Cultural False Friends

You are probably already familiar with the ideas of cognates and false friends. Cognates are words which are related to each other in different languages. English and Romanian, for example, contain a fair few cognates, since Romanian is Latin based, and English has tons of Latin based stuff in it. English and Hungarian on the other hand have very very few cognates, because Hungarian is just bloody weird. (And because they have one of those academies which insists on creating new words for new things, they don't even have easy-to-grasp words for things like "The Internet" or what have you).

False friends, are words which you think are probably cognates, but turn out not to be. The most famous example of this is the Spanish word embarazada, which means pregnant (and not embarrassed as people tend to assume). Though my personal favourite is the Portuguese word constipação which actually means "a cold", and so (because I have a puerile mind) makes me imagine Portuguese tourists going to the chemists in the UK while on holiday and asking for medicine for their cold, and getting something else.

Hungarian to English has one or two false friends - trafik, for example, actually means kiosk or tobacconists (there must be a "My hovercraft is full of eels" joke I could squeeze in here, but I can't work out how). Akció, on the other hand, means "special offer" or "discount", and not anything like "action". (This is also a Hungarian/Romanian false friend, as you sometimes see shops here with signs in the window saying Akció/Acţiune, which makes the same error. A slightly ruder example is the Hungarian word Szakadék which means cliff or abyss, and nothing like how it sounds (which is more or less "suck-a-dick")

Between English and Romanian there are one or two which come up all the time - nervous being the most obvious. The Romanian word nervos actually means angry, and this causes people (not least me) a lot of confusion. I think the Romanian word mizerabil means something like filthy, which is also a tad confusing. Then of course there's the common menu item crap (fillet of crap, fried crap, grilled crap, etc).

But, I have come upon a new concept here, and that is the cultural false friend. There is a Romanian word imediat, which you hear very often. How long will it be? Imediat. When will you be finished? Imediat. When can I expect it? Imediat. Now, in theory, imediat is a cognate. It means, as you might expect, "immediately". It's just that in English, immediately means "right away", or "I'll drop everything and get it done right now". It doesn't really mean that in Romanian. It means something more like "soon-ish" or "when I get round to it", or "in a week or so". So, I've had to mentally redesignate it as a false friend, or otherwise it just gets too confusing, and more that that, it creates unreasonable expectations (for me).

Any other cultural false friends? Or even just amusing linguistic ones?

Paper View

I have a nascent theory of the "it came to me while lying awake one night/while I was drinking a beer" variety, that you can judge the quality of a holiday destination by the British newspapers on sale there.

The highest quality such destination is the one that doesn't actually have any British newspapers on sale at all - as that means the place doesn't actually attract enough british people to make it worth while (note: this only actually applies to holiday destinations - you can't buy English newspapers in Csikszereda, but this doesn't imply a high-quality place, merely remote and uninteresting to any outsiders)

However if the number of UK visitors does create enough demand to stock newspapers, then you can start wondering about why and how decisions are made to order which papers. In Malta a couple of years ago, for example, where I was working, the only papers available were The Sun, Mail, and Express. The three worst mass readership papers in the country. The thoroughly downmarket, Murdoch owned Sun, and the two extreme right wing anti-immigration/anti-foreigner rags Express and Mail. Frightening. What had Malta done to deserve this little slice of little-englander hell in it's corner shops and kiosks? Sure the vast majority of English people there were elderly people seemingly escaping the British winter, but not all such people are obnoxiously right-wing, surely? Or are they all in Malta not so much to get away from the weather but to get away from all those foreigners?

Thassos, which is what made me think of this half-baked nonsense in the first place, had the following British newspaper options - Mail, Express, Sun, Mirror and Times (to add to the English language newspaper options it was also possible to buy the International Herald Tribune). Not sure what message this is giving us about Thassos. That tourists there are somewhat right of centre in general (and in the case of the Mail/Express saddoes, completely off the chart). That there was no place for the middle ground Guardian/Independent reader? It's a rum do and no mistake. Wonder what you get in Chiantishire? Guardian and Telegraph?

