Getting an Election

The local elections are coming up in Romania and everyone is agog with excitement. Ok, not very agog, or even agogish in any way, but there are elections and there is a bit of half-arsed mild interest. Anyone who relied on the TV to give them an insight into the upcoming elections would conclude that the only race happening was the one for mayor of Bucharest, since nothing else even gets a mention. (Though to be fair, the impression I got of the recent local elections in the UK suffered from the same capital-centric media coverage)

I am told that I am even allowed to have a vote in these elections, which surprised me, because I thought as a non-citizen it was only Eruopean elections that I could vote in, but apparently EU laws allow legally resident non-citizens to vote in local (but not national) elections. So that's exciting. Or at least it would be were I not in Central Asia on June 1st when the elections take place. So my vote will have to be held back.

The focus here is all about the new Hungarian party which is competing this time out and which looks set to split the Hungarian vote. I wrote some time ago about how I felt the UDMR's monopoly of the Hungarian vote was undemocratic and ultimately not that helpful, but a number of people have told me since that they disagree and that without the UDMR, however flawed they may be, Hungarians would have nothing, and the (actually very good) minority law would not exist. [I'm not sure I believe this entirely, but a lot of people do, and that's what matters]

The new party (well, they've been around since 2001) is called the MPP or "Hungarian Civic Party" and they're a more nationalist party than the UDMR. The leader, Szász Jenõ, mayor of Udvarhely (Odorheiu Secuiesc), is a bit of a prick (in my considered political opinion) and he looks like a village idiot on all the posters (not that looks count for anything, but I couldn't help but noticing). This raises all sorts of issues - I've heard some Hungarians say they won't vote at all, in protest at having to choose (which is an interesting spin on traditional democracy) - what they mean is that they don't want the vote split and their abstention is a protest against the lack of unity. I haven't heard of anyone who says they will vote for the MPP, but (a) Csikszereda really isn't the party's heartland; and (b) people in Romania are very wary - to the point of cultural taboo- about saying who they are going to vote for anyway.

Here in Harghita county, the question is just by what split the vote goes between the UDMR and MPP, since the vast majority of it will go to one of those parties, and it's not like the split will "let in the Romanians" as the fear runs. In places like Targu Mures and Oradea where there is a very significant Hungarian minority though, presumably the split vote will make a significant difference. Everyone I've heard hopes that the MPP lose badly so they throw their lot in with the UDMR at the next general election - otherwise the Hungarian community might fail to get any representation at all in the next parliament. (And the anecdotal evidence of my email inbox suggests that Romanian nationalism is on the rise, a bit)

As for me - well, neither of the two Hungarian parties really represent my political views. The UDMR is soft right and in the European parliament is in the same block as the UK tory party. While the MPP is, I believe, aligned with the Hungarian Fidesz party who always seem like a complete bunch of right-wing tossers. So the new deomcracy for Hungarian Romanians is to choose between a right wing Hungarian party or a right wing slightly more nationalist Hungarian party. Woohoo - what choice! The mainstream Romanian parties don't really appeal either, with the so-called left wing one being the corrupt old gits at the PSD. So, to break down a cultural taboo, I don't know if the Romanian Green party is putting up a candidate in Csikszereda, but if they were, and if I were able to vote, I'd give it to them.

Fitting in

A couple of weeks ago, during the "Megye napok" (county days), Csikszereda was visited by some vaguely famous musical acts. (For more or less the first time in my memory of the place) One of these was Morandi, who are (at least by Romanian standards) just about as big as they come. Another was a band I'd never heard of called Sarmalele Reci, who, at least on the the basis of a couple of youtube videos I watched, look pretty good. (Good name too - it means "Cold Stuffed Cabbage" but sounds much better in Romanian than in English). We were going to go, but an inability to find a baby sitter put the kybosh on that plan. However, I think almost nobody went and the concert got called off, in the end - at least someone I know showed up 45 minutes after it was supposed to start and nothing was happening.

