Industrial Cooking (part 2)

Last night, in our ongoing quest to prepare for the winter we made zakuszka. Lots of zakuszka. Now you may be wondering what exactly zakuszka is, unless of course you have you lived in the Balkans at some point in your life. Zakuszka is the way that Romanians, Bulgarians and some parts of Yugoslavia ensure a vegetable intake throughout the winter. Zakuszka is the Hungarian spelling, but apparently it’s not popular in Hungary, it’s just a Transylvanian thing. It’s derived from the Romanian word for the same thing, which is, I think, Zacuscă. According to this wikipedia article it’s Romanian in origin, but I reckon there’s no way that zacusca is a Romanian origin word, and it must be Slavic. (That’s what you get with Wikipedia, I suppose).

So, anyway, what this process involved (aside from creating absolute havoc in the kitchen) was first to grind up 2 kilos of red peppers - and they were a very specific type of red pepper too, kind of tomato shaped red peppers. To be honest there are more kinds of pepper available here than I’d ever thought fathomable. I guess for living in a Hungarian town this is what I should have expected, given that paprika is one of the few words in English that comes from Hungarian (the other two that I am aware of are goulash – unsurprisingly – and coach –in the sense of means of transportation, derived from the Hungarian town of Kocs apparently). But anyway, I digress.

Where was I? Ah yes, feeding two kilos of peppers through a meat grinder. Took a while. There are a lot of peppers in two kilos you know. But this was relatively pleasurable compared to the next phase which was to feed a kilo of onions through the same grinder. Because I still have this thing in my eye, I have a little bottle of fake tears that I can put in whenever it bothers me (which is less and less often thankfully). What a waste of money. Just feed an onion through a grinder and bob’s your uncle. If this were a magic realism novel rather than a mere blog, anyone subsequently eating this zakuszka would be seized with melancholy, thanks to the tears shed while making it.

So you take this ground up concoction and throw in half a litre of sunflower oil (I told you this was an industrial sized recipe) and slowly cook it for an hour. Meanwhile, you burn off the skins off 8 aubergines*. I can’t really explain this process in any other way, and I’m sure there are modern ways of achieving the same result, but basically you put the aubergines on a fire (either outside on a real fire, or inside on the gas ring) and turn them until all the skin has cracked and burned and then you strip them and chop them. (They get this delicious burnt taste). So you take these roasted(?) aubergines and feed them through the grinder too, and then mix in a large pot the onion/pepper mix, the aubergines, a litre of freshly prepared tomato juice, a kilo of soaked and cooked white beans, another half litre of oil, some peppercorns, bayleaves, salt and a little sugar and cook that “until the oil rises to the surface”. Only it didn’t really, and we just stopped after two hours. Then you stick it in jars, and steam the jars on pots of boiling water for half a hour. And that’s it.

We were at it for basically 5 hours straight, but now we have a pantry full of zakuszka (and strawberry jam) and are thus set for the winter. The kitchen looked like a bombsite though.

(*More word facts. The word I thought was Hungarian for aubergine is vinete, but it turns out that this is in fact the Romanian word that Transylvanian Hungarians use. The word that other Hungarians use is padlizsan, which is basically the Turkish word Magyarised. I can tell you’re gripped.)

Ornithological Meteorology Update

The storks were right on the money. September has been great weather every day. Long may it continue.

Racism in Romanian football

Romanian football has a serious problem with racism. This week UEFA punished Steaua Bucharest for racist chanting at their recent match with Shelbourne and forced them to play their next European match 250kms away from home. It’s shameful that it was left to UEFA to finally take some action and the Romanian FA (FRF) has never done anything about it.

I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been watching a game on TV and heard fans launch into a chorus of monkey chants at one of the opposition’s black players. Because there are not that many black players in Romania, it doesn’t happen at every game, but for example one of the best players at Poli Timisoara, a Senegalese bloke called Mansour, always comes in for abuse, particularly when his team are playing in Bucharest. It’s worst at Steaua, but Dinamo are bad too.

