Life In A Crater

We were up early on Saturday and took the Hutteldorf bus down to the Tiergarten Schonbrunn, an enormous park in Vienna, inside of which is a zoo and conservation area; walking around the entire place took about three hours. 

There was a rope park (which I naturally rolled around in for a while) and a toy crane (which I crammed myself into and used) and we were accosted by a large turkey that insisted on flexing every five seconds to make it clear to his lady friends that he was tough.  We had lunch at another Japanese restaurant where I tried duck for the first time.

At 8 p.m. we got our tickets and went to a Strauss and Mozart concert; it was held in a large hallway with chairs lined up like the inside of a school auditorium - I went in expecting a purely instrumental performance and got five fantastic operatic singers backed by a brilliant orchestra. 

To the far left of the orchestra there was a balding, middle-aged man who played the drums, triangle, and any other sound effect that was needed throughout the performance, and each time he hit the triangle, he looked immensely pleased with himself.  He turned out to be a comedic piece for the concert as he played the foil to the conductor's straight-man, playing a slide whistle out of sync with the music and eventually banging out a rhythm on anvils that ended with the conductor's baton being broken and the back row of the orchestra looking at a playboy magazine.

The final performance of the evening had the drummer shooting off an air rifle at intervals, and later pointing it at the conductor, who ducked with lightning speed, responding by pointing his baton like a gun.  As campy as it all sounds, they were an immensely talented orchestra; I got the CD.  It was that good.

Sunday was a day where nothing had been planned; we winged it and ended up going on a horse-drawn carriage ride and buying a few souveniers but that was the extent of it; Monday we got on the CAT to get to the airport, climbing onto the second level and settling ourselves in with our luggage, only to discover we had trapped ourselves in a car where a young couple were very noisily macking on eachother.  While I have no qualms with PDAs, I can't help feeling there should be some sort of limit to it - I believe there should be some sort of loophole in the law allowing for a mild sort of assault under the circumstances where your stomach begins to violently churn from the noises someone is making while kissing (wetly).  It just seemed a little excessive, and dad pointed this out in a very obvious way by beginning to inhale through his nose in great snorts in an attempt to break The Mood.  It didn't work. 

And, even when we were told that the CAT had broken down in the middle of the tracks - and that's why we weren't moving - they still didn't stop.  So not only were we stuck in a train car with the horn dogs, we were actually stuck in the train car with the horn dogs.  Eventually they got the thing moving enough to get us to the next stop and somewhere along the line we managed to strangle the information out of the employees that we needed to get onto the train that was behind us to get to the airport. 

The ensuing nine hour flight was as mind-numbing as can be expected and we were seated next to a child who laughed like Satan.  We got a pre-arranged cab service to bring us the rest of the way home, and after nine months away, lake Ontario was a sight for sore eyes.

I won't say that this is the end of my travelling given the wander-lust I'm inclined to, there's a good chance that one day I'll be on the move again, but it's good to be home.

Should anyone reading this find it completely incomprehensible, blame the jet lag. 

Stay classy, planet Earth,
- Batsy

We caught a plane in Bacau, so the drive was short and didn't require us to go through the dreaded city of Bucharest this time around; we left at three in the morning to be at the airport by five and stood patiently in line.  As per the norm, several people shoved into the front of the queue anyways.

The airport was tiny but apparently they sought to compensate for this fact by taking a more hardass approach to security.  It's normal for the large, well-known airports to do some extra checks and maybe pat a person down as a precaution, but in this particular airport, after checking in our large luggage, they then required us to remove any medication we carried so they could take a look at them, and told us we couldn't take them onto the flight.  Given that each of us carries some form of medication - heart medications, inhalers, blood pressure medication - and all of them are fairly urgent to have available, we had to have something of a debate just to bring them on board.  To be fair, there is no law that requires any airport to remove a person's medication, especially when the medication is clearly labelled as such.

But beyond that, even though they opted to take most of our medication from us and put it into the large luggage storage, they didn't check us well enough to realize we had stored extra in other pockets.

The flight was short, only an hour, and we transferred from the Bacau airport to the Timisoara airport; that flight was another two hours and we arrived in Vienna and got our bags with zero difficulty.  A cab was waiting for us outside of the airport and we were taken to our hotel, An der Wien; the hotel is in a less frequented area, but it's clean, comfortable, and one of the ladies who runs the place has hair that looks like she stole it from Lucille Balle, which I naturally approve of.

The transit system here is even more confusing and intricate than the one in Paris, but it's also incredibly efficient; we went into a main area of Vienna and just wandered for several hours.  Eventually we made our way to an aquarium which was several floors high and had pirahnas, iguanas, and an albino snake that must have been about twenty feet long - I had the misfortune of trying to take pictures of the snakes during feeding time.  They're somehow less dazzling with mouse guts hanging out of their mouths.

And there were birds. 

And monkeys. 

One monkey attempted to eat me; it was small and cute and took an intense interest in my shoes, I even got to scratch it on the head a few times before it took hold of my finger and opened its mouth as wide as it could - which was surprisingly wide for a monkey that was only about four inches tall.  With its eyes on me, it very slowly began to lean in, and I couldn't help the feeling that if it could have spoken it would have been asking 'You cool with this?' - as far as animals that try to eat me go, this one was incredibly polite.  Of course, I moved my hand before it could complete the taste test.


Vienna Day Two

We got up late, ate breakfast at the hotel and took a series of trams and busses to get to our destination in one of the busier areas of the city.  After nearing on a year in Romania we all took an unhealthy amount of joy in locating a Subway, which we took advantage of.

Around two in the afternoon we waited on a busy corner for our tour guide to show up; Renata - a tiny Austrian woman with a voice like the Governator - came whizzing up to us on the Segway to lead us back to the office.  We met up with a father-son duo from Minnesota there - Charles and Paul, respectively - and went to the park to test drive our Segways, all of which were given Austrian and German names and it just figured that I had been assigned to ride Sigmund Freud for the next three hours, but sometimes a Segway is just a Segway.

My first foray out of the park and onto the street had me and the electric psychoanalyst nearly run over by a passing car as I tried to figure out how to make the thing stop on my command - I had the 'forward' thing figured out pretty well though.  We ended up buzzing through the city for hours as Renata enthusiastically told us about various structures and bits of history about Vienna, but honestly - I wasn't paying a lot of attention.  I was on a Segway. 

I guess I couldn't get over the fact that someone was naive enough to give me access to one, nevermind actually letting me drive it through a city, so it remained novel to me the entire time, which I suppose was made evident when I couldn't hold still even for the two minutes while Renata gave us information - I ended up going in circles around our little tour group the entire time.  In a busy park area, Paul (who I believe was about eleven or twelve) and I ended up buzzing around the fountain, racing eachother while alternately screaming "AUTOBOTS, ROLL OUT!" and "ARRR I'M A SEGWAY PIRATE!" 

Along the way we encountered a ramp.  You see where this is going.

Paul took a glorious flying tumble off of his Segway on the way down, and my natural reaction was to try and stop as fast as I could, which doesn't go great when on a downwards angle, so I ended up doing a complicated half-balanced movement where my right foot was dragging and scuffing along the ground even as the Segway continued to try going down hill, to the point where I was nearly doing the splits.  I imagine I was the picture of grace.

I must, however, thank Mrs. Pradhan for her yoga instruction or I may well have just split in half like paper mache; namaste, Payal.

Paul popped back up onto his feet like a prarie dog, immediately exclaiming "I'm alright!" while his father looked on with an expression somewhere between school-teacher disapproval and paternal pride.

Still, we took on a ramp. 

Later on we ended up eating at a Japanese restaurant; barbecued teriyaki salmon and we got coconut milk with rice for dessert - strange, but fantastic. 

Went to bed early but I don't take no guff 'cause I'm a segway pirate.  Arrh.

