The maxi taxi.

Today, for those of you who have never had the opportunity to experience one for yourself, I am going to introduce you to the maxi taxi.  It's a daily fixture of our life in Romania, so I figured it deserved a mention here.

In Târgu Mureș, there are two options for public transit: the bus or the maxi.  Autobuzuri are like public buses in any large city in any country.  Maxi taxis, however, are different from anything I've seen in the States.  A maxi taxi is a large van -- think 15-passenger size -- that's been outfitted to seat 16 people and hold another 20 standing in the aisle.  They're not usually that full, but sometimes they are.  Oh, sometimes they are much more full.

For instance, once Jack and I rode the free maxi taxi to Auchan.  Typically it costs 2 lei per ride, which is the equivalent of about 60 cents in American dollars.  However, a few of the enormous international supermarket chains here have free maxi taxis for customers, which roam the city picking up anyone who wants a free ride to the outskirts of town, where these monolithic shopping malls are.  We had heard that you could buy tortillas at Auchan, and we were curious, so we got on.

Big mistake.  Notice how in the picture above, there are a few people sitting down, looking pleasantly out the window, and you only see one person standing with his or her rear squashed against the window?  That's nice.  But in some maxi taxis at some hours of the day -- and in the free maxi taxis at all hours of the day -- the vehicle is standing room only, so upon boarding you are suddenly face-to-face with a complete stranger who is only inches away, while another stranger is unfortunately smooshed between your rear and the window.  It's bearable while you're moving, because even the jerkiest of gear changes are softened by the mass of humanity swaying back and forth, all smushed together.  The American pop music on the radio, the smells of everyone's breath and laundry detergent... it's a unique, but not necessarily altogether unpleasant, experience.  But when someone has to get off at a stop, it's not so nice.  It seems inevitable that at least one of the people who needs to get down at each stop is standing in the far back of the maxi taxi, and you can only imagine the chaos of trying to make your way down the aisle and out the door of a 15-passenger van with 37 people in it.  Sometimes I think it would be easier if we'd just lift them up and crowd-surf them to the door, but I don't know how to offer that suggestion in Romanian yet.

Yet the thing which has interested me most about maxi taxis and the culture associated with them is the method of boarding.  Typically, when a maxi comes to a stop, the people who are exiting get off first and leave the door open for those boarding; the last person on then pulls the door shut behind them.  But just because the people getting on the maxi taxi wait for those getting off to step down doesn't mean they leave room for them to do so.  Romanians generally have a much smaller personal space "bubble" than Americans, so people stand closer together in line, when talking, in a crowd, and so on.  (Often I have been waiting at a store counter, thinking I am next, when a Romanian will cut right in front of me without realizing -- certainly not intending to be rude, but to them I didn't appear to be in line.)  This translates to maxi taxis too: exiting one is like pushing your way through a mob, since people rarely leave a path for the departing riders to walk through, instead crowding immediately to the door.  At Auchan, catching the maxi taxi back into the city was like being part of a swarm of pigeons swooping in to freshly-thrown bread crumbs.  (If you've never seen pigeons dive-bomb bread crumbs, it's astonishing.  Try it.)  Jack and I simply stood back in amazement and had to laugh to ourselves a bit -- but then, of course, we joined the throng and stood wrapped tightly in each other's arms among a swaying, sweaty, crowded mass of humanity, all the way back home.

I love riding the maxi.  I really, truly do.

Marțisor.

March 1st was Marțisor, the Romanian holiday celebrating the coming of spring!  It's a delightful little holiday, and for those of you still battling blizzards in the American Midwest, I'm sorry to rub it in -- but spring seems to have sprung here.  It's sunny and fairly warm, and today I even saw flowers poking their heads above ground.

Historically, Marțisor has always been marked by the giving of little talismans or decorative brooches or bracelets, usually red and white and often with a little bead or stone or decorative ladybug charm or some similar festive springtime icon.  It's tradition to wear the red and white string all month, on your wrist or pinned on your jacket, and at the end of the month to tie it to a tree, thus (as the legend goes) imparting on that tree health and vitality for the upcoming year.  Now people buy and share Marțisor bracelets and tassels with their friends (though it's mostly women and children who do it).  The few days preceding Marțisor in Târgu Mureș were fun, as white tents popped up all over town with vendors selling fresh flowers and Marțisor trinkets of every variety.

