Year One

Yup, so it’s been over a year now since we left for Romania.  I guess to sum things up (especially since I haven’t blogged anything in like 3 months) we’ve rented or stayed semi-permanently in no less than 4 apartments, got engaged, went into “exile”, had a wedding, got married and got a job.  It’s been pretty eventful, or so it seems… it’s tough to know what to blog after all of that.  Apparently you get to have less adventures the more stable you are in life.

After being here for a year it’s tricky to remember what would be interesting to write for people although one of our good friends continues to hound us for more info.  It’s because of him that I’m writing this right now (thanks Andrew!). 

Maybe it would help us to remember some of the things that we haven’t done for a year:

driven a car ● worked more than 18 hrs in one week ● gone to Wal-Mart ● ordered wings from Wing Zone ● eaten at an all-you-can-eat buffet ● got carded when buying alcohol ● used a microwave* ● dried our clothes in a dryer* ● used craigslist ● gone through a drive-through ●  got a free refill on pop*● talked to a telemarketer or other solicitor ● met a vegan or Jehovah’s Witness ● been in a fire/safety drill ● written a check ● got asked for 25 cents ● used a vacuum cleaner ● rented a movie ● eaten blue crabs or have anything with Old Bay seasoning on it.  

I’m sure the list could go on but I think that’s fairly impressive so far. 

*we were in the US Virgin Islands for a week where we had the chance to engage in these activities

So what are we up to now?  Well, our job is finally paying us for certain things and we have gone a couple of solid months without dipping into savings so far.  Like I said earlier we went on a short trip to the US a few weeks ago and I will write about this later, but for now we have a lot of free time on our hands and we don’t really know what the next step in our lives will be.

I spend a lot of my free time playing computer games and Amanda has felt bored and direction-less for the first time in quite a while.  I suppose we are both a little bored but we both definitely want to continue to live here for a while as Romania continues to impress us.  We do have a number of ideas that we are tossing around but unfortunately all of them will take a bit of a financial investment and we are hesitant because both of us are fairly miserly with our funds.  On the other hand, starting a business is a sure-fire answer to the coveted visa issue.

Sandu and Jiu-Jitsu

My good friend and former student from Moldova, Sandu, is here in Bucharest now.  He had been attending the military academy in Chisinau and got a scholarship to attend the academy in Bucharest.  As I understand he was one of only 10 Moldovan cadets who got accepted due to academics and behavior.  It is very rare for kids to get out of their village/town in Moldova let alone make it out of the country legally.

Anyway, Sandu encouraged me to start training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu again.  I talked with my friend who owns a BJJ school here in Bucharest and he said that Sandu could train there for free since he knows of Sandu’s circumstances.  Sandu entered in the annual Romanian BJJ championship and took second place, beating plenty of talented opponents and losing to one of them as he hadn’t trained in BJJ for a couple years at that point.  It was a fairly significant win.

I’ve been training for about 3 months now and my back has been in surprisingly good shape.  I am more aware of what will give me pain so I wrestle more conservatively but of course at least I am networking and working out and all that.  I avoid IB profin and other stuff because otherwise I tend to over-train because I feel good at the time which leads to bigger problems in the end.

At the end of this month we will host a guy from Denmark who is traveling around the world giving free Jiu-Jitsu seminars/lessons in exchange for a place to sleep and food to eat.  Since he linked our blog I feel we should link his as well: http://www.bjjglobetrotter.com/.  It’s a really good idea and worth checking out.  We will take him to Moldova, to the village with us so he can see the project I started a few years back during my Peace Corps stint.

The Trip to the US

As we mentioned earlier, we took a trip to the USVI about a month back now.  This involved us flying to Belgium, heading up to Amsterdam, flying to London, Miami and then finally St. Thomas and spending a week in St. John.  As usual, we had a good time.  But those of you who know our visa situation may ask “Wait, so how did you circumvent the 90-day-within-180-days-issue that has traditionally plagued you guys before,”?  Good question.

So we heard through the grapevine that although the 90-day-within-180-days law exists on paper, like most things in these parts, nobody is really checking or cares.  Still, this was kind of a big risk for us since we didn’t want to miss our flight out of Romania due to some border official who actually wanted to do his job.  We found out that you can overstay your visa in so many ways if you have a doctor’s note saying that you need to be in Romania for medical treatment.

I won’t go into details but we happened upon a doctor’s note with proper official stamps that said Amanda had to be in Romania due to the emotional trauma of having a miscarriage (not true).  In case that didn’t work I had one that said I was having back surgery (also not true).  It turns out that we didn’t need either one.  The Baneasa airport (the other airport that our wedding guests did not come in to) is probably the most third-world-esque airport in Europe, and in case you are wondering I am including Chisinau’s airport in this statement.

First of all, Baneasa doesn’t have lines, or at least they didn’t when we flew out; they just kind of funneled people toward the customs officials and “security point”.  Despite going around to the front of the funnel and being astounded that others were still voluntarily waiting in the back of the funnel, we got our passports looked at and stamped without having to bust out our fake doctor’s note.  We thought we were doing pretty good as we were still early for our flight.

Our optimism was shattered when we noticed that at the end of the funnel was an enormous backup and still no line as you started the process of going through the security line.  As half the security staff was sitting around telling jokes and flirting with the cute female security staff, the other half was running a remarkably inefficient security process.

While people were sitting in a hot room, with all their winter gear on of course, the security guards were allowing all people with small children to go to the front of the line, all the way from the back of the line so as more people piled up in the front, all the families were taking their kids through the security check-point which is time-consuming as nobody starts to take off the necessary gear before getting up to the metal detector.  Obviously people started to complain and the security had to bust out their biggest security staff guy to push people back.