Stay Classy, Ontario
- Batsy

There is a man in our tree; this amuses me.

It turns out that our side yard is being taken over by a sprawling grape vine, the garden in our front yard produces strawberries and raspberries, and the enormous tree beside the porch grows copious amounts of tiny, black, sour cherries.  The flavour of the latter can be likened to Dimetapp, but it seems that the Canadians are the only ones who feel this way about them because the Romanians love the taste of the cherries and eat them by the handful while we gag and sputter - but I think we've established by now that there are some cultural differences when it comes to cuisine (see: fish donuts).

We've also recently had an infestation of sorts - a disgustingly cute, fuzzy infestation; a stray has been hanging around in our yard for a while and recently brought her kittens with her and we were feeding them cheap, tinned ham pate  - which they loved, despite it being a bizarre purple-grey colour - and since we're suckers, we also bought them some hard cat food.  Two of the kittens have become friendly enough to pet, and the black one especially (named 'Freddy' due to his penchant for clawing everything) likes a good belly rub (Ange, don't you dare tell me to rub your belly). 


My buddy Hans (A stray German Shepherd, who I sometimes also call Mr. Gruber) has taken to following me when I go to the gym; he recently barked at the girls who swarm me for money (note: if you are heard speaking English, you apparently become a target); he got cookies for that.


It's been storming a lot lately; every day for about a week and a half we've had an insane thunderstorm that floods the streets, but it's also been ridiculously hot, around 30 C - it's supposed to go up to 32 C (80 F) today, which is the sort of temperature that makes Canadians melt like Elphaba.  Despite this, one day we got hail roughly the size of peanuts; I know this because I got hit by some of it.

We were invited to a barbecue a couple of weeks ago at the Stinoys, held in a large side yard with a sprawling garden.  There were at least thirty people there, most of whom were Indian ex-pats and many of whom were people who attended the gym with me.  There was a very nice woman named Irena who unfortunately only spoke Romanian, but she was making her best efforts to talk to me.  Bogdan kindly began to translate in his droning, bored French accent:

"She says you ahr vary nice, and a beautiful girl.  She thinks you ahr a good person and she wants to seek you nekkid."

There was an extended pause following this as I surreptitiously eyed Bogdan and watched him struggle to keep a straight face, and then Doina politely translated his translation back to Irena, who began to panic.  Flapping her hands, Irena tried to explain in Romanian that she wasn't actually hitting on her bosses daughter, and Bogdan decided to translate that too:

"She finds you vary attractive and wants you with no clothes."

By that point I was moving to throw Bogdan into the fountain while the circle continued with Doina translating it back to Irena, Irena getting hysterical trying to explain, and Bogdan translating progressively raunchier things.  Rest assured that he will suffer for his insolence and it will likely involve papanasi. 

A while ago, Nellie decided she wanted to get a tattoo; apparently there aren't a lot of shops for it around here so Nellie, Payal, Saket and I ended up sitting in a steambox of a car, cursing our way to Piatra Neamt and down back streets and alleyways in search of the tiny place; we had to stop about ten times to ask for directions.  Saket entertained us with his surprisingly authentic Jeff Dunham impersonations, since it turned out he had most of the routines memorized.  It took about two-and-a-half hours to get to the tattoo parlour, which was located in a broken down old concrete building, guarded by a massive German Shepherd who kept trying to get it on with everyone who passed by. 

Initially my internal alarm went off at the sight of the place from the outside - as it usually does with a lot of buildings here - but the inside was clean and he was certified, so at the very least she wasn't going to get some horrible disease, despite what the first impression told us.

We spent another two hours waiting for Nellie to decide what she wanted; she eventually chose a pair of dragons formed into a heart on her ankle.  With our camera phones at the ready for Nellie's first tattoo, many luls were had as her eyes crossed and face twisted in reaction to the needle. 

Our gym class has been whittled down over the last few weeks; Payal and Saket returned home to Bangalore, Siddharth and Mrs. Yagnik returned to Kolkata, and Oishika and Mrs. Pal will be returning home this week.  They'll all be missed for their enthusiasm, but we'll stay in contact.

We went to the Armstrongs for Canada day; whenever visiting them, I always prepare myself for a night filled with innuendos (in-YOUR-end-o's!) but this particular night was more impressive than most.  It began with Armstrong observing that the hot dogs on the barbecue were exploding and (in a Scottish accent) shouted,

"Mah weenies ahr spleet!"

And it devolved into an evening of sarcasm, insults, and double entendres as we ate 'Canada Day Pasta', which were in shapes of maple leafs, moose, and yes, beavers.  At one point Alison observed that the french fries in the oven hadn't finished yet and that she liked 'brown bottoms'; it was at this point that Sachin finally looked up from his food, mouth stuffed, ears perked, eyebrows raised and went:

"Mmm? What what?"

Good job, Alison. 

The Armstrongs also have a kiddie pool; the first time I discovered this, I ended up wearing my jeans into it because I, in my maturity and wisdom, couldn't wait to put on the swimsuit I had actually brought with me. 


Sachin took Ruby to the pool and let her kick her legs around in it; I promptly scooped a cup of water out of it and dumped it on his head.  With his hands full of Baby, he had no defense, but his eyes slowly rolled towards me and he whispered:

"I kill you."

A second cup of water produced a more hysterical reaction of,

"I kill you!  Oh god, I kill you!"

It struck me as funny that he also did excellent Dunham impressions.

We saw Terminator: Salvation, The Hangover, and Transformers over the last month or so; two involve fighting robots, one involves a tiger and roofies.  For mindless entertainment, I suggest all of the above.  For deep plot - go see something else.

That is all.

Stay classy, Ontario,
-Batsy

To say that Romanians like to party would be like saying Courtney Love only kind of enjoys crack; Romanians don't just like to party, they fuckin' love to party and will put aside about dozen hours to do so.  I mention this because I very recently went to a Romanian reception and discovered that even the weddings are exactly like the other parties - right up to the excess booze, stilettos, and dethcircle dance. 

This will be difficult to believe, but I avoided drinking that night in lieu of being able to walk on heels and wear a dress; the heels were removed about half an hour into the party, much to the amusement of the other ladies on the dance floor - mind you, they may have just been laughing at my dancing.  Canadian-style; largely based around bending your knees, pointing in various directions, snapping your fingers and  possibly winking.  That's how I roll.

The music was live, the skirts were short, the food was terrifying. 

The first course was a plate of meat; I use the general term because the piles of tan, brown, and pink-hued fleshy slabs arranged on the plate had clearly once been attached to something with a circulatory system, but I found myself unable to establish specifically what poor creature had given up it's life to create the carnivore's delight that had been set in front of me.  I can only speculate that it may have once been a pig, but this is really just a supposition.  A whole plate of pork to myself seemed off-putting enough, but then I found a delightful treasure.

I'm a slacker; I've been slacking.  Slacky slack.  McSlack.

I should have posted this a while ago, but hey, time flies when you're having copious amounts of booze. 

Or - or fun. 

Something like that.

Went to Greece at the end of April; I found myself grimly traipsing through Bucharest again but the flight went off without a hitch (it's always novel when nothing goes wrong and you don't get guns pointed in your face), it was a two hour flight to Athens and we hung around for mere moments before hopping on a half-hour croissant-laden flight to Santorini island where we spent the entirety of the week.  We were greeted at the airport by a Bulgarian driver, who took us on a journey across the entire island to get us to our hotel and I found myself distracted by his hair, which was impressive considering he'd somehow managed to compress what had to have been a sheep's worth (measuring in farm animals; insert Romanian-based joke, possibly about it being roughly two cocks high) of blonde curls.  

When I managed to pull my gaze from his physics-defying mane, I discovered Santorini was - rocky.  This is sensible considering it is an island, but I think my mental schemata of islands had me picturing more brightness and flora ala Gilligan's Island - though there were particular flowers that stood out against the slate colours.