 The centru of Târgu Mureș, filled with Marțisor booths.

 

 The lovely Marțisor pendant Jack gave me...

We bought one for Otilia and Jack surprised me with one too, which I already have forgotten to wear every day... oops.  Clearly I'm not a true Romanian.  But I'm excited to tie it to a tree at the end of the month, and I don't think I'll forget that part!  In the meantime, here are a few more pictures, which I did not take -- but they give a good feel for what the Marțisor decorations are like.  If you're interested in learning more, the Wikipedia article on Marțisor is actually pretty good... check it out!  And a happy coming-of-spring to you.

Packages.

We got our first packages today!

Here in Târgu Mureș, we really have access to pretty much anything we could want.  Romania's transition from communism to capitalism has resulted in a pretty open-armed embrace of commercialism and consumption (in large part, though of course there are pockets of dissent, like the "Shop less, live more" graffiti by our apartment).  But in Târgu Mureș alone we have access to three huge multinational grocery chains where we can buy food products ranging from Vietnamese rice paper wrappers to Philadelphia cream cheese.  Jack and I tend to avoid those stores, unless we've really got a craving -- they're not near the places we live and study, they're expensive and crowded, and quite frankly, we just prefer shopping at the tiny mom-and-pop shops on the street near our apartment, the farmers' market, and little hole-in-the-wall stores downtown.

But anyway, shopping habits aside: there are a few things we haven't been able to find here, no matter how hard we've looked.  Namely cumin, Reese's peanut butter cups, and brown sugar.  (We didn't realize how often we used cumin until we came here and started to cook without it!)  So our moms, being the loving and committed and wonderful people that they are, decided to mail them to us.  The packages left the States on the 11th and arrived in Romania on the 19th; we were given notice by the post office of their arrival on the 21st; and today, the 26th, we went to pick them up.  (In Târgu Mureș you can only pick up packages from overseas on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am to 2pm.)

We had been warned by a friend that the office was a bit hard to find and that, upon arrival, we might be slightly interrogated (in Romanian), so we practiced possible vocabulary, looked at maps, brought our passports, and prepared for lots of confusion.  The post office where packages are delivered is on the far side of town from where we live (there are multiple post offices in the city, but out-of-Europe packages only come to one of them).  We took the bus, found the post office, walked around back to what looked like an unmarked delivery dock, pulled open a rusting metal door, and stepped into a tiny office, where a small group of people were clustered around a desk, mailing and receiving their packages.

Thankfully, our transaction was easy.  We handed the guy our notice and, after a few questions, he got the boxes for us.  Because our packages were gifts, we didn't have to pay to pick them up (if you order something online, for example, you have to show your proof of purchase and pay a customs tax before they let you have your package).  We had to explain that we had two boxes because one was from each of our moms, which made the people behind the counter chuckle a bit.  But after only ten minutes or so, we walked out triumphant, a box under each arm, grinning in anticipation of burritos and peanut butter cookies and Reese's to share with our friends here.

Thanks, moms.

Friends, birthdays, travel, and skiing.

Jack and I have been traveling a bit lately, so sorry for the neglect of the blog.  We'll try to play a bit of catch-up in the next few days, as a number of interesting things have happened and made us ponder.  But for now, a few pictures and tales from our latest adventure!

On Valentine's Day, we took the bus from Târgu Mureș to Cluj, Romania's second-largest city which is about two hours west.  Cluj is a gorgeous city with a well-maintained historic center, a hub for higher education and fine arts in the country.  FNO has an office there, because there are dozens and dozens of IMPACT clubs in the Cluj area, and they typically send a lot of kids to the Viața camp in the summer, too -- so we'd been wanting to visit, meet the FNO staff, and do a bit of exploring.  Plus, my dear friend Alyssa was coming in to Cluj by train on the night of the 14th so we could spend a long weekend together before she flew back home to the States.  So many good reasons to go!

Look at what we found in Cluj!

We picked Alyssa up at the train station late on the night of the 14th, wandered back to our cool hostel in the old city wall (yeah!), and then left early on the morning of the 15th to take the bus down to Lupeni for the rest of the weekend.  Traveling by bus in Romania is easy, and for us has thus far proved to be faster, cheaper, and more convenient than train -- so we were happy to throw our bags under the bus and settle into its comfortable seats for the six-hour journey south to the mountains.

