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.

Summertime in Exile

Chisinau is very hot right now. We tend to be moving much slower now probably because of the heat and this has affected our ability to write more punctually on our blog. When I noticed that we hadn't written since May 26th I realized that we have actually been doing some pretty interesting stuff in the past few weeks. For example, we went to the village for this year's edition of the sports day festivities. For those of you who don't know this is when they have soccer matches, basketball and volleyball games as well as donkey races and wrestling matches.

Before I went I was asked to stand in for the wrestling referee in case he didn't show. In order to be a more effective referee I had to learn the real rules for traditional Moldovan wrestling (called "trinta"). Someone in one of our English classes referred me to the head guy of the sports and recreation fund of Moldova. This guy is middle-aged, has old-man cauliflower ear (the flat kind) and is huge. He was like a world judo champ back in the day and now he passes his time doing some sort of paperwork and making phone calls in his office while his cronies sit around watching soccer matches in a surprisingly well-lit room in one of the more upscale Chisinau hotels.

Petru (that's his name) is a very friendly guy and kinda reminds me of my Granddaddy the way he hands me the same pictures to admire whenever he sees me, telling me stories of the good old days and how he will be going to Japan to a judo conference or something. Anyway, Petru referred me to his friend (crony) who is the head of the national "trinta" federation of Moldova. So he's a big deal, or so says Petru.

I met with this guy Serghei, the head of trinta in Moldova and he turned out to be a typically friendly-yet-eccentric Moldovan. I went to his office where he gave me the official trinta rules and regulations which included the official trinta stamp on it. This was my key to success. Serghei suggested that I sit and study the rules while he and some old-school Russian dude sat and played chess. It was a Moldovan-style suggestion which meant that it wasn't a suggestion at all but more of a command. I tried to watch them play chess for a moment but was commanded to continue studying the rules because there would be a test at the end.

I eventually had some questions for Serghei and had to interrupt his chess match in order for him to explain some things to me. My questions were always to be answered in the following fashion:

"Excuse me, but do the wrestlers always start in the same position if there is a stop in the match?"

"Sorry, but if the wrestlers go off the mat, do you still award points for take-downs?"

"Robert, Robert, Robert, we are Moldovans. We are Christians, so whenever we start the match we put our hands in the shape of a cross on our opponent's belt." He showed me how and then went back to chess.

"Robert, Robert, Robert, we are Moldovans. We are surrounded by Ukrainians and Romanians and even farther out by Hungarians and Russians. If we fall over the border we live to tell about it because there is land there. We are not in Japan where one would die if they fell into the ocean. So to answer your question, yes, you still get awarded points."

"Ok, one more question. It says here in the rules that the referees must agree on points awarded. What does that mean?"

"Robert, Robert, Robert, we are Moldovans. We are Christians and we make the sign of the cross over our hearts which shows that we adhere to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Therefore when we wrestle we must have 3 referees and 2 of 3 of them must agree in order for there to be points awarded."

I was getting the picture now. And his logic made sense although I feel that the rules were created before his reasoning was. In the end, I passed Serghei's test and was suggested that I rapidly drink some of Serghei's home-made grape brandy with him before we go our separate ways. He wished me luck with the refereeing and walked me to the bus stop. In the end I didn't wind up refereeing because the other referee guy showed up after all. But I did have the official rules with the official stamp and Serghei's logic in my head just in case there was a discrepancy.

In the end, one of my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu students from long ago wound up winning the ram, which was the prize for the men's wrestling contest. He didn't have much opposition though which may or may not have been orchestrated by his father who was responsible for setting up the tournament. In any case I am happy for him. I will definitely visit Petru and Serghei again before we head back to Romania in 2 weeks.

We have gone for a few trips to "nature", in "the woods" here in Chisinau. Amanda got to see some horses although she didn't get to ride any. The horses were being used for jumping over jumps and things of that nature. There's some kind of equestrian center here in Chisinau, but I have a feeling it's for those same people who drive around in BMWs and Hummers. Aside from the horses, we enjoyed a nice picnic in the park with some friends we know from Burlacu.

There are some really nice parks in Chisinau, which is a surprisingly green city in contrast to the Communist, grey, block-apartment buildings everywhere. The most recommended park is the Dendrariu Park where the $0.08 entrance fee appears to cover the extensive upkeep of an impressive collection of rose gardens and other flora. There's also a lake where I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to be swimming, but nobody seems to be enforcing that rule so there are usually people splashing around.

We've also been to the "beach" a couple times in the town of Vadul lui Voda. For those geography buffs out there, you may be thinking to yourself, "that's strange...I thought Moldova was landlocked..." and you would be right. This popular summertime hangout is in fact on the shores of the Nistru River, where they plow up the light-colored dirt every morning to make "sand." I think they used to have real sand when were here a few years ago, but it seems to have been replaced with the less expensive stuff. It's still a nice place to get away from the city and they do a good job making it feel like a "beachy" community with sidewalk bars and water sports for hire.