Our travels required us to pass along a very steep ridge every time we wanted to get to our hotel and once we rented a car, we got to see our lives flash before our eyes each time we crossed because there would inevitably be an impatient taxi driver roaring up behind us; Greek taxi drivers are insane, I feel this is an important thing for people to note.  (Not quite Tom Cruise in 'Collateral' insane, but maybe Pauly Shore insane - not any particular movie, just Pauly Shore himself mind you, if they were just plain old Tom Cruise insane then you'd be rear-ended by a scientologist cab driver who would be inexplicably bouncing up and down in his seat shrieking "Σ' αγαπώ Katie Holmes!  Σ' αγαπώ Katie Holmes!", but I digress).  

The hotel itself was fairly small and out of the way but it had a great view of most of the island, balconies for each room and a well-kept pool area; the manager even brought breakfast to our room every morning.

One thing I feel I should also mention: Greece is not as hot as people seem to believe it is - or at least, not in April.  Maybe it's a bit like how Americans sometimes pop into Canada in mid-winter and say: 'Where's all the snow?' (and we usually imagine them asking this particular question with a yokel drawl and snaggleteeth; awful but true) but we came to Greece in mid-spring expecting to broil to death under an unforgiving tropical sun - burns are not difficult for pasty Canucks to obtain, but it took most of the week for us to show any indication we had experienced sunlight (ever).  It wasn't until Thursday of the week that it was actually hot outside, at least for us - we spent two days essentially laying around on the beach and yes, there were some topless sunbathers and a few nasty banana hammocks (more like bananito hammocks!  Oh, snap!) 

We discovered that Greece - like Romania - has the same issue of stray dogs but that, it seems, is where the similarities end.  The dogs, while without homes, were all wearing collars to indicate they had been spayed or neutered and as we learned from the hotel manager, the people on the island have created a fund and made a group effort that put fresh bowls of dog food and water around the entire island to ensure the animals are fed and taken care of, and it seems that every dog is extraordinarily friendly.  We ran into a well-meaning but dim cocker spaniel we dubbed Mr. Diggs because of his tendency to constantly dig holes into the sand; we threw rocks for him to chase and were astonished when he continually came back to us. 

For about three hours straight.

There was also a yellow terrier who took a liking to us and settled down into the sand near our chairs.

For shame; I forgot to mention a ridiculous but significant moment. 

We drove to Targu Neamt a few weeks ago and decided to climb a long, winding pathway that led up a mountainside; the walk itself was steep, and at the very top was a montrous white stone citadel.  Looking at it, one might believe it was hundreds of years old, but apparently it had actually been restructured and rebuilt over the years due to the wear and tear that seems to go hand-in-hand with religious structures (hey, deities are harsh critics).

It cost 1 lei to be able to get a better look at it; I found I was more interested in the dogs that were laying around the place, but went along with it anyways. 

It turns out that you can't actually go inside the citadel, as it's barred and locked tight, but you can walk along the top of it, first crossing a long bridge which leads to a sort of elevated stone court, complete with flattened spires. 


There's not exactly anything to do up there aside from sit on the stone for the sheer novelty that you're kind of sitting on a castle.  I guess one could introspect, but that sort of thing inevitably leads me to thinking about Philosophers, and everyone knows how I feel about that (pfft, who needs self-actualization anyways?)

I just ended up posing like the karate kid; that's about the limit of my emotional depth.


On the way back down, I saw there was a ragged, elderly man not far from the citadel, just standing around at the top of the mountain; he was selling paintings of religious figures.  Very poorly done paintings of religious figures.  On tree bark.  His name was Phil, he informed me he was a shaman and used to live in Siberia.

Long story short, I now have a tree-bark Jesus on a horse.  It kind of sums up my Romanian experience.


Stay Classy, Ontario
- Batsy

So, last month I spent part of a day underground; that was interesting. 

We went to Targu Ocna where you hop on a bus and get taken on a bumpy, rattling downwards spiral into an enormous salt mine, it's about a ten minute ride to the very core of it, and when you think of salt mines you generally think of a dark, dank cave - which is fairly accurate up until the point you realize walls and doors have been installed to separate sections of the place, which kind of takes away from the ambience.

And there was a church inside; leave it to Romania to put a church 3000 metres underground; it's a little ironic when you think about it, but I guess if a zombie apocalypse happens and the cities collapse, you can rely on there still being somewhere to go pray and get your daily fill of Lord and Savior brand wine and wafers. 
 

Mmm, tastes like prophet.

But in the meantime, the commute has got to be hell. 

Once you get past the shock of seeing apostles slathered across rock salt with gilded frames, you can get into the main area, which consists of a beehive of huge, wide tunnels.  Romanians go to the salt mines as a holistic treatment for pretty much everything, and since I've got asthma I was told it would be good for me - I bit back on my snark and went for the luls, and while the humid air didn't cure my respiratory defect, at the very least I'm sure it took care of my sodium intake for the rest of my life. 

It was kind of awesome though; you'd figure a salt mine would just be a lot of rock, but it turned out that since people were spending hours at a time down in the mine, they decided they should add some form of entertainment and thus filled the place with benches, chess tables, swing sets, slides, teeter-totters, basketball nets, tennis courts, ping pong tables, pool tables, and yes, even a fucking bouncy castle.
 

Best. Salt mine. Ever.

There were even a couple of shops down there so you could buy snacks or a drink (surprisingly this is the first place you can't buy beer from in Romania) and we played cards for a while down there before coming up again for air.  Also, as a side note, the woman that we went with, Doina, did an awesome front flip over a handrail.  It was by accident, but still badass.

Also, the mayor dumped snow on my head. 

At this juncture, I feel I should also make mention of something that happened in Piatra Neamt - after going for incredibly bad food at a restaurant there, we were heading down a sidewalk near a busy intersection where people were crossing over the pedestrian walk.  They had the right of way, but people were honking their horns anyways, and there was an older man in a rickety wheelchair trying to make his way across, and because people insistently laid on their horns, he tried to go faster and ended up losing control of his chair and landing face-first in the middle of the intersection. 

Now, I just know that anyone who is reading this, upon seeing this happen, would do the obvious thing.  Help him. 

But instead, the people in the cars continued to honk, and some even began to drive, which meant the cars behind wouldn't have any idea there there was a human being laying in the middle of the street, and I ended up having to swear and curse my way into traffic - running on foot, because I'd seen him from about forty feet back - to help this man up and get him to the side of the road.  And the worst part is, people on the other side of the road, an entire crowd of people who were nearby, were watching and laughing as though they'd found their entertainment for the day. 

It's a bit heavy for a journal entry, but this is the reason I haven't written an entry for nearly two months - I have been furious about this situation ever since and I've never been so thoroughly disgusted by human beings in my life.  I won't go on about it, because I don't feel I can trust myself not to write some things that would be in very, very poor taste (moreso than usual).

On Valentine's Day we went to a club, Rosu Negru, and I got wasted on whiskey, beat the Mayor at air hockey and mocked him for it, and danced like an idiot. 

I fell in love with a dog the other day; it broke my heart.

I've been working out a lot; I'm trying out a mix of different programs - P90x and Turbo Jam, the first of which is basically for the clinically insane, I did the Chest and Back on day 1 and was aching so thoroughly that I had to take a break on day 3.  I gave Turbo Jam a try yesterday and it was essentially a mix of tae kwon do and dance, run by a very bubbly instructor - I could get used to it. 

Not much else to update on as of now, except to say that Repo! The Genetic Opera is badass and I've had the music embedded in my head for the last three weeks.  Also, I got awesome shoes.

That is all.

Stay Classy, Ontario
Batsy

...and they both mulled over it for a moment before pointing in the direction we were already heading.  We walked about twenty minutes after that, and discovered they were wrong; we ended up getting GPS direction from a Parisian's blackberry and found our hotel, the Trianon Rive Gauche. 