And what a lovely weekend we had.  It was my 23rd birthday on the 18th, so our time in Lupeni was full of fun surprises from Jack and Alyssa and the dear friends we have in Lupeni: a day of skiing on Straja, the mountain which towers over Lupeni; an evening of making crafts to make our home cozy (Jack knew exactly what I wanted!); an afternoon at the Bates' with not one but two surprise birthday desserts; and on our last night together before Alyssa flew out (in Cluj again), a fabulous Indian dinner at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant at which we and a food reviewer were the only patrons.  We got to meet Felipe and Janelle, the other young couple who have just moved to Lupeni and are also committed to at least three years with FNO, and a number of other wonderful people -- we are so excited to move back to the Jiu Valley in April and be a part of that community!  But more on that later.

Alyssa and Kelly and a lot of tasty Indian food.

 Brandi, Briana, and Gabe's fabulous birthday creations: carob cake with apple and quince

 and berry muffins -- all from Lupeni's summer bounty.

Skiing deserves a bit more attention than the passing mention in the previous paragraph.  I grew up cross-country skiing with my family in Iowa, but habitually fell down when I attempted to go down hills, which didn't seem to bode well for picking up the downhill version of the sport.  I'd only downhill skiied once in my life, and that was three and a half years ago, in Michigan, where there aren't very imposing mountains.  Jack had never skiied in his life.  But Alyssa's really good, so we decided to go -- and it was, well, entertaining.

We took this picture before we started, hence the not-covered-in-snow thing.

I should preface this by saying that Alyssa was a fabulous and patient teacher.  She would nicely wait and watch from behind as Jack and I gingerly snowplowed our way down the slope, then swoop up gracefully when we nosedived into the snow and only laugh a little bit as she helped pull us back upright.  At least at first.  Eventually she decided to meet us at the bottom and then stood there taking video of us while we tottered and toppled our way to the end... what a good friend.  (I've thought about posting that video here, because it's actually really hilarious, but I think the internet is too slow here for that to work.  Thankfully.)  But in our defense, the bottom of the slope we were on (and yes, we were too chicken to ski any more than just the one same hill over and over) was icy and steep and there was a huge line of skiers standing at the bottom waiting to get on the lift, and I was terrified of crashing into them.  Alyssa promised I'd be able to stop before I hit anyone, but I wasn't willing to take the chance... so I fell down with 100 meters to go, just to be safe.

Jack and Kelly learn to snowplow...

 The bottom of the hill = huge line of skiers waiting for the lift.

I've never skied in Colorado or the Alps or anywhere fancy, but I can presume it's different in Romania.  For one thing, Straja is a crowded little village where the roads aren't plowed and the sidewalks (if they exist) aren't shoveled -- which means that everyone is tromping awkwardly in their ski boots through six-inch-deep brown slush, carrying skis and poles and trying not to fall down.  It's crowded, and loud techno music is constantly booming from the cabanas, and there are stray dogs all over (who sometimes chase the skiers as they approach the bottom of the hill, joyfully leaping alongside and barking and nipping at their poles).  On the Saturday we visited, the lines were long and the hills were packed.  There had been a children's ski competition that morning, which had as its logo and mascot Baloo the Bear, an old bear who lives in a cage just behind the ski cabanas on Straja.  You can go visit him -- I think the ski competition was supposed to be in celebration of his birthday, so it involved all the children trooping down to his cage, singing happy birthday, and then feeding the bear a cake.  Strange.

This is the village of Straja.  When it's cloudy, you can't even see the valley below.

But for all the chaos and confusion of trying to rent skis and buy lift tickets and negotiate the crowds and learn to master (ha) a new winter sport, we had a wonderful, wonderful time.  At the end of the afternoon we happily sipped mulled wine and ate giant, delicious Hungarian pastries (basically pastry dough wrapped around a giant broomstick, roasted over a fire until baked, then rolled in sugar and walnuts or cinnamon or coconut and eaten warm).  Then we took the gondola back down to the valley, walked fifteen minutes, and were home in Apartment Lucy, counting our blessings to live in such an amazing and beautiful place with such dear and wonderful people.