We did manage it to make it to one concert in the week, though, seeing aged Hungarian Shakin' Stevens impersonator, Fenyő Miklós. (For Romanian readers who have never heard of him, just imagine a 65 year old Stefan Banica Jr - a horrific thought, no?) Also it is a bit unfair of me to call him a Shakin' Stevens impersonater since he must hav been cranking out the rock n roll when Shaky was still in blue suede nappies. A better British comparison would probably be Cliff, but without the later career move into schmaltzy ballads and vomit inducing "smooth god" or whatever he calls his particular genre. Anyway, Fenyő was not as bad as I had feared, and was actually very enjoyable (apart from the venue- the sports hall, which was a rubbish place for a concert). You can't really go wrong with straight up rock n roll though, at least for dancing and the like. The crowd was interesting - mostly people of between 35 and 55 with a few kids (like ours, for example - still no babysitter). This reflects I think the fact that (a) he brings up a lot of fond memories for the Transylvanian Hungarians of a certain age, because as with all Hungarian musicians of the time the act of listening to him was somehow illicit; and (b) that among the young he is tragically unhip (indeed I asked some teenage students about him and they'd never even heard of him).

So there you go. I get more Hungarian with every day. Next week I'll be wearing a big felt hat riding a horse and having a bizarrely extravagant moustache.

In other fitting in news, we now own two chickens. They don't actually live with us, since we don't really have the space to allow them to enjoy their natural wander aimlessly and peck existence, and anyway, it would get tiring to constantly be stepping on eggshells, but they are ours all the same. They live in a friend's garden with 15 others who all look exactly the same, so we don't actually know which ones are ours, but these are just details.

Comfortable missionary position

Been slacking off on the blog a bit lately, don't really have much of an excuse, but since I'm providing a free service (albeit one of dubious value), I reckon you can cut down on the criticism a tad.

I'm writing this on a train home from Bucharest*, where I spent yesterday and this morning partly doing a workshop and then this morning getting myself a visa for Kazakhstan. This latter process had its own little set of interests, as I eventually located the embassy which is not an embassy, and is not even a consulate, but is a “diplomatic mission”, whatever that means. The bloke who works there is though officially a consul (rather than a missionary), and has what appears to be a nice cushy life. The place is only open from 9-12 and I duly showed up this morning at 9.30 to find he hadn't actually got to work yet. The policemen outside were friendly enough and spoke English which was a bonus. [Another positive was that I went for a stroll round the block while I waited and came across the gloriously named "Kunty Automotive Service". It's the first time I have ever thought that having a mobile phone with a camera in it would have some value. Sadly though, I still live in the dark ages, mobilephonewise] It seems a little bit much that Romania presumably has to pay for two policemen to sit outside what amounts to a house with a flag on it, 24 hours a day, to guard a consul (who only works a couple of hours a day) and two staff (I'd called them a few times and that experience, along with basically meeting everyone this morning, means that I have pretty much worked out the staffing levels of the place. I reckon I'd make a good spy). One thing I had to do before going there this morning was to pay for my visa - you can't just show up at the place with cash, you have to pay at a bank, and then show them the receipt. This I had to do in the Banca Transylvania (any branch), which is convenient as we live in the same building as that bank. So on Wednesday I went along to the Csikszereda Banca Transylvania and asked if I could pay for a Kazakh visa. This, as might be imagined, caused some consternation, since I suspect they don't get many people in there asking for such a thing. There were lots of phone calls and eventually a ledger was produced in which I managed to locate the Kazakhs and demonstrate that really this was possible. Anyway, I finally got my pieces of paper in order, and when the consul showed up, waited for half an hour reading about the glorious achievements of Kazakh government, while he stuck something in my passport. Not quite sure why it took him half an hour, but there you go. He was probably tired.

I'm off to Almaty the week after next, since you asked.

(*While I did actually write this on the train on Friday, I could not post it until today, Sunday. So, no, the Kazakh consul was not working on a Sunday. Or in the afternoons. Or before about 10. Or much at all really)

Sporting update

A couple of pieces of sporting news to report today.