Over the course of the week, we visited the Pantheon, we went down into the crypt and saw the resting place of Victor Hugo and a memorial dedicated to the lives lost in the French Revolution.  We visited the Eiffel Tower, where we got some excellent pictures, but the line was phenomenally long, and the Gendarmerie (French Super Cops - the cops that ne s'arrêtera pas) were everywhere, generally just looking sour and being party-poopers.  We walked through most of the city in the week we were there, and took a bus tour on the second night that took us to all of the sights, and our tour guide, Alexandra, began explaining each sight, first in French, then in English - which we all thought was reasonable - until she then switched to German, followed by Russian, Spanish, and then Japanese (much to the delight of one of the families on board).  At this point I had decided that our tour guide was either a member of the X-Men, or an android, which she confirmed later on when I asked her how many languages she spoke, and she replied that she wasn't really sure, 'but probably about eight'.

After that, we took a Seine River boat tour, which seemed to be proud of itself for the number of bridges it took us under - it was cold, the seats were ridiculously uncomfortable, and everyone was obviously bored, to the point where they were lining up to get off the boat ten minutes before we even reached the finish.  Once that was done, we went back on the bus and headed to the Moulin Rouge, where we waited for about an hour outside the place, in the freezing cold - we were alright with waiting, though a few people in line weren't particularly one sulky Russian guy several feet behind us who began to scream, and I quote:

"This isn't fair we wait here we wait here for long time you treat us like this?!  Fuck you Moulin Rouge!  Fuck You!"

Shouting his apparent frustration at the red windmill, perhaps in the hopes that his rage would compell those inside to speed up the show that was already playing; he continued until two massive shadows blocked the streetlights from his vision.  Those shadows were, in fact, owned by the massive, six-foot-seven bouncers employed by the Moulin Rouge, so the swearing stopped. 

We ended up laughing about it with a couple in front of us, a Welsh man and his girlfriend; both of them were clever and polite, up until the point another couple merged from the bar to our left and jack-knifed themselves into the line directly in front of us.  It turned out our newfound Welsh friend wasn't pleased by this douchebaggery, and made a point of letting the (much taller) Parisian know that his rudeness wasn't welcome.

The douchebag proceeded to give us a number of excuses, which ranged from:

1) We were here ze whole time!
2) Oh we were in ze line long ago and we stepped into ze bar to have a drink just to warm up!
3) But we just went inside to go to ze bathroom and when we came out, ze line was like this!

Our Welsh friend proceeded to let the tool know that  his excuses were unacceptable, and that he should please fuck off.  When we got into the Moulin Rouge, Mr. Douchebag and his Douchess ended up getting in before us, and getting better seats, and they even paused to give us a cocky, smirky look before going in.  I couldn't help wondering if it had occurred to him - in his lifetime of popped collars, tiny cigarettes and lilac-scented hand soap - that he was doing an excellent job of portraying the rich bad guy in every James Bond movie, and that he was being an unbelievable tool.  If only he saw the error of his ways, he might be able to cut his losses ahead of time by giving up his life of villainy, because there's a good chance that one day he will end up with his dastardly plots foiled when a debonair spy tricks him into falling into his own tank of sharks with laser beams on their heads.
The Moulin Rouge had a lot of boobies, and men prancing around in very tight, sparkly clothing, and lots of dancing and singing, and animal imagery. 

I, uh, it was kind of familiar in an...odd...way...I'm not really sure why...it...


Later in the week we went to Le Louvre; we showed up early, and the line was still massive.  We ended up staying for several hours, and yes, I did manage to see the Mona Lisa, though I had to put to use my skills as a stealth ninja by crowd weaving.  I made it to the front of the crowd and got about twelve shots of the painting, and only one of them actually turned out, because holding a camera steady in a wavering, massive crowd is almost impossible, and the pictures turn out like Michael J. Fox took them (I'm sorry).

There was a tiny Asian woman in the crowd behind me, and she was being progressively crushed by the people around her, all of whom seemed to be ignoring her very presence - admittedly, she was only 4'8 at most, but still - and I ended up digging into the crowd and basically picking her up and placing her at the front.  I'm not really sure what she said to me (I don't speak Cantonese after all) but she was pretty damn excited, so I think I did good.

We ended up visiting a lot of tourist traps; a lot of souvenir shops, where I got a couple of scarves, and several cafes - it turns out that good tuna in Europe is pretty much impossible to come by, but everything else we tried was pretty good.  On New Years eve, we ended up near Champs D'elysee, and we stuck around for a while, but the area started getting very crowded, and the Gendarmerie were popping up all over the place again.  We ended up heading for the subway, where one of the cops grabbed a couple of kids right in front of us and arrested them, and then again when we got into the station, we saw a foot chase involving about a dozen teenagers and a few cops in excellent respiratory health.  By the time our train took off, they had most of the guys lined up face-first against the wall.

We decided it was in our best interest not to stick around for the fireworks and yes, we watched it on television instead, but not before enjoying a sandwich and some beer outside a little pub, and a guy beside us was strumming 'Creep' by Radiohead on his acoustic guitar, which struck me as funny for some strange reason.

On the 2nd we headed out and after a ridiculously long train ride we got to the airport, only to find that, for some reason, it was so crowded that we could barely move.  We began to weave our way through the crowd, and after a few frustrating minutes of trying to maneuver our luggage through the massive throng, the crowd - ended.  All at once, I realized that the entire crowd in the airport had, for some reason, jammed themselves off to one small portion of the building, as close to the walls as they could get, and that there was a long stretch of empty airport, and in the far distance, another crowd doing the same thing.

Then I saw the guns; it was difficult not to, given that they were being waved in our faces by, yes, the Gendarmerie, who were screaming: "Non, non, get back!" and proceeded to push us back into the crowd and stand with expressions vaguely like mean sturgeons, refusing to answer our questions regarding precisely why guns were being waved at us, and why none of us were allowed to go to our respective gates to catch our planes.  With the knowledge that they weren't going to answer us anyways, I asked one of the cops how he was doing, and how his New Years had gone; he replied with the stony silence characteristic of government employees when faced with the annoyance of the general public. 

After all, it's not our place to ask questions, right?  Like why we're having guns waved at us.

After about fifteen minutes of holding the entire crowd there, they let us through to our gates without ever telling us what was happening.  I have no real proof, but I suspect it had to do with the Foreign Minister arriving in Paris for an emergency New Years meeting regarding the Gaza/Israel conflict, when she came just to say, "LOL NO WE WON'T STOP BOMBING GAZA, SRY!  G2G NAO TTYL!"

But we don't get to know because we're just the public - it's not our business.

We got back to Roman, but not much has happened since then.

Stay Classy, Ontario,
- Batman

Arrgh.

Arrrrghfuck.

So I've basically been bed-ridden for the last week with a cold from hell; when I'm not sleeping, I'm either sneezing my brains out or sitting around giggling at nothing because I'm high on cold meds.  I'm not sure how I got it, but I suspect it may have come from our most recent social gathering last Friday, when we went to a very early New Years celebration and everyone was dancing and sweating and drinking.  They did the dethcircle dance again, and yet again I found myself joining it - at one point I was even dancing in the middle of it with a guy I'd never met before, wondering vaguely how I get myself into these situations.  We all danced to a song called meneaito which I think is actually Spanish, but still fun; there was another live band, but thankfully no one asked for my 'telephonay' this time.

The scotch was fun too.  Lots of fun.

We ended up staying out until one in the morning, but the party apparently continued until six and had moved to several places in that period of time.

