so that is what stuck. His cruel son was then called Draculea, but his other nickname was ‘the impaler’. I will let your imagination run with that one. Neither Draculea, nor Stoker have probably spent time in that castle, so I consider this a very smart marketing ploy, as it has put Transylvania on the tourist map. Otherwise the story is completely made up and impressive just for that reason; today it has pretty much become a genre in itself. The first film, Nosferatu, dates back to 1922!

No such thing as coincidence?

My mother's best friend in Holland, living two blocks away from us, is Romanian. She fled the communist regime and would always speak bitterly about her country. I was therefore surprised to find so much hospitality (not just a bed, also food and long conversations- even though would not necessarily say 'affectionate' or 'warm' per se) and the towns in Transylvania are lovely. Bucharest less so. Large grey communist buildings alternate kitschy new build and most of it could have done with some restauration/paint at least 30 years ago. It did not make me feel safe at night, even if there was no reason for that sentiment.

The most shocking and surprising thing that happened, was bumping into my mum's friend, while crossing the street. She had come last minute to look after her parents' grave. I had not seen her in seven years. We had a drink together and she pointed to different places, where she had met her husband, where she used to live. I asked her if her feelings had changed, she said: “they seem nice, but I know what they are really like.” Both of them being Romanian, but being part of minorities, meant their treatment was unpleasant at the best of times.

At night I went salsa dancing, but I was too tired to show off much skill. To me, everybody looked similar- whether thin, fat, tall, short- there was just no variety, no colour. Even though there was perhaps still more to see, I decided to leave the next day…..

 

Barely day three and I have left my normal life completely behind. 

The plane was filled with young women with too much make up and tattooed men, looking forward to two weeks of getting plastered and the night clubs where Mexicans are not welcome. I was lucky to be met at the bus station of Cancun by Pintero, an amateur hip hopper, who showed me the parts of the city that could not have been more removed from the luxury resorts, His place consisted of one room, a few mattresses and a table, attached to it a tiny shabby bathroom. He said it was better not to hang around outside his flat in the evening. He was in the lucky position to make better money (350 vs average of 200 pounds a month) than most, thanks to his good command of English. After a quick meal, that taught me I will be eating a lot of guacamole, corn based products with vegetables in the coming two months, he dropped me off at the harbour, where I took a boat to Isla Mujeres. This island is like other small islands I have visited: palm trees, the main street filled with souvenir shops and restaurants and beautiful, busy beaches with diving and snorkling day trips. Jacobo had waited for me. He introduced me to his girlfriend (20) and her three years old daughter (father no interest), took me out for dinner, shared his life story and then insisted I downed a few tequillas, while convincing the barman to play salsasongs, so we could dance to a few good tunes. This left me with some nasty blisters and still has me limping. His room was not much different from P´s, no kitchen, a small bathroom and no furniture. I made myself comfortable in the hammock, but J¨s drunk snoring and my excitement left me with little sleep. In the morning we visited the beach and in the afternoon his girlfriend had arranged for a scooter and showed me the island,which was highly enjoyable. In the evening I was beyond tired, but the couple convinced me to come out to a fun open air bar. I could barely stand on my feet, even though I tried a few moves on the dancefloor (cumbia, salsa, raggaeton, bachata is pretty much the standard music here, so that works fine for me!). Eventually they decided to put me in a taxi, one of their friends volunteering to accompany me- which was a good thing, with the stray dogs barking and the houses being similar to each other. He however, decided to stay and chat for another two hours, hoping for more, and eventually left when he finally got the message that ´no´ actually meant no. The rest stumbled in at five; yet again a night of two hours sleep, as I got up early to join a snorkling trip to a reef and an underwater museum (statues placed under water). After these days of acclimatisation I have left the island and am now ready for the real work to start exploring Mexico´s rich history...

A MAN WHO HAS NOT BEEN TO ITALY, IS ALWAYS CONSCIOUS OF AN INFERIORITY

(Samuel Johnson)

I try to remember when I have last been in Italy. Has it been six years? Or seven maybe? I am officially half Italian and carry an Italian first name. However, my relationship with the country is not so strong. Since my move to England there doesn’t seem to be too much space for yet another part of my identity.
In short; it is time for me to go to Italy, breathe the language, taste the food and reacquaint myself with the culture.

Of course I leave in a rush...packing up all my stuff to move out of the house I am living in and at the same time getting ready for a holiday...Perhaps a bit too much....three hours sleep is actually not enough...

Puglia is my destination of choice. Southern Italy, the ‘heel’ of the ‘boot’.

The day before I leave, I remember the website www.couchsurfing.com, where random local people offer to host you, or to drink a cup of coffee with you.

I arrive in Napels, where I of course eat a pizza, buy a hat and then board for the next destination: Vieste. It is a long trip, as I have a stopover in Foggia and then wait a few hours for the next bus. It gives me time to see its cathedral.

In Vieste I learn quickly that the tourist season is over; the hotels on the lower side of the price scale are closed. Still manage to haggle; I go to bed at nine and wake up eleven hours later.