At most airports they ask people to be prepared to go through the metal detector by taking off belts, coats, second coats, jewelry, hats, boots, shoes, or whatever else needs to come off and to do this way ahead of time.  Not here.  The metal detector would go unused for up to 10 minutes at a time while ladies with fur coats, earrings, furry hats, sunglasses or whatever else is necessary to look good on the airplane waited to take everything off when it was their turn to go through the one working security point.  To make a long story short we waited, sweating for about an hour standing up next to irate Romanians who couldn’t understand why things were taking so long.  But we did make our flight.

When we got to Belgium we had to somehow get from near Brussels to Utrecht as we were Couch Surfing.  Coming out of Eastern Europe we were initially stunned by the prices of everything in Western Europe, including public transport.  We decided to hitchhike in the freezing cold to avoid paying for a bus and the first guy we hitched with was an Albanian dude whose English was limited but he did “love America”, so much so that he took us as far as he could and bought us coffees.  We met a Dutch family at the gas station who crammed into the back of their car so we could get where we needed to go.  Nice people so far.

The first guy we surfed with in Utrecht is a young composer who composes that slow, epic music you hear in movies and video games.  He had a dog, which Amanda liked, and as she slept her cold away I went and wandered around Utrecht.  Very nice city.  Our next stop was Gouda (pronounced “how-duh”) which is obviously famous for its cheese.  We stayed with a very nice couple; a Dutch guy and Romanian girl who now live in the Netherlands.  They were really nice and we spent 4 days there, including Christmas where we went to a community center and helped hand food out, clean up and provide a very nice dinner for the folks there.

Our next stop was Delft which is famous for their blue and white ceramics.  We went to check out Rotterdam on the way which is like a brand new city with modern buildings because it was bombed out during WW2.  The rest of Holland is really old so this was a big contrast.  In Delft we stayed with a younger guy who was finishing up school to be an architect.  He was really cool too, so we really lucked out with hosts in the Netherlands.

Eventually we made it to the Virgin Islands, just in time for the New Years Eve firework show.  As usual the USVI was a bit of a shock coming from freezing Europe.  We did the normal stuff: kayaking, swimming, chillin’, seeing the family and all that.  I was disappointed that only one of my brothers could make the trip but it was good seeing Luke all the same.

Our trip back was less adventurous.  We only had two days to make it from Amsterdam to Brussels so we stayed a night in Amsterdam and a night in Brussels but didn’t really get to see much.  We couldn’t find Couch Surfing hosts and Amanda didn’t want to hitchhike again so we shelled out some cash and it wasn’t in Romanian Lei.  We were a little worried about getting back into Romania due to the passport issue but we had little to fear as the customs agent didn’t even look at us and stamped our passport, reminding us not to overstay our visa.  We assured him we wouldn’t.

The good thing is that we avoided a second round at the Baneasa airport because there was too much fog on the runway so we landed in Otopeni.  We got back to the apartment, took a few days of naps and got back into the swing of things.  That’s where I’m leaving off for now.  I have a class in a couple hours so I will play a little bit of “Bloons Tower Defense 4” before heading out.  Take care for now and we will post something else at another time.

A Marriage and a Paycheck

So we finally got married. Legally. Now I have a wife. I’m somebody’s husband. It will take some getting used to but I think I can handle it. The ceremony actually went off without a hitch. The entire official process, which was promised to be about 10 minutes in duration clocked in at just over 4 minutes. We arrived at the courthouse dressed in our “bride” and “groom” baseball caps and mulled about in the courtyard as other couples and their families started showing up as well. We were greeted by one of our new friends, Blake and his wife Iulia. We met Blake, who is originally from Gay, Michigan in the U.P. (that’s “Upper Peninsula”, for you non-Michiganders) at one of our (unpaid) trainings and have been hanging out ever since.

Side note on Blake: Blake was in the Navy and served on a nuclear sub like my dad, was born maybe 50-75 miles from Marquette where I spent about 7 years of my life, went to Missouri Military Academy which was Wentworth’s arch rival after the closing of Kemper Military Academy. Blake is on Couchsurfing and previously surfed with the same guy in the Transnistrian region of Moldova where we went this winter and spring. Small world.

Blake and Iulia had already gone through the Romanian marriage process so they were our guides as well as our stand-in “best man” and “maid of honor.” I use these terms loosely not because they are crappy people but because the “ceremony” wasn’t exactly set up for these kinds of positions. We also brought along one of our Couchsurfers, Paula from Germany. She was our stand-in “flower girl,” meaning she had to hold the flowers through the ordeal. Anyway, so we were waiting around outside and a dude with a clipboard comes outside where everyone is waiting and stammers, “Is…” That’s how I knew we were going to be the first ones because I knew he was sitting there trying to pronounce my last name.

He looks at our group and walks down the steps, over to where we are standing, eyes glued to his clipboard, tilts his head and gives it a try, “Mac…Masters Robert?”

“Da.”

(In Romanian) “We will be calling you in a few minutes. You will wait outside the room until we call your names but you don’t have to go now because we have some time. The ceremony will take about 10 minutes. You need two witnesses, are they present with you today?”

“Yes, we have these guys right here.”


“Do they have their documents?”


“Yes, of course.”


“Do you need a translator?”


(In my brain) “No, dipshit, we were able to comprehend your fairly complicated series of statements and questions, but I really need a translator.”

(In real life) “No thank you.”


“And Miss… Golub…? Is she present”?


Amanda responds in the affirmative.


After looking at her name a bit longer, probably reading about her citizenship, “Do you require a translator?”



Entrance to the Civil Court



Ok, I would’ve normally let him slide on this since he only read her name, but why did we have to fill out no less than 5 OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS stating that we knew how to speak Romanian and thus didn’t need a translator?! What did they DO with these papers? You could have easily given one document to the guard, one to his friend who probably was assigned to another floor but wasn’t doing his job, one to the ceremony officiator, one to the clipboard guy and one to the next couple getting married so when we come out the door they know it’s ok to congratulate us in Romanian.

“No, I understand,” says Amanda.

We went upstairs and waited for our names to be called.

We took some pictures and BS-ed and discussed how the ceremony would go and who would hold what camera and what flowers. Eventually the doors to the official marriage office opened and we were summoned inside by the clipboard guy. The official marriage-ceremony guy put out his cigarette, brushed his freshly-dyed hair away from his eye, and put on his blue, gold and red beauty-queen sash and started into his spiel. He read from a big book of official marriage words or whatever it was, and basically asked us if we willfully entered into the marriage, we said that we did. Then he went on and on about family stuff and family stuff in Romania and all that. Of course we have video of all this and will show the whole thing with subtitles once we get together with a Romanian to make sure we get all the words.

We had to ask the man if we could do the “ring thing.” He said we could and waved us on. He seemed impatient. After this we went and signed our names in his huge official books, and so did our witnesses. He took our hands, put them together and told us “casa de piatra,” which literally means “house of stone.” This is like saying congratulations but is specific for marriages. We walked out and were assaulted with rice by our wedding party. We had some champagne outside and went to a café. 



Riding bikes in Herastrau

Later we were meeting some more friends at a restaurant, but we had a few hours to kill in the meantime.  The civil court where we got married is right next to one of Bucharest's best parks - Herastrau - which incidentally also has free bike rentals!  Riding the bike with flowers and a long white dress was a little challenging, but well worth it.  We rode all the way around the lake in the middle and by the time we returned our bikes, it was time to go to the restaurant. And that was pretty much it. We had to get up early the next morning and teach classes which brings me to our next subject.

We have paying jobs! This is good for now. We still don’t have visas but hopefully we will be able to sort this out within the month. Surprisingly and disappointingly, the place where we work has never had to help any of their employees to get visas despite the fact that they specialize in teachers who are native speakers of the target language.

They really don’t want to give us a work permit because they have to pay 80% of what they are paying us to the Romanian government in taxes. On top of that, we would have to pay 26% of our paycheck to the government. It seems hard to believe that this country claims they aren’t communist anymore. Luckily, since they are still kind of communist, there are bootleg ways you can get around taxes. We will go for our first visit to the immigration soon to see if there is a way we can get around the system. Hopefully the immigration official will be helpful.

In any case, we still get paid, and we get paid every month. Our last paycheck came out to being 150 lei (~$50). Don’t laugh. After all our (unpaid) training for the month of September, we only had time to teach a total of 2 lessons between the two of us. We should be doing a lot better when November rolls around since we are teaching at least 7 lessons a week on average.

Bureaucracy Wars: Part… Who’s Counting?

Here's a slideshow of some selected pictures from everyone who came to our party - links to everyone's pictures can be found on our party page!

So much has happened since our last post, I will sum it up in the shortest, incomplete yet deepest sentences possible. Think of it as a Haiku or something poetic and beautiful like that.

Belgrade was awesome. Better than we expected. Checked out Timisoara. Timisoara was ok. Decided not to live in Timisoara in favor of Bucharest. Went to Bucharest. Went to Brasov. Rented an apartment for a month. Landlady had no teeth. Toothless landlady offered Amanda her old wedding dress. Planned our party. Learned how to use Torrents. Tried to get married legally. Got shut down due to a missing document. Amanda broke down in the civil court room. Forged some documents. Amanda chickened out. Still not married. Continued planning for the party. Bought some alcohol. Bought some plates. Bought some spoons, knives, forks. Reserved the citadel on the hill. Reserved the hotels. Organized transport for trips. Asked family members to bring things. Made welcome packets. Made welcome fliers. Went to Bucharest. Met family members. Everyone was on time. Everyone made it. Went out to eat with entire family. Slept at Vlad & Carmina’s place. Family members discovered roosters crow at all hours of the night. Went to Brasov. Train ride was stressful. Got a call from the Romanian border guard. Border guard was giving our Moldovan friends a hassle at the border. Talked him into letting them through. Got to hotel. Went to organ concert. Went to eat. Moldovans arrived. Went to sleep. Problems with rooms. Small breakfasts. City tour with Alex. Free time. Genealogy and potluck night. Went to Brancoveanu Monastery. Problem with minibus. Went on Transfagarasan. Went to Balea Lac. Went to Curtea de Arges. Arrived home to eat some more. Bed time. Setting up for the party. Long walk to the citadel. Party was awesome. Mom danced. Cheech was drunk. Alex says inappropriate things. Barbeque was delicious. Nathan gets freaked out by singing children in the woods at night. Everyone gets home. Trip to Bran castle. Waited for a bus for way too long. Checked out “Za Pub”. Got some shwarmas. Went to Sinaia. Michelle was sick. Went to Bucharest. Went to Otopeni. Slept at Vlad and Carmina’s. Said goodbye. Went to Brasov. Overpaid the toothless landlady. Got suitcases full of stuff. Went to Bucharest. Dropped stuff at Andra and Razvan’s. Went to Moldova. Got into Cahul at 2am. Stayed at PC Volunteers’ place. Went to the village. Met Alex, Simona, Cristi and Mihaela. Ate well. Toured the village. Saw village’s museum. Back to Bucharest. Started (unpaid) training at work. Looked for apartments. Found an apartment. Landlady didn’t want to rent. Amanda was upset. The search continued. (Unpaid) training continued. Settled on an apartment. Decided on a good apartment at a good price. Moved into the apartment. Continued (unpaid) training. And then…

Ok where was I… Oh yeah… another battle with the bureaucracy. Here’s how that went:

We finally received all of our necessary documents for getting married. No forgeries were necessary with the exception of one. We had received our health evaluation about 2 months ago in the same fashion that we had received it for our visas. We went to the doctor and asked for a health evaluation. She explained to us that we could get the evaluation, but if we both felt that we were healthy enough she could just give us the document and avoid making us take x-rays and getting blood drawn which would be cheaper for her and less work for us. Since the evaluation is only good for 14 days, and the paper-pushing process at the marriage office takes 10 days, that gave us a 4-day interval to get all the documents in but as I said before in my “haiku” that we were missing a document. We went back to the doctor who agreed to write another evaluation, free of charge, and we could write the date in the blank at our convenience for next time. We thanked her.

We took all of our documents to the civil court with the exception of our health evaluation since it was missing a date and obviously would need to receive its forged date later so that we could get it in on time. This trip was just to make sure that everything was ok and we weren’t missing anything. The lady looked through our stuff and told us that we needed a notarized statement saying that we were both able to marry legally in Romania although we already had one of these from the US Embassy. We needed another one with a few stamps and signatures. We went and had this done for 100 lei, and the notary lady said that if we had any problems then we could come back and they would change what needed to be changed. We said that we understood.

Now we had everything. Our documents comprised of our birth certificates, an apostille with an attached copy of our birth certificates, a translation of both apostilles and birth certificates, a copy of our passports, an affidavit from the US Embassy, health certificates, a notarized statement saying we are legal to be married in Romania, and a notarized statement giving up the rights of our first-born child. Ok, so one of those is made up but it was a lot of paperwork! No wonder Romanians are always surprised when we tell them that you can get married in Vegas in a drive through and have the ceremony conducted by Elvis. Their next question is if it’s legal. Yes it is my friends. Yes it is.

This past Tuesday we went back to the courthouse with all our documents, including the two that were still outstanding the last time we went there. This time it was a different lady. And this lady was kind of a… not nice lady. She looked through our documents and half-way through she kind of huffed and asked where our residency permits were. We said that we didn’t have any, that we were both foreign and that residency permits were not required if two foreigners want to be married in her frustrating country. She was adamant that we needed residency permits and pointed to some documents that a past married couple had turned in, one of the couple being Romanian, and a copy of her ID. We again tried to explain that according to her country’s laws that are remarkably easy to find online, and according to our remarkably efficient embassy, a residency permit was not required.

The not-nice lady wasn’t having any of this nonsense. She wouldn’t look at Amanda’s printed document that stated the rules, probably since it didn’t have any official stamps on it. She opened her circa 1973 law book and pointed to a clause stating that one person in the party has to have a residency permit, but this was talking about when a Romanian marries a foreigner. I was starting to get angry and was probably red in the face at the time because the lady’s not-niceness was hard to manage. We said that she doesn’t understand the law and that we would just go somewhere else.

I should have left for an (unpaid) training that was coming up in a couple hours but Amanda convinced me to go to another civil court office and give it another try. The worst that would happen would be that we get turned down again. I was glad that she was not upset and that there were no more breakdowns at the courthouse. She promised that I wouldn’t miss my (unpaid) training so I agreed to go with her.

When we finally found the place we were surprised by how nice the building and the flowers and everything looked. We went up the stairs into the yellow building and straight into the door on the right. We sat in front of the desk of another sulky government employee. We should mention that the government employees just discovered that their salaries would be cut significantly (25%) so this is not the best time to be getting good service at the courthouse. The lady quickly looked through our papers and asked sharply what my mother’s maiden name was. My heart was beating quickly and I was getting ready to be my normally patient self without a red face. I answered her that it was Gresham but that she was married to my father at the time of my birth, and I indicated where it was written. I don’t know what this had to do with anything but I was feeling defensive.

The lady asked me what should be written on our marriage certificate. Did this mean that we were getting a marriage certificate? I didn’t quite feel at ease. I asked her if she could write “Gresham” for my mother’s name but she said that couldn’t be done since it was written “Gwendolyn” (my mother’s middle name). I said ok, whatever. As long as we could get a certificate. The lady went on to explain that we had four options as to what our last names would be. First, she could take my last name. Second, I could take hers. Third and fourth, we could have some hybrid (McMasters-Golub/Golub-McMasters or probably even McGolub). Amanda said she was prepared to take my name, no problem.

The lady eventually cracked a smile and said that our Romanian was very good. She wanted to know our story. We obliged her and said that we would have liked to get married in Moldova but this wasn’t possible. She was warming up to us. She had us fill out no less than 5 other documents. She signed, dated and stamped them. She sent us out into the corridor to fill out some more paperwork. Amanda and I discussed whether or not this means we would really be getting married. We admitted it looked good though. We went back with our paperwork and she filled out another couple of official documents and then told us to go across the hall to the director’s office.

We went to see the director but he motioned us to wait as he was in there with one of his cronies and they were having a chat fest over a crappy-smelling cigarette or two, or twenty. We waited for about a half hour as they finished their BS session and I was getting antsy since I had to go to my (unpaid) training. Finally we were called in and were asked to sit down in the nice chairs in his office, not the uncomfortable ones in front of his desk. With his cigarette slowly burning down to the butt in his ash tray, he looked over his glasses at us after reading our official documents. He tried some English with me, and I answered in Romanian (this was to avoid having to get a court-appointed translator that we would have to pay for). He tried the same thing with Amanda, but at the end he felt confident that we could speak the language well enough to forego the translator. I will mention that in no less than two of our documents, it officially stated with an official stamp that we are able to speak the language. Our new friend across the hall said that she wanted to write “super” but obviously this would be in violation of official bureaucratic protocol.

He brought us into the back room (where we’d actually get married) which was pretty big. There were two desks at the opposite side of the room by the window, and both the desks had some imposing-looking Romanian flags on poles behind them. He explained to us that we would be here at 3:30pm in 10 days and he quickly explained to us what to expect. He made sure that we would have two witnesses and explained that if they were Romanian then they needed their IDs, and if they were foreign then they needed their passports. He explained that Romanian passports were not good enough because they are just legal for foreign travel. Whatever.

We assured him that we would have our witnesses. They would have their documents. We shook hands with ol’ Smoky and left the courthouse. He had our number in case something happened and we couldn’t get married. So far we haven’t received a call. This is a good sign. Now we wait. We are planning to wear our “bride/groom” baseball hats if the old commie guy will let us. We have some prospects for witnesses. We should be good to go, and we will write more on this later. Keep your fingers crossed.

Of course, we weren't allowed to have cameras in any of the government buildings, but if we were, here's what it would have looked like...

Rijeka and Cres, Croatia

After Lokve, still reeling from all the money spent on the house we slept in but thankful for all the help that the school director gave to us, we headed out to Rijeka. Rijeka is a port town, and it is the port that the Mihelcic family sailed out of on their way to the US. It was a fairly quick 30-minute trip down the mountains to a surprisingly beautiful town right down on the water. The buildings were all old and there was a pedestrian street with stores on it. There was even a castle up on the hill so it was very picturesque.

We were staying with some Couchsurfers who were living right in the middle of the city, right off the pedestrian street. We took it as a good sign that the apartment was right below the Romanian Consulate. Our host greeted us in her underwear and we had a long conversation with her and her boyfriend but she stayed in her underwear. I wrote it off to it being hot out. She turned out to be excellent and also eventually put some clothes on. She was just a little eccentric which is something that we can deal with. There were about 9 other Couchsurfers staying there as well so we were lucky to get a bed to ourselves. There were three Mexican girls, a Slovakian couple, a guy from Israel, a Spanish girl and two guys from Zagreb (Croatia).

It was like a hostel. A free hostel. We took some trips around town, met with some more CSers, and we also went to a beach. It was a rocky beach but it was good nonetheless. We read our books while the other guys swam in the sea. All of the Couchsurfers were pretty young. I was the oldest one in the group, clocking in at 29 years. They liked to stay up late and hang out. At first we thought this would be annoying but we were able to sleep in and they were all pretty respectful so it wasn’t a big deal.

We asked everyone for advice for our next trip. Everyone suggested going to see one of the islands nearby or going out to the Dalmatian coast in the south. Lots of people said we should go and see Bosnia. When we asked more about the southern coast it was apparent that it would be remarkably expensive. It would be even more expensive than the rest of Croatia which is kind of stiff. We planned to scratch seeing the south in favor of going to one of the islands for a couple days and then down to Bosnia for a day. We were in a time crunch at this point in time because we had to be back in Romania to take care of business.

When we asked how much accommodation costs on the island of Cres, it was not surprisingly expensive, especially since they charge by person and not by room. The Couchsurfers suggested that we do some “wild camping”, i.e. “homeless camping”. They suggested a great spot that was about a mile away from the center of town on Cres. The weather was perfect at the time being so we figured we would just take our sleeping bag and sleep either in the woods or on the beach with no tent. This is technically illegal, but nobody is checking so we figured we would take the risk. We took only what we needed for 2 nights and left everything else with our CS hosts.

We had to take a ferry out to Cres. They only had transport once a day so once we were out there, we were out there. The water was very calm and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was a nice trip. When we got to Cres, we followed the Couchsurfers’ directions and took a left at the marina and headed down the beach. We came across some old camping pads by a dumpster and since we were doing the whole homeless thing we figured we would go all-out and pick up the pads and take them with us since we didn’t know what we would be sleeping on. Don’t worry, we smelled them first and they didn’t smell like homeless or like urine.

By now it was starting to get dark and we were in a hurry to find a spot. All the places on the beach looked a little suspicious so we headed up to the woods across from the beach. On the way over I thought I saw an old man with no pants and just a t-shirt on. I blocked it out of my mind, figuring that he was just confused, or I was, and then I went and found our spot. I smelled around to make sure that it wasn’t a make-shift bathroom because if I had to go I would probably go there. It seemed ok so we laid down our homeless pads for our “wild camping”.

Like I said, the weather was great and we were glad we had our homeless pads because we only had one sleeping bag. When we woke up the next morning, we went down to the beach. I should have heeded the warning sign of the old man with no pants on the night before because when we got to the beach, every old person or any other person who should have had clothes on, didn’t. That’s right. We were at the nude beach. It was totally nasty and now I am aware of what geriatric doctors go through on a daily basis and I have a significantly greater amount of respect for them.

Luckily the entire island wasn’t naked. We had to walk down the beach to get back to sanity. We basically put our horse-blinders on and walked past the nude families of naked mom and dad complete with pre-pubescent boy and girl, past the naked fat lady bending over to collect sea shells. It was not pleasant. I just wanted to come back during the night time when my eyes had recovered and it was too chilly for nakedness.

Since the accommodation was free, we were able to spend our money at restaurants and buy souvenirs for future Couchsurfing hosts. We also hung out at clothes-only beach which was really nice. The whole place was packed with Germans who I am told own pretty much the whole beach and the Croatians don’t have enough money to buy them out. Obviously it is the place to go if you are German-speaking because half the signs were in German. We didn’t hear any English the whole time we were there.

We went back to Rijeka after 2 nights at Cres. We wanted to go to Bosnia but there was no reliable transportation out there on the day we needed to leave. We also found out that our Rijeka Couchsurfers’ landlord came over and kicked them out of their apartment. Something about a missing TV. I was a little worried about getting my bag back. Since we only took what we needed to the island, the rest of our stuff was floating around Rijeka somewhere. I got in contact with the Couchsurfers and they said that my bag was at someone’s parents’ house and it was safe. We returned to Rijeka and hung out some more with the friendly relocated Coushsurfers, I got my bag back and we got on the bus and headed back east to Belgrade.

Lokve

Amanda’s Journal Entry from Lokve

Friday, July 16, 2010

We arrived in Robert’s ancestral village on Tuesday night via a Couchsurfing contact, Nevena. We were all under the impression that finding cheap accommodation would be no problem since this is a small village of about 1,200 people and surely someone would have an extra room they’d want to rent out for a few nights. Not so. After asking around at advertised apartments as well as strangers on the street and porches, we found that no one was willing to let strangers sleep in their house and those who were willing to house us wanted no less than 40 euro PER PERSON. Ouch. The small village feel was quickly fading and Lokve was looking more like a tourist town every minute. Eventually, we found a nice lady who usually rents per week, but was willing to let us stay till today for 30 euro a night. Iris, the apartment owner, turned out to be very and helpful later on in our “roots research.”

The apartment was a ways out of town so it was a 30-45 minute walk to the center of Lokve. On the way in the first day we found a dog-friend who accompanied us half-way to town. I felt guilty leading him away from his home, but I didn’t do it on purpose. It was nice to have the extra company though. J As we walked to town people walking on the street and sitting on their porches would say hello to us (“dobor dan” in Croatian), so we got good use out of our limited vocabulary. It was starting to feel more like a village now that we weren’t talking money.

Once in town we looked at the school and made our way up a considerable stairway up a hill that we thought would end up in the cemetery, but instead was just a monument to Jesus’ walk up Calvary Hill. Nice view from the top though – you could see all of Lokve. There was a road leading down from the monument so we followed it until we happened on what we were looking for in the first place – the cemetery!

Most of the headstones were pretty new, but there were a few older ones from the late 1800s, early 1900s. Robert and I forgot to write down any first names of family members so we just took pictures of all the Mihelcics…there were a lot. We called my mom later to get a better list and returned to the cemetery to see what we could find. There was an old woman visiting the cemetery also, so we showed her the family tree and attempted to ask if she knew where to find those headstones. She told us that the priest would have a book with everyone in it and led us down to the church to find him. The priest wasn’t there, but she talked to some people for us and arranged for us to meet with the school director the following day.

That night we went down to the Lokve lake to look for frogs (Lokve is famous for frogs and the name of the town itself translates to “puddles”…appropriate!) and for Robert to go for a swim. While we were sitting there I got a call from a man saying he was Iris’ husband. Somehow they heard about our meeting the next day with the school director and he told me that Iris would meet us and help with translation – her English wasn’t great, but it was better than our Croatian. Ah, the village grapevine…

So the next day we met with Iris and the school director and told them the names we were looking for. The school director had helped other foreigners with searching for relatives, so she went off to the other room to get her records. She comes back with this book with a cover two feet tall and one foot wide, and very old-looking. When she opens it, I read the date on the top and it says 1864… These are the handwritten school records of each student from 1864 and it’s all in near-perfect condition. We spent some time looking through these books and found siblings of Robert’s great-great grandparents, but strangely, no great-great grandparents. Perhaps they were more useful on the farm and so didn’t get sent to school.

The school director was incredibly helpful and offered to take us to the bus station in the next town over, and so now we are waiting in front of the school for her and her husband to meet us!

Serbia

Our first experience with Serbians was a good one. We crossed the border pretty painlessly even though it was in the very early morning. Our border guard actually smiled at us. He asked us where we were going and we said that we were going to Novi Sad.

“Exit fest, yeah?”

“Yes.” After a pause, Amanda asks, “have you been there?”

Now imagine a clean-cut, middle-aged police officer, a little pudgy wearing a communist uniform. Now imagine him “getting crunk” and dancing to throbbing bass until the sun comes up, possibly a little drunkenly with no shirt on. This is essentially what Amanda was asking him.

“Yes, maybe 2 years ago I was at Exit,” he says with a big grin on his face. We decided that we liked Serbia already. When we got into Belgrade it didn’t look that much different from any other post-communist capital. There were your token stray dogs, your crumbling sidewalks and abandoned buildings that surrounded the bus/train station. We bought two bus tickets to Novi Sad where we would be staying with a Couchsurfer. We took a nice, air-conditioned bus that arrived on time out to Novi Sad, where the festival would take place.