So, I bought the Times once. I'm not proud of it since it's a Murdoch paper, but I could justify it to myself since the newspaper's online presence does boast the most consistently funny podcast that I know of - The Bugle. I learned that the Times is the official newspaper of The Ashes, whatever that means (it obviously means that the paper contained ludicrous amounts of coverage of said cricketing event), and that it's editorial team have obviously decided that the solution to all the world's problems is David Cameron. One of those "If the answer is David Cameron, it must have been a particularly stupid question" type things. It's a bit like imagining the problems of the world's entertainment industry could all be solved by James Blunt. Another bland vapid inoffensively rubbish toff.

I also bought the IHT (as we seasoned travellers know it). It's not a bad paper all round (though it does give airtime to idiots like Thomas Friedman), but why oh why do all US newspapers do this thing where they start a load of stories on the front page and then ask you to turn to another page to finish each one? It's mad. You have to go front page, page 3, front page, page 5, front page, page 3, front page, page 4, and so on for ages. What possible advantage does it serve? Why don't people complain? It drives me mental.

Greeced Lightning

Back from our too-short holiday in Skala Potamia, Thassos, Greece. Lots of sun, sea, sand and errrm, well that's it for obvious words beginning with "s", since we were in a small two room apartment with three kids. Salad, I suppose. There was a lot of salad.

You know those brochure style images of couples walking hand-in-hand down a moonlit beach? Sitting in candle-lit restaurants slowly sipping wine and eating delicious food? Frolicking playfully (yet with the obligatory hint of sex) in the foaming waves? None of that stuff happens when you're on holiday with children. Or at least not with our children. Perhaps others have some foolproof sleeping-pills-and-ouzo concoction by which they cleverly create space for themselves, but not us.

Anyway it was a good holiday and I wouldn't like my obvious need to spend a week on holiday just with Mrs Musings to overshadow that fact. The sea was perfect - warm clean clear water, gently sloping beach allowing kids to play without fear of going under, fine white sand. Food was Greek (which means fantastic). The Mythos was cold. We didn't do much besides hang around on the beach, but that was fine.

Driving to Thassos is also easier (and quicker) than driving to Croatia as we've done in the last couple of years. It's just a straight shot down to Giurgiu in Romania, across a ridiculously unkempt border post and run down bridge over the Danube (especially ridiculous given that this is a majorly important border crossing in EU terms, and beyond - the route from Turkey to the west pretty much has to go through here), across Bulgaria, and then into Greece at the the three way Bulgaria/Greece/Turkey border area. From there you hit "developed EU" and the roads are superb all the way to Keramoti, the port for Thassos.

There is a bit more too it than that obviously. For example when I say "just a straight shot down to Giurgiu" I have conveniently left out the need to get past Bucharest. This is no easy task. I asked on a Romanian forum before going for advice, and got lots of helpful answers (which of course all contradicted each other as is the way of these things). Based on that, on the way down we decided to try the "centura" (belt) which is the sort of ring-road thing round Bucharest. My god, what a road. It's more pot hole than road, has incredible traffic and baffling road rules (all the "spokes" going in and out of the city have priority over the centura, so you have to crawl across these mad, churned up junctions every couple of kilometres, dodging cars, being squeezed by trucks, just generally living on a knife edge). On the way back, as it was a Saturday, I decided to instead try out the "driving through the middle of the city" option. Arguably this was better - the roads were in better condition, the traffic was still heavy, and complex, but at least there was slightly more logic to the road junctions. On the other hand, they have obviously banned signs in Bucharest - the only directions point you to the various barrios. This is all very well if you actually want to go to cartier tineretului or wherever, but not much use for the outsider. It wasn't until I had somehow negotiated myself to the road leading out of town from the Arcul de Triumf that I first saw a sign pointing to the airport. I mean surely this is information that might be useful to people? Madness. I think it's some massive scam to try and sell more GPS systems (it's certainly the first place I've ever driven in which I've felt I could have used one. Though such is the disregard shown for out-of-towners that it wouldn't surprise me if the City Hall jammed the signal of Satnavs within the city limits).

