Now, for some updates on me. Much less exciting than news about an art show, I know - but it is all I have to offer!
Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009
Today it is gray, rainy, and I believe chilly outside. According to the weather channel online, this is what I have to look forward to for most of the week. I cannot really complain though because the weather has been exceptionally beautiful to this point, and the summer has been very dry here. As someone from Texas where we have been in what seems like a 10 year drought, I can understand the need for rain and appreciate it when it arrives. I am just glad that I have an umbrella to use :)
To go back in time....
Sunday, Oct. 11, 2009
After I moved into my place on Saturday, Simona invited me to come to her parents "vacation" house a little bit outside of Cluj. It is a house and some land they purchased about two years ago and have been fixing up since then. No one had lived there for 10 years, so it was in pretty rough shape. Apparently here mother fell through the floor twice! There is still one section of the house that needs to be re-done, but the rest looks very nice. They also have what appears to be around an acre with a large garden (think things like dill, potatoes, garlic, onions, eggplant, peppers - hot and mild, squash, beans, and more) and an orchard (walnut, pear, apple - red and green/yellow, plum) trees. The walnuts and apples were in full season on Sunday, so we spent some time picking both. As soon as we thought we had gotten all the walnuts, a breeze covered the ground yet again! It was a lot of fun and felt very much like fall. I don't think I have had such a stereotypical "fall" experience since the time I went apple picking my freshman year in college up in Maine!
A few pictures of the house, garden, and orchard....
The house to the left and barn to the right:
View back to the garden and orchard:
Just a nice shot of the backyard:
Some of the apple trees in the little orchard:
While there, we had a rather extended lunch. It started with cheese (the telemea which is like feta), bread, a pepper spread, and an eggplant spread (kind of like baba ganoush - called salata de vinete here). Simona's mother made both of the spreads, and they were delicious! We also had some kind of wine (but very fruity and not very alcohol-y) that her mother made from a certain fruit (something like small cherries??). It was all delicious, and I thought this was lunch until Simona told me that the main course and dessert were still to come. This part was just so that are stomachs would not be angry (as she said). It all felt so Italian!
Picture of Simona's mom preparing the first course (aka the anti-angry stomach course):
Following this part of the meal, Simona, Guiseppe, and I walked around the village a little bit. It is a small gathering of around 60 houses, along with a small church, but literally nothing else - no store, nothing. It took about 30 minutes to drive there from Cluj and the latter half was all on dirt/rock roads. For those of you who have a Romania guidebook, it was just a few kilometers from Turda, which is supposed to be an interesting place to visit (the fabled Turda Gorges - if you can stifle your laughter over the name...I am very, very mature, I know). Although Simona said that a lot of the homes belong to people from the city who mostly come out on the weekends and during the summer, it seemed like a lot of local, farming, and rather poor people there as well. It looks like a very simple and often hard life, but also a nice one in the sense that you are in a beautiful and peaceful setting and must feel very connected to nature. It certainly seemed like an aging population, so I would imagine much of rural Romania is (ah, much like the U.S. in that sense - it reminds me of some articles from the New York Times a year or two ago about the fading of the midwest).
Some pictures of the town -->
This boy and his horse live next door to Simona's parents (I think....):
I love these piles of hay. You see them all over the rural areas.
The world's ugliest baby chicken (is its mother a vulture??):
Just a nice shot of some people walking in the village:
What a nice little decrepit house. I love it!
A woman getting ready to go out with her horse and cart (see, people really do get around this way in the rural areas!). This mode of transportation definitely makes sense when you see the roads because a little car really would not work well in many places here.
When we returned from the walk, it was almost time for the rest of lunch. We had potatoes mixed with hard boiled eggs and a salad (red peppers, lettuce, pickles, olives, etc). Simona and I do not eat meat, but there was also a variety of meat for everyone else. After this, we had some coffee (espresso-like - but not for me!!) and cake. The cake reminded me of my grandmother's rum cake in a bundt cake pan but instead had chocolate pieces, walnuts, and some dried fruit at the top. It was good, but afterwards I was completely stuffed!
The food from the main course of lunch:
Some of the things we gathered from the garden and orchard. What a great bounty!
at 5:30pm. I had been planning to attend a philharmonic concert that night (silvestri, bartok, and vivaldi), but I was just too tired to go out again. There is another good concert coming up with violin concertos by Tchaicovsky and Brahms and some operas (Rigoletto, Hansel and Gretel, Aida), so hopefully I will be able to make it to those and feel cultured. Just like my time in London, it looks like I will end up going to most of these things alone. Kind of a bummer, but I guess it is okay. It is important to get out sometimes, though, and just do things!
Other than this excursion, I mostly have been working on job applications and writing cover letters. There are a few job and post-doc applications that are due in the next few days, so I am trying to finish those up. Of course, I also have class tomorrow, so I need to prepare for that as well. It seemed like such a long time between the first and second weeks of class, but this week has gone by very quickly.
And, here is one final picture. It is of this neat little nature reserve that we stopped at on the way to Simona's parents' house. What a beautiful place to walk around and spend more time at!
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