Chisinau Apartment

We’re finally in our new temporary apartment. The apartment is located on the 13th floor of one of those sweet-looking Soviet style bloc buildings. Even more sweet is that all the modern amenities from Soviet times are still in the apartment. I’ll give you a virtual tour right here on the blog! Let’s start with the elevator. Most of the time the light is not working in the hallway so you have to feel your way around for the button that calls the elevator. Either that or use a flashlight.

One of the two elevators will come and get you. It will either be the big elevator or the little elevator. You don’t get to pick. Both of the elevators seem equally unsafe and after you reach the 13th floor with your teeth and fists clenched, your arrival is signaled by a loud “POP!” from the button on the wall. We still haven’t gotten used to this. I think it shaves a couple months off our lifespan each time. The doors on the elevator squeek open and you are let out into the hallway. You go to our door and after you undo about 40 locks you get into the apartment.

The apartment isn’t exactly as modern as our last one but at least we have hot running water. Actually we only have hot water. To flush the toilet you have to put some water in a bucket and pour it into the toilet until its contents go away. Laundry is done in the bathroom by hand. This is my job. After Amanda’s battle blister from de-kerneling the corn I didn’t want to subject her to further war wounds as a result of washing laundry. Amanda pretty much takes care of all the other cleaning chores.

It almost seems that when the Soviet Union fell, the people who lived here just vacated the premises ASAP and didn’t have time to take their commie stuff with them. Our oven is all-original with “CCCP” written on it as are half the radios in the apartment. There are Soviet Kopeks (money) lying around all over the place. We even found some cans of calamari in the fridge with CCCP written on them. That means they’re at least 18 years old. Mmm. I wonder how much I can get for them on Ebay…

The best discovery that I made, in my opinion, is a book called “English for Everyone Part 2”. It offers a glimpse into state-controlled language learning in 1977. It teaches people how to speak with stuck-up London dwellers about crappy Soviet art and provides loyal Party members riveting stories about the horrible life that Negro New Yorkers have to live in the great “City of Contrasts”. At the end, the writer “can’t wait to get back to good old Moscow”. I think my favorite parts are the discussion questions. Here’s a sample: 1. Joint actions of the socialist community countries in the struggle for peace. 2. Further strengthening of friendship and co-operation among socialist countries. 3. The celebrations of the Great October Socialist Revolution and May Day in the Soviet Union. I know I can’t wait to discuss!

Back to the apartment, I have to say that this is probably the creepiest place I’ve ever lived in. If anyone ever starts a Chisinau “ghost tour” then the 13th floor of this building needs to be on the itinerary. I can probably make up a pretty good story about the owners of this place flinging themselves to their deaths out of the window, not being able to bear the ensuing chaos of the fall of the Soviet Union. But, with the exception of my (possibly) unmerited fear of an earthquake happening in the night, this feels like it’s a fairly safe place to be.

Our location is pretty good and although it’s in a part of town that we’re not familiar with, it does have almost everything that you could ask for. It’s got some good restaurants, including a McDonald’s down the street when we have those occasional McNugget cravings. There’s a memorial park right next door dedicated to the memory of the Moldovan men killed in the Afghanistan conflict. It’s weird knowing that our country was the one who supplied the guns who killed those guys. It adds to the creepiness factor I think. There is a wooded area behind the apartments where you can go have picnics, complete with a man-made mosquito lake. There is a Wal-Mart type “supermarket” down the road when we need something that is hard-to-get (no BBQ sauce though…ugh).

So now our time is spent helping out with English lessons at the American Counsels Language School although the lessons are finished for this these particular set of classes and everyone is getting ready to take tests. We are working out a new marketing idea with the director that may involve us going to businesses posing like American customers and speaking in English, only to give a flier at the end of our conversations offering lessons at the language school. I’m sure we’ll write about this later.

We have been exploring our possibilities of work in Romania when we go back for the second time around. I emailed some former Peace Corps Volunteers who have a tourism business in Transylvania. I am crossing my fingers that they can help us out somehow as this seems like the best possible work we could find. We also heard back from Berlitz, the company who gives English lessons in Romania. They want to interview us in Bucharest sometime. Once we figure out when we’re gonna be going through there again we will set up the interview. We will probably work in Bucharest or Timisoara which are big cities not located in Transylvania. But at least we will have work and an income.

So here’s our tentative schedule for the next couple months: June will be spent here in Chisinau working with the language school. In early July we will go to Brasov for a couple days and reserve rooms for people and a place for our party. Then we will go out to Serbia for a series of concerts from July 8-11. After this we will head out to Croatia for probably a week. Then it will be back to Bucharest or Brasov depending on what we need to do for the job interview and setting up for our party and getting married and all that. Then in August we will have our party and after that we’ll be on to bigger and better things! Wow!

Ok. We’ll write again soon.