Bulgaria, like Romania, is a bit of motorway free zone. But unlike Romania, the other roads are actually pretty good. Even roads marked as minor white ones on the map are in good shape (you'd never venture onto one you weren't familiar with here for fear of spending three hours negotiating a 10 km section of untarmacked hell). It's helped by the fact that almost nobody seems to live in Bulgaria, meaning that you only pass through a village every 20 kms as opposed to every 3 kms here. And when you do it's empty of the horsecarts, dogs, cows, drunk blokes, cyclists, children, and wandering people of all varieties that you get here. (This allows for fast driving but it is slightly disconcerting. It was almost a relief to get back to Romania and it's colourful vibrant chaotic villages on the drive home). The other border, at Svilengrad is the starkest contrast you're ever likely to see within the EU. You cross from organised, fast, clean, well-kept Greece, into shabby poverty-stricken mayhem of what appears to be a major Rroma shanty town in Bulgaria.

Finally, a recommendation. If you're ever driving thorugh Bulgaria (either from N-S or E-W or any combination thereof, and you want a place to stay somewhere in the middle, try the Shipka IT Hotel. Fantastcially helpful and friendly owners, great hotel, good value, in a really nice village at the bottom of the mountains in the Valley of the Roses. Even if you've no plans to drive through Bulgaria, then make some, just so you can stay there. We stayed there both coming and going and felt like we were saying goodbye to friends at the end.

Csikszereda: going to the Blogs

A few weeks ago, I reported on the blog competition that was going on here. Well the competition closed yesterday and the winners were announced. It turned out that I was one of the judges of the competition (I didn't know I would be when I wrote before) so I did read all of them in great depth, and they are a fantastic bunch of very different, very interesting, well written, well put together blogs.

There were 10 entrants and 6 of them would all have been worthy winners. In the end the winners were:
Under 18 category:

First place- Visit Csikszereda! This one is great and really has some superb photos on it, and has used the visuals in a very good way.
Second place- Aagota's Hometown Again very good, a nice variety of stuff and a different kind of format.

Over 18 category:

First place- Csixereda!? Another really excellent blog. Some really nice pieces of writing (and excellent English). I urge you to watch the video by local band "Los Colorados"
Second place - Ikarosz Grocery Different, varied, great design, very original. Good mixture of items

Public online vote:
A Piece of Harghita. I loved this one, and actually it was my top choice for the competition, so I'm glad it won the public vote, after being pipped in the under 18 category. Very interesting, well written, great design, I loved the way he uses video. Highly recommended.

Not to forget:
Zsu's Blog. Sadly there were only 5 awards made, and as it turns out there were 6 really excellent blogs, so this one missed out, but it is still worth your attention. Well thought out, good design, nice writing and presentation. Good use of pictures.

So, I'm actually about to go on holiday for the next ten days or so, and anyway, it's not like I've been around a lot of late, so, I'd like to recommend that anyone who is in the vaguest bit interested in Csikszereda/Miercurea Ciuc take a look at these blogs. And I'd like to urge the authors to keep at it, since they're doing a great job and they shouldn't stop when the competition is over.

To finish, shamelessly ripped from "A Piece of Harghita" a video presentation of this town. Manages to achieve in 4 minutes what I have failed to do in 5 years of incessant rambling on here

Dan the Man

(note: Football post follows. Just so you know)

Yesterday was a day I'd rather forget for rather painful/uncomfortable reasons. I won't divulge them here as (a) it wouldn't be exactly edifying; (b) it's still too raw (in a number of ways); and (c) there are some things that are best left unspoken/unblogged

So, instead, to take my mind off my current discomfort, I need to report on the shock winners of the Romanian football league this year. The town of Urziceni (Err - zee - chen) is a small dusty piece of nothingness sort of north east of Bucharest. I have driven through it a couple of times on my way to the coast, and really it's not exactly the must buzzing metropolis on the planet. It even makes Csikszereda look quite attractive and lively, and believe me, that's a difficult thing to do. The population of the town is 17,000, and it's one of those southern Romanian towns in which every lamppost is plastered with posters advertising agricultural labouring jobs in Spain and Italy. In short, it's the sort of place that people leave as soon as they can.