On Sunday we went out with the Deputy-Mayor and his lovely wife Doina and visited a few citadels, including the Painted Monastery in Voronet; the inside of the building was bizarre because the entryway had been painted to represent the calendar, with one picture for every day of the year - except, every painting was of a Saint being killed.  Violently.  In some pictures they were being beheaded, some were being drowned (while tied up in a sack), others were being clubbed to death, one even seemed to depict scaphism which - for those who don't spend their time reading up on execution methods - is one of the more creative ways if dispatching a person.  It involves a hollowed out tree, honey, a pond, and insects.  Oh, and diarrhea.  Lots of it. 

So you see, it clearly pays off to become a Saint.

There were several tombs inside as well, and if you donated to the church, the nun would tell you the monastery's history.  We, uh, we were sort of able to guess it by all the pictures of guys with glowing faces being beheaded.

The heat in the house kept failing the last few days, so dad went out to check the boiler and it proceeded to explode and spew out a two foot long flame that just barely missed him.  The maintenance man concluded there was something wrong with it.

Christmas is coming.  Hoorah.

Stay Classy, Ontario,
- Batsy

Two weeks is not enough time, I've discovered.  We barely got our stuff packed for air/sea shipment before we were back on another plane.

So, uh, we took a different airline back this time after the phenomenal experience with Austrian that I mentioned in my previous entry;  we took Olympic Airlines instead, so rather than being taken from Toronto to Vienna, this time we went from Toronto to Athens.  Unfortunately, we didn't really get to see the sights (except the mountainview we got from pressing our noses to the windows of the plane) and ended up sitting in the airport for six hours before we could catch our flight from Athens to Bucharest.

I'm just going to get this out of the way, right now.  

Fuck you, Bucharest. 

Fuck you so much.

I hate you.

It turns out the Silent Hill fog was still around and we were about half an hour away from Bucharest when the Pilot explained that the visibility was so incredibly low that he wasn't sure he would be able to land, and if not, we would have to turn around and go back to Greece.  He explained that there was, however, plenty of fuel in the plane, so he could fly in circles for about fifty minutes before he would have to actually land or turn back.  No big deal. 

At some point he made the decision that the visibility had cleared enough and decided to go for a landing while all of the passengers stared out the windows and wondered precisely where the world had gone, because all we could see was white mist. 

When planes go for a landing, they usually drift on a slow downwards angle with the nose tilted up, this way they land on their back wheels first, but apparently there was a miscalculation at some point, because the plane basically landed on all wheels at once, making us grateful for our seat belts, since without them, we likely would have ended up with our heads through the overhead storage compartments.

Getting through customs this time around was ridiculously easy, but that may have been because the airport almost empty and security just wanted us gone, as we were the last flight of the day.  We ended up on another long, swerving trek through Bucharest then, once again covered in a thick fog that made it impossible to see further than five feet in front of you.   
 

Artist's rendering.

We speedily got out of Bucharest, and we stopped for breakfast along the way; however, breakfast foods and I aren't compadres, so I ended up getting rice, which either wasn't actually rice, or had been criminally overcooked, because the yellow-white mushy lump on my plate didn't have any actual grains in it, but had been reduced to a glue-like paste that could be described as having the consistency of runny snot.  Or possibly that stuff they ate in the Matrix - which I'm pretty sure was also described as runny snot.

It was another seven hour ride before we got back to Roman and were greeted by dogs and more fog.  We're waiting for our shipment to come so the house will seem less like just a huge, echoing cavern and more like a huge, echoing cavern with furniture in it.  We're in it for the long haul this time around; we'll see what happens.

I also feel it's my duty to mention that 'Sex Panther' cologne is now being sold in stores since there's apparently an Anchorman sequel coming out; I'll pay back anyone who can get me a bottle of it.  I'm serious, look it up, www.sex-panther.com 

60% of the time, it works every time.

Stay classy, Ontario,

- Batsy 

That fog I mentioned in the previous entry?

Yeah, it got us good and proper.

Wednesday at 1:30 p.m. Mum, Dad, and I along with three other Canadians (Allison, Dave, and baby Ruby June) were sitting in the airport in Iasi waiting for our flight to Vienna, when we learn that our flight was delayed due to the fact no one was actually able to fucking see outside.  A few minutes later, we find out our flight was cancelled.  At this point, anyone reading this journal will know that I was getting on a flight to Vienna in order to catch a flight to Canada on Thursday, so with the initial flight cancelled, it sort of created a problem, since I haven't exactly mastered the art of teleportation yet.

Also, the airport was so tiny that it only sent out one plane every day.

So we were at the front desk with all of the other people who were supposed to be on the flight, trying to figure out exactly what was happening and whether we would have to stay overnight in a hotel in Iasi to catch the plane the next day.  Two hours later, and they still had no idea.  Three hours later, they figured out that the plane for the next day was actually completely booked and thus would not have any seats available.  Four hours later and they brought us chicken sandwiches to appease the raging beasts that were clearly waking up inside everyone in the airport.  Six hours later and they finally concluded we were all screwed and that the only possible way to get us to Vienna was to send us to Bucharest. 

Eight hours away.

By bus.

So they loaded us all on, tossed in the rest of the sandwiches and wished us good luck as we trundled onwards in a mobile, chicken-scented hell - the senile bus driver seemed to have lost all of his hearing long ago and was thus unresponsive to the screams of terror from his passengers as he knifed the bus into spaces that most skateboarders wouldn't dare to try passing through.  For whatever reason, he had also decided that it would be ambient to crank the heat to hellish temperatures for several hours; most of us were nearing the desperate point of needing to tear all of our clothes off and hang our heads out the window in an attempt to get air that didn't smell like B.O and fried poultry, and poor baby Ruby was down to her last frilly layer of clothes in an attempt to keep her from overheating.  Eventually I managed to scuttle my way up to the front and very loudly request that he turn the heat down; when that didn't work, I decided to mime out the fact we were all melting, and it seemed to be effective.

So he turned the air conditioning on full blast instead. 

He later mounted a curb while trying to squeeze the bus past an 18-wheeler.

After six hours of attempting to wiggle myself into a comfortable position across three chairs, we made a pit stop which was a convenience store and a 'Water Closet' which is actually a public bathroom where you have to pay if you want toilet paper.  I can't help wondering how the woman who dispenses tissues describes her job.

Oh yeah I'm a public servant.  I work with people.  I perform a needed service.  I'm a Water Closet Franchisee.  I'm a Hygenic Tissue Technician.

There were a few mangy, skinny dogs outside of the convenience store, so I fed them bits of some of the leftover chicken, for which they both seemed extremely grateful, and then we took off again.  By midnight we'd made it to Bucharest (which everyone knows I love so much) and the bus driver sat behind the wheel while we unloaded all of our luggage ourselves, and proceeded to begin driving away while Dave was still on board, forcing him to perform a Bond-esque move by leaping off of a moving bus.

We all ended up falling face first into our hotel rooms (we got coupons for a complimentary meal for our troubles when we arrived, "By the way, the chef leaves in twenty minutes") and got four hours of sleep before we had to get to the airport. 

Upon arriving at the Bucharest airport, we found out that, while the agents in the Iasi airport were switching things around (so we would have Bucharest-Vienna tickets), they managed to cancel our Vienna-Toronto tickets, and for a long moment I think we all clenched our teeth (or in Ruby's case, clenched her gums) and held our breath; I personally had to count slowly to ten before I trusted myself not to spew out a lifetime worth of frustrated, colourful expletives.  Thankfully, it didn't take long to work out the issue, and we boarded our flight to Vienna without any further problems; when we got to Vienna we waited for about two hours, and got onto the flight to Toronto (Austrian slaplines again, but with distinctly less slapping) and got our luggage without being given any further reason to bash our heads against the wall.  We got home around 5 p.m. Canadian time.

On Saturday I was attacked by a small Greek.  It was good.

I'm here for two weeks, but I'm not going to be online much; anyone who reads this and wants to get their Batsy on will know how to contact me for shiz.