Post-skiing snacks should always be fresh off the fire...

Relieved to be on the way home without any broken bones, happy and tired.

Home sweet home: Lupeni at the bottom of the gondola.

Lovely.

Yum.

Lately our lives have been full of good food.  And though usually this blog is full of words and musings about things more complicated than food, I'm a big fan of eating, so I want to share some of these culinary delights!  I think I'm even going to break the general code of black-and-white photography on this blog to share pictures... they were that yummy.

To wax philosophical for a second, I think food is one of those great, universal things which bring people together.  After all, everybody eats, and eating is fun.  In every culture I've ever experienced, food is an essential part of hospitality and celebration.  Feast days and holidays are universal, and everyone loves them... well, at least I do!  So living in a culture where food is an essential part of hospitality and where local and home-prepared food are valued parts of the rhythm of life?  I love it.

Otilia, our host here in Târgu Mureș, loves food too.  (We're kindred spirits that way.)  She told us a few weeks ago that Sundays are the day for church and special "Sunday food," and we've been living that up.  One week she made "Varza la Cluj," which is sorta like a Romanian casserole with ground pork, rice, cabbage, spices, and smântâna (the ever-present Romanian sour cream), followed by dessert of homemade crepes with homemade plum jam.  Yum.  The next week was sarmale, the Romanian national dish -- little cabbage rolls stuffed with, you guessed it!  Pork, rice, and spices. 

 I didn't take this picture... but here are the famous sarmale!

This week she made pork șnițel (flattened, battered, fried pork chops) with mashed potatoes with smântâna and a side of homemade pickled tomatoes and cucumbers.  We followed all that with gogoși, or Romanian donuts... they just sound fancier by their Romanian name.

Making gogoși with Otilia was delightful.  She'd made the dough before church and let it rise all morning, so that when we got home we could simply roll it out and cut it into circles with a coffee mug.  You then drop the little doughy circles into sizzling sunflower oil, let them puff up and fry, and then scoop them out.  Once cooled, you top or fill them with accessories of your choice: chocolate spreads, jams and jellies, cheese... endless possibilities.  They're not as good the next day, so Jack and I each ate, like, five.  But it was worth it.  As you can see.

Cutting the dough into donut shapes...

Frying them in oil...

And delight!  I think the best way to eat gogoși is with jam AND chocolate...

So Otilia's a great cook, and our weeks here are filled with soups, bread, potatoes, vegetables, and all the hearty, healthy delight of Romanian cooking.  But we do some of our own meal preparation too, which has been a source of amusement to Otilia, who marvels at the strange things we make.  Last night we got ambitious and made spring rolls with peanut sauce, after the delightful discovery of peanut butter, rice paper, and rice noodles at a big grocery store here.  She laughed at them, calling them "strange Vietnamese sarmale," but ultimately sat down and enjoyed them with us.  Success.

Life together.

Currently, Jack and I live in apartment 15, bloc 3, of Stradă Sârguințeii in Târgu Mureș, Romania.  Every day we climb up five flights of stairs after class and then stand, panting, to unlock the heavy wooden door to our home.  The building is quite nice, especially compared to our building in Lupeni, though it looks like a towering concrete monolith just like the rest of Romania's blocs -- just this one is mercifully free of decay.  We live with an older woman named Otilia and a dental student named Georgiana, who also rents a room.  As we've mentioned before, Otilia is a lovely lady, a recent widow who has taken in boarders so she doesn't have to live alone.  We like her a lot, and are enjoying the give-and-take of teaching each other our respective languages, the laughter and confusion of complete misunderstanding, the sharing of meals and stories, and the gradual learning of life together.

But oh, life together... what a feat that is.

Personally, I am enough of an extrovert that most of the time I enjoy living with a host grandma, trying to talk with her, listening to her go off on tangents in Romanian for thirty minutes over dinner.  We're learning more and more every day, and it's fun to realize that we're having real conversations now, about real things!  We talk about cars and driving (she has an old white Dacia, but only her husband knew how to drive it), about communism and gardening (under the regime food production was stifled by the state, so even gardening could be seen as an underground activity), about death and marriage and her grief for her husband (he passed away just last June), and about the bizarre things we do to American food (last night I made cookie dough brownies, if that helps explain).

