The stretch of vitality

So Friday was the last night in Romania for me and Matt.  After staying a bit late at work to tie up loose ends, we took the US contingent out to the best restaurant in town – Lugano.  The restaurant scene hasn’t quite made the changeover to the “customers are a good thing” attitude of capitalism yet, so if a restaurant is currently full when you arrive, they just tell you it’s full and hope you’ll go away.  However, having been turned away at our previous two attempts to eat here, we were determined.  We explained to the hostess that we were willing to wait for  a table, and then she indicated if we waited ten minutes she’d have one.  OK, problem solved. We also noticed that the same waiter with the funny haircut that works at the “Escala” bar we hang out at was working here tonight, so he’d be serving us for about eight hours straight.

So all four of us ordered the Chateaubriand, which is about the only decent beef you can get in town.  This night was also the only night I saw live music in any restaurant.  There was a fairly cheesy keyboard player and singer performing.  It was a bit odd though because they were playing so softly that you could easily not notice them or think it was a faint background radio.

We were supposed to meet up with a group of ten people at a lounge near our hotel at 10:00, but our planning was a bit off so we were running very late at dinner.  This prompted a flood of calls and TXT messages on the cell phone I had purchased, most of which I missed or ignored.  So about eleven we went to the lounge and eventually coordinated with Bogdan to meet us there.  We got a table when a big group left and had a nice hang out.

Now, there is somewhat of a tradition starting for the Americans leaving on an early morning flight back home to just stay out all night and “pour themselves to the airport” the next morning, as I’m told.  So this was our plan.  We next headed to Escala, again meeting up with our waiter from dinner, and joining up with two of the British contingent.  It was already getting fairly late, so we only had about one or two rounds here before they started to close up.  However, I did managed to bust out my sax and jam along with the music for a little bit.  The “DJ” (the guy who controls the laptop full of pirated music) had left already so I had to enlist the waiter to try to find something suitable for me to jam to. The best we could find on short notice (and short patience on his part for these silly American antics) was James Brown “Get Up/Sex Machine”.  So I jammed with that a little.  When a few other people in the bar realized that I was looking for stuff to play along with, the went up to the laptop and tried to find some appropriate stuff. However, when I saw that they had resorted to hunting for youtube videos to play, I drew the line and just played some  a capella funk stuff.  Then we packed up and continued the pub crawl.

The last stop was another small local bar where Bogdan quickly negotiated for control of the music laptop and queued up Pink Floyd The Wall.  After a last round of beers (for them) as it approached 5am, Matt and I headed back to the hotel to pack up and get our cab to the airport.  We got there OK, but were dead tired.  There was a fairly long delay there both to get on the bus which takes you to the plane, and then one on the bus before the bus actually started driving. Matt couldn’t quite hold out.

The flight back was decent, and obviously we slept a good deal of it.

Last night was Jeremy’s last hurrah here. He flies to the London office today.  Matt and I stayed late at the office to do some conference calls with the states, and then got a cab across town to “Dragoni”, one of the few Chinese restaurants in town.  With a little bit of effort the driver was able to understand the restaurant name and the cross streets.  Then we needed to take an alternate route to avoid the traffic heading to the stadium for the Beyonce Knowles concert.  We arrived at the restaurant OK and were joined up by several others for another underwhelming meal.  After dinner while waiting for the cab outside we could hear the Beyonce concert.

We went back into the center of town for 5 RON ($2) Tiramisu.  Toward the end of the meal a Gypsy girl of about eight and a boy about twelve came into the restaurant.  It’s fairly common for them to come into restaurants to beg, although this was the first I had seen it.  They only got about three steps in before the bartender ran out from behind the bar to chase them out.  Just after they left the gentleman sitting nearest the door realized that while the girl distracted him the boy had knicked his cell phone out of his coat pocket on the back of his chair.  The customer and the bar tender ran after them on foot, returning about five minutes later with the cell phone.  Presumably they inflicted some form of punishment on the boy.