As a side note, I watched SAW 5 tonight; definitely worth the wait.  It's probably sick, but I've never been more attracted to Tobin Bell or Costas Mandylor.  I think I might be going to hell.  Chicken-scented, mobile hell. 

That is all. 

Stay classy, Ontario.

- Batsy

For the last three days Roman has been covered in a thick fog, and the first day of it resulted in a journey of epic proportions as we travelled across the city to meet up with one of the new Canadians and her little one (baby Ruby June).  What should have been a laid back 10 minute walk to the hotel turned into a stumbling, half-blind trek through a smoky-coloured haze; we crossed the Hole (a large square in the city that is described by its title) and in the distance could see the massive, elevated cross of a church. 

Along the way, I couldn't help recounting the details of the Silent Hill game as I waited to hear the air raid siren that would indicate the darkness was coming.  As though Romania decided it would be best to place special emphasis on the creepy factor that day, we passed a store that was filled with detached bits of mannequins; pale torsos and disembodied limbs piled high.  Fabulous.

And, even better, as we were nearing the hotel, we ran into a very large group of stray dogs; thankfully they weren't interested in eating our intestines, and we met up with Allison at the hotel (it was like a mission, srsly) and made it back to the house without any Pyramid-Head related incidents occurring.

We bought a bottle of Palinca - Romanian-made hard liquor - the other day; it's a very popular here, so we figured there was no harm in trying.

We were wrong. :(

Upon opening the bottle, I couldn't help noticing that the clear liquid inside smelled strangely familiar, and not in a good way.  Going against everything instincts tell us about consuming things that smell funny, I tried it and discovered that it not only tasted like mould, but directly after drinking it, my tongue went numb.  I proceeded chug pineapple juice in a desperate bid to get the taste out of my mouth, and then sobbed quietly into a grilled cheese sandwich.

As a side-note, don't eat Polenta either.  If you could digest a sock, I imagine it would taste like Polenta.

Another Canadian living in the city went back to Canada for  visit; he came back to Romania bearing tuna and sour patch kids for us.  This is a good day, troops, as the tuna here in Romania looks like cat food and tastes roughly the same (note: it's still better than mould-booze, however).  I seem to be using a lot of disturbing food imagery in this entry (it's all called for). 

We went to Lacu Rosii again the other day; I got myself some winter gear - the cold here is different from in Canada, here the chill is somehow sharper, and it seems to get right into your spine.  The similarity is that everyone here also likes to wear funny hats in the cold.

We discovered Iasi has a movie theatre, they're all in their original language, they just have Romanian subtitles, so Saw 5 here I come.

I'm off to Vienna now.  Hurrah.

- Batsy

You know all of those movies you see that show Greek families getting trashed, holding hands, and dancing in a circle?  It happens in Romania too, except it's a little deadlier in person; particularly when you're just trying to pass the circle and end up being grabbed by one of the many tipsy dancers and forced to engage in a whirling, spinning circle dance of death, trying to hold down the whiskey you just drank and keep your feet from getting stomped on by a pair of four inch stilettos.

The people there were - enthusiastic - about celebrating, to say the least.  The dancing was non-stop, and eventually a group of women did a sort of 'history of dance' for the guy who was leaving the company, doing different dances for him from the thirties to modern day.  It was great, but kind of awkward when the tiny belly dancer grabbed my hand and insisted I get my groove on with her.  I did, Canadian-style.  That is to say, I sort of bent my knees a little and pointed my fingers in the hopes I could give the illusion of dancing (I don't think it worked).

There was a live band; the pianist kept smiling at me, so I figured it was polite to give the band a friendly noroc toast to indicate I was appreciating their music, and later when they were taking a break, the pianist asked me to dance with him, and then again later on.  The first dance was slow, the second was a lively near samba - I'm not the most graceful person in the world, but I seemed to be doing alright.  Or maybe it was the whiskey, I could've looked like Elaine from Seinfeld trying to dance (or possibly a Nurse from Silent Hill - think 'Thriller' played backwards) for all I know.  It was great up until the point where he asked me for my phone number (in Romanian - and when he realized I didn't speak Romanian, he made the phone signal with his hand, sort of a sideways evil eye, while saying 'TELAYPHONAY?') and I saw that he was wearing a ring.  I rather wished he had just left it at the simplicity of an innocent dance; ah, well, c'est la vie - I left without giving him the time of day after that.

The other night, we were invited to an East Indian gentleman's house for a celebration called Diwali - the celebration of lights.  Essentially they light candles, eat sweets, buy new clothes, drink, and open crackers; it's a rockin' good time.  The only catch was that the daughters of guests need to be in traditional clothing, so I was given a sari to wear, which is essentially a tunic, a pair of paints, and a very long scarf, all in bright colours, with bangles and nose-studs - I wore it, but the pants didn't have a drawstring, and they were about four times too big for me, so I tied off the waist with a hair tie.  Apparently I put the scarf on incorrectly (I googled it) for the kind of sari I was wearing, because the women were politely containing their giggles - I think it would be roughly the equivalent of someone putting their button-up shirt on backwards in Canada, so I can see how it would be a source of amusement, as was the hair-tie-belt (but that would be pretty funny in Canada too - like a electric cable for a belt).  One of the women took me to another room and demanded I remove my pants - I had to wonder if I should have asked her to buy me dinner first - and I stood awkwardly in a tunic that went to mid-thigh, watching as she slipped a drawstring into the pants in half a minute.  She re-adjusted my scarf as well, so I looked less like a crazy foreigner.  I was wary at first, because I didn't want to make any poor impressions, but after a while I relaxed - they were all fantastic people, they were eager to talk.  The food was excellent, but most of it had been made with cream and dairy, so I picked at it, but decided that it would be more impolite to vomit on their carpet from a dairy allergy.

Two days ago, I went to bed very early in the hopes I would be able to regulate my sleeping pattern to something more reasonable, but instead my brain decided to wake up at 3 a.m. and not allow me to sleep any longer.  Around 5 a.m. I had my first cup of honest-to-god coffee, and discovered why people refer to caffeine as their 'crack' - I felt like I had injected pure evil into my veins, because I was actually shaking for most of the day and I was so irritably unsettled that all I could do was fidget and wish for a track I could run around on.  It was around the point I started getting cold sweats that I decided I wasn't going to drink coffee again.

Anyone else find Sarah Palin creepy?

- Batman

Let's say Steve Buscemi had a baby with Mary Murphy from So You Think You Can Dance; then let's say Fran Drescher had a baby with Steve O from Jackass.  Let's say those two babies grew up, got together, and had a baby - the resulting screeching, retarded, horse-faced love child would be Bucharest. 

It was six hours there; we got into Bucharest and it was non-stop traffic - a drive to the hotel through the city that should have taken twenty minutes took us two hours as we inched our way across cobblestone streets.  These are streets that were built for two cars to fit on side-by-side but - in a feat that ignored the rules of physics - were somehow jammed with four cars side-by-side, with motorcyclists weaving in and out between the three inches of space between idling cars, all of whom were blasting their horns, despite the fact there was no way for anyone to move.  A simple walk through part of the city turned into a game of frogger as we tried to cross streets without being crushed by a speeding semi, or elbowed in the face by one of the many pedestrians who just didn't seem to acknowledge that anyone else on the sidewalk existed. 

As a side note, our driver, Floran (floor-ee-an) doesn't speak English, but he was fascinated by my Nintendo DS Lite - I had to teach him how to use it, it was kind of awesome.

When we got to the hotel, it turned out that there was a team of Olympic athletes staying there as well, so it was busy, but the concierge was wearing an awesome purple suit and the room itself was beautiful. 

Later on in the night, we realized we were starving and ended up calling a taxi to get us to a restaurant, since the prices at the one in the hotel made us die inside a little.  The resulting ride through the city was a hellish, swerving trek that took twenty minutes and was reminiscent of the boat ride in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or possibly the Carousel scene in Strangers on a Train.  We ended up at an Italian restaurant and I got a margarita that turned out to be a salted glass filled with three shots of tequila, with a couple of lemon slices floating in it - knowing that we had to take a taxi back, I took full advantage of it. 

