Pickles in the stairwell (and other thoughts on neighborliness).

Our stairwell smells like pickles.

Just to clarify, there are no pickles there -- it's actually our neighbor's woodpile.  For some reason the wood they burn in their stove to heat their apartment is extremely pungent, and it really, really, really smells like pickles from the instant you hit the second floor on up.  But it's not that bad -- funny, really, and a better alternative than the more typical dank-mold-stench that wafts from the basement of most apartment blocs.

Anyway, that's not really the focus of this post.  As many of you who read this blog know, it has been one of our consistent prayers and dreams to get to know the neighbors in our stairwell -- those eight apartments we pass by on the way to our own, the last apartment on the top floor.  Our neighbors directly across the hall have been a source of a bit of sadness and stress for me, as they are quite standoffish and unfriendly, and tend to leave their trash/shoes/bicycles/wood/couch/ladders/etc. scattered across the landing in front of our door.  But we're making progress on that front -- we're taking turns putting in new lightbulbs when the landing goes dark, and nodding in acknowledgment of each other on the street.  Each time feels like a little victory for me.

Our downstairs neighbors, though -- they've been much more friendly!  It's not typical in Romanian culture to get to know your neighbors, to chat and exchange recipes or borrow cups of sugar -- and that's something I've missed since leaving our lovely neighbors on Calkins.  I've lowered my expectations for neighborliness -- no more shared compost piles and community dinners in this stage of our life (at least not yet!).  And that's what has made the past few weeks so sweet.

In the last month, we've been invited into two of our neighbors' homes: the elderly couple on floor 2 who we sometimes help carry groceries for, and the superintendent and his wife on floor 3, who I was totally intimidated by when we first moved in.  The Dreptates (they're the elderly couple on the second floor) invited me in one day after work, and then when Jack arrived a little later they brought him in too, pouring us tall glasses of homemade wine and sitting down to talk for almost two hours. They've lived in this bloc for over 30 years, ever since it was first constructed, and they were happy to tell us about the other neighbors, the two empty apartments, the changes they've experienced in the building and in the community since they first moved in to bloc A2.  It was lovely, and we all promised to do it again sometime -- but even if it doesn't happen, it was wonderful to feel like we'd been welcomed for the first time by our neighbors.  Now we often see Mr. Dreptate outside, playing parcheesi with a group of old men, and greeting him by name is a delight.

Then, just a few days ago, we stopped at our superintendent's door to mention that our doorbell/intercom wasn't working.  He invited us in to explain the problem, and we got to talking, until finally his wife scolded him to let us come sit down.  She made us tiny cups of strong coffee and we talked about Lupeni for long time while our groceries wilted by the door and their grandkids ran in and out of the kitchen.  They were really understanding people, interested in and appreciative of the work of FNO and youth development.  And again, I left with a grin on my face, promises of coffee in our own apartment sometime. 

I am trying to keep my optimism at a realistic level about life in bloc A2.  But these two encounters have been balm for my soul, a small taste of acceptance and welcome, a delight.  Now the superintendent is working to get the basement cleaned out and sanitized, with all the neighbors chipping in money to pay for the removal of the mold and muck.  I was so happy to be asked to pay our portion -- because for now, these are our neighbors and this is our neighborhood.  And now it's starting to feel like it.  Pickle smell and all.

Sochi.

It's been interesting to be living abroad for the Olympics this year.  I have to say it's actually pretty refreshing -- the coverage is nonstop on Romanian television, with a lot fewer athlete interviews and a lot more sports, and far more even coverage of athletes from all over the world, rather than only the Americans.  I miss the NBC trumpet fanfare, but other than that, I think I'd take this vantage point any day.

But it's also been interesting to watch some of the comments on Sochi -- the city itself, the messy and unfinished hotels, the dirty water, the corruption.  Through the grapevine of social media and John Stewart, Jack and I have quickly come to realize that Sochi has become a bit of a laughingstock to a lot of Americans. 

And it makes me mad.

I know that cross-cultural experiences have their fair share of humor.  Mistakes in translation, new foods that startle our palate, and new experiences where we are entirely out of our element -- these things make us laugh, and help us see the world with delight.  But there's an important distinction between this sort of delighted-wow-this-is-crazy laughter, and the laughter of disdain and sarcasm, directed at problems you have no intention of becoming involved in.

Corruption isn't funny.  Dirty tap water isn't funny either.  The fact that the Russian government couldn't even put on a facade to cover these problems, despite the investment of over 50 billion dollars, should make us react not with judgment and ironic humor, but with alarm and sorrow -- because if this is what the "cream of the crop" is getting, what's the reality in the rest of Russia?  How dare privileged athletes and journalists from the richest country in the world poke fun at a culture and people they hardly know?  (And while I'm at it, how dare they forget that in many communities in their own country, the conditions aren't much better...)

We seem to have forgotten that the struggles of the rest of the world aren't fodder for jokes.  The dirty water thing, for instance.  Yes, you could joke about it... but the reality is that the water has been polluted because the Russian corporation in charge of much of the Sochi construction set up a huge illegal dump for the waste from its construction project near a local village.  The dump dried up the entire village's water supply, and now the wastewater from the dump is seeping into the river which serves as the primary source of drinking water for Sochi.  (Learn more here.) Once you hear that, it becomes a lot harder to laugh it off.  Sure, it's a problem for the athletes and journalists and spectators who traveled to the Olympics this year.  But it is surely not a cause for laughter -- particularly because in two weeks, the Olympics end.  But everyone whose drinking water has been ruined by this exorbitantly expensive endeavor?  Their water supply remains the same -- dirty, undrinkable, unsafe.