On the walk home we had another “Romania moment”.  It was only about 9:30 pm or so.  We walked past a man using a pick axe to try to pull up a drainage grate along the curb.  Now, most of us Americans with common sense think “Strange man, not a city worker, using a pick axe late at night to get into the sewer system — keep walking”.  Of course, Allison immediately approaches him to inquire what he is doing.  After their brief discourse she indicates that he claims to have some rotten pickles that he wants to dispose of in the drain.  The rest of us sort of look at one another confirming that whatever he’s actually doing, it must be nefarious.

Tuesday for lunch I went with Alex, Flori, and Matt to the local Jewish lunch canteen.  This was not far from the office, but is way in the back of a courtyard and has no signs.  It is visited by prestigious Jewish guests traveling through Romania occasionally, however.  It’s essentially a small kitchen making home-cooked meals.  Everyone gets the same meal – whatever they are making that day.  Today we had bean soup then roast chicken with Mamaliga (polenta), and donuts for after.  It was very good but too much food for me to eat.  While there, men have to wear a Yamika or some kind of hat.  The whole thing costs 8 RON (about $3).

So unfortunately I have come down with a cold.  I should probably chalk it up to working late during the week.  In any case, Friday I had the worst sore throat I can remember, so I stayed in the hotel and rested.  I also had to skip out on today’s road trip to Brasov, sadly.  I’m in the hotel now trying to rest and feel better and take care of some work things. 

So we had a nice dinner out at Uberto’s on Thursday night.  Matt K has joined us from California this week.  On the walk back to the hotel, a pair of young girls asked us for a light (“fire”) in broken English.  We apologized, explaining that we were American and did not smoke.  Romanians can’t seem to understand this.  Flori at work just asked me “why not” when I told her I didn’t smoke, as if she had never heard of such a thing.

In any case, this encounter, which I will refrain from further comment on, yielded this email the following day: ————————————–

The findings of the super-secret-emergency calling of the “Man Commission of Romania”, following this known as ‘Us or We’, have been made.

We assess you a ‘FAIL’ for not picking up drunk women on the night of October 18^th. The further details of such finding are as follows:

1. In that you proceeded to converse with said impaired female for a time period exceeding 15 minutes.
2. In that you (and your duly appointed wingman) were aware of interest in you on the part of one of these individuals.
3. In that multiple attempts to lure you along with them to some ‘unspecified location’ met with less than exuberant response by you (as witnessed by your wingman and 2 other members of this commission)
4. In that you proceeded to your room and did not leave immediately to pursue correction of said infraction of Man Law.

This commission further asserts that you, Peter Lyons, must summarily submit your Man Card to this commission for summary punishment. J

This week we were joined by the executive in charge of the Cluj office for a visit.  On Tuesday pretty much the whole office went out to eat at Cafe Ardeleana, a nice restaurant with traditional food.  It’s also one of the few restaurants that doesn’t play loud techno music. Sorry about the red eye in these shots. I tried some of the local fare, including a shot of the Tuica plum liquor, which was jet fuel as far as I could tell, and a bunch of fatty meats and sausages.  One of the items was just a hunk of fat, and the other was deep fried fat. Someone tipped off the office manager “Mama Anca” that I had been practicing in the office late at night, so she asked me to play. On the way to the restaurant I stopped by the music store across from our hotel and bought a music stand just in time. While we waited for the entrees I busted out my sax and played two movements of a Bach cello suite. Directly behind the table in these shots above is the non-smoking jail.  Restaurants generally have some small incarceration chamber for non-smokers, and these are invariably empty.

Saturday I went with Horatiu to the Transilvania Expo, a clothing market that they have in Cluj each year for a few days.  I bought a fleece, and just in time, too as I brought only T-shirts and a light windbreaker and was in need of something warmer.