I agree entirely with Csaba Asztalos, president of the Romanian Anti Discrimination Council in this statement "The image of Romanian soccer is in deep crisis and Steaua pays now for the FRF's lack of reaction (to racist behaviour) over the past several years," (taken from this article). In response the FRF spokesman says “these kind of actions are not a large phenomenon (in Romania soccer). It is about isolated incidents.”. Well, if the phenomenon is not widespread it is because there aren’t many black players in Romania. Ask Mansour if he thinks it’s isolated incidents.

Here is a good article about anti-Gypsy racism at Steaua and Dinamo , and in particular how it is not merely a fan-based thing. Gigi Becali (the repugnant owner of Steaua who I have dissed on this blog frequently) is one of the worst offenders. Of course this is not to say that all Steaua fans are racist, nor that racism isn’t a major issue in football elsewhere.

I can only hope that the latest UEFA action will begin a period of self-analysis by the Romanian media so that the FRF finally start to take action.

Going back in time

There are times when I realise that the place I live has some catching up to do. I no longer notice the horse carts and other aspects of rural life (and anyway, ten years ago I was living in Portugal, a country firmly ensconced in the EU by that time, and also subject to animal-drawn-transportation bottlenecks). We have a nice cable modem at home now, and so it’s easy to forget that out in the villages things are not necessarily in the 21st Century.

Occasionally though I get reminders.

Yesterday, we went to a baptism. A double baptism in fact, the recently arrived offspring of both Erika’s colleague Csilla and her sister (and one of Erika’s best friends) Meli. People flew in from all over for this event – Meli and family live in New York, a lot of old friends live in Budapest or elsewhere in Hungary. One or two live in Bucharest, and there was even a friend and her English husband who flew in from London. A fairly young and cosmopolitan bunch all in all. The event took place in their small home village of Csikszentdomokos about 30km north of here.

The Catholic church is undergoing renovation and so the mass was held in what seemed to be the town hall. This was a nice touch as it meant that rather than the priest being backgrounded by a large statue of a man writhing in agony while nailed to a cross, there was instead a rather nice mural depicting the village itself. We arrived fairly late (thankfully – it’s a bit of stretch sitting through a catholic mass in English for me, so doing it Hungarian would have made it even less appealing), but already the priest had made his mark, expelling the child of some friends of ours for being too loud. He apparently stopped the service and made some admonishing comments before telling his parents to remove him, which they did. Seems a bit un-Christian, but then I don’t suppose he gets many kids in his services (there certainly weren’t any not related to the baptismal portion of the evening at this one).

Then it was time for the baptism itself. The black clad shuffling widows filed out leaving the hall empty aside from the baptismal party. I sat back and watched as events unfolded in a detached, not really sure what was going on way. As the ceremony unfolded it became clear that the priest was a bit old school and was getting frustrated (a) at one of the babies crying; and (b) at his unfamiliar congregation not cowtowing enough to his normal dictatorial grip on proceedings. Occasionally he obviously said things that made people laugh slightly embarrassedly (as that is what they proceeded to do). At one point for example, (I learned later) he chastised many of the prospective godparents (and there were plenty of them) for not having brought a certificate proving their Catholicism. Two couples had managed to procure this certificate in advance so they became the official godparents. It’s not clear to me what this certificate involves, and whether you have to take a test. “Who or what is the third member of the holy trinity? I’ll have to hurry you.” It was all obviously a lot more hardcore than when I became a godfather last year, when I just had to show up and renounce Mal, without any of the worries about whether or not I was actually a Catholic, Christian or indeed monotheist of any sort.

It was at the end of the ceremony however that I realised something a little more earth shattering had taken place. I was watching the ranks of assembled and chastised unofficial godparents, when they all, almost literally took a step back and silently gasped. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a mass silent gasp, but I assure you it can happen. I saw it. There was a lot of shocked catching of eyes and incredulous looks. It was clear something major had happened. After it was all over I found out. Apparently, the priest had seen fit as part of his closing remarks, winding down the holy event that he had just been called upon to carry out, to add the following line (more or less, it’s a rough translation taken from several accounts, and in light of the fact that the last two words had knocked everyone sideways to the point that no-one was exactly sure what had preceded them) “Remember, that today you godparents have taken on a sacred duty, to ensure that these children remain in the arms of the church and in the love of Jesus Christ, and that all those who don’t accept the love of Jesus Christ are stinking Jews”

