Atlantis

Bucharest is the latest part of Romania to slip underwater, thus more or less completing the full set of regions flooded this year. Luckily this biblical cleansing of the nation has been staggered so that at least people had places to go when their area was up for being washed.

The advantage with the floods being in Bucharest for the TV stations is that their correspondents didn't actually have to leave the capital, and they could report the floods at length. (TV News in Romania is very much centred on Bucharest at the best of times - the rough equivalence is "man falls down pothole in Bucharest" = "two men savagely murdered in Craiova/Cluj/Iasi/...". I exaggerate, but not overly) Last night then we got an orgy of stories from the flooded capital, from the leaking senate bulding (pictures of senators in session holding umbrellas) to people complaining loudly about the drainage to peoples' kitchens with three inches of water on the floor. It went on for about 25 minutes of a 30 minute news broadcast.

I expect this flood to dominate the news for some more days to come. We still have to have the inevitable recriminations about the lack of drainage in the capital (which does, it must be said, seem to be a major problem), plus there'll be lots of human interest stories about a family in some suburb whose sofa was damaged beyond repair.

[A few minutes later: Just re-read this and realised it comes across as an extended moan about unbalanced TV coverage, which, while true, was not what I set out to write about. Bucharest is flooded, and seriously so, it seems. Apologies if it seems I have been making light of that fact.]

Going to the dogs

The counterpoint of the following two sentences from
this article, is fantastic. I'm glad to see Bush is finally getting the press he deserves...

George Bush, Adolf Hitler and Nicolae Ceausescu are being used to persuade people to adopt stray dogs in Romania

"Our idea is to make people sensitive to what an animal can offer in terms of affection by showing them that even the most hated dictators on this planet received love from their dogs.

[Disclaimer added for those on the right who are determined to read everything completely literally: I do not think George Bush is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler. I just thought it amusing that this article appeared to be implying that. Apologies for not treating anyone who reads this as a complete imbecile.]

The weekend in brief and fractured form

This weekend (or this week actually) was (is) European Mobility Week, which is all about being mobile without using your car. So we chose not to go anywhere outside the city so as not to break the rules.

Actually there is a local NGO (The Partnership Foundation) who are dead good and they put on various events around town to celebrate. There was an NGO fair in the middle of town on Petofi Street* at which Erika's school had a stall, so we spent some time there, there was a bike race, there was an eco-vehicle challenge, and there was a draw-an-ecological-vehicle-on-the-road-with-chalk competition for kids. So we had a good time just walking round the town participating in an eco-festival right on our own doorsteps.

[*a word on street names - any street that is not named after a person has to be signed in both local languages. Thus we live on Fratiei/Testveriseg (brotherhood) street. For mailing purposes the Romanian name is used. The one exception to this is when the street is named after a person in which case it can't be translated. Thus the main street in town is called Petofi Street after Sandor Petofi, a famous Hungarian poet and revolutionary who died somewhere near here. The street where Erika works was called, when I moved here, Strada Florilor / Virag Utca (flower street), but has recently had its name changed to Kossuth Lajos Utca (after another famous Hungarian revolutionary). It's a game the local government play with the national one. Still, if it keeps everybody happy, and not at each other's throats, then I'm all for it. I think we're about the only town in Romania that doesn't have any street or square named after Stefan Cel Mare (Stefan the Great) either, since he is not such a great hero to the Hungarian community as he is to the Romanian, having beaten King Matthius at the battle of Baia.]

Autumn started yesterday, at about 4pm. After we had returned from the eco-events, the skies darkened and the temperature began to drop. In the early evening, Erika and I went to the cinema, and it was getting decidedly chilly. By the time we came out it was dead cold and pissing down with rain to boot. Today looks and feels like autumn. Bit of a shame, but I suppose this great September we'd been having was too good to last.