This place is a good start of my holiday. A picturesque old city centre, surrounded by a beautiful sea. The boat trip to the caves is cancelled halfway due to bad weather. Walking back in the evening a guy, who is playing basketball calls me over. Something that regularly happens in Italy; even old ladies say ‘Che bella’ passing by. Must be the hat... He asks me out for dinner, which I politely turn down, but we meet later on. He is very friendly, shows me around, takes me to his local pub, explains life here and in the end we go to a beach place, where he hangs out with his friends every weekend (including dj and ping pong. The next day it is Bye Bye hotel Bikini, and hello Italians!

Next destination: Barletta. I have a phone number of one guy from the website. I call him unexpectedly from the station and before I know it, he shows up and takes me to his house. It might sound weird to just go home with an almost stranger, but I decide that a lot of people are simply like you and me and just want to meet nice people. Also, everyone can leave a review of their visit. It is clear that Italian men have much better taste; his bachelor’s pad looks nothing like those I have seen in London. This one has colour and even matching bits and pieces! Floriano is another gentleman. He projects an Italian film on the wall, feeds me and shows me around this white stoned beautiful town. To my surprise there is a working synagogue in the old part. The next day Floriano brings me to the cute white walled village of Monopoli, where we spent a wonderful afternoon drinking aperitifs and eating lunch with his friends, who tell about life in a village in the south. Floriano then drives to his family house on the country side, where we enjoy the silence and sounds of crickets, which I have not heard in many years. He drops me off at the Caves of Castellana, where I spend the next two hours marvelling at all the different shapes and drooping stalactites.

Again I show up semi unexpected at my next address; Teresa is actually too busy, but as a proper Italian, it would never be a reason not to host someone and she feeds me lunch and tells her brother to take me to Alberobello. Alberobello is a village that consists of small houses, known as Trulli. One expects Snow-white and the seven dwarfs to come out of them any minute. Once back, Enrica, Teresa’s three years old comes running at me with open arms-we have a good connection, obviously the right age for me. In the evenings I stay up late, discussing Italian’s most popular subject with her husband: Politics. No need to say Berlusconi is not very loved in the south, unemployment is high and corruption alive, which is highly frustrating for all these hard workers I meet. The next day Teresa leaves me alone with her little one and gives me the key. Coming from a big city this kind of trust is surprising, but also simple; I am nice to you, you are nice to me, why would anyone spoil that by doing any harm? The whole couchsurf experience sincerely makes me feel that it is indeed trying to make the world feel better...

I make acquaintance with Annalisa, who owns and works 6 days a week in a local bar. We have an immediate click and in the evening we go to Ostuno-needless to say that this is another stunning place- for dinner. My birthday the next day passes by almost unnoticed, isn’t it for her showing up with a lovely bottle of local wine. No time to celebrate though, as I am off to my next destination; Lecce. On the way I stop in Bari, where someone gives me a quick tour of it. She is instructed by Annalisa; from when I get in touch with Italians, they sort my holiday out..

Lecce is a real gem, different in style, as it is baroque and walking around in it over and over never bores me. Mario is my host here. He is quite the Italian flatterer, but when I decline still cool... I stay here a few days and make a trip out of town, in order to take a lovely dive in the splendid sea (Gallipoli) -this while at home it’s raining badly...

The next day I struggle to get to Taranto, as I just miss the train. At arrival Ezio takes me to a restaurant and puts me in the car to visit a friend of his who owns a winery. Before I know it I am on my way back with 3 two litre bottles filled with fresh local wine. Add to that the litres of Lemon liquor (Limoncello) I buy as well and you will understand that most of my suitcase is filled with alcohol!

Back to Annalisa (the bar owner) where I stay for the next few days. We visit a place I have been wanting to see since I read ‘ Cristo si e fermato a Eboli’ (1945) ten years prior, a memoir of Carlo Levi about his time spent in exile there during WWII. He has put the province of Basilicata which is historically one of the poorest and most backward regions of the impoverished Italian south, on the national map. We are lucky to also find his lively paintings of the locals and their daily hardships which are impressive and in my opinion can be considered as historical documents. Matera itself as it turns out, has been worth the wait. The ancient town of the Sassi are houses dug into the calcereous rock and originate from a prehistoric settlement, and are suspected to be some of the first human settlements in Italy. The ancient town grew in height on one slope of the ravine created by a river that is now a small stream.

This is my last trip on my journey....I find myself and the end of my holiday- glad that I did this, as after the stress plays up...but that’s a whole different story...

www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=607179&id=904445256&l=3303a144e9

IF YOU SMILE AT SOMEONE, THEY MIGHT SMILE BACK

My sister Sylvia had to be in Kiev for a few days for work and me, always up for seeing her and new places, thought this was the right combination. Still running around between work and too many social engagements, I arrived utterly unprepared in Ukraine on Friday the 30th of April. Sylvia had already had a day or two to acclimatise and I let her do all the dealings; she picked me up from the airport, had organised a local contact and was able to get us to places by using some improvised Russian words. Within the first half an hour it was clear that the only useful alphabet and language was going to be Russian (or Ukranian-which is closer to Polish). The other thing I noticed immediately was that smiling was not a common activity and none of my smiles were acknowledged in any way. (It made me realise how much I do smile in a day- and how much I like them!).

