Alexandra and Adela have been here a week now and they are enjoying the advantages of country life with the swing in the walnut tree and having Mihaela, our neighbor, to play with. It is nice to have girls around. They are not quite so rambunctious as boys, but then again, it has been a long time and my memory may be a bit fuzzy.
The dog trainer came today. He will teach the dog commands in English so that I can take advantage of his expertise and Eugen will know how to handle Rini, who is growing by leaps and bounds. At least she has learned not to use the front porch for her personal toilet and she does not run into the house whenever the door is opened. I think these are quite remarkable accomplishments for a dog not yet six months old who was used to indoor life before she came to us.
We have not yet taken all of the visine, sour cherries, from the trees. And I think that we never will get to the end of this task! We have taken the seeds from several liters of them and put them into jars with aspirin, hoping that this method of preserving them is as sound as it is easy. We have also put about 40 liters into bags in the freezer and today Eugeniu made jam, 9 huge jars of it and I put more bags into the freezer along with a few liter-sized bags of apricots that have fallen from the trees. Alexandra helped a lot with the visine by helping with the sorting of the good and the bad as she and Mihaela put them into freezer bags. Oana and Catalin took home a huge chest full of them and when they brought it back on Saturday, we filled it with a bucket full of visine that Costinel had picked. Fortunately Monica agreed to take it home with her. Costinel, who is Mihaela's brother, is still climbing into the trees to pick visine, but now we hope that the neighbors will take the rest. We have enough to last for quite a while and that includes the ones hanging from the nails at one end of the patio. Nicu says that we will be able to resuscitate them by soaking them in water. This will be an interesting experiment as I have long been interested in methods of drying food naturally.
Eugen is busy working on a plan for building a greenhouse plus. I like all of his plans and hope that we can follow our dream to build it.
12 February 2010 The fifth snow of the season ended with rain melting the huge piles of snow that are still filling the road near our house. Yesterday the snowplow pushed some of it aside so that more cars could navigate though many choose to stay put. The bare branches of the trees have dropped the snow so carefully held for days on end and below the snow is unmelted as yet. the warmer predictions for the week are slowly changing to indicate that the cold freezing weather will stay with us for a while. So we feed the soba with wood cut by Vickah who helps us ever so much! Currently he is shoveling off the mountain of snow that has filled the patio several times this winter. Rini is very happy that the ice has vanished and she can walk about and even romp around in the snow that covers the earth.
My husband had been ill and today he feels better though the cough is still with him. Fortunately no high fever as yet. A quiet day following what seems like an endless retinue of such days, but each is filled to capacity - at least to the capacity of available energy. In spite of our varying quantity of inspiration and energy, I continue to search for healthy recipes and information about health for us and he continues to paint and take care of so many things. Painting is one activity that is not hindered by this weather!
I have discovered that I can download whole books and again have the pleasure of reading them. The backlight of the computer screen and the ability to enlarge the print are features that counteract to a small degree the joy of holding a book in hand - magnifiers just do not do the trick for that. Magnifiers are great for short passages or for reading recipes, etc. But holding them at the right distance for rapid perusing of the lines of print has not been something that I have a knack for at all.
And as I think about what to write I see that our snow days are not so exciting as the days that came before, days when in warmer weather we traveled to various places and thus I introduce a story that reports another adventure at another time.
Tecuci
October 29, 1996
We started out for Tecuci on Saturday at 11:30 A. M. Valentin had arrived ready to go at 9:30. I was still hurriedly trying to get off the morning’s e-mail and Eugeniu was still asleep! Valentin had wanted to go for some weeks now. Mioara is buried there. Mioara was Valentin’s wife, sister of Eugeniu. She is buried in Tecuci beside Valentin’s parents and sister, Ilenutsa. We hastily made preparations for the journey, packing clothes and sandwiches for lunch, and washing empty plastic bottles. Our first stop was at the Shell station where the long lines at the pumps reached to the entrance except for one on the end with only three cars. I pulled up fast to that line only to find that the pump did not work for benzina fara plumb (unleaded gasoline). The attendant came, I moved the car closer to the pump and he pulled the hose from the other side. He told Eugeniu that the red gasoline container could not be filled; it was against their rules. Eugeniu was upset that I had taken it out of the car too soon, but he talked them into permitting us to fill it telling them that the container was considered a safe one in the U. S. This extra gasoline was in case there was no unleaded gasoline in Tecuci. In fact, the closest unleaded was in Focsani about 60 kilometers away, but we did not need to use it because we had enough fuel to take us as far as Buzau on our return trip with a little less than a quarter of a tank to spare. The air pump at the Shell station near Otopeni was broken as it was two weeks ago when we last filled up with gasoline. The traffic out of the station was as bad as on the highway where traffic was bumper to bumper. Past Otopeni and Corbeanca we were at last on our way. We stopped once more at a station where we found that their air pump was also broken. Eugeniu used the hand pump we had bought in Vienna. The route through Ploiesti to Buzau was 33 kilometers longer, but Valentin and Eugeniu were sure that the roads were better. The traffic was heavy; there were clouds with occasional sunshine. The fall scenery was splendid. We had to stop or slow down to pass the carts full of corn stalks taken from the fields for fodder for cattle and kindling to start fires. Some corn stalks are used to form walls for shelters in the fields. We noticed a Shell station in Buzau that we remembered for our fill-up on the way back to Bucharest. This one was not as crowded as the one in Bucharest. Along the way we saw the vast vineyards and fields of new wheat. Eugeniu said that the winter wheat is planted now and will hibernate through the winter snows and in the spring will be ready to continue its growth to maturity. Wheat can be planted in the spring, but the dangers of spring rains at the wrong time can cause the loss of the entire crop. Flower vendors displayed bouquets of huge chrysanthemums along the road side. Other vendors displayed huge piles of onions. A small motorized machine for wood cutting joined the line of traffic. These are still used though there were more of them in the past. It is one of the ways that Gypsies earned their living.
It took us four hours to travel to Adjud. At the turn-off to Tecuci, they told me that we were to go to Adjud where Alin and his family lived, not Tecuci. Teodorica was not feeling well and could not receive guests at his home in Tecuci. Valentin did not know the way to their home, but planned to call from the railway station (gara). We asked directions to the station, made a wrong turn and stopped to ask again. The man was most helpful. He knew the doctor and rode with us to show us where to go. Alin, a physician, his wife Adi, a pharmacist, and their two daughters, Alina and Andrea, gave us a royal greeting. Alin came out to greet us and took us in for a meal that was indeed a feast. Bread, a tasty dip, cheeses, olives, slices of hard sausage, Coke and Fanta, followed by a delicious ciorba (sour soup) and then a course of mashed potatoes, meat balls and a preserved salad of grated beet with horseradish sauce. Very delicious. We sat around the kitchen table near the flame of the range top which was the only heat in the whole house. Adi put the jars of beets on the radiator, making a joke about keeping them there because the radiator was so cold! They had no hot water and no heat and did not know when the heat would be turned on. To get hot water, it must be boiled in a pan on the stove. Alin and Adi are making improvements in their apartment slowly. The new door is made of a finely crafted finely grained pine, frame included. The newly polished floor in the living room appears to be oak. These improvements are made slowly because they are paid for out of a combined salary of $150 per month for these two professionals who are well trained medical specialists. Adi has a pharmacy in a village of Gypsies near-by and Alin, an obstetrician, is on the staff of the local hospital. Alin is the son of Valentin’s brother who was a forestry engineer, like his father before him.
Andrea and Alina speak English, but Alina is shyer and hesitated to say much. Andrea told me that she is bored with school and hates Math. She loves their dog, a Labrador retriever, very much and wants to be a veterinarian. I told her some of my tricks of trying to make boring things more interesting and promised to send her King’s Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Lorenz.
Alin explained that the best accommodations for us for the night would be in the local hospital. Adjud does not have a hotel. The hospital has many empty beds because the “tax” for hospitalization is 5,000 Lei per day (at current rates less than $2). Alin told us that the people stay at home, where they may die rather than go to the hospital because they cannot pay such a high amount. (Today Laurentiu is here to fix the car alarm which seems to go off spontaneously much to the distraction of our neighbors. His wife is a physician who just finished a four month fellowship in the U.S. He said that the health care system here began to decline seriously in 1980.)
Although they have a five room apartment which Valentin had assured us was sufficient to provide a bed for us, Alin, Eugeniu and I departed for the hospital where Alin chose to stay the night also. It was a safer place to keep the car and a more comfortable place for us to sleep. He said that we would have a room with a private bath and that the hospital had heat. There were three hospital type beds in our room, three bedside tables, a lavatory and one overhead light fixture. There was no hot water and the radiator, though not warm, was at least not icy to the touch. We giggled at the circumstances, glad that we were there only for a night’s lodging and not due to illness. We had a safe place to stay thanks to our gracious host whose good nature must surely make him well loved by patients and staff at this hospital that is so lacking in necessities essential to good health care. This room had no telephone, no TV, no bedside lamp. The sheets were made of thin gauze through which the stripes on the mattress could be plainly seen. The pillow cases were of the same material, but both mattress and pillow were solid and comfortable. We were tired after the stress of driving where we had not traveled before on busy two lane highways full of impatient drivers threatening a head-on collision as they passed the slower trucks and buses in spaces so short that oncoming traffic had to break or swerve to avoid instant death. It seemed that the newer cars were most often the impatient ones, but there is a whole class of Dacia drivers that speed like crazy to get in front to wait for the traffic light or to take up the small space between me and the next car that I believe is essential to safe driving.
I planned to write down the adventure of the day in our bleak hospital room, but Eugeniu began to tell me the story of Teodorica. We took this trip on the initiative of Valentin who had wanted to visit with his family and to visit the grave of his deceased wife, Mioara, in Tecuci. Teodorica is the widower of Valentin’s sister, Ilenutsa, who had been a well loved and most respected physician in Tecuci. She died at the age of 82, about three years ago. When she died, Teodorica inherited her house and belongings. They had no children. (As Laurentiu said just this morning, yes, we will have children, because if not there is no purpose to all of this!)
During World War II, Ilenutsa was working in a hospital where Teodorica was a patient. He had been wounded in the Battle of Stalingrad. The next day, when we were in his kitchen, he opened his shirt one or two buttons in the middle of his chest and showed us the indentation made by the scar of his chest wound where the bullet entered. It went straight through his body, but he did not show the scar on his back. At that time Ilenutsa was married, but after her husband died, they met again and married. Though Ilenutsa was well loved in the community, Teodorica was not well thought of. It was thought that he a cad, a dandy, a romancer of women, a man who had many affairs with all kinds of women, at the same time he was rough with Ilenutsa regarding financial and more personal matters. Eugeniu described him as “not a true one. You cannot believe what he says.” So into the night Eugeniu told me of this family and their high position in the community and of their social life. Ilenutsa was a kind and loving woman and much adored by everyone. Eugeniu remembered a time when Teodorica visited in Bucharest at the house where Valentin still lives. He was not happy about how Ilenutsa was treated so he took all of Teodorica’s things, bag and baggage, and threw them over the fence into a pile of snow. This real life drama was far more interesting than the TV!
No matter that the radiator never gained an ounce of warmth, we slept well and awoke refreshed for a day of touring the area with our hosts as guides. First Alin took us back to his house where we had coffee and a breakfast of toast and delicious jam and then to a village, Nicuresti, where his friends invited us in and served us a taste of their wine, coffee, cozonac (sort of like cinnamon bread), and slices of a custard filled roll with fresh grapes as a bonus. They had been to a wedding the night before and had only had one hour of sleep before we came. They had no wine to sell. It is too new and will not keep. The daughter in this family spoke a little to me in English. She teaches the third grade. They are learning to speak French in her class, not English, in addition to other subjects. I took pictures of them and petted the puppies. We said goodbye and I waited for directions for each turn in the road. We passed through a throng of people and wagons gathered at the town center and people dressed in their Sunday best on the way to services. Among the young dandies, there were “cowboys” in flat, broad brimmed hats more reminiscent of a tango dancer than of a cowboy.
We drove on to another village where we looked for the winemaker recommended by Alin’s friends. We asked for more exact directions of a pair walking down the road who happened to be Americans looking for wine! They could not help us, so we traveled on searching for the correct lane. We passed an ancient wall surrounding a church, the wall being at least three hundred years old. We finally found the man with the tractor in his yard. We had not been able to see it because it was behind a solid fence and gate. We got our clue down the road where a group of three was sitting by their gate husking corn. The Winemaker was a small man with a hunch back and very dirty clothes. His hands were stained with the juice of the grapes with which he made Merlot. His eyes shone with the greatest of good humor and pride in his product. These eyes announced his presence far more strongly than the mean surroundings from which this family maintained their existence. His wife had eyes of the clearest of blue and at first was not sure of our attitude toward them, but soon relaxed. They told Eugen and Valentin about their grief over the recent loss of their 24 year old son in an accident.
In their yard they had a pen full of the loveliest of pure white geese with a tuft of feathers on their heads like little pill box hats. The horse was harnessed to the wagon with its license plate on the rear. Their remaining son had a towel wrapped around his wounded hand. He had been turning the wheel to crush the grapes to make the wine and the friction of his clothes against the machine caused a wound which became infected. Under the tree in front of the porch there were huge bags of grapes waiting to be turned into wine. The kitchen garden had ardei (peppers) still growing and eggplants that might produce again if the weather holds warm enough. When we left, the winemaker's wife came near with a last word of parting and great sincerity which touched my heart. The winemaker told us to go with God’s blessing. I said, “Merci.” A week later Eugeniu told me that they had given us the huge sacks of their grapes and would take no money for them.
We returned to Adjud to a great Sunday dinner of braised beef steaks and mashed potatoes with all the trimmings and we were still full from the morning’s treats! Conversation as the night before was full of stories and jokes. I am beginning to understand some of the conversation, but not enough to get the jokes. I usually get the general topic and a few specifics. One joke translated to me was this: A man needed to measure his TV antenna. He climbed to the top, measured, climbed down again and then placed the antenna on the ground and measured it again. When asked why he did that he said, “Well, that was the height and this is the length!” (I told Eugeniu that this was what we would call an Aggie joke, Romanian style.)
Before we left for our afternoon drive to Tecuci, Adi gave me the small blue and white pitcher I had admired the night before. I told her it was just the size my sister had asked me to find for her collection. I had refused to take it saying that I only wanted to know where I could find one like it. She did not know, but insisted that I take it.
We took both cars for a short sight seeing trip on our way to Tecuci. The first stop was a scenic viewpoint at the huge dam built to provide water for irrigation. Next stop was the Gypsy village of Homocea where Adi has her Pharmacy. Adi told us that this village is inhabited by the best of Gypsies. They are prosperous and are the opposite of the usual negative stereotypes. The homes were an Easter basket of colors and designs. I wanted to take pictures of them all - such a contrast to the usual drab colors of the villages and cities across Romania. Adi’s pharmacy was neat, pleasant and well ordered; it was on the street level of a medium sized three story building and was filled with plants, including several varieties of colorful begonias. English ivy climbed the wall in one corner. Outside the building there was large community water well and a gaggle of geese were wandering nearby.
We drove through a young forest toward a viewpoint where we could see teams of soccer players below and a horse and wagon on the dirt trail down the mountainside across a broad plain to the smallest mountain in the Carpathian chain. Alin explained that that is the mountain that marks the turn of this chain of mountains toward the west. A small monastery was just above us. Adi, Alina and Andrea left us at this point to return home. Alin went with us because he needed to be in Tecuci on Monday. We drove to the monastery door and walked into the grounds to discover a treasure of a biserica (church) with frescoes restored in 1983. A nun took us to the small chapel that is used most often as the biserica is too cold in winter and cannot be heated. Then we went to see the rugs they used to make. Lovely tightly woven rugs of bright colors with flowers woven in the unique style that I have seen in Romanian-made rugs for sale at some of the better shops. They had only three and could not decide to sell them. Maybe next time we come. They tell us that they have rooms that we could rent if we wanted to come to stay for a few days. This monastery is at the edge of a larger, older forest. It has a splendid view and the air is clear and clean. The dank air of the cities with its homes closed against the cold stand in stark relief to this refreshing atmosphere. We drive on up the mountain and through the forest where the ground is covered with a golden yellow carpet of fallen leaves. At the edge of the forest a last burst of gold hangs over the road like a lace curtain in full salute.
At Tecuci we visited Alin’s sister so he could let her know that he is in town. Their mother is very ill with a broken hip and “sclerosa” which Eugen defines as the mental deterioration of old age. Alin left his briefcase with his sister and then we drove to Teodorica’s house. Alin had called him and told him that we must have a place to stay. He agreed and thankfully we did not have to make the drive back to Bucharest (211 kilometers) after this day of village visits. (Tecuci does have a hotel, but most hotels in Romania need much remodeling to bring them up to standards for most tourists of today.) Teodorica greeted us and eventually was as hospitable as an old man of 82 can be. His yard was full of grape vines and fruit trees and the kitchen garden had onions, and peppers, and parsley that was still green. He proudly showed off his apple tree that produces four kinds of apples as well as the cherry, vishine, and pear trees. He brought out his homemade wine and offered us a taste of it in delicate crystal goblets. He made mamaliga to go with the brinza (sour cheese) he offered. Eugeniu made an omelet for me since I did not want to eat the brinza.
Sitting in this kitchen listening to talk of recent politics, I could see that I was indeed in the company of old men, Eugeniu the youngest, then Valentin, and Teodorica standing opposite us in his maroon beret. The room reminded me of my father’s house in Port Lavaca and how I used to go there and try to bring some order and cleanliness to its small kitchen. I am relieved to see that Teodorica has a small hot water heater over the kitchen sink. We put our coats and jackets on the coat rack in the hallway between the kitchen and the room with the TV. Mercifully, the bathroom was inside, but that was its only redeeming feature. Eugeniu could not even use it to shave, much less either of us having a nice hot bath!
I had on four layers of clothes and was still a little chilly. Teodorica told us that the law permits the heating of only two rooms if there is only one person living in a house even if it has ten rooms. We slept in the room next to the heated TV room and were kept warm by a lovely comforter in clean, white, starched linen. Teodorica showed us all the medical books that had belonged to his wife that he displays on a table in this guest room. The next room is locked and we were told that it is full of bookshelves double packed with books on all subjects. We think Ilenutsa read a great deal. Teodorica was a brush maker and is very good with his garden. The grapes and the apples are beautiful with no pock marks left over from invasions by small creatures so often observed on the fruit in the markets here in Bucharest.
The next door neighbor, owner of an auto parts shop, was concerned that our car would be vandalized if we left it in front of the house all night. He insisted that we put it in his back driveway inside a locked metal gate invisible from the street. The space was too small for our car and his so he took his out and I drove my car into the small space for our long station wagon. This act of kindness to total strangers is one of the most pleasant parts of this life in Romania. The next morning we bought some antifreeze from them. How do you thank the Good Samaritan?
After breakfast we walked a block to the house of the beekeeper. His four beehive boxes were in the front garden. This house was neatly kept and the drive was lined with flowers. An apple tree bereft of leaves was decorated with bright red apples still hanging from its branches. Roses and chrysanthemums and balsam and pepper plants beside the front drive. A dog chained to his doghouse growled a warning that kept me outside the gate until the beekeeper calmed him and the unchained nearly grown puppy. He had five jars of honey ready for sale and Valentin wanted them all for his supply for the winter. Eugeniu told him that we wanted to buy some honey, too. He brought out a huge milk can of honey. He found some jars and a spoon and a stool. This can was near empty so he brought out another can. Thoughtfully he moved the stool and can inside where I would be warmer. Eugeniu and I dug out gobs of honey one spoon at a time until our jars were full. This butter yellow honey was as solid as a rock - Eugeniu did most of the work while I peeked at the back garden full of corn and chickens and fruit trees and grape vines. The beekeeper was kind and friendly and offered the hospitality of his living room where Pro TV was advertising a Sigourney Weaver movie, the one where she is getting revenge on Ben Kingsley. Mr. Beekeeper told me that he had been a welder for the Germans during WWII. The beekeeper insisted that Valentin and Eugeniu taste his wine. By now it is 11 and I am ready to get on the highway for the tedious drive back to Bucharest.
We thanked Teodorica for his hospitality and the neighbor for his generosity in securing the car for the night and headed for the cemetery, our last stop in Tecuci. Valentin directed us through the lanes to a place to park the car just below the memorial to World War I veterans. We walked to Mioara’s grave resplendent with flowers and a tall tombstone with pictures and inscriptions for the dead and all but the dates for Valentin and Teodorica for it is also the grave of Ilenutsa and the parents of Valentin and Ilenutsa and places waiting for Teodorica and Valentin. I take the last of the pictures and try to roll the film only to find that the camera did not work and all the pictures for this whole trip are gone. I am ready to cry. I cannot remember all the pictures in my mind’s eye.
The trip home was remarkable in that we took the shorter route home and found that the highway from Buzau was less crowded. From Urziceni we often had four lanes of newly paved road with patches of ongoing construction. I actually drove 60 MPH for part of the way! Four hours to drive 211 kilometers. The first half more slowly due to the long lines in either direction slowed by the carts and horses with load after load of cornstalks - one with passengers asleep while the horse led the way! There were roadside scenes of farmers working much as they have done for centuries. Surely scenes and colors in the fall sunlight of just the type that inspired Van Gogh. We stopped only to buy gasoline at the Shell station in Buzau. We did not see a restaurant we were willing to try all along this drive so we drove straight to Bucharest and Piata Domeni, right near home, to eat at the Nicuresti at its tables with crisp white table cloths. The Nicuresti had delicious, artfully presented food and excellent service. It was established by people from the same village where we were received so hospitably by Alin’s friends.
We were happy to be home, ready for a nice hot bath!
