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.