It took me a while, but here it is...my brand new blog! I make no promises about how regular I will be with my entries, nor how short I will keep them... as I have a bad record with both! But I do promise to make whatever I write interesting and entertaining and as close to the truth as my private nature allows a not so private blog to be ;)
My flight was fabulous: quick, on time, loads of leg space (thank you Maya for pointing out that the "cot" seat is the best option), good food (Hindu vegetarian option - thank you British Airways) and with complementary socks (!), toothbrush and toothpaste. Really people, fly with the Brits. They know how to do it in style and no, they are NOT paying me to write this. When I stepped out of the plane in Bucharest, I met with my best friend from childhood, also named Alexandra, and with the very mild and very foggy Romanian version of what we call winter.
This, up to here, was the good part. Now, the bad part. As I stepped out of her car, I saw this errant dog. For those who do not know, Romania is not only famous for its vampires and gymnasts but also for its equally sharp-toothed and agile errant dogs... However, the one I met upon arrival outside my new home broke my heart. Both its rear legs were broken... so broken, in fact, that they were crooked. Yet he was still walking on them, only lifting the more crooked leg when he stopped walking... Urgh!
At least, I have not seen any begging orphan children on the streets. At least not yet, but be sure that I will be on the lookout. Last time I was here, in 2006, they were almost as numerous as the errant dogs today. This is a private project of mine... the orphans in Romania. Don't ask me how or when, but one day I will somehow help them...as much or as little as I can.
Things got exponentially worse when I opened the door to "my" apartment. I wanted only to roll into a tight little ball, cry and hop on the very first plane back home. The place belonged to an old aunt of my mother’s who passed it on to her over a decade ago and has been mostly unused since. It was shabby-looking, unbelievably dusty and filled with the remains of a recent moth infestation. The neighbor who has been taking care of it, had started using it as storage: it was filled with his belongings, of which the weirdest was about 2 dozen bottles of Sprite (why ???). To top it all off, my beloved hand-made wool carpet was missing. That is when I showcased my own set of fangs… and the neighbor, of course, cleared everything in no time and I was left to ponder whether I should stay and sleep there in dust and microscopic moth particles or go sleep at my friend’s apartment whose mother smokes cigarette after cigarette non stop…
After a meal (salad) at Alexandra’s place, I made up my mind that I’d rather inhale dust in privacy rather than smoke in co-habitation and we went shopping for some food, plastic gloves and the most potent (i.e. toxic) cleaning essentials Romania has to offer.
The shopping center calmed my sleep deprived and shocked nerves. It felt like HOME!!! It had everything we have and more. First store I laid my eyes on and entered into was a natural health food store… my favorite kind! And listen to this: it has the whole line HIMALAYA products!!! Canada, as “evolved” as it is, does NOT have Himalaya shampoos and lotions and even my favorite product on the planet: the Himalaya foot cream! (Dhasuji, I think you, above all, will understand my joy about this seemingly insignificant fact).
You know what else Romania beats Canada at – hands down? Cell phones! It is so cheap it is almost illegal. I have 3000 minutes and 75 international minutes for a mere 5 EURO a month. That is approximately 7$ a month. For 3000 (not 300) minutes AND 75 international. How sweet is that?!? It is so cheap, in fact, that people have not 1, not 2 but 3 and 4 and 5 different cell phone plans with different companies cause they all have sweet deals. And they use all their cell phones at once. It is like the national hobby – collecting cell phones. That would explain why, in a matter of hours, both my cousin and Alexandra have offered me cell phones.
WoW! This is turning into a very long entry. I did forewarn you though… I can’t keep it short. I just can’t. Especially not my FIRST entry. But it is drawing to a close. It has now been…about 5 or 6 days that I am here. I have managed to clean part of the apartment - the less scary parts. The scariest part is the stinky fridge. It has brown water in the fruit compartment which emits fumes that make me gag and run in the opposite direction every time I even think of cleaning it. The up-side of that is that I have been surviving on 1-2 meals a day, consisting of fruit and bread and butter (or salad at my friend’s house – the general understanding of a vegetarian diet in Romania) and I have HOPEFULLY lost some weight…at least a few grams. I have found my hand-made wool carpet - what is left of it anyway- in a pool of moth remains and I have apologized to my friendly neighbor. I have also discovered I have free TV –all apartments in my building do… some arrangement between said neighbor who is also the building manager and a cable company who is renting a room for free in my building. Thanks to this wonderful (and most likely not so kosher) arrangement, I have free access to TLC, Disney, Discovery, National Geographic and History, to only name a few of the 63 channels as well as my personal gift from God: RAI – the Italian channel!!! Anybody who knows anything at all about me knows I am addicted to anything and everything Italian. So this, for me, is priceless ;) (Oh! And just a little note here: I can fly to Rome and back from Bucharest for a mere 50 EURO! I will devote a special blog just about how happy this makes me).
Tonight, I will meet the other 2 Art of Living teachers in Bucharest and make a plan about our courses and activities here. I can hardly wait for I have been missing it. We will also start Patanjali Yoga Sutras on Monday! Yay for me! For those who do not know, those are videos about what Patanjali, considered the father of yoga, wrote on the matter).
So, my friends, whoever read all the way to the end, thank you for letting me share it all. I do feel mostly at home here now. Thanks in no small part to my friend Alexandra for whom 21 years apart have not made the slightest difference, my beloved cousin Adi, and YOU!!! I do draw strength from my beloved friends in Canada.
Till next time, enjoy, smile and be merry!!!!!!!!!
Alexa
p.s. no pics yet... soon though