Our local contact was Victoria, who had arranged a cheap apartment for us and was very helpful in giving us advice on all types of matters and kept following us with the local phone she had lend to us. After having settled the apartment, Victoria took us to her friends. We were unexpected guests, and we got quite a lot of stares; generally westerners don't find any reason to visit.. We then ended up going to one of the houses with the whole group, where they continued their discussions.
I found two little girls more of my level (around 5yrs old) and played the whole evening with them- as they required less of a language effort. Even though they did all the jumping, I was the one worn down at the end of that!
Saturday we took our time and walked around all day, with as high point the Lavra, a monastery set on 28 hectares; a tight cluster of gold-domed churches and underground caves with mummified monks.

This part of Eastern-Europe is of course the cradle of some profoundly talented musicians and other artists, which we saw expressed in the Swan lake performance we attended in the National Opera. I had deprived myself for about three weeks of any cultural enjoyment and this was a true outburst of it; both the orchestra as the dancers were supreme.
Generally I found the people friendly, even if it was hard to tell sometimes-smileless-as people would generally try to answer our questions and further left us alone; we felt safe overall. People are well-dressed, even not necessarily with the latest fashion, women seem to have a strong preference for very very high heels, very very short skirts/very very tight trousers and the mullet's still having its heydey here.

My sister left on Sunday. I utilised the rest of the day to visit the St Sofia, have lunch with Victoria and I took the nighttrain to Lviv/Lvov, thanks to a note written in Russian by V, which I could show to the ticketseller.
I arrived early, found my way to the hostel, which was filled with Poles, who had clearly done an allnighter, as the kitchen table was literally covered with empty wodka bottles. I did not want to lose too much time, so found my way to the Jewish centre. A not so appealing man kept on talking to me in either Russian or Ukranian, I eventually understood he was calling Tanya, who could help me. The centre had clearly not changed since the seventies, the radio, the green telephone and orange lamp were testimony to that. It probably also had not been cleaned since then, judging by the dusty smell. Eventually Tanya arrived, who spoke a good English, who offered to take me round the next day. I used the rest of the day to walk around; Lviv, like Kiev could do with a great deal of paint and renovation; however the main square is beautiful. In the evening I tried my luck by going to see a classical concert; a local orchestra, but yet again of a very high standard.
Kiev feels fairly Russian (not that I have ever been there), while in West-Ukraine, where I was now, the feel was much more Ukranian, and so was the preferred language.

The most beautiful building in Lviv was certainly what used to be known as the ‘Jewish hospital’-now a maternity ward. Set up and run by the local community before the war- one third of the population was Jewish-. However, when I asked in the souvenir shop, which was filled with pictures from the town, for a picture depicting the ‘Jewish hospital’, the lady made clear there was not such a thing. When I then was able to clarify which building I meant, she simply claimed ‘it was not that beautiful’.

In this building, the bullet holes were still visible in the wall, where the Jewish doctors and nurses were shot in the early fourties. This was clearly the start of my Jewish tour, full of destruction and past history. Not even out of town was the concentration camp Janowska placed (demolished and a prison now), then there were cemeteries and monuments. A little interesting fact was, that some houses still had Yiddish writing on the wall of what it used to sell and some courtyards had a few meters of rails, which were used to transport goods to be sold from the house onto the street.

In the evening, overwhelmed still by all this information I decided to stay in the hostel, where I found myself in a long winded conversation with the local girl who was running the hostel that evening and who had studied German in college. It was shocking to discover she had never heard of the concentration camp, being born and raised in Lviv. She summarised it: “ in this town we are proudly Ukranian, so in general we don’t care what happened to the Russians, Poles and Jews”.

She also explained to me that in Ukraine people get married when they are twenty, which has its perks, as then you can have your home and children before it comes in the way of your career (and indeed I had noticed the vast amount of teenage couples)-so in her eyes, I was an oddity (not to use the words 'old spinster'). She also told me that the phenomenon of ‘Ukranian brides’ was quite known and this way the evening proceeded fairly quickly. Later my ‘friend’ in the hostel arrived, a man from Georgia, with whom I could not communicate through language, but we managed through food.

The next day I woke up early to catch the train back to Kiev, which was a long and boring journey, in which I felt increasingly ready to embrace the ‘west’ (and non-smelly toilets) again. In Kiev I visited another monument, wandered through a park, had a few ‘blinis’ (pancakes) thanks to my little dictionary and made my way to the airport. Again I met a girl, who, like the others, at first seemed not so responsive (both in expression and in words) and aloof and eventually did open up and we had a nice chat about (guess what!) cultural differences....and that ladies and gentlemen, pretty much concluded my trip to the East

THESE STORIES COMING SOON...

GOED WEEKEND

Lots to tell,
but too much to do!!

Last week here..

www.youtube.com/ladwash

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlGc4S5SC6o

A LATE SHABBAT SHALOM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCWBTytpUyM