Cranky Abroad
September 28th, 2007 at 3:22 pm by CrankyDear reader(s),
I will be travelling to Romania to meet my new programmers face-to-face. As I mentioned to Preston, blogging will be either very sparse or very strange – we’re playing it by ear here.
This land of rich cultural heritage, which has been described as both “New Europe” and “freakin’ Third World corrupt”. Also some of the best rootkit and Trojan Horse viruses have been created here.
If you want those little wooden dolls that have other wooden dolls inside them or some malicious software, please drop your request in the comments. I’ll do my best to comply.
Thank you.
September 28th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Wow, I visited Romania back in 1989. What a place. I’m sure that now it is much more Westernized than it was back then. We stayed in a 4-star hotel in Bucharest that was heinous. Lots of black market activity, etc., etc.
Have a wonderful time!!!! A little Romanian wooden doll from Cranky would make my entire experience on the internet worth it all.
September 28th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
How exciting. All I know about Romania is from that heart wrenching documentary on the orphanages. So take some pictures and show us something pretty. Like Dracula’s castle.
September 28th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
I believe those wooden dolls are called “nesting dolls”.
You have got to live-blog Romania. No slacking…because if I don’t get my Cranky fix I get…well…CRANKY.
I am sure you can blog about Romanian toads.
And if you run across any Romanian ex-Olympic gymnasts who need a green card…
September 28th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
Screw Dracula, I want a Vlad the Impaler souvenir! How the guy got such a bad reputation, I don’t know, because he impaled jihadists trying to form the global Caliphate.
September 29th, 2007 at 10:17 am
It has been a decade since I put in a stint lecturing on the virtues of American journalism (back when it was still thought to have some virtue) at Romanian universities, but a couple of culinary/linguistic tips are burned into my brain stem:
* One of the six meats on your buffet, perhaps the only one available, will be a lamb sausage called mititei (pron. MEAT-EAT-EH, as though inquiring in pidgin Canadian). It is normally served after only the slightest kiss of flame on the grill, just enough to piss off the microbes festering within the essentially raw interior of the sausage. The term for “very well done” is: “foarte bine facuti” (FWART-EH BEAN-EH FA-KUTS; the “ti” ending comes out as “ts” in Romanian). Locals will say you’re ruining the mititei experience that way, but I viewed that as an acceptable tradeoff for avoiding the experience of hugging a Romanian loo overnight. The sausage is generally not bad, basically the same as a Bulgarian kebabche (which is normally cooked through) and akin to the kofte kebab available at your neighborhood gyro joint.
* Schnitzel is a universal word, but only in Romania can they find a way to screw it up. Order it only in sit-down places. At the train station buffet and such, you’re apt to end up with a tough, dry chunk of alleged pork that tastes like it was fried in motor oil.
* When you do have to resort to street food or fast food of any variety, even if is something you cannot imagine anyone putting mayonnaise on, request it “fara maioneza” (FAH-RAH MY-OHN-EH-ZA), without mayo, or what frighteningly passes for mayo over there, squirted in profusion over chips and much else.
In Bucharest, a couple of dining options that I presume still exist are the Carul cu Bere, a rather ornate old beer hall, and a restaurant downtown that used to be open only to military officers. Both of these places were pretty good when I was there, and of course ridiculously cheap. Your waiter knows how cheap it is to you and will devise ways to inflate the bill accordingly, but I always felt it would not be cricket to complain.
If you have a chance to get out of town, the Saxon cities of Sighisoara and Sibiu are fairly charming. A little closer by train, up past Brasov, are several ski resorts such as Predeal that appeared good candidates, ten years ago, to attract a bit of foreign investment and become little Lauterbrunnens.
Oh, and back to food. You’ll see this crap on the menus. No metaphor there. They serve a food called crap. Poor Romania, having suffered so much else, is evidently afflicted with dyslexia as well. It means carp.
September 29th, 2007 at 10:30 am
Thank you for the tips! Much appreciated.
I think I’m going to be on the other side of the country from Vlad’s castle. However, if they have those sno-globes that have little impaled Turks inside. I am so getting you one!
September 30th, 2007 at 7:05 am
I went to Romania a few years ago and it’s gorgeous. Bucharest stinks though – seriously, I think there’s an open sewer running through it.
I went to Dracula’s castle and it was awesome. I wish I had bought the Vlad the Impaler cocktail sticks – but sometimes we all miss opportunities that we later regret.
They have salad for breakfast there.
Someone gave me their uncle’s homemade wine that I took back to England – it gave me the trots.
You can buy an orphan for around 40,000 euros. I don’t know if that’s a good deal or not.
Have fun!