Reminiscing about Romania

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We last left you with "Bamboozled (Trevor's word) in Budapest"\133

We will now spend some time "Reminiscing about Romania":

We spent Friday, Nov. 8 until Thursday, Nov. 14 in Timisoara, Romania at the home of Mimi and Marti Coyne, friends of Trevor. Marty and Mimi are full-time missionaries to Romania\133Marti is American and Mimi is Romanian. They have to great kids, Jimmy, 4, and Brenda,2. We really enjoyed being part of their family for the week and learned much about Romanian culture while there\133 Here are a few of the highlights from the week:

Upon arriving in the train station in Timisoara (around 9pm), we needed to change money so we could buy a phone card to call Marty to come pick us up. Seeing that the local money change office had long been closed (so we understood via sign language at the "information" office), Trevor decided to go the "local" route. A taxi driver who had befriended us in hopes of taking us somewhere (does this sound familiar from our Budapest story?) walked us over to a guy who pulled out a huge wad of bills, who wanted to know which type of currency we wanted to deal in! We had no idea what the exchange rate was for Romanian lei, which Trevor felt the need to mention. But the guy assured we were getting a good deal, and we walked away with 200,000 lei (we later found out that we were lucky and in fact did get a fair deal. The exchange rate is about 1$ to 33,000 lei. Plus, they helped us buy the phone card and make the phone call! That redeemed our confidence in taxi drivers for the time being!)

Sunday morning we visited a Romanian church, where Marti preached in English and Marios (a young man Trevor met 10 years ago in Romania) translated into Romanian. There were also baptisms\133something a little different was that the women getting baptized all wore white, wedding-type dresses. After church Sunday we went to Mimi's parents house for an authentic Romanian meal! It was great food, including cabbage rolls, chicken, schnitzel, potatoes, and some yummy cream puffs for desert.

Trevor spent a lot of time running errands with Marti and helping him with random projects around his house and Mimis' parents house. As Marty pointed out, you can make a "to do" list and only get one or two things done in a day because of unexpected Romanian quirks. For example, they went to get glass cut for a window and returned to pick it up and the man had decided he would close early that day.

Marty and Mimi have developed a relationship with a family of 8 (6 kids and their parents) who live on a small farm, literally in the middle of a field. We went and visited them the day after they had slaughtered one of their pigs. They invited us in for a snack\133which consisted of pig\133no, not ham, or sausage, or bacon. Yes, fresh, seared pig skin (not a football\133) and a slice of fresh pig ear, and to wash it all down, some real, salted pork rinds. The first two items were a bit of a challenge, but Trevor really liked the pork rinds. All Alison could think of were the pig ears that we feed Kia (our dog)\133 Quite a different world...the Romanians use every part of the pig and waste none of it. But, we were good foreigners and accepted the hospitality of this family\133and we're alive to tell the story.

Evenings were spent in various ways including going out to eat great gelato, doing magic tricks with Adi, Mimi's 12 year old nephew who is living with them, walking through the main square where the 1989 Romanian Revolution took place in Timisoara\133you can still see the bullet holes in many of the buildings\133wow.

Those are a few of the highlights of Romania\133we left on Thursday night at 10pm and took an overnight train to Bucharest. To our surprise, and the surprise of our Romanian hosts as well, the train was the NICEST one we've been on so far. We were in a 2 person sleeper and enjoyed a good night's sleep. We arrived in Bucharest, Romania at 7am and spent a few hours doing a walking tour of Bucharest, including seeing the Parliament building\151which they claim is the BIGGEST administration building after the Pentagon. It was quite big! We returned to the train station and broke down and got a McDonald's cheeseburger and ice cream\133the first time so far on this trip! At 2pm we got on a train to Instanbul, Turkey where we arrived at 10am the next day (yes, 20 hours!) But we need to mention our border crossing experience: we were awakened at 3am and told to get off the train. We took our passports and trudged out into a very thick fog. We bought our Turkish visas and got our passports stamped without a problem, then got back on the train. Some people in the next car down, meanwhile, were being kicked off the train by the Turkish border police after they found at least 10 bags of "narcotics" that they had stashed in the ceiling of their car. It was quite a scene, with the head of Turkish police there looking very Mafia-like and the fog really added to the ambiance. As we were watching this happen, we heard a faint drum beat, which got closer and closer. Soon, a guy walked around the corner and continued to beat this huge base drum as he entered the train station. We both thought, "What is this guy doing at 4am, walking around playing the drum???" Later, once in Turkey, we learned that he was alarm clock waking Muslims up to eat before the sun rises (since we are presently in the month of Ramadan, in which Muslims fast from sunrise to sundown.)

We have a great computer for the next few weeks here in Turkey, so updates should be often and pictures should be regular!!! Just in case you forgot what we look like\133

Love, Alison and Trevor