Otilia is a lovely, intelligent, lively woman, and living with her brings us joy.  But I also am recognizing in myself the desire to "nest" -- a longing to make our home cozy and ours, to hang things on the walls, to play some Bruce Cockburn and The Duhks and dance around without feeling like an imposition.  Otilia has been a wonderful host and seems to enjoy putting up with our American, 22-year-old, newlywed antics.  She lets us invite people over, and helps prepare food for them (ah, the ever-hospitable Romanian hostess).  She makes soup and buys bread and cooks potatoes from her garden and offers food to us many times a day, always checking to make sure we've eaten.  It is good to live here.  But how to make home?

I guess this is what it feels like to combine intercultural communication and adaptation with newlyweds learning to live in someone else's home for three months.  It's not a common thing for American couples to live with other people, and after seven months of having our own apartment, I'm realizing that this is a big adjustment.  I like it here, a lot.  I really do.  I don't think I'd be learning nearly as much Romanian if we lived alone, and in fact, I think Jack and I would be a bit bored and lonely.  But right now, as I sit on the Tweety Bird duvet cover in our bedroom, looking at the white-lace-and-orange-linen curtains that shield the balcony, lamenting the pile of books and flashcards and waterbottles and electronics that clutter the small table in our bedroom, I feel some nesting, cozying, mama-bird instinct kicking in, wanting to make this place look and feel more like home... to me.

So perhaps I will allow myself to accept that God created us to long for and appreciate beauty, and I'll go for a long walk in the woods.  And then maybe I will go buy a basket to organize the clutter and a candle or two to make the space cozy, and turn off the lights so as not to see the robin's-egg-blue paint on the walls.  I will appreciate the things that are beautiful already -- the gorgeous stained wood of the wardrobe, the lovely woven rug, the plants growing on the balcony -- and remind myself that preferences are not all that important, after all.  I will appreciate the gifts of hospitality and generosity and food, and let Otilia know that I appreciate them.  And as we live here together, Jack and I, we will make it home --  because home is a place of love and safety and hospitality... and some beauty and coziness, if you can muster it.  So we make home by living here, by loving here, by belonging here.

Tweety Bird duvet cover and all.

Ȋmpreună (together).

Now look, I’m not going to suggest that this past month of our lives has been very much like the children of Israel wandering in the desert for 40 years, but it’s the story in the Bible that came most quickly to my mind when I think about our marriage.

Not that we’ve been freed from the capitalist captivity of the United States and are now disappointed by the lack of “freedom” in our new freedom (though it’s not uncommon to hear bad North American pop music on the buses and in restaurants here…).

No. I want to share just how delightfully surprised I am at how well Kelly and I have gotten along since we’ve arrived here. I know we’re newlyweds and should still be infatuated with each other and that it should be a dream come true to go to Europe, of all places, together. And that’s true. It’s wonderful. But it also means that our main community is… each other. It’s not like we’re doing separate work during the day — we’re studying the same language. It’s not like we have any friends of our own — we share everyone here because we really don’t know many people. We worship, eat many meals, study, run, be with friends, and even just sit and stare off into space together.

For those of you who don’t think this sounds like a lifestyle that would be taxing or out of the ordinary rhythm of life, I will forever wonder how you do it. For me, and for Kelly, 24 (or 23 or 22)/7 with the same person, even our darling spouse with whom we entered into the covenant of Holy Matrimony, can get tiring.

So you can know the good news that Kelly and Jack are healthily, HOLY, and, for the most part, happily becoming one flesh, enfolded by the grace of God. I shudder to think about doing this without God. I guess I shudder to think about doing this with God too, but that’s a much better shudder. A holy shudder. I shudder when I think about the call that’s been set before us, and about the covenant we made in June. It’s definitely a cause for celebration.

I dearly want to celebrate with you, our wonderful cloud of witnesses and supporters, in person, with wonderful food and drink and dancing and games and long, quiet walks. For now, we’ll celebrate over blog comments and emails, maybe letters, mainly in our hearts. Though when it comes time for us to celebrate our calls and relationships and our God with you in person, I hope you’re ready to GET DOWN AND PARTY. TOGETHER.