But miraculously, incredibly, its football team Unirea Urziceni (which roughly translates as Urziceni United) have just become champions of Romania. They've achieved this without any real star name players and without importing vast quantities of South Americans as most of their rivals have done. The town will, I think, be by far the smallest ever to host Champion's League football (well when I say host, the ground is too small, so they'll play their games in Bucharest, so it won't really exactly host CL football, but you know what I mean)

The manager who has worked this miracle is none other than Dan Petrescu, who is famous the world over for playing his football for the mighty Sheffield Wednesday (he did also play for some other minor teams, but it was his time at Wednesday which will have been the pinnacle of his career). Indeed, he hasn't yet reportedly said, but I am pretty sure he has it on the tip of his tongue "Winning the Romanian league with Unirea is the proudest moment of my career since the day I signed for the great Sheffield Wednesday". (So successful was his time in England at Wednesday and another lesser club whose name escapes me, that he had a popular TV show named after him)

Anyway, it's a remarkable achievement, and it adds to the highly amusing recent denial of any trophies or any kind of success whatsoever to Bucharest teams. Last year CFR Cluj did the double, and this year Urziceni have won the league and the cup final (this weekend) will be contested between CFR Cluj and FC Timisoara. In addition the second Champions League spot has gone to FC Timisoara after they (yesterday) got their 6 points back from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (and thus pushed Dinamo down into third place). So, all in all, ha ha Bucharest. Sadly Steaua just scraped into the last spot for the "Europa League" (the new UEFA Cup).

In other good news for Romanian football (and Romanian football managers), Mircea Lucescu led Shakhtor Donetsk to the UEFA Cup, László Bölöni won the Belgian league with Standard Liege, and little known local Csaba László (from Udvarhely/Odorheiu Secuiesc just down the road) took Hearts to a very creditable third place in Scotland. And Mircea's lad Razvan is now the new coach of the Romanian national team about which I feel very positive as I think he's an excellent coach and has to be an improvement over the rubbish, and now sacked, Victor Piţurcă. South Africa 2010 is well out of reach, but it could be a brighter future for the national team.

Fruits of our labours

As regular readers of this blog (not sure if I should go with a plural there, but what the hell) will know, last year we became landed gentry and purchased a house with a garden. Well, I say house, but I really mean crumbling-building-once-used-as-a-house. Anyway, the barn is in the process of being made into a liveable space and should be done by July, but the house is no less, and possibly more, decrepit than it was this time last year.

But, setting aside all that, last week just before I went to Prague I made a pesto almost entirely from ingredients that we ourselves had grown. I say we grew them, but it seems a little too easy. Dig up some ground, stick some seeds in and then just let them get on with it. Though it doesn't always work, of course, since we do have one patch which seems to resolutely resist producing anything worthwhile (even the weeds grow slowly there).

So, anyway, without further ado, Pesto alla Bankfalva.
You will need:

• Large handful or two of rocket/arugula/rucola (this was one of those words I learned in other languages before English, since when I was a lad we didn't have rocket and had to make do with lettuce)
• A couple of cloves of garlic
• Some walnuts (about 10 per handful of rocket). Shelled, of course.
• Olive oil
• Salt (these last two were the ones that didn't come from the garden)

Stick everything in a blender and errm, blend, until such time as it all has become a pesto like consistency. Add olive oil as required if more liquid is required. Cook pasta, and stick some of this delicious green gold on it and mix up a bit. Et voila! Or whatever Et voila is in Italian.

Now, there may be those who are at this moment boiling with rage about the un-pesto-ness of this pesto. Pesto purists, for example, will see the replacement of pine nuts with walnuts as an act of great treason (but pine nuts are unavailable here, and we have a walnut tree, so nerr). Also using rocket instead of basil will almost certainly set some peoples' teeth on edge (but our basil hasn't grown much yet, and the rocket is almost as prolific as the weeds, so double nerr, and anyway don't knock it until you try it - rocket pesto is the business). However, it also shouldn't be forgotten that pesto purists would insist that parmesan cheese ought to be in pesto, so I think we can safely conclude that pesto purists are mentalists who would rather make their primi smell of vomit, than eat something tasty and wonderful, so discounting their views is easy.