Most relevant to Csikszereda is the news that Steaua Bucharest ice hockey team (not to be confused with the football team of the same name - they are not linked as far as I can tell) has decided to next year play in the Hungarian league. The invitation to participate in that league has been open ever since Sport Cloub from here decided to join it two years ago, but Steaua previously decided not to go down that route. Having watched the Romanian league title be contested by the two Csikszereda teams (Sport Club and Hochei Club) this year, squeezing Steaua out of the championship game for the first time since the 50s, they have obviously realised that the only way to stay competitive is to be in Hungary as well. I think it's good in many ways that they have decided to do this - partly because if it were just the "Hungarian" teams from Romania that took part it would all look a bit nationalistic, partly because I think the more competitive the league the better, and partly because I just don't think it can do any harm to have what will essentially become a Hungary-Romania league in a sport (there will be 4 Romanian teams and 7 Hungarian teams in this league next year)

More intriguing from an external perspective is the ongoing saga of the football league. This is going down to the wire with the last games being played on Wednesday this week. The last time I wrote about football here, CFR Cluj were well ahead but I feared a comeback by Steaua, which duly came to pass, thanks partly to some wobbling by CFR and some very suspiciously dodgy decisions and moments in Steaua's games (including one game against Rapid in which they were 1-0 down, but the ref called off the match gifting Steaua a 3-0 win). A good summary is here from Jonathan Wilson in the Guardian.

Anyway, last night, Dinamo beat Steaua 2-1 to leave CFR one point clear at the top. They only need to win their last game to take the title. It's just that this last game is against city rivals U Cluj. And U Cluj's fans hate CFR passionately. And while U are already relegated, I assume the players will do their utmost to knock CFR off so that they can give something back to the fans who've watched them through a very bad season. And who knows what pressures the ref will have come under.

If Becali, the most vile man in Romania, gets his way and Steaua win the league, I'm giving up on football in this country. It's corrupt beyond belief. So come on CFR. Please.

Spelunking Today

Well, yesterday, really. We spent our May 1st holiday underground in a cave not too far from here called Sugo Barlang (where barlang means cave) or Pestera Sugau in Romanian. Romania has loads of really interesting caves, I'm told, many of which are more dramatic than the one we went to yesterday, but this one was pretty interesting all the same. Some pictures (as ever, click on them to view full size)



This effect is apparently called "Leopard Skin":

For some unaccountable reason back in the 70s some part of the Romanian army was billeted in this cave, so many of the stalactites and stalacmites got snapped off, which is a shame, but it does mean you get to see the cystalline stuff in the middle:

More broken bits, but still pretty cool.

A bat. A cat? No, a bat.

A pair of brave cavers

What is going on in Italy?

Firstly the electorate returns corrupt hard-right crook Silvio Berlusconi to power, then the city of Rome elects a neo-fascist mayor (first right wing mayor since 1943, and I don't think you need to look at Wikipedia to recall what kind of political climate there was in Italy in 1943).

From the outside it is really really hard to imagine how anyone could vote for Berlusconi since he's seems so utterly unfit for public office as he's so bent. But someone's whose views I trust absolutely tells me that many people actually vote for him because he's such a crook and yet he's managed to beat the system so often (read: got himself elected so that he can change the system and thus not get convicted by it). And here I think Romania has corruption problems.

(There is of course a Romanian angle to this whole story, since there are half a million Romanians living in Italy and they will of course suffer greatly in such an extremist political climate)

Mind you, this is not just Italy, since it seems completely possible that today London, a city which prides itself on its multicultural character, looks set to elect a racist mayor. Boris Johnson, a man whose main claim to fame is that he behaves like a buffoon on a regular basis (but then uses that cretinous exterior to hide the fact that he's a really hard line right wing wanker, who uses words like "piccaninny" like he's a slave owner). As a friend memorably described him (and you should look away now if bad language offends) he is a cunt in twat's clothing.

The world's going to hell in a handbasket.