When we crawled our way into the hotel, I ended up in a ridiculous laughing fit with Mum, which I suspect was fuelled by booze and the thrill of living through it. 

The next day, we went to the art museum; there was a Spanish, French, and Austrian section - much of the artwork was religious, there were a great deal of paintings depicting Virgin and Child, Crucifixion, Descent of the Holy Ghost, and Holy Family, but there were also numerous, very violent ones, like Massacre of the Innocents, Susanna and the Elders, and Beheading of John the Baptist.  I know that, when entering museums, people are expected to be reverential to the work, but really, like anything, there was some mediocre work, and some beautiful work; there were a few by Jan Van Eyck and a Rembrandt for anyone who wants to know.  I would say the one I was most drawn to was a painting of the deposition of Christ; it's a pretty bitter image to look at, particularly with the idea that the crucifixtion was an actual event, but the painting was done beautifully. 

Another six hour drive.  If I hear Katy Perry's Kissed a Girl or Beyonce's If I Was a Boy one more time, I'm going to put my head through a window in the hopes the glass will emulate trepanning and relieve my brain of the ability to process either song, ever again.

We stopped at a Viva station for the sustenance that keeps our alien bodies functioning, and then got back to the house and pretty much barred ourselves in.

It's 3 a.m.; I should probably be sleeping.

That is all.

- Batman 

The other day while heading back from Hera's restaurant, I said 'good evening' to a passing elderly man, and he stopped me and began to talk rapidly - he started in Romanian, and when he realized I didn't understand, he progressed to German, then French, then Italian - in the end, we all agreed neither of us understood, but he still sang 'O solo mio' to Mum and gave her some grapes.  We weren't really sure what to do, but it was interesting anyways.

We went to Hotel Roman the other night for a sort of business meeting; I had curry again, and had dressed up for once.  One of dad's co-workers was a very charming Frenchman who insisted on sitting between the ladies, he was pretty awesome.  On the way out of the restaurant, I either misstepped or God decided he was sick of me being a dick and pulled the world out from under me, because I totally didn't see that final step and landed shin-first on the curb.  I cracked a tile. 

Note: Star Trek is hilarious.  I had not realized this (except, of course, for the scene with Kirk fighting the lizard man).

That is all.

- Batman

It was a six hour drive.  Six.  Frickin. Hours. 

We stopped over in Bacau for a few hours to check out the Arena Mall and Dad bought a GPS; as per the norm, the GPS system came equipped with the choice of a male or a female voice - but it turns out that the female voice is, in fact, a murderous English bitch intent on killing us with poor directions.  She maneuvered us into a pedestrian walkway, and down a one-way street (the wrong way) so we quickly snuffed her and brought in her male counterpart as a replacement.  We feel satisfied we did the right thing.

After about thirty thousand roundabouts, and going up a mountain that required driving in a constant 'S' pattern, we got to Braşov and the first thing we saw was a dead dog on the side of the road.  I've made note before that there are a lot of stray dogs here in Romania (especially in the city I live in, Roman) and I had considered that, when winter comes, we'll likely see a lot of dead ones - in the last week, I have seen seven dead dogs.  It's distressing, and I'd like very much to start some sort of cause for it; there are very few vets in the city, and there doesn't seem to be anyone willing to work against animal cruelty, and no humane societies - in fact, another city around here regularly puts a few dozen stray dogs onto a train and ships them to Roman like they were garbage, thus releasing more strays here.  Apparently some people think this is funny.

It is not.  

We headed through Braşov for some time and there were communities of farmers all the way through, selling 30 lb bags of potatoes, cabbage, onions, mushrooms, and wild blueberries.  There was also this stuff called Kurtos, which, I suspect, is Romanian for 'fucking magical' - they're a sort of pastry in a tube shape, they get roasted on an iron stick over an open fire and sort of caramelize themselves.  They're massive and awesome.

We got to the centre of the city, up to Bran Castle, which most people refer to as 'Dracula's Castle'; it was pretty epic-looking from the outside, and it was a long walk up to the castle itself.  I had wanted to go to Transylvania since I was a kid to see the castle, and allow me to advise anyone who wants to go - save the 10 lei, and buy some souvenirs with it instead.  The inside of Bran Castle has been redone entirely; it no longer retains much of any historical value, all of the stone has been covered in drywall and painted white, and the royal family that lives there keeps a lot of modern furniture inside now - it was like walking into someone's house.  The only part that I really was impressed by was the stairwell in the wall; it was like a small, low, dimly lit stone tunnel with a four-foot door - it was kind of ambient and creepy.  We didn't get to go to the dungeons; no one is allowed to.

Afterwards, we headed to the marketplace outside of the castle and browsed through the dozens of carts filled with Dracula merchandise; it's incredible how much they've westernized their own history in order to sell things - the Romanian history of Vlad Tepes Draculea is the story of a man who was simultaneously a war hero, strategist, prince, and sadistic monster.  The history they were selling was of a vampire; it was a little sad to see Vlad the Impaler on an ashtray.  It was, however, hilarious when a guy dressed as Dracula (full costume; hair slicked back, cape, fake blood, plastic teeth) came up beside me, tapped me to get my attention and said in an accented whisper: "Hullo!" I laughed pretty hard, and he made an 'aw' sound and looked dissappointed for a few moments before shuffling off to get his picture taken with tourists.

We stopped at a restaurant close to the castle and got served by Romanian Juno; the young waitress was moody and irritable, and who could blame her?  She probably spends most of her day serving food to people who make constant Vampire jokes and persistently rub her pregnant belly - and it was a Saturday.  Anyways, the food sucked.  It was awful.  Seriously.

We went to the hotel later on, and it turned out our room only had one bed, so I took the couch - it was a pull out bed, so it worked out.  We walked into a tourist trap later on, and there were some people dressed up as Navajo indians, lip-synching to music - they weren't even playing the instruments they had with them, and they were selling merchandise for anyone who felt like having some genuine fake Navajo clothing made by genuine Romanians.

At night, I watched some Romanian-dubbed Scooby Doo with Batman and Robin as guest stars - how awesome is that?  The Joker and Penguin were there briefly too, and for some reason they'd stolen the Batcopter and were defeated by well-aimed beach balls - i'm not entirely sure it would have made sense to me even in English.  I kept waiting for the part where Scooby and the gang all woke up from their drug stupors and realized they were laying in a warehouse in pools of their own vomit - it didn't happen, despite the fact I had been certain it would end that way.  An episode will end that way one day - or with Fred going into a psychotic breakdown and killing the entire gang; I read a story like that, once. 

When we got up in the morning, we had breakfast in the hotel, which consisted of a buffet of cold egg product, stale bread product, and fatty meat product.  We all felt ill after picking at the bits that looked edible/dead.

On our way back to Roman, the mountains were completely covered in fog, so we had to navigate our way back through the S-pattern roads again, half-blind, but thankfully without the homicidal woman GPS voice telling us to drive off the edge.  The bitch.

I saw a lot of Daewoos.  This is probably funny to anyone who has a good memory regarding Pineapple Express .  The company also makes clothes washers - I find this funny for no particular reason.  Daewoo. 

I'm buyin' me a Daewoo.

Not really.

- Batman

Last weekend we went up to Lacu Rosii ("Red Lake"), which was roughly a two hour drive from Roman; it was essentially an entire city balanced precariously on mountainsides.  There was a winding road that led us a long way up the mountain, and it turns out that figuring out the gear shifts on a 4-wheel drive Volkswagen isn't the easiest because Mum was doing her best impression of a bobble-head halfway up - eventually we got the thing going, but it was an interesting ride up. 