Local News News

For many years I have been the English language voice of Csikszereda, the place that people discovered when they searched for English language information about the town. I have been contacted by ice hockey fans, by Hungarian-Americans, by people who adopted children from this area in 1990, by tourists (not so many of them, I confess), and by various others from around the world who have come across my rambling nonsense and thought I might be able to provide them with some insight into the mysterious world of the Csik/Ciuc Depression.

Now there are some problems with this obviously - (a) I'm not a local and so what insight/information I can offer is not quite as insightful as it might be (though arguably, I suppose, it could be more objective); (b) I'm a 43 year old bloke with kids, and therefore do not necessarily represent a hugely diverse body of opinion. (What do women think of this place? Young people? People with social lives? etc etc); (c) Is my opinion to be trusted? On the internet it's always hard to tell. I'm not sure if I would trust my opinion, so why anyone else should is beyond me.

But now, I can exclusively reveal, there are more English language bloggers in the Csiki-blogosphere (Blogo-depression?). These bloggers are not outsiders, but real live locals, with lives and everything. I have not made them up. They are all part of a competition being organised by the Soros Educational Center here - and are listed here (and you can vote for them too). More might be appearing in the next few days, so keep checking that page (I'm hoping that at least one Romanian (by which I mean Romanian Romanian rather than Hungarian Romanian) will join up, because that perspective would be really interesting and valuable too)

So here they all are:

• Csixereda!?
• Ikarosz Grocery
• Visit Csikszereda!
• Aagota's Hometown

Enjoy. And vote. And, if you live in the town, sign up for the contest.

In other local news news, the town's most historic newspaper "Harghita Nepe" has, as far as I can tell, vanished as a commercial entity, and been bought up by the County Council as a place where it can sing the praises of its works, and especially those of the "Dear Leader", one Borboly Csaba, whose tenure at the helm of the County Council has not so far been one of unalloyed success (and who has, it is rumoured, attempted to drag Harghita County Council into the 21st Centruy by, wait for it, signing the staff up for a Yahoo group. Rock and roll.). So, I suspect the interest in Harghita Nepe will be soon no greater than that for the Pyongyang Daily News.

1930s redux

Been away in Prague for a week, of which more later, but have woken up this morning to some really scary and appalling news from all over Europe - not least in this corner of it. The EU, which was, in large part, formed to prevent the rise of fascism again in the continent, seems now to be a venue for the resurrection of that disgusting ideology.

I'm sure there is much wringing of hands all over the Net regarding the two MEPs that have been elected from the extremist BNP in the UK. And so there should be. Also, regarding the rise of the extreme right in Holland, Italy, Austria, Finland, etc etc. (All over Europe in fact).

Here in Romania, the extremists (PRM) won 2 seats with 7% of the vote, which is pretty shit, and especially when you see that the two people they'll send are life-long tosser, anti-semite and Ceausescu's poet, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, and in second place egomaniac nut job with a Jesus complex and owner of Steaua Bucharest, Gigi Becali. The latter of those two is more of a joke figure than anything to be really scared of, but it remains to be seen how actually being elected to something will go to his head. It's certainly difficult to see him enjoying his time in the European parliament - after all you don't get on TV very much and you have to spend time with a bunch of foreigners. I anticipate he will set new records for non-attendance.

But it's in neighbouring Hungary where things like the success of the BNP and PRM really pale into semi-insiginficance. Hungary in which the right wing "populist" (populist being a codeword euphemism for racist) Fidesz party got a massive 56% of the vote. (Fidesz being a party which desperately reaches out for the votes of the far-right, pandering to the anti-semitic, anti-Rroma views of the extremists and not distancing itself from any of these, cutting deals with various neo-nazi parties down the years). Now, the government in Hungary is massively unpopular, and it may well be that a large proportion of those 56% come from people who are voting for Fidesz just because they are the only real opposition, so let's not jump to too many mad conclusions from that performance.