Jesus frigging Christ. This is a man who is respected and looked up to. In a village such as this his word is practically the last word in any matter. And he’s a repulsive anti-semitic racist bigot. If I hear some random old bloke say such a thing, I’d take is as something unpleasant but hopefully isolated. But this guy… He’s a role model. He’s a teacher. He’s a counsellor. He’s probably effectively a magistrate. And he’s a racist. And not only is he a racist but he actually doesn’t hide it and comes straight out with it while doing his job. This is how I know there is some catching up to do here. This priest, it is clear to me, not only feels it’s acceptable to hold these views, but also didn’t even stop to consider that he might refrain from expounding them in front of a congregation of young well-travelled and well-educated people (or anyone really).

Frankly I’m still reeling from it.

aszfaltozni

That word (which may or may not be correctly formed or spelled) is the Hungarian verb formed out of "asphalt". And there's a lot of it going on right now.

I know I have gone on at length about the state of the roads here, but for good reason. Harghita county in particular has been a disaster area for ages, with Covasna county (the other majority Hungarian county) not far behind. But now, it seems, there is a concerted effort to repair roads. And when I say repair, I mean thoroughly repair in the sense of re-lay, not merely patch up the holes as had previously been the way. A couple of weeks ago we drove over the Bucin mountain road from Sovata to Gyergyo, which we had never before done, because it was so horribly bad. But word had reached us (and many others) that it had been repaired. And how. I never thought I'd find myself waxing lyrical about a road surface, but it was magnificent. "As smooth as skin" as someone told me, which must be the translation of the relevant Hungarian expression. It's become a tourist attraction in its own right. People just drive over it for the pleasure of it.

And now, similarly ambitious road projects are underway on the road south of here towards Brasov and the road west of here to Udvarhely. I have no idea where the money has suddenly come from to perform this expensive job, but I can only assume that the EU must have stumped up some of it. The next question is whether or not the mayor of Csikszereda (whose responsibility the town's roads are) will look at these pristine thoroughfares entering his city and feel embarrassed enough to follow suit.

And on that note, I will sign off for the day, but not before sharing with you the best website I have seen today. Rock, Paper, Saddam. Enjoy.

64th

Romania has come in 64th (out of 177 countries studied) in the UN Development Program's Human Development Report. (Click on the link marked "Human Development Indicators" for the rankings). This is some kind of complicated index that takes into account GDP, health care, life expectancy, income, education etc.

As far as the Romanian press are concerned this means Romania is the worst placed country in Europe - though they then proceed to add the proviso "if you take out the former Soviet states and countries such as Albania and Bosnia", so it's a bit like the UK press stating that "The UK is the worst placed country beginning with U in Europe if you ignore the Ukraine". Mind you it does mean that Romania is less developed (by this measurement) than Macedonia and Bulgaria (for some reason Serbia and Montenegro is not one of the 177 countries included). Other countries which are better off than we are include: Russia, Libya, Cuba, Mexico and Brazil. Which sounds pretty bad, I have to say. Mind you, for real low results, and to make themselves feel better Romanians need look no further than neighbouring Moldova which is down in 115th place, below Vietnam, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Cape Verde, to name a few.

Norway is top by the way. Followed by a top ten of Iceland, Australia, Luxembourg, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, and the USA. (The UK is 15th).

Fairyland

Many people here had told us about this mythical land over the mountains where doctors were nice and talked to their patients as if they were human beings, but we had laughed off their fanciful stories and imagined that the positive bedside manner was a couple of decades away from Romania yet.

But pressed and cajoled by happy pregnant women who had made the trip over to Udvarhely (Odorheiu Secuiesc in Romanian), we finally were persuaded to make an appointment. At the very least, we were told, the doctor we were seeing had a better scanner. Last night was that appointment, so after work we set off over the Harghita mountains to Udvarhely, the most Hungarian town in Romania (98% Hungarian population).