After the market we had some Mititei (Romanian grilled sausages), which were quite tasty.

Next stop was a cell phone store.  I needed to get a cell phone in case work needed to reach me for some customer support issues over the weekend, so we stopped at a nearby store and got me all set up.

Then we took a road trip to Turda, about 30 kilometers away.  Horatiu demonstrated his comprehensive knowledge of every speed camera along the way, which he laments “double the time it takes to get to Turda”.  In Turda, we visited the Maria Tereza Salt Mine (Salina Turda).

This place was really cool. First you walk about 300 meters down a gradually sloped tunnel into the mine.  If they didn’t mark the distances from the entrance on the wall and someone turned you around in there, it’d be tricky to tell just by looking which was was out.  This leads to a series of larger square tunnels.  The tunnels have the feel of early first person shooter 3D video games because they are so geometrically simple and long.

First we entered a large echo chamber.  Man, how I’d love to go back with my sax.  We then proceeded into a room with a large wooden crank that was turned by a team of horses to power some of the mining equipment.  This is straight out of Indiana Jones stuff.

Then you climb about 8 or 9 stories of very steep wooden steps down into the main mine chamber.  This place is enormous and full of fascinating patterns on the walls and in the salt stalactites.  The local people believe the air in the mine to be theraputic, so there was an old women sitting there with her knitting and a couple playing badminton.

After the mine we headed to the big gorge in Turda, which is really fun to hike around and visually stunning.

Now, this extended outing wasn’t exactly well planned. Had I known we were going to be hiking so far and so long, I would have brought some snacks and water.  But this was very spur of the moment.  So after two hours or so of hiking up the gorge, sometimes needing to hold onto a steel cable hung from the rock face at narrow spots where the rocks were slippery, we needed some food.

We stopped at a bakery/cafe in Turda with really good cakes that Horatiu is crazy about.  We had some and he took a few home with him.

Back in Cluj, I left Horatiu and took a little rest (so far we’ve only covered noon to 6pm).  Later I joined up with Jeremy and Randall.  We went to Lugano, the best restaurant in Cluj.  We were joined by Allison, a very quirky young Canadian girl who has been living in Cluj for seven months working as a translator.  Later Bogdan joined us and swore that he assumed Allison spoke Romanian natively.  It was a very nice and memorable dinner.  You get a really interesting dynamic with this crowd: me, Bogdan (a Cluj local), Allison (Canadian), Jeremy (North Carolina and self-describedly “country”), and Randall from Seattle.

The food was good and I was starving, so I really enjoyed it.

Next stop was club Euphoria.  We hung out there for a while.  This is where we spotted the woman currently holding the status of best looking on the trip.  Randall was beside himself.  Going to and from the coat check gave me ample practice for pretty much the only Romanian I know: scuzati-ma.  You basically have to wedge yourself through people to move.

After we tired of the crowds we went around the corner to Escala, a nice downstairs bar to meet up with the British contingent.  This bar was not at all crowded, so we took over a big section of it and hung out until the wee hours. 

Needless to say, after doing all that Saturday, I took it easy on Sunday.

My first Friday in Cluj I went out with Horatiu to some local bars.  We first tried Janis Pub, which was having some live music as part of the Transilvania Jazz Festival .  However, the solo piano was either horribly amplified or it was an electric piano, so we moved on to a bar called Fire.  This was the more dive bar punk rock scene.  We hung out there most of the night.  The crowd here was certainly more diverse and interesting than in the clubs.  Many of the girls seem to cut their hair by jumping on a trampoline below a sharp ceiling fan, though.  There was a small non-smoking section through a corridor, which was completely blocked with smokers taunting anyone who attempted to go in there.

When someone puked and the crowd around him took no notice of it, I glanced at Horatiu, and he said right away “it happens”.  I decided to head out at that point.

Sunday Brandon, Jeremy, Randall, and I took a road trip to the town of Sighisoara.  I had to make that a hybrid map/satellite link because google maps has no data on this area until you zoom out really far.  In any case, we piled in the car, got some gas on the way out of town from the unfriendly woman at the gas station that “maybe” takes credit cards, depending on whether or not the machine works after they pull it out of the drawer and plug it in.

As we slowly made our way along the curvy two-lane main roads, we stopped to see some of the intricate roofs on the gypsy houses.

Construction projects in Romania seem to typically be scheduled for 5-10 years no matter how small, so most buildings are not ever entirely complete, at least out in the country it seems that way.

Along the way we also stopped to look at the wares being sold at the side of the road by gypsies.  They were selling lots of hammered copper pots and bowls, assorted coins, glassware, and huge copper decanters for Tuica.  The guy with the plate of assorted coins had one that he claimed had a picture of Hitler and another one ofCeausescu, and upon inspection it was clear that neither claim was true.

We continued on to Sighisoara, birthplace of Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes.  The town is nice to visit, and we enjoyed a slow lunch before climbing a very long staircase covered with a wooden roof which led up to a church, mausoleum, and graveyard.  I’m glad it was broad daylight because I can say with confidence that after dark this place has got to be one of the spookiest, scariest places on earth.  Definitely don’t want to mess with Dracula there after nightfall.

I thought this woman looked interesting because her clothes and hair matched the dull green of her house.

Friday I met up with Alex for lunch and to lend him my tenor sax.  After that I headed to the airport.  I took the PATH as far as 14th street before realizing I still had the keys to my friend John’s apartment in my pocket (I was staying there a few days this week before the trip), so I headed back to the office, with my luggage in tow,  to leave the keys there and then made the 4-train, 90 minute trek to EWR.  It was very humid in NYC this week, so this involved a lot of sweating.  It felt good to switch to a dry T-shirt when I arrived at the airport.

Flew Alitalia to Milan which was OK and only mildly torturous.  Then a two hour layover in Milan and a quick flight to Cluj-Napoca, Romania. I arrived at the small airport in Cluj, went through customs without saying a single word, grabbed my bags about fifteen feet from customs, and met Horatiu, a coworker based in Cluj, who gave me a ride into town and dropped me at my Hotel.  On the way in from the airport, we drove past the new Opsware (now HP) office. It stands out as of of the few modern buildings amongst older European styles and communist era block housing. Horatiu met me at the airport no problem and I got settled in the Hotel.  There was a wedding in the hotel as well as a separate wedding motorcade on the streets nearby.  We drove beside the bride and groom’s car a ways.

Horatiu was starving since he hadn’t eaten anything yet that day after a long night clubbing on Friday, so I quickly freshened up and we went to get dinner at one of the more traditional local restaurants.  After dinner and a nap, I ventured out to the supermarket for a few snacks and essentials for the room, then did some exploring of the neighborhood.

Without wasting any time, that night Horatiu introduced me to the Cluj night club scene.  Cluj has somewhere between 60,000 and 100,00 university students, depending on who you ask.  Clubbing is pretty much the leading night life activity, and techno music permeates the city.

We went to two clubs, the first one smaller and extremely crowded, the second one larger and just very crowded.  At the first club, we were joined by a few other of the local Romania guys and eventually the Opsware US contingent.

Now normally I avoid crowded, smoky night clubs, but this trip was actually a lot of fun.  At the second club we were joined by another group of ex-patriots that work at their company’s Cluj office.  Two of the Opsware US guys have decided to extend their “training” visits to just shy of the 90-day you-need-a-Visa cutoff, and so they’ve made some local connections.

The club itself was packed with beautiful Romanian women, full of cigarette smoke, and decked out with lasers, smoke machines, paid dancers on the bar, etc. I drank about 1/4 of a beer, to avoid adding soda to a fairly long list of things that made me stand out in a bad way.  Brandon took a hilarious photo of Jeremy ogling the dancer nearest our group.