The View From Here

It's been a busy few days in Sibiu. ...well, I say "busy"...that mostly means me walking in ever-larger circles. The experience of being in a place where I have the language skills of a half-trained Labrador retriever, comparatively speaking, is both hilarious and intimidating. Universally, people have been awesome and patient and kind, and I am having small victories like remembering how to say good day and good evening (I keep jumping the gun and skipping good morning; Romania has some very specific criteria about when one says which greeting). I have mostly managed to decode menus and grocery store items, too, so there haven't been any unpleasant surprises, food-wise. Actually, all of the food has been marvelous, and the bad news is that all of the work I did to curb my sugar cravings over the last six months or so is probably shot because there are so many pastries. (I am using the excuse of trying to have a real Romanian experience, and one thing no one does is worry about the sugar/salt/fat content every obsessive waking second. I miss that, actually, pretty intensely. Eating healthy foods is one thing. That's probably a post for another time.)

I continue to be thankful for the people I have met; I've several remarkable outings with one of the MA students here and her friends. I also got a crash course in Turkish culture and art, thanks to two other visiting professors. The intersections of culture are unlike anything I've ever experienced, and the immediate hospitality and welcome I have received (even so far as to be invited to dinner with the Turkish instructors and their students, which turned out to be home-cooked Turkish food by the students) startles and awes me.

In today's picture pile, two views from the clock tower at the edge of Piata Mica (literally the small square), one looking onto Piata Mare (the big square), and one looking over the city toward the Carpathian Mountains. And then two images from my personal souvenir take: yarn! The large wall of yarn is the shop (I am responsible for the gap), and the six skeins are my haul. Each is 400-500 meters of fingering weight loveliness, from a variety of wool/mohair/angora blends. For about $35. I just. Enough yarn for four lace projects.

I found the yarn in the Dumbrava shopping center, which has almost everything ever. I should have arrived with an empty suitcase and just bought clothes here; they have things I actually like. Ah well.

I also went well to two games in a college-affiliated soccer tournament. Yay, sprots! It continues to be strange waking up as the west coast games are ending and getting only highlights/postgames for east coast evening starts.

Still. Let's go, Pens!

Between rainshowers

This morning, I got to scope out the university a bit more, and the administrative assistant helped me get the technology in the classroom to cooperate with me, which was awesome. Yesterday and Saturday evening I spent with one of the graduate students, Renata, and her friends, and that was fantastic. They took me to the massive folklore/traditional civilization museum, and they were kindly very patient with me touristing about. We had a long discussion about an English equivalent for "dumbrava" (a small forest with water, but that isn't a swamp), and everything that we ended up with in English was either fairly archaic (coppice, spinney) or very precisely affiliated with a different climate. And that was rad. Then, I was invited to a backyard barbeque, where I got to meet more excellent people and also Renata's cat, Charlie. I have to say that there is something infinitely reassuring about the globally consistent behavior of cats.

Today, in addition to the trip to campus, I also went for groceries again and bought a gogosi, which is that golden pastry of awesomeness in the photo below. (Sorry for the wonky photo pile at the bottom of the post: the Blogger app I am using doesn't appear to allow one to move the photos around.) It was easily as big as my spread hand, and it was still warm when the clerk dipped one side in powdered sugar. I regretted that I was (as usual) wearing black, but that's all I regretted. They apparently come with fillings, too, though I got a plain one this time (gogosi simple). What I was most proud of was that I managed the whole transaction in Romanian (badly pronounced Romanian, to be sure), and I almost got it in the grocery store, but the clerk had to switch to English to ask if I had a 10-bani piece to avoid handfuls of change. I am starting to get the hang of making buna ziua a little more automatic and understanding when passersby shorthand it.

After groceries, I went on a walk, where I found a very large rose garden in Parcel sub Arini. A few plants are coming into bloom there, and it looks like it will be amazing in a week, so I'll try to keep an eye on that. Also in the park, I saw one of Sibiu's ambient dogs having a nap in a gully. The dogs have ear tags to show that they've been inoculated, and they seem both chill and in good condition. I saw another one on my walk home, just a beautiful shepherd-ish looking fellow (like if you mixed an Australian shepherd with a Husky). If one ends up in my suitcase, it is not my fault.

Finally, there is the photo of what I've been eating here in my room for dinner: bread and cheese and a tomato and cherries. While it continues to dump buckets outside, too (intermittent violent thunderstorms), I have covrigi (Romanian pretzels) and a chocolate hazelnut spread that I think I like more than Nutella.

...Also, there is day baseball, which will be my soundtrack for sleep. (I have to say that waking up to score of games just-ended is a little bit of a let-down. If I wake up early, I can probably listen to the end of the west-coast games while I write, but hockey will be just ending around 5 a.m.)

Buna seara from Sibiu!

Getting there

I arrived in Sibiu at five last night and was given a quick tour of the area near the university and where I'm staying.

The short version is that one cannot swing an umbrella without hitting a place to get ice cream. Also: lots of umbrellas. This is because it seems to be somewhere that it could rain at any moment, and while I walked to the grocery last night, that green soft smell was what I noticed most. And it is marvelous. On the short walk down Victoriei, I passed a few empty lots full of tall grass and trees with white-painted trunks. The spaces were gated off, and I am going to assume the white paint was to protect said trunks from insect damage or some such thing, but the effect was both eerie and lovely in the fading light (and I'd been awake for more than 24 hours at that point, so).

Across from the grocery (where I bought a box of perfect, ripe cherries, among other things) is Parcul Sub Arini, a long, wooded park. I'm looking forward to exploring that soon. There is also a jazz festival taking place; I am here in time to catch the last few days. Soon, I will get to meet one of the graduate students here, and she'll show me around a bit more.

Onward!