I just got back from a three-day retreat in the mountains above a small village called Bran. Me, Mihaela, Cecilia, and four other ladies who are advisors in Education USA centers around Romania met there for some training and collaborating.

Our villa was on top of a mountain, and as I walked out onto my balcony to take in the breathtaking view, lo and behold, there was Dracula's castle, not more than 1000 meters away!

Every night we enjoyed a traditional meal in the restaurant decorated with sheepskins and antlers. The meal always started with a shot of Tsuinka, the famous Romanian plumb brandy, then a plate heaping full of polenta, sausages, pies, peppers, cheese balls, and yoguhrt. Then they served us hot wine as we went outside to watch the massive bonfire. A young man always played his guitar and sang folk songs, and people would join in from time to time. It was so soulful and hauntingly beautiful that it sent shivers down my spine and it hit me...I'm in ROMANIA!

After I settled down and we went back inside, I was mildly horrified to find out that what we had just eaten was only the appetizer. Out came another monstrous plate with two baked potatoes, bacon, lamb and chicken. Then wine. Then dessert. And when we went for breakfast the next morning it wasn't much less. I don't know how people eat like this three meals a day! I started eating less and less, and pretty soon the other ladies were claiming my leftovers after they had cleaned their plates.

One afternoon we visited the Rasnov Citadel, a massive contruction from the 1600s built on the top of a mountain a few kilometers away. It was quite impressive (I'll put pictures up next week!), and the view from the top was spectacular. Too bad for it there was no great vampire legend to make it famous, because it was definitely more striking than Dracula's castle.

I definitely feel that Mihaela and I bonded on this trip. Not only are our birthdays two days apart, which makes us both scorpios (very important to all the ladies), but she discovered that I too prefer Pepsi, and I like garlic flavored bagel chips, all things she was disappointed to see I had not put on my resume. We actually do have quite a bit in common, and I know working with her will be great fun and very productive!

Thanks for all your notes on my message board. It makes my day to hear from you!

Noapte Buna!

"Life in a foreign country is a dance of submission and resistance. Self-knowledge comes in small repeated shocks as you find yourself giving in easily, with a struggle, or not at all. What can you do without? What do you cling to?"

From Expat: Women's True Tales of Life Abroad

Never in my life has this rung so true as it has in these first few days of adjusting to Bucharest. Every day I am bombarded by dozens of new traditions, mindsets, cultural quirks and culinary specialties. The struggle of seeing Bucharest as it is, and not as I had imagined it would be, leaves me exhausted each night as I collapse on my couch/bed.

Yes, I can deal with "showering" by holding a hose over my head in a bathtub with no curtain. I am actually quite skilled at it after living in Austria for a year. But will I ever get used to the brown, lukewarm water that runs for the first five minutes every morning?

I can eat mysterious meatballs and yoghurt that tastes, rightfully so, like the cow it came from. Years of refusing to give my dad the satisfaction of a reaction as he tried to gross me out anytime I ate new things has given me an uncanny control over my gag reflex. But the fish canned in its scaley entirety in some sort of tomato sauce just about did me in. Thank the Lord for Pepto Bismol!

Every morning when I wake up the street vendors are advertising their goods in their sing-song chants, and a buggy, pulled by an old grey horse and filled with what looks like garbage to me, but who knows, makes its lazy way down Strada Vintila Mihailescu. Every morning Nicoleta crossed this street to buy bread from the corner convenience "shack." The bread is kept in a plastic box, covered by a towel, and everyone digs through to find their perfect loaf. One of those things I'm giving in to with a struggle.

Getting anywhere is a total test of agility. The "gliding" technique we learned in Viet Nam—walk slowly and steadily and the cars, motorcycles, etc., will go around you—comes in handy when crossing the streets here. The metro system is the most confusing I've ever seen. The underground lines try to be color coded, but I've seen the M3 in red, orange and yellow. And, each direction of each line is called either "Linie 1" or "Linie 2." I know they're trying to be helpful, but "Linie 1" means underground line 1 to me, so when I am looking for M3, which was yellow but is red in this station, and all I see are signs for "Linie 1" and "Linie 2," and nothing for M1 (which I just got off of) or M3 (which is supposed to connect at this station), well you can imagine my frustration…not to mention the amusement of the commuters watching me wander back and forth in a trying-to-look-not-lost sort of way.

This minor fiasco happened on my way home after going to the Fulbright Commission and meeting Mihaela, my supervisor. The office is quite large, and the walk to it from the metro station is along the edge of Parcul Kiseleff, a huge city park. Mihaela and Cecilia are two lovely, warm-hearted and giggling eastern European ladies who gave me a warm welcome "to our land, and to our hearts." I am looking forward to working with them.