Now, Amanda and I aren’t really into big festivals with lots of annoying and drunk crowds of people who ruin concert experiences for everyone. The only reason we chose to go to this festival is because my favorite band of all time was playing: The Chemical Brothers. These guys don’t tour the US so this was like a once-in-a-lifetime chance. They weren’t scheduled to play until the last day of the 4-day festival so we went to some of the various other shows with Dragan, our Couchsurfing host, until it was finally time on the last day for The Chemical Brothers.


What is really cool is that Exit festival is set in a medieval fortress on a big hill. There are like 12 stages with various styles of music playing. We got to see some big-name people play like Missy Elliot, David Guetta and Faith No More but we also had to put up with some retarded fans which were mostly made up of intoxicated, rich young Brits who came down to Serbia only because the prices are better and so they could get drunker without their parents knowing. Amanda got to see Mika who has been one of her favorites since he came out with one of her favorite songs. He put on a good show.

Our host, Dragan was really cool and so was his family. His family didn’t know any English so we got to learn some Serbian (which is the same thing as Croatian and Bosnian). It kind of felt like Peace Corps training all over again because we got fed and we were forced to start to learning the language. Serbian is a lot like Russian and it uses a bunch of Romanian words so it was easy to pick up, at least in the beginning. Now we can order coffee and say hi!


Novi Sad is also a pretty town. It is old and has nice buildings. Dragan showed us a radio center that got bombed during one of their Balkan wars and also the bridges that were bombed by NATO during the same wars. The house that we stayed in was right down the street from Darko Milicic’s house. Darko was an extremely highly hyped pro basketball player who was initially signed by the Detroit Pistons. He was supposed to have been the next Michael Jordan or at least the next Scottie Pippin but he almost never played and The Pistons got rid of him after about 3 seasons.

Despite all the second-hand smoke that we choked down, all the elbows, spilled beer and screaming, jumping Limeys, the Chemical Brothers put on an awesome show. We were only about 3 people behind the front of the main stage so we got to see everything up close and personal. I’m glad that we had the chance to go to the show despite the company.

We stayed with Dragan for about 5 days and then headed west to Croatia. We had some discussions with Dragan and his friends about their relation with the Croatians. They both said that they didn’t have any problems with anyone personally but there were a lot of small-minded people who liked to perpetuate age-old ethnic issues. Speaking of ethnicity, there is no difference between ethnicity or language in regard to Serbians and Croatians. The only difference is that after the schism of the Christian church, the Serbs chose to be Orthodox and the Croats chose to be Catholic. This division has been used politically to maintain conflict between the two groups. Both the Serbs and Croats have a very rich history which unfortunately is sometimes overshadowed by their many conflicts.

In any case, we had been told that if you go to certain parts of Croatia you may see a lot of anti-Serbian activities. Dragan’s family lived in Croatia and in fact Dragan was born in Croatia but they had to leave during the wars because it was not safe to live there anymore. In fact, the Croats in the village they lived in burned Dragan’s family’s house down to prevent them from returning.

All in all, Serbia was a very nice place with very nice people. We couldn’t have lucked out more. The transportation system is excellent, prices are low and the town was clean. We contacted our next Couchsurfer host in Croatia and bought our tickets to Zagreb. We planned to go right through Zagreb and straight to meet Nevena, who lived in a town right outside the town where many of my ancestors are from. Nevena would take us to one of my ancestral towns and help us find accommodation.

This is the second leg of the trip.

A Bribe and a Receipt

As some of you know, these past few weeks have been incredibly eventful for us. Unfortunately we haven’t been near a computer until now in order to document it. We finally came out of exile from Moldova and had the chance to continue setting up for our party in August in Brasov. We went to the hotel here in Brasov to see if we could work out a deal for our guests. We figured that since there were a whole bunch of people coming and they would be staying for an extended period of time then we would be able to get a good deal on the rooms.

We haggled with the guy a bit. Actually he did most of the haggling since he is one of those people who can’t stand a minute of silence. We organized a time to meet him and when we got there a middle-aged fast-talking guy with gold Nikes and a gold chain and bracelet to match, met us to discuss which rooms we wanted and when we wanted them. We saw all the rooms and they were pretty hooked-up. There were a number of rooms with stoves, a couple with Jacuzzis and the best part is that they are all in the center of the medieval part of town and all are equipped with free Wi-Fi.

My man with the gold shoes wouldn’t stand for us to be out in the rain so he told us to stay in one of the rooms until it stopped raining. He talked about how great the location is and tried to explain why his rooms didn’t need air conditioners. When he ran out of things to say, he lowered his prices. This was the pattern that we waited for. This is kind of what the conversation was like:

“And this room is very big. You have a microwave, a stove and you can make anything you want. If you want to cook in here or hang out outside, it’s ok!”

“… [nodding our heads with our “thinking faces” on]…”

“Well we can go as low as $50 for this one but the other ones must stay the same.”

“… [more nodding and not even Amanda is giving a polite smile]…”

“Well actually we can go as low as $42 dollars on these rooms”. He went on to explain that the other rooms could be rented out at any given minute so it was not worth it to him to reserve those at a reduced price. It was hot and he was sweating so I tried asking about other things in the hotel.

“I know that at other hotels they give a continental breakfast for free…”

“Yes, yes, we give great breakfasts here too. Usually it is toast and jam but for you we can establish a menu for a real breakfast every day and you can have omelets, fruit, whatever you want…”

This seemed like it was a good deal. We had checked out other places but really nothing could beat this guy’s prices and location. We let him talk his way down as far as he would go and after trying him for a little more we decided that we would maybe meet the next day since we were heading out for our vacation the day after tomorrow. We made our down payment and made sure that everything was in writing.

We also set up the menu and itinerary for our party on August 17 at our “secret location”. Most of this has to be kept a surprise but we can say that the food is bound to be off the chain. We have quite a schedule of events for the folks that will be able to make it. I hope that everybody is ready for it and we will be finding some “rain day” events in case of bad weather.

Anyways… So we went to Bucharest in order to go to our interview with Berlitz (the “teaching English” company we plan to work for). They seemed very pleased with us and scheduled us to start work on September 1^st. We met the “rest of the team” and they seemed like they were looking forward to us working with them in Bucharest. We will get back to this later. Now let me tell you about our adventure when we were trying to set up our hotel reservations in Bucharest.

I called up our guy (Vlad) who I know that has a hotel… ok, so it’s a big house with rooms that he rents out but they are good quality. He said that we could get to his house from the Gara de Nord [northern Bucharest train station] which is where we started out from. We waited almost an hour for the city bus and it never came. They were supposed to come every 30 minutes. We walked down the street and as we were walking the bus came by so we had to run to get on it.

Right after we got on two guys got on after us and sat in the back. The bus driver asked us where we were going and suggested that we get off the bus because he thought we made a mistake. In hindsight he was probably trying to help us. I was adamant that we found the right bus and explained to him that we didn’t need to go as far as the airport so it was ok that we got on the bus.

As I was trying to stamp our tickets in the ticket-stamper thing, the two men in the bus ordered me to stop trying to stamp my tickets. It was at this point that I realized that these guys were plain-clothes ticket-checker dudes who give people fines when they try to get a free ride. The more dominant one had a jaw that moved a little bit more than it should and kind of reminded me of Phil Hartman’s Frankenstein character on Saturday Night Live so we will refer to him as Frankenstein. The other guy was Frankenstein’s yes man and played a supporting role so he will be referred to as Stooly the Stool Pigeon.

Frankenstein showed me his “bus patrol” badge, and ordered me again to stop trying to stamp my ticket. Bewildered, I stopped and asked him a logical question. “Why?”

Frankenstein complemented me on my Romanian and asked me where I had learned it. Was I going to get out of whatever mysterious mess I was in by smiling and explaining my story to him? I tried. It didn’t work. Frankenstein asked us for our passports and only after we gave them to him did he explain the dire circumstances that we were in.

Looking at my passport, “Ok, Roberto,” I didn’t tell him that this was not my name. He didn’t even mess with my last name, “You bought tickets for the city bus. This is the express bus because it goes more than 20km from the center of the city.”

“Well I bought tickets for the bus. I told the ticket seller where I was going and he gave me these tickets.”

“These are not the right tickets, I am sorry.” Stooly was standing behind Frankenstein slowly shaking his head in support. “The tickets that you are supposed to have can be read by this new electronic ticket-reader and don’t need to be stamped.” This was starting to get irritating. “For your convenience, of course.”

“I don’t understand. Why would the ticket seller give me these tickets if they don’t work?”

“Well it’s possible that you didn’t specify which tickets you needed so he gave you the regular city bus tickets instead of these convenient electronic tickets that we have now.”

At this point, Stooly piped up and explained again that because this bus goes further than 20km from the city, the tickets are slightly more expensive and they come only in electronic form. “And it is clearly written on the front of the bus that it is an ‘express’ bus.”

“But I didn’t even see the front of the bus because we got on from the side of the bus and besides you saw that we were trying to pay with our tickets.”

“Unfortunately this is a 150 lei [~$50] fine for both of you,” says Frankenstein with his jaw dropping and closing in an even more exaggerated way. “Fortunately for you, you can pay us 50 lei [~$15] and this will suffice. It’s your choice.”

This sounded like a bribe to me. I don’t normally support this kind of practice but here are our circumstances: We are on our way to make a down-payment for 17 people which will take up an entire guest house and we are already late for the appointment. In 4 hours we have to catch a train to Belgrade to start our “vacation” and the tickets are already paid for. We can’t afford to start a war with a corrupt, barely-non-third-world system today. We paid the bribe.

This was the most official-looking bribe that I have ever seen. Frankenstein took out some little calculator machine and after logging some information, it printed out a nice receipt for us. You may be wondering if this receipt had an official stamp on it. It did. On top of this, Frankenstein “helped us out” by writing on the back of a card that we had paid the bribe and he explained to us that if we have any other problems from any other bribe-takers on the bus then all we had to do is show them that we already paid the bribe. This would save us from having to buy another ticket. How helpful and convenient! Frankenstein and Stooly flitted off the bus, wishing us a good day.

Amanda obviously wasn’t happy with this. On top of the bribe situation, the “express bus” was stopped for over 20 minutes and Amanda started to have a break-down. She was banging her ringed hand on the bar of the bus, willing it to start up again. Maybe if she banged louder the bus would start. I heroically kept the temper-tantrums at bay by pointing out that we had traveled on plenty of buses without paying anything and we never got caught. It was ironic that the first time we tried to pay that morning was the day we got caught by the bus patrol.

We thought that these guys were targeting tourists. In our case they were, but thankfully we saw that there were plenty Romanians who got busted and fined because they didn’t know how the system worked. I think they busted at least 4 other people on our trip to and from the hotel. These guys were making bank so no wonder there were so many of them everywhere.

In any case we made it to the hotel, had a nice chat with the owners and then we made it to our train that night. Yeah, we were $30 short but we counted our blessings. The train ride was nice and it cheered Amanda up a bit. We paid for regular tickets but our seats in the cabin were empty so we basically paid half-price for sleeping cars. This made up for our lost money. And we had receipts for everything.