To the lighthouse

The hospital I was in, which is reserved for lung cases and infectious diseases (in separate wings) with the TB ward lying somewhere in the middle, sitting on the pulmonary fence, is in a beautiful old building. Think mittel-european house of some minor voivode. (More Colditz than Stalag-Luft III. Oh sorry, I forgot I was going to try and lay off the prison references). A bit crumbling, but looking onto a nice courtyard, and with views in all directions, and located not actually in Csikszereda, but in the former-village, now-suburb of Csiksomlyo (Sumuleu Ciuc in Romanian). When I got tired of reading it was pleasant to spend time watching the Spring arrive - the tree outside my window went from bud to full-on blossom during the week, the snows on Hargita mountain gradually receded, the birds in the courtyard fluttered around collecting nesting materials and the like. It was all very tranquil.

Sadly though, this hospital will not be a hospital for very much longer. You see the building is owned by the church (the Roman catholic church in this case). It became a hospital during communism when it was nationalised, but now the church want it back (as under post-communist rules they are allowed to). I'm not quite sure what they want to do with it (the former orphanage in the same area reverted to RCC control a few years ago, and as far as I can tell they haven't touched the place since). To me, it would seem that having a hospital in the building goes some way to fulfilling the church's supposed raison-d'etre - you know about helping people and all that - but instead they will probably just use it for accommodation for the pilgrimage weekend, and leave it lying dormant for the rest of the year. It's a real shame, and a bit crap really.

In other religion related news, today is Easter Sunday in the Orthodox calendar. As I understand it this means that roughly 1975 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and was resurrected a couple of days later. Then a few weeks later, he repeated the trick, just to head off the doubters. That's commitment for you.

Anyway, Happy Easter Romanians and anyone else of an orthodox bent.

The English Patient

So, as you may have surmised, I was indeed admitted to hospital last week. I went in on Wednesday, and was expecting to be there for a week, but my parole hearing today (Tuesday) went well, and I got let out a day early for good behaviour.

So now I'm home, struggling to cope with the sheer randomness and unpredictability of non-institutional life. It's all very strange.

First things first - I was eventually diagnosed with pneumonia and pleurisy in a kind of double whammy of pulmonary trauma. If you look up pleurisy on wikipedia, you get a list of famous people who snuffed it from the disease. Wordsworth, Charlemagne, Cezanne, Hardy. Luckily as the list gets more contemporary, the results get more slight - Steinbeck, for example, merely had a rib removed. Not that I really wanted a rib removed, but given the option of the Steinbeck or the Wordsworth, I would have plumped for the Steinbeck. In addition, I had very high blood pressure and an enlarged heart. All in all quite a selection.

Erika went off to buy me some pyjamas and slippers, vital parts of hospital uniform, which I didn't previously possess, and on Wednesday morning at the appointed hour I drew up, clutching my new nightwear and various items of foodstuff to tide me over in case the Romanian hospital food didn't really meet my needs. After a few more tests ("Please spit in this cup"), I was shown to my new room. This room, I later realised was effectively the VIP room. Perhaps because I was foreign, or a bit rubbish at Hungarian, or just very important in some other unspecified way. [I think they use it for problem patients too, so maybe I fit into that category]. The VIP room had it's own en-suite bathroom (well, a shower and toilet) and only two inmates (while all the other rooms on the corridor had 4, and had to share the bathroom at the end of the corridor) I changed into my pyjamas and slippers and dressing gown, what the hip-patient-about-ward is wearing these days, and slid my bags and so on under the bed. I chatted with my roommate (the director of the town's "culturehouse" - VIP room I told you), and quickly began to get into the routine.

It was the next morning that the bad bit of the routine became apparent. At 6am (I'll repeat that time, as it's a little unreal at first glance), at 6am, the door was noisily opened, the lights (of the bright retina-searing fluorescent type) were turned on, and the first injection of the day was administered. For me this involved the insertion of a needle in a vein, and the slow intravenous drip-drip-drip of 500ml of antibiotics. In terms of sheer brutality - the bare room, the bright lights, the insane hour, the needle - it must be akin to Guantanamo.

