Leaving the Village

Since we have had no internets for days, there's toooooo much to post here. All smart locusts know when to leave town and since we ate all the food, drank all the wine, used all the water, and used all the toilet paper in Viscri, we called it a fortnight and left. I'm now in Sigisoara, birthplace of Vlad himself, about to take a night train to some villages and towns near the border of Ukraine...

Castelul Bran

My last post was intended to be put up 2 days ago, but because there are 15 ways for the internets to fail and only one way for them to work right, I haven't been able to post. Yesterday was the day we tracked Dracula all the way to Bran and its fantastically beautiful castle. I was a little disappointed that the walls weren't dripping with blood and there was no torture chamber, so I feel a little conflicted about the castle. Really, Vlad himself only stayed there one night and the castle is really a story about the number of times Transylvania has changed hands over the centuries. The castle is beautiful, very homey, and I could live there so if someone out there has 80 million euros to drop, I'd like to talk to you. Meanwhile, the castelul should be marketed as a beautiful spot, not the craptastic tourist trap that it is. We saw more Dracula nonsense than I would care to remember, and a lot of other things that don't relate at all. Case in point: one tourist shop sold jester hats, don't know why, and another sold black vibrating dildo lighters. No joke.

Today we went to the Orthodox church to see a service and attended meetings with architects who have convened with the Emanescu Trust for a conference to figure out how to best rehabilitate the houses & structures here without destroying the character. Really interesting stuff.

Death March Today, Dracula Tomorrow

We walked 10 kilometers (or at least most of us did) in the sun and shade via forest trails to another village, Messendorf, which also had a fortified church like the one in Viscri, our village. I swear, if we didn't have two horse carts to take us along, someone would have probably died. No, I exaggerate, but it was tough to keep everyone together between walkers and riders. Meanwhile, one stallion kept wanting to "talk"to the mare next to him, and he had a serious erection that no one could keep their eyes off of...hilarious. Let's all wish them well. One cart ran over a snake in the forest, and its tail writhed while its better half made a hasty escape. Too bad, really. I also got a splinter in my hand.

The scenery was beautiful though, because the countryside is absolutely beautiful, few bugs and poisonous things. We visited a sheep fold, had some fresh cheese and then went to the town where they had no troughs for our horses and basically, the town was in worse shape. There are only 3 Saxons left living in the village, and the one man we met was 97 and the lone caretaker of his church. He wasn't sad, but the situation definitely was. So then we went back to our village which looked like the big city in comparison, and tomorrow we go to Bran Castle