It was, indeed, a revelation. All Ob-gyns in Csikszereda (and we have probably seen most of them) are sullen, uncommunicative, unhelpful, dour, non-committal and generally unpleasant. I have no idea of their medical abilities, but as empathetic human beings they're rubbish. All through her pregnancy with Bogi, Erika got mere grunts out of her doctor and when she finally plucked up the courage to ask "Is everything OK?", the response was (always) "It seems so". And that was it. This time around we've been a little bit more forceful, and had a slightly better doctor, but we've still got very little information handed to us, and what we have squeezed out of her has been grudgingly given. So, when Erika went into this doctor's office she expected something similar, just with a better machine.

But no. He (and his assistant) were kind, solicitous, and informative. They asked all sorts of questions, talked to her as if she were a human being (imagine that) and asked her (twice) if she was happy with the service she was receiving. Customer care! In a Doctor's office in Romania! (I know this isn't surprising to anyone else, but it was amazing to us). He even asked Erika whether I would like to come in and look at the scan too - in Csikszereda I once went in and was looked at as if I was some kind of alien (In this case I couldn't go in, because Bogi had got bored and I had gone off for a walk with her so I wasn't available to accept the invitation). Anyway, he told Erika that everything is fine with the baby, who, I can exclusively reveal is a girl (despite folk wisdom telling us all along that it was a boy). And even talked her through some of the things that other doctors should have talked us through long ago. We have a picture of her too (the baby that is).

All in all it was a great visit and has left us with the wish that we had been going there all along, and the certainty that from now on we will. The only slight drawback is that Udvarhely is over the mountains across a pass at 1000m up, and with the baby due in December, there is obviously a slight concern about conditions. But we'll have it here if need be.

All that remains now is for me to plough through the girl's name half of the Hungarian names book that we borrowed. I'd already done the boy's side and identified names that work in both Hungarian and English and which I liked. Oddly the list was littered with classical Greek and Roman names which would have been amusing, but a little unfair on the nipper. Agamemnon, for example, was there. I wonder if Medusa is on the girl's list? Or Cleopatra? Hmmm.

Who are Romanians and what do they believe?

"Romanians believe they show less positive personality traits than the “European person”. They even admit having outright negative traits such as being somewhat insensitive to others, leaning towards aggressiveness, and authoritarianism, behaving like followers rather than leaders, reacting tensely, walking on the thin line between honesty and dishonesty, being rather disorganized, idealistic, superficial and conservative."

This is one summary statement from the fascinating study Romanian and European values and beliefs: are they different or not ? which was published in June apparently but has only today come to my attention. (It's a pdf file and rather long at that, so be prepared for a wait).

The survey looks at the (self-perceived) differences and similarities between Romanians and Western Europeans, whether "European values" are respected in Romania, to what extent "non-European values" are accepted here, what Romania's agenda should be, and the perceptions of the EU, acession, and various public figures. It's all pretty interesting stuff.

There are some horrifying statistics contained therein - 38% of population believe that "Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals" for example, and 46% think "Superior and inferior races are a reality". Some surprising ones - 64% say that there are "Too many foreigners in the country at the expense of Romanians" (in truth this may only be surprising to someone like me who lives in a town with practically no immigrants). Some pleasantly surprising ones - only 42% think that there are "More lawbreakers among gypsies than among Romanians" (I would have expected it to be much higher), and at least one extremely misinformed one - 62% think that "Ethnic groups should be obliged to learn Romanian". (They ARE for god's sake! I live in one of the few towns where you could theoretically get by without learning Romanian, but everybody who wants to graduate from school, to obtain anything resembling a reasonable level of education or to be able to survive in the country as a whole must -and does- learn Romanian. It's stunning to me that there are people in this country who think that the ethnic minorities are swanning around NOT able to speak the national language.)

56% of the population are hopeful about EU accession with 39% worried, with the majority seeing that accession will bring short term drawbacks with long term advantages (that's pretty much my view too).

The best bit is tucked away at the end, where various "potential communicators" are ranked according to how aware the public are of them and how competent they are perceived. The two most competent are seen to be Basescu (100% awareness) and Jonathan Scheele (37% awareness), who is (as far as I know) the chief EU bod in the country. The least competent? Gigi Becali (94% awareness). Hah.