As Samuel Johnson said, "The point of traveling is to correct our fantasies through reality. Instead of imagining the world as it could be, we see it as it is."

People told me Bucharest would be very different than America.

They were wrong.

It's an entirely different world over here.

My two-day "layover" in Budapest was lovely. It was absolutely wonderful to just relax (and speak English!) with my friends from home. I do love Diosd, the town they live in. And it's always great to see them and catch up and scheme up ways for me to work at the school they all teach at. It was a perfect little dose of Moses Lake before I had to get back on the train and go to Bucharest.

I managed to survive a 13-hour overnight train ride, complete with scoffing policemen who rolled their eyes at my huge backpack and my inability to understand neither Hungarian nor Romanian, grumpy old Romanian ladies who were very fervently telling me something, only stopping briefly to stare at me quite rudely when I said the only Romanian phrase I could: "I don't understand Romanian," and of course loud drunks. I never felt in any real danger, but not being able to understand anything definitely put me at a severe disadvantage. Needless to say I did not sleep very well.

The Romanian countryside is beautiful in that Eastern European sort of way. There were shepherds wandering the green rolling hills with their flocks of muddy, yellowish sheep. Horses pulling wagons and children with their dogs seemed to be the main form of agricultural labor, and it must have been laundry day, because all of the yards were shadowed by brightly colored sheets and clothing trying to dry in the foggy wind. Some houses were barely intact; I must say sometimes I couldn't quite tell which buildings were for the people and which were for the animals. And there's no way the rain didn't get through most of the roofs. And yet, there was one village with a satellite dish on almost every house.

At the train station in Bucharest, a man charged me four Euros to carry my bags for me, and I let him because my blinking backpack was so ridiculously heavy. If he managed to run off with it, I reasoned, he probably deserved to have it.

Cecilia, one of the ladies from the Fulbright Commission, and Vergil, an associate, picked me up and drove me to the place I'll be staying for the next six months. We almost got killed a few times on the way, I think. There aren't really lanes on the roads here. There are stripes, of course, but I guess they're just more like suggestions than anything else. I almost had a heart attack.

I am living with a woman named Nicoletta on the sixth floor of a communist-style cement block apartment building. My bedroom, which was previously the living/dining room, based on furniture, looks out to three of the dozen other identical buildings in this neighborhood.I had a minor meltdown when the reality of my living situation hit me, but I don't really know what I was expecting. This is Romania, after all. I should be glad I have hot water and electricity!

Nicoletta has been very hospitable. She fed me sour, salty meatball soup that her mother, who lives out in the countryside, made. It was really good, although I didn't dare ask what kind of meat was in the meatballs. Then she took me to the "Hypermarket," as they call them here. All the buildings look the same; I don't know how I'm ever going to find my way around! The Hypermarket was bigger than any Safeway or Fred Meyer in the States. I even think I saw some things that you can't get even in Austria. I was quite impressed, albeit entirely overwhelmed.

This evening I watched TV with Nicoletta in her room. The Romanians love American television, and they never dub, only subtitles. So I got to watch CNN and Law and Order in English. That was a treat. While we watched TV, we had a snack of yoghurt that her dad had made himself. We drank it out of mugs and ate some other meatballs that her mother had made as well. We'll just say that was an adventure!

I have been taking plenty of pictures, and will post them as soon as I can access the internet from my computer. I am constantly overwhelmed with new sights, sounds, even smells, so I'm sure I will be writing again soon! La revedere…

Pitstop in Budapest

After almost two weeks in Vienna, I had to face up to the fact that it was time to move on. This morning I took the train from Vienna to Budapest, where my friends from home who teach at the International Christian School of Budapest picked me up from the train station.


It was really hard to leave Vienna. It feels so much like my home away from home, and staying with my host family from my study abroad program was so wonderful. They are certainly my european family, and being with them made the initial wave of homesickness bearable. Bucharest is still a city of unknowns for me, and I will have to work hard at not comparing it to Vienna all the time. It will be an adventure of an entirely different sort, and I know I will feel at home there before my six months is up.


In a way I am glad to make a 2-day stop in Budapest before I get on the train for another 14 hours. Seeing the Whites and MacLamores is always a taste of home, and it gave me something to look forward to when I boarded the train in Vienna. But at the same time, I feel like all these stops as I make my way east is just prolonging the inevitable. Like peeling off a bandaid agonizingly slowly instead of just getting it over with in one quick rip. I can go as slowly as I want, and make plenty of stops along the way. But eventually I am going to end up in Bucharest, where I am going to be unprotected and alone, forced to start anew and be more independent than I've ever had to be in my life.


