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July 2022
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Sad News
My
stay in Romania started in a horrible way, with the news of my father's
death. It all happened very fast and it was a traumatic event from
which I'm still learning to recover. My journey continues, and I carry
him in my mind.
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Two months in Romania
I
found a great apartment to live in Bucharest. It was spacious,
comfortable, and well decorated. And, best of all, it was located right
in front of Cișmigiu Gardens, a lovely park that became part of my
routine. I had daily long walks under the trees and around the lake, and
it felt like having my own mini Central Park.
The city seems to have a split personality. Some parts are dominated by
communist era architecture, with massive government buildings and
high-density apartment blocks. But, fortunately, there are still many
older buildings from the Belle Époque, which give Bucharest a unique
charm and the nickname Parisul Estului (Paris of the East).
As expected, I visited quite a few museums and learned about local
artists I had never heard of, like Nicolae Grigorescu and Theodor
Pallady. In fact, all Romanian artists I knew before coming to Bucharest
had careers in other countries (sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, movie
director Jean Negulesco, playwright Eugène Ionesco, philosopher Emil
Cioran, writer Mircea Eliade).
After two months, I was able to read many things in Romanian and to have
the most basic conversations (mainly ordering things in stores and
restaurants). Not having to use a different alphabet like in Bulgarian,
vocabulary acquisition was much easier. They only have two tricky
letters, the ș (an s with a cedilla, sounds like sh) and the ț (an t
with a cedilla, sounds like tz). So mulțumesc (thank you) is pronounced
multzumesc and piața (square) is pronounced piatza. But it's easy
to live in Bucharest without learning Romanian, because almost everyone
speaks English.
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Mamaliga!
Romania
makes the best polenta in the world. They call it mamaliga (or
sometimes the diminutive mamaliguta). It's made with unrefined corn
flour (Romania is one of the largest corn producers in the world), which
gives it a pleasant texture. And, fortunately, mamaliga is the most
common side dish, even more popular than French fries.
The two Romanian main dishes that I ate most often were sarmale de pui
in foi de vita (minced chicken, rice, onion, and eggs, rolled in a
grapevine leaf) and pastramă fragedă de berbecuț trasă la tigaie (pan
fried tender lamb pastrami), all served with mamaliga, of course. There
was also a memorable meal in Brașov, appropriately called Specialitate
Brașoveană, which was a stew of chicken, pork, beef, and bacon, served
on top of a bed of French fries.
I also drank some good wine in Romania. One of the local grapes is
called Feteasca Neagra, which produces a pleasant dry but almost fruity
red wine. My favorite bottle was La Cetate Feteasca Neagra 2018. But the
wine I drank the most was from Moldova: Chateau Purcari 1827 (that's
the name of the wine, not its year), made from the local grape Rara
Neagra de Purcari. Full bodied, good tanins, a great everyday wine.
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Into the Carpathian Mountains
When I was a kid I read a book by Jules Verne called The Carpathian Castle,
and since then the Carpathian Mountains were associated in my mind with
mystery and adventure. So I just had to go explore the area, and went
on a tour to Transylvania. The mountains actually cross several
countries (Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania,
and Serbia) but half of it is in Romania and most of that in
Transylvania.
I visited Brașov (formerly Kronstadt, built by German immigrants),
Sinaia (ski resort close to Peleș Castle), and Bran (home of Bran
Castle). Peleș Castle is a fantastic palace built between 1873 and 1914
as a summer residence for King Carol I. All the interior decoration is
original, each room in a different style (French, Florentine, Turkish,
etc). Collections of paintings, weapons, tapestries, porcelain, books,
all at a level that you could expect from a monarch. Bran Castle,
however, is a tourist trap. The building itself, a medieval fortress, is
very interesting. But it's marketed as "Dracula's Castle", which is
wrong in several different ways, and the interior is ridiculously
decorated with fake props from horror stories (including a fantastically
anachronistic mask from Scream). Bram Stoker says in Dracula
that his vampire lived in Transylvania, but the description of the
castle doesn't match Bran Castle (and Stoker never visited the region,
so he couldn't have seen it). And the connection with Vlad Țepeș (the
inspiration for the character's name, since he was also known as Vlad
Drăculea) is even worse. The historical Vlad the Impaler was a ruler of
Wallachia, not Transylvania, and he was never in this castle. But the
greedy current owners of the castle are only interested in selling mugs
and shirts, and while there are tourists gullible enough to believe the
hype they will continue to do a disservice to history and literature.
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And after Romania?
Temperatures
start to rise and I hear the Mediterranean calling me. I'm already in
Nice, enjoying the summer in the French Riviera, but that's a story for
another time. Stay tuned!
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