There were dozens of vendors along the mountain, and we ended up stopping to look at most of them; I ended up buying a dress (I know, I know) it cost 50 lei, which is about $23 Canadian. 

We recently gained access to a gym that very few people use; it's got free weights, a full body strength training machine, a stepper, a treadmill, and an exercise bike as well as an elevated platform for sit ups, and a 200 lb punching bag - we've been going about three times a week, so I might be coming back from Romania built like Chyna (well, not entirely). 

This weekend we're going up to Braşov (Brash-of), where Bran Castle is located in Transylvania; people refer to it as 'Dracula's castle', though the prince never actually lived there (he might have been kept prisoner there for a few days, though).  We'll be staying the weekend in Transylvania (for god's sake, no vampire jokes!) and then later on this month we're going to Bucharest (boo-ka-rest) for a few days. 

While in the store at Lacu Rosii the other day, they had snacks called 'Jaffa Cakes'; anyone who watches SG-1 will find this hilarious - I believe the cashier thought my dad and I were insane for laughing at snack cakes.  That is all.

- Batman

Last week, we saw a body being carted away by horse; it was bizarre.

Today we went for a walk around the city; those who know me are aware that I own a floor-sweeping black wool jacket, and I've been wearing it around Roman since I arrived, given that it's just warm enough for the current weather.  I had noticed that people were staring at me, and I hadn't been entirely sure why - today I learned that it was because of the jacket; when I stepped into Angelly's, a clothing store, a trio of women behind the counter were watching me with round eyes.  They were all staring, and they began to say 'la baptiste', which I learned translates to 'priest'.

Stop there. 

Think about it for a nice, long moment.  Think about what you know about me. 

Now, know that this isn't the first time this has happened here, and in retrospect, I probably should have seen it, as I was wearing a black sweater underneath that zips up to the neck - all I was missing was the white collar. 

La baptiste.  Go figure.

- La Batman

Last sunday while driving to Piatra Neamt - a city in Romania about an hour from where we live - I saw a field of sunflowers dying in the chill of fall, with an enormous white stallion standing in the middle of it.  It's only been a week now that we've been in Romania, but I know that particular image will be one that sticks with me, not just because of how obviously picturesque it was, but because it's very much unlike anything I've seen before - let's face it, in St. Catharines, the most wildlife you see is the deer's head on the wall at Montana's steakhouse. 

The city we're in, Roman, isn't the most modern to say the least; most of the high-rise buildings are made of stark white concrete, leftovers from the reign of communism - I don't believe the city can afford to tear down and rebuild them, so a lot of them have been painted in bright colours to look more inviting, but as I understand it, the inside of the buildings are more welcoming than the outside.

The farmer's market here is very popular, and relative to Canadian standards, all of the groceries are very cheap; beer costs less than coca-cola, and you can pick it up in your local cornerstore in cans, bottles, or huge 1 litre jugs (Romanian currency - one lei here is the equivalent of about $0.40 Canadian; to put it in perspective, a large can of beer here costs 3 lei, which is roughly $1.50 Canadian for a beer; so as a side note, I may come back to Canada a raging alcoholic). 

They like beer here, man, no, I mean - they fuckin love it, they love it so much that you can buy it on the top of a mountain - we took the gondola up the mountainside in Piatra Neamt and there were about seven food stands, all of which sold a variety of beer.  From the top of the mountain, you could see the entire city sprawling outwards - I later discovered that the mountain was, in fact, a bunny hill for beginners in skiing, and decided that maybe I'd been hasty about my decision to learn how to snowboard.  I proceeded to get drunk and ride the gondola back down for funsies (it was that, or roll down, since there's no snow for me to gracelessly lodge a ski into and break my leg with yet); being drunk and sitting in a metal box swinging hundreds of feet in the air on a cable is oddly hilarious.

But I digress; I haven't even mentioned how we got here - no, not by osmosis you idiot.  It turns out that flying is the popular way to get to other continents these days, so we chose that method.  We started out in the Pearson Airport; the company put us in Business Class, so we got to hang out in the "Maple Leaf Lounge", which essentially means that while all of the Economy Class people (which would normally be us) are sitting crammed in plastic bucket seats downstairs, we got to go to a private area with cushy seats, wi-fi, and most importantly, free beer.  Free, unmonitored beer.  And cookies, which were taken full advantage of; they never stood a chance.

After nearly missing our boarding call, we got onto an Austrian plane, and business class fliers get lots of leg room, reclining seats, DVD players, and way too much food.  All of the men working on the plane were unfairly attractive, wearing scarlet vests, and for some reason spent a lot of time behind a curtain slapping eachother and giggling.  I didn't sleep the entire nine hour ride, suprisingly not because of the slap-happy airline stewards, but rather because the businessman next to me smelled heavily of B.O, old spice, and bad cheese - or good cheese, depending on your preference.  That, and I guess I have some trouble holding still; I wisely spent my time manipulating my reclining chair into every possible position it could go into, and attempted to simultaneously watch all the movies they were providing to us on the DVD players (Leatherheads is awful, Cheaper By the Dozen was surprisingly watchable, Austrian Women's Pole-Vaulting is cool if you like watching German She-Ras launch themselves into the air, and I didn't bother with Kung-Fu Panda because Jack Black gives dad kidney stones). 

After an agonizing nine hours on the plane we got off in Vienna; and went to the business lounge there - I skipped the beer and went straight for the caffeine, and several businessmen winked at me.  Apparently greasy, tired women are popular in Vienna (do you remember that scene in Ace Ventura, when Ace was asking for an autograph from one of the football players, and he'd disguised himself as a pimply teenager?  I'm pretty sure that's what I looked like).

About another hour later and we hopped onto our second plane; it was nothing like the first - if there was ever a rickety tin can, this was it.  The plane was miniscule and there were about ten passengers on board; we were watched over by a polite but very bored-looking stewardess who, in her crimson dress suit, gave us a silent and deadpan (ala John Cleese) review of how we could do up our seatbelts and where the safety manual was located (though I suspect she would have preferred to tell us where we could put the safety manuals).  The plane was so small that, from any window, you could look out and clearly see the propeller; strangely, I enjoyed the second plane more than the first one, possibly because the ride was only two hours.

When we arrived in Romania we had to go through more security, and when we got our luggage, it turned out one of my bags had been badly damaged; thankfully nothing inside was busted, but the bag itself (which was brand new) was destroyed.

We were greeted by two of the men my father works with; Niko and Florian - Niko spoke some English, Florian did not.  It was another hour and a half drive to Roman, and by the time I got to my bed, it had been over 24 hours since I'd slept - I basically fell face-first on the bed and didn't move for, get this, eighteen hours. 

As it turns out, the house is huge; marble and hardwood floors, three living rooms (yes, you read that correctly), two huge bedrooms, and a bathroom with a bidet.  For those who don't know, a bidet is basically a butt-fountain - you sit on it and it, well, use your imagination.  You've probably guessed that I refuse to use it.

It turns out that there are a lot of stray dogs here; about half a dozen every few blocks - they aren't aggressive, but it's kind of heartbreaking, especially since I have two back in Canada, both of whom I miss (well, you know, and the people too - don't give me that look, Rosemarie - Marco).  But, unfortunately, you can't take them in because many of them have infections or lice, tics, possibly disease - it's sad.

On sunday, we went to a women's handball game at the school, where we met the deputy-mayor, a hilariously friendly man.  The game itself was extremely violent, several of the players got hurt through the game, and during the break, a rowdy group of guys kept trying to hit the security guards with sticks - it was interesting, to say the least.  The game ended in a tie, and a couple of the girls started brawling in the middle of the court.  And I thought it was only Canadians who were that crazy about sports.

Eventually I'll get some pictures and video up; for now I'm just going to chill, have some Ciuc beer (which is surprisingly good) and then get some shut eye; I'll try and keep this thing updated. 

That is all,
Batman