I'm exaggerating of course. The difference between the two are many. Guantanamo is on a tropical beach for a start.

On the downside, the regular injections of sodium pentathol, which I imagine in my seen-too-much-TV way to be a feature of "enemy combatant" life, are administered by bull-necked crew-cut marines, rather than by attractive young women. And then there are the snarling dogs, and the bags on the head, and the electrodes, and the probability of never being allowed out, and never getting a fair trial.

After the rude awakening of the 6am jab, the day settled into it's regular flow. 6.45 am (ish) drip is completed, needle removed; 7am shower (this wasn't a mandated time, it was just the time that there seemed to be some hot water); 8 am breakfast (bread roll, cheese or meat - as far as I was concerned then, bread roll); 8.30 am cleaner comes in; 9am blood pressure checked; 9.30 am pills brought. Not quite sure why I needed to have them hand delivered every day, and not just left for me to take them when I was supposed to but perhaps it's a way of preventing prisoner suicide bids. They should really have taken my belt from me.

At this point I think I must have done this extended prisoner metaphor to death so I will attempt to leave it alone now, since it must be getting a tad tiresome. I can't promise it won't return, but I'll do my best.

To continue with the exciting day outline: Noon lunch; 1pm doctor's rounds; (long fun-filled gap) 6pm second intravenous drip of the day, coinciding exactly with dinner appearing (a tad annoying really, it's not like there couldn't have been a way in which to stagger these two major events of the day); 10pm lights out.

As you can see it was a fun-packed existence. There were a few bonus moments though - Once we got a surprise 4am visit from a delirious patient, roaming the corridors randomly waking everyone up, which added a certain je ne sais quoi to the evening (and also to the 6am wake-up). There were two trips out in an ambulance, too - once to the cardiologist and once to the throat specialist (there must be a Latin-derived name for a throat doctor, but I have no idea what it is). I also managed to break a few rules while there. On Saturday afternoon, for example, Erika walked up with the kids in tow. Rather than have them come in the ward, they stayed out in the garden and I got dressed and came out to join them. We had an enjoyable hour soaking up the late afternoon spring sun, in the courtyard garden of the hospital, and then they headed home and I went back to my cell room. It was then I was informed of my terrible error in ... putting on my clothes. This apparently is definitely against the rules, and I should have gone out in my pyjamas (and then got told off for getting cold). I obviously had no idea of this clothing transgression, but when I mentioned it to anyone they said "Well, of course you can't put your clothes on" like I was an idiot. Not quite sure why the rule exists - so you can always tell who the patients are? It doesn't necessarily work that way, though, since the nurses wear dressing gowns over their uniforms when it gets a bit chilly in the hospital.

So, gradually, the minutes intravenously dripped by, slowly becoming hours and days. I had no need to carve notches on the walls to see how many days I'd been inside though, as I could conveniently count the track marks on my arm. (Or at least I could for a while, until my veins, sussing out what was going on started to bury themselves further and further into my arms, pulling the muscles over their heads in an effort to avoid the needle, and thus meaning that each session started to involve two or three holes each).

I should at this point say that despite my whining above, the experience of being in hospital was really very good. The nurses were all extremely friendly and professional, the doctor was fantastic (I gave her the URL of this blog, so she's probably reading this, but I'm saying it because it's true not for any other reasons), the food was...well, the food was food, the place was spotless, despite being in a run down old building, and on top of that I got to read a stack of books. I can't compare it with hospitals elsewhere, because I haven't been in one for this length of time, but I reckon that despite the pressures everyone is under in an underfunded system, they manage to do a great job of taking care of patients.

At the end of it all, my blood pressure is still pretty high - though as a complete layman, it seems logical to me that if you stick a litre a day of extra liquid into someone's system (as they did) then the blood pressure would be bloody high. I know it doesn't work like that, but I don't really understand why not. But everything else seems to be getting better. I have to take it easy for a little while, and have not strain myself or be too active. Does anyone know where one can hire handmaidens to feed one the occasional grape?