We had gone to see Mar Adentro, winner of last year's best foreign language film at the Oscars. This will give you a sense of how long films take to arrive in Csikszereda. It was something of a language challenge for me (being in Spanish with Romanian subtitles), but I was pleased at how much I understood. It was an amazing film and one I can't possibly recommend too highly. It'll be too late for anyone outside of the remotest parts of Papua New Guinea to catch it at the cinema, but go ahead and watch the DVD or download the DVIX file or whatever you modern types do these days. The acting is amazing, and the characters so well drawn. It's about euthanasia but doesn't try to make any political points, just tells a heart wrenching and moving story of people dealing with tragedy. And despite being about someone wanting to die, it's one of the most life-affirming films I've seen. Really.

The other day, Bogi suddenly had a nasty thought, and turned to Erika in a semi-panicked state: "What if the baby only speaks English?"

And finally, from the BBC, man in nylon suit starts fire. I love that story.

Remembering Virgil Sahleanu

This month marks 5 years since the assassination of Trade Union leader Virgil Sahleanu in Iasi under the apparent orders of the former manager of his employer TEPRO. It's a sad, but powerful story that probably never made it outside Romania and the Czech Republic (the company that owned TEPRO were Czech).

In 1998, TEPRO, a Romanian producer of steel tubes and pipes, was privatised and bought by a Czech company, Zelezarny Veseli, who were one of TEPRO’s competitors prior to the buyout. The parent company then allegedly started out on a program of asset stripping TEPRO, running down the factory and preparing to shut it down. Ioan Hariton, the secretary of the union which now bears Sahleanu’s name said “The Czechs took our products and stuck the Zelezarny label on them selling them as if they had produced them. Moreover, they refused orders for certain products, recommending that potential partners sign contracts with Zelezarny Vesely. They actually wanted to occupy the international markets where TEPRO was selling its products and lead our factory into bankruptcy.”

The trade union, now headed by Sahleanu, started fighting in the courts (on the basis that Zelezarny weren’t abiding by the agreements they signed in buying up TEPRO) and demanding the reinstatement of 1200 sacked workers. For his trouble Sahleanu himself was fired and had to continue fighting from outside the company. But fight he did, and successfully, winning the reinstatement of the workers, and eventually an agreement to reverse the privatisation. The company sued him and on his way to court one day he was attacked by two men and stabbed three times.

Charged and convicted with involvement in the murder were (as well as the two assailants themselves) the former manager of TEPRO, and the manager and employees of a private security firm. In addition, Frantisek Príplata, a Czech investor/businessman who was acting as adviser to the new management of TEPRO, was convicted by a Romanian court of “inciting murder”. Even after his appeal was turned down, he remained out of jail on the grounds of ill-health, during which time he fled across the border to Hungary on foot, and thence home to the Czech Republic. The government in Prague won’t extradite him, saying "Czech law forbids Czech citizens from being extradited. The only exceptions are EU countries, and Romania is not in the EU." I'm not sure what that means come Romania's accession, but I imagine Mr Priplata is a tad concerned.

Links to the latest versions of the story (and frankly from where I culled more or less all of the above information) can be found here, from Romanian Indymedia, and here, from the Prague Post.

Low Cost Romania (brief reprise)

I have just discovered that Sky Europe have won permission to fly to Bucharest and will be doing so from early December. They're only flying to Bratislava initially, but given that Bratislava is within spitting distance of Vienna it is defintely a step in the right direction, and they also fly on from Bratislava to useful places (for yours truly) like London Stansted.

This will be the first true low cost airline (to my knowledge) in Bucharest. There is something called Air Blue or Blue Air or something, but having checked out their prices, "low cost" seems to mean "not well known" in this case. There's also something called CarpatAir which flies to Italy and Germany from small airports in Romania via Timisoara, but they're not terribly cheap either.

It's good news, even though it still involves a 3¾ hour drive from here to Otopeni or Baneasa airports in Bucharest.

This isn't a very interesting post is it?

Low cost Romania

While wandering round the 'net today I came across this article on the uninteresting topic of Renault's sales in Europe. What caught my eye however, was the following sentence "The Dacia, which means "low cost", company in Romania is fully focused on the Logan model and can make 200,000 vehicles per year."

I imagine there would be a large number of Romanians who would be as surprised as I was to learn that "Dacia" actually means "low cost". There was I thinking it was an ancient region of Europe roughly corresponding to modern day Romania.

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.