But we can and should draw a lot of conclusions from the rise and rise of the nazi Jobbik party who picked up an absolitely terrifying 15% of the vote. 15%. A party who are allied with what can only be described as a fascist vigilante movement called the Magyar Garda, a bunch of black booted thugs with fascist emblems and a suspicious salute whose self-proclaimed role is to protect people from "gypsy crime". A party whose members make statements implying that sterilising Rroma woman would be a way to control the population. A party who play up anti-semitism (Hungary, by the way, seems to be the only country in Europe where anti-semtism still seems to be an acceptable, almost mainstream, viewpoint). Indeed one of its new MEPs, Krisztina Morvai, who seems to have been on a campaign to charm and convince journalists in the Western European press that she and her party are not a bunch of disgusting extremist scumbags, only last week made some incredible anti-semitic comments on an internet forum.

Really. These people are utter scum.

Is Europe fucked? Is facsism really back? Is this the beginning of the new 1930s? We've got the economic depression, we've got the rise of nationalisms, we've got the apparently electable extreme right neo-nazi parties. It scares the living shit out of me, to be honest. I mean I don't think that the European parliament will be the venue for this new fascist rise (the PRM is going to have a hard time dealing with Jobbik, for example, as the PRM hates Hungarians. Likewise the Italian Northern League is hardly going to get into bed with the PRM since half their current rhetoric is anti-Romanian), but in general there really feels like there is a tide of really disgusting views sweep[ing over Europe.

Crete is the word

So, I'm in Crete. Crete is ace. Crete is the word, as they should have sung (not that Greece in general is in any way shabby or unpleasant, but Crete's got it all).

Some things you might or might not know about Crete.

• It is the home of the Minoan civilization, which was around bloody ages ago (even before I was born). Yesterday we went to Knossos which is the home of the most famous Minoan palace. This palace was built (most of it) between 1700 and 1400 BC. That's a long time ago, and it was massive. It still is in fact, and it took ages to wander round. Here's the wikipedia article should you be so inclined. I won't go into details about it, since you can read it all there if you want to, but it's really impressive. The bloke most responsible for excavating it, Arthur Evans, reconstructed some bits of it, which seems a tad controversial, particularly since he really didn't know what it was really like when it was still standing and he just basically guessed and stuck rooms on where he thought they should be. Still, I guess it's better than just digging it all up and shipping it to the British Museum.
  
• The palace, having so many rooms, may or may not be also the site of the "labyrinth" which housed the minotaur. (With all due provisos about the fact that the minotaur is a mythical character etc etc and so on)
• Crete was also the home of Deadalus and Icarus as well as being the birthplace of Zeus (with all due blah blah etc you get the picture)
• Cretans seem like very nice people, despite the fact that in American English (as far as I can tell) the word cretin is pronounced the same way as Cretan, which seems a little bit rude. But in spite of this slight on their intelligence, they seem very friendly.
• Samaria Gorge (into which we ventured on Saturday) is said to be the longest gorge in Europe (though this expert local disputes this). We managed to see it the worst possible way, by just deciding to do the first 3 km or so and then going back to the car. The first 3km, though, are straight down hill, for about 6 or 7 hundred metres, which we then of course had to climb back up again. Still it was good exercise, and it was spectacularly beautiful
• The food on Crete is absolutely superb. And by absolutely superb I mean really amazingly wonderfully beautiful. Everything is so fresh and delicious. It's such a great change from home (I apologise to Hungarian and Romanian readers of this blog, but really food from pretty much every country on the Mediterranean sea walks all over yours. No offense. It walks all over English food too if that helps make you feel any better.)
  
• Chania is a great little town. Until a week or so ago, I'd never even heard of it. Now I'd like to live in it.
  
• Crete is so full of archeological sites that one day we found ourselves in Gortyna, the Roman capital of Crete, most of which is just a bunch of rubble lying in an olive grove. You can just wander around in it, tripping over columns and trying not to step on bits of pottery.
  
• Did I mention the food?
  

Most Dangerous Place in Europe

is, it would seem, Romania.

Take a look at the map here:


(Slightly bigger version can be found here)

Now, what this shows is the level of risk of death due to natural disasters. Green areas are lower risk, red areas are higher risk. Look at where the red bit of Europe is (Basically Albania and Romania). (I think if you look at the bigger map, you can just about make out that Bucharest is a huge angry red spot in the middle of a fairly orange country. I take it this refers to the expectation that there will, before too long, be a devastating earthquake in Romania, and Bucharest will likely suffer more than everyone else)

Taken from here.