The thought alone is daunting, but these are the kinds of challanges that make my life the spectacular adventure that it is. This is my version of life to the fullest, and I remind myself of that whenever I start to wonder what in the world I am really getting myself into! :)

Yesterday Anja, Till and I went shopping for a suit for Till. I felt somewhat like Stacy on What Not to Wear; the fashion designer in me was definitely shining through. We stopped a few times for coffee and a piece of the famous Wiener Sacher Torte, just the way shopping should be done in Vienna.

We stopped in a few kitchen stores, too, because Anja needed a couple new breakfast plates. I'm having a hard time figuring out if I found everything so much cooler simply because I'm in Europe or if there really aren't so many exciting dish and flatware designs back home. I'm pretty sure it's the latter; I would remember if I saw such fun stuff at Crate & Barrel. I just hope there will be a way to register at European kitchen stores by the time I get married. :)

We went and saw The Bourne Ultimatum last night. Elio and I were battling it out over whether we were going to see it in English or dubbed over in German. I won out because we couldn't find any place that was showing it dubbed over, and it was better that way. The voices are just never even close when they dub them. 

It has been raining nonstop since I got to Vienna. I packed in preparation for this "unusually hot" summer they had been having, and the first day I got here it decided to rain. There's no sign of it stopping and they're calling for flooding in the next couple of days.

So it has been an adventure trying to layer all the summer clothes I brought in order to brave the wind and rain as far as the U bahn station. I tried the walking through the city thing the first day, but the look on Anja's face when I came home that night in jeans soaked up to the knees, shoes bursting with water, and a "raincoat" that was dripping wet- from the inside- was enough to get me to take the public transportation and save the walking for another time.

But I must say, if I had to choose a European city to be in in such weather, Vienna would be it. The birthplace of the renowned "cafehouse," Vienna has no competition as to the number of cafes its street corners bear. Not even Seattle holds a candle to it. And you all know that sitting in cafes is a beloved passtime of mine, so what better excuse to "cafe hop" than the fact that by the time I make it to the next cafe in sight I'm already soaked through again? It would be silly to not sit and warm myself with a Wiener Melange or a Grosser Brauner or simply a black tea. And I of course read the newspapers like a good Wiener Cafehaus patron does. And I journal and people watch and contemplate my life. Despite the fact that the streets of Vienna are resembling those of Venice with each day of downpour, I have no complaints.

I'm in Vienna!

My lovely host family from 2005 picked me up from the airport, and the drive through Vienna was so surreal.


We went to a typical little Wiener Stuebe for dinner, and being engulfed by decades of stale cigarette smoke as I walked into the dimly lit, not so well ventilated restaraunt was about the best thing I've smelled in quite some time. It always amazes me how strongly smells stimulate memories for me.


My host brothers have both gotten taller and broader through the shoulders, but other than that they are the same great Till and Elio. Till took my huge backpack right away, and I had to pass my other bag to Elio before he walked off empty handed. Just like old times. ;)


My room hadn't changed much either. Same great view of Gaussplatz and the Augarten, although the trees are taller so you can't see the Flak Tower built in WW2 so well. I slept with the windows open, and fell asleep to the smells of the pizza and cigarettes from the pizza place downstairs, and the sounds of pedestrians and the #31 tram. I slept like a baby.


This morning I slept in, and when I got up Anja and I had tea. Now we're off to a bakery for breakfast, then I think I'll tromp through Vienna for a while and see how well I can still find my way around.

So I don't know if it counts to write in my travel journal before I leave the country, but I'm going to do it anyway. 
I am sitting in SeaTac airport waiting for another three hours before my flight leaves. My first flight was delayed so I was going to miss my connection, so I'm taking a later flight. But I found out all this after the fiasco of them almost not letting me check in in the first place because I don't have a return ticket. Austria needs proof that I am leaving within 90 days, and I have no real way to prove that. So there were about 15 tense minutes where I thought I was going to have to buy a return ticket for sometime in December, which would have only been half-way through my internship. But they let me check in, with the warning that I will probably get stopped at customs in Vienna. We'll see what happens when I get there! 
I'll be getting in to Vienna a couple hours later than originally, but nothing too bad. Then I have a week or two of roaming my old streets before I go on to Budapest, then Bucharest! 
I'll write again when there's more exciting things going on!