By the way, when reading through the list of traits of a Western European as compared with Romanians (by Romanians) it's fairly clear that most people interpret "Western European" to equate to "Western and Northern European", which is interesting. (Western Europeans are perceived as cold and reserved for example).

Anyway, probably very interesting reading for any Romanian readers, but not especially interesting for anybody else.

Crossing the border

In October I have to go to Kiev (or Kyiv, whichever you prefer) for a few days. I've just been investigating how I will get there. Now given that Romania has a sizeable border with Ukraine (in fact it has two borders with Ukraine with Moldova surrounded by the two countries), you'd think it wouldn't take that long. But you'd be wrong. Either one can go by train on a journey that takes 30 hours-ish via Chisinau (and I know for a fact that Ukraine has a different gauge railway from non-Soviet Europe and that they have to spend a few hours lifting the train off one set of wheels and putting it on another. Why they don't just ask you to get off and get on a new train is beyond me). Or one can go by plane. Via Vienna, Amsterdam or Frankfurt. I mean really. The cheapest option I've so far found involves me flying all the way to Amsterdam so as to fly all the way back again.

It's insane. Really. You'd think both countries would be united in some kind of post-2004 Orange revolutionaty fervour. But I might as well be going to Gabon for all the ease of this journey.

Salt of the Earth

Every time we go to Marosvasarhely we pass through the town of Praid (Prajad) which has at its heart a large salt mine. I didn't really know much more about it than this, and the fact that you can go there for treatment of respiratory ailments. In fact, its mere existence on our doorsteps seems to mean that if you have so much as a cough the doctors here will prescribe a week down the salt mines.

Well, yesterday we actually went there. And it is not exactly what I expected. First off, you buy your ticket to go down and then wait for a bus. I expected just to wander off down some stairs or take some kind of lift, but no, this is a bigger operation that I had assumed. So the bus shows up and you climb on and then are transported into a tunnel which descends at an angle through the mountain side for about 10 minutes, before arriving at a door, where you are chucked out. Then you do walk down the stairs and finally arrive in this vast hall. There are play areas with swings and slides and the like, churches carved into the rock, shops, cafes, a museum and a hospital. It's stunning. It smells kind of weird, like being under the sea without the drowning problem. And the salt looks like marble. It's polished and shiny and, well, marbled. It's quite amazing. Bogi loved it, running from slide to swing and angling for a game of ping pong or billiards. All of these things are there because if you go for treatment you have to spend weeks underground (well, you do come up every evening, but you spend all day every day down there so I guess they need to create something for you to do). After a while you start feeling all heavy legged. It's dead odd.

There's enough salt there to supply all of Europe for 100 years. That's what the sign said anyway. No idea what that means. Does it assume a relatively static amount of salt use continent wide? Have trends in greater or reduced salt use been factored in? If there is a future gastronomic fashion for Portuguese style bacalhau, will they have to revise that figure down to about 90 years?

I think it's probably indicative of the modern world when a salt mine has a website. It's here if you're interested. Though I ought to warn you that the translations on the English language pages leave something to be desired.

The storks are not what they seem

Earlier this week Erika got a call to see if she could help the New York Times SE Europe correspondent file a story about the floods last week in Udvarhely, and the contribution that illegal logging may have made to their severity. Anyway, she was able to fix him up with a fixer (an item of vocabulary I learned today) and he is still there having shot a film for the Beeb as well as writing a report for the NYT. So anyone with access to the BBC may still get to shortly see a report on the floods in Harghita County. I'll keep an eye out for it on the website and link if it comes up. The NYT's SE Europe correspondent (Nick Woods) lives in Ljubljana which much mean he doesn't make it over to Romania and Bulgaria that often at a guess.

We're going to have a good late summer/early autumn. I am told this is certain because the storks are still here. Apparently last year the storks left on August 20th (All of them on the same day? No idea.) But as of yesterday at least they were still in the area hanging round in those massive nests they make. I'll let you know whether this is true or nonsense as the season progresses