There's another post to be written about the building itself in which I was incarcerated treated, but I need to go for a medically mandated lie-down now. But I'll leave you with a question: When old men play up in their role as hospital patients in order to force young female nurses to treat them like children is it some kind of odd sexual perversity, loneliness, or some kind of search for a mother? I've no idea.

Random thoughts

I'm just back from England, where I attended the annual IATEFL conference in Exeter with Erika and something like 1600 other people. It was a good trip, though I wasn't feeling at my best, since the cough I had a few weeks ago turns out to have been pneumonia (or at least some similar non-specific lung inflammation, of similar levels of intensity). I am waiting today to have another delightful visit to Csikszereda's hospital so that I can work out whether or not more treatment is necessary (this possibly will involve spending a few nights in the aforementioned building while I get regular injections of antibiotics and/or monitoring of rampant blood pressure which has risen in accompaniment of the lung thing. So if I don't post anything here for a while it is likely because I am stuck in hospital and hence offline.

One of the things that I have complained about often in Romania is the fact that people are so incredibly nesh here. If I dare to take Paula out in 20 degree temperatures without a hat, I get older people especially looking at me like I'm inhumane and ought to be arrested. You see people wearing cotton wool in their ears just to keep the draughts out (and also sounds and other such troublesome things). But I think there has to be some kind of happy medium between the approach to temperature in Romania and the approach to temperature in England.

To set the scene we flew into Luton last Sunday in the middle of a raging blizzard. In April. In southern England. No idea what's going on. Anyway, it only really snowed on that day, but the temperature never really got very warm - most nights there was a heavy frost, and the daytime temps never rose much above 7 degrees. But in the midst of this hardly summery weather people walked around wearing not much more than their underwear. Mostly these people were teenagers, and especially teenage girls, it is true, so one can put some of this masochistic lunacy down to the vagaries of fashion, but it is a fashion which seems remarkably long-lasting. Whenever I go back and find myself wandering round an English town of an evening I usually find myself marvelling at the lack of warm clothing on those out carousing. This year, if anything the phenomenon has either got worse, or prolonged exposure to Romania has made me more sensitive to it. Perhaps I am becoming assmiliated and before long I, too, will be tutting concernedly at parents whose children are not buried in a vast heavily-lined, multi-layered, all-over burqa; wearing large clumps of cotton wool in my ears; and furiously closing every window in the train.

Zero Summit Game

Bucharest is being flooded with loads of violent, aggressive and corrupt criminals. Any sane immigration policy would have kept these people out of the country and turned them back at the airport, but Romania instead is welcoming them and even cleaning up the city before them to make their stay a happier one. "How many deaths are you responsible for, sir? Certainly, of course you may come in"

I'm talking of course of the various world leaders converging on Ceausescu's delightful Palace of the People to talk about expanding NATO or not expanding it or (in the case of Greece) to once again get pissed off about Macedonia being called Macedonia. Bush, Brown, Sarkozy, Putin. They're all here (I think Putin isn't here yet, but he's on his way).

In order to welcome these people (and I use the word reluctantly) the city has been tarted up a bit (new pavements have been laid, stuff has been painted, and the stray dogs have been ... well, I'm not sure what has happened to the stray dogs, have they been rounded up, shot, shipped off to somewhere else in Romania, painted a more pleasing colour? It's not clear to me). Roads have been closed all over the city - even to pedestrians, and schools and various organisations have been given the week off, so that the children and employees don't upset Laura Bush by being dressed better than her. One of the airports has been closed so that all the fancy aeroplanes can park there for the week, while the other one just has fewer flights, and heavy security. I think if I lived in Bucharest I'd be tempted to go out and demonstrate against all this stuff even if I didn't have any axe to grind with NATO.

Maybe they'll organise a trip for the assembled dignitaries to the airport at Constanta which was used as an impromptu torture camp by the US and its allies in its euphemistically named "extraordinary rendition programme". Allegedly.