I don't mean to point a finger at Russia.  Living in Romania, watching the protests in Ukraine, hearing the stories of this entire bloc of Eastern European countries, has been lesson enough that Communism takes a long, long time to recover from, and that corruption is a really big, horrible, insidious thing.  (And no, the issues in Sochi are not entirely the fault of Communism or corruption.)  But still, the stories of corruption should disturb us.  The unpaid workers used to build the beautiful Olympic Village, without adherence to labor laws, should anger us.  The extravagance and expense of the Olympics should alarm us (and that's not just Sochi... that's all of 'em, and all of us).

I love the Olympics.  I want them to last, to live up to their ideals, to be a place where we learn about our neighbors around the world, where we feel the best sort of patriotism, where miracles still happen, where beauty and grace and skill are admired by all of us, all around the world, regardless of who demonstrates it.  But this part?  This ugly part, with the condescending attitudes and insensitivity to the local effects of waste and corruption?  This reaction of mockery instead of concern?  That I don't like.

So here's to you, Sochi.  Thanks for putting on the Olympics.  And hang in there.

All hail the cab.

We had quite the adventure yesterday.

We had spent a lovely weekend in Târgu Mureş, reconnecting with friends and a city we hadn't seen in quite a while, and Monday morning it was time to make the 8-hour bus trip back home to Lupeni.  Our bus was leaving at 7:30, so we woke up around 6:30 to pack, eat breakfast, and say goodbye to Otilia, our delightful host mom who generously let us stay with her again.  Of course, she made us breakfast (eggs, fried potatoes, and salty sheep cheese, paired with sweet fruit tea and slices of white bread), and we stayed and chatted a little too long.  We left the house at about 7:20, walking briskly to the stop to catch our bus to Turda.  The Rocada bus company has had a little stop in Otilia's neighborhood for years, and it's only a 7-minute walk, so we weren't too worried... until we arrived and saw the sign posted, saying that it had moved.

With only about 4 minutes until our bus was supposed to leave, we frantically skimmed the sign in Romanian, noting that the stop had stopped being used a month earlier and was now located at the bigger bus station on the other side of town.  Jack and I looked at each other and took off running, diving into a nearby taxi.  "Do you know where the new Rocada station is?" we asked him in garbled, rushed Romanian.  He did, and we asked him to take us there as fast as possible.

The taxi driver nodded and took off, skirting the edge of town to get us there as directly as possible.  As 7:30 flashed on to the clock, I held my breath and looked out the window for the big white-and-blue Rocada bus.  We were just a few blocks from the station when we saw it, already moving.  We'd missed it.  But the sign said the bus also made one final stop in the city, at a nearby grocery store.  "To Kaufland!" we cried. "The bus also stops there!"  The taxi driver looked at us, confused, and I explained -- "We just passed our bus. We missed it.  It's already moving."

He nodded again and sped up, speeding past the now-unhelpful bus station and onto a busy main street.  We could see Kaufland in the distance, but we were in the wrong lane.  As we watched, the Rocada bus pulled up to the stop.  We held our breath as the taxi driver whizzed through a roundabout to get us turned around.  But the bus pulled away just as we pulled in behind it.  We were too late.

I sighed -- but that taxi driver wasn't done.  He gunned it and pulled up beside the bus as it sped along, honking and waving at the driver.  And miraculously, the bus pulled over.  The taxi came to a stop and our driver jumped out, gesturing to the bus driver that we wanted to get on.  And so we piled out of the taxi, stuffed our fare into the hands of that amazing cabbie, and got on the bus, relieved and a little giddy. 

Whew.

Drying days.

Looking out the window at the city park, I see white sheets snapping in the breeze, like big sea gulls flapping their wings over the snow.  There are kids pulling each other on a runner sled, running slowly over the field of white, their puffy pink- and red-clad legs moving too fast for the speed they're going on the slippery surface.  Behind them, four of the five floors of the apartment building are sporting colorful laundry, hanging from south-facing balconies and fluttering gently in the breeze.  It's February 3rd, but it is sunny outside -- so it's a drying day.

I haven't met a single person in Romania who has a clothes dryer.  Washers, yes -- but when it comes to drying, it's good old clotheslines and drying racks, and none of the electrical, mechanical fluffy warmth I grew up with in the States.  Most of the time I'm fine with this -- I like hanging clothes to dry on the balcony on a warm summer day, bringing them inside toasty from the sunshine.  In the winter, though, this gets more complicated.  Before we had heat in our apartment, it would take our laundry days to dry -- usually three or four, with collars and pocket linings seemingly still damp a week later when you wore the item again.  And the apartment has mold issues, so we were always nervous -- begging the laundry to hurry up and dry out so that the humidity level would decrease.  Now we have heat, so things go a lot faster -- and we recently got our dehumidifier fixed too, so we feel like we're living in the lap of luxury -- but still, it feels like the drying rack is always, always out.

And so sunny days with a bit of a breeze?  Those are good drying days, and we seize them.  The laundry goes in first thing in the morning, to be hung on the balcony (freshly-shoveled to be clear of snow for this very purpose) before we leave for work.  And our home's laundry joins the hundreds of others, flapping happily in the mid-winter breeze.  Drying.  Hooray!