Back to Romania

Because I too lazy I will take exercpts of the e-mail letters that I kept going with my friends just to freshen up this blog with the impressions of coming back to Romania.

Hello y’all from Dracula’s homeland.

This is my second day home and I am full of good stories. I am extremely excited about all the changes that I found home.

On the flight from Minneapolis to Amsterdam I set next to a guy who does mission work in Tanzania. 7 hours of flight didn’t seem long enough to hear all his interesting stories, discuss the politics of the world and share my perspective on things. From Amsterdam to Bucharest I sat next to an American gal named Jenn who decided to move to Romania. She finished college at UW - Madison and accepted a job at an American consulting firm in Bucharest. Apparently she was in love with Romania’s culture and the extravagant lifestyle that she can afford here with an OK American salary.

I won’t bore you with the excitement of being with my fam again. We have a new car, tiny on the American standards, but quite all right for Romania’s gas prices. It has a bunch of gadgets inside and it looks very trendy and europeanish. My mom drove from the airport on the way home and I can honestly say that she is the worst driver ever. The good thing is that it’s mostly lack of experience, so I hope that with time she will get better. I guess that we got home safe and that’s all that counts. Just in front of us a nasty wreck happened. A drunk driver who happened to be a known politician’s brother, smashed his Mercedes SUV on the incoming lane into a little town car killing on the spot two parents and their 14 year old daughter.

Yesterday I witnessed with all the shock and awe the lack of customer service in Romania. I was at a Restaurant-Bar-Disco (whatever that means) when I ordered a drink and out of 10 choices on the menu they only had coke and mineral water, with no choice of size or ice. After half an hour I was brought the bottle of mineral water and the waitress spilled half of it on my lap in her unnecessary attempt to pour it in the glass. I found the whole thing very amusing.

More changes I found at home where my mom did some redesigning and redecorating of the rooms. My room is bigger with less furniture and my brother’s room has a new design with a top-notch orange futon. I was truly impressed by the internet connection that I have here, which beats the crappy University connection. Today I washed the car. It cost 2$ a car wash and a guy was handwashing your car in the 32 degree weather. It took him 20 minutes to make it spotless so I gave him another 50 cents and told him Happy New Year!. He cracked a big smile.
I hope everybody has a break as exciting as mine. Have fun, don’t eat too much and Happy New Year from me and my family.

Dragos

P.S. Now you can take a look at pictures of my room and you can see our new car on my webpage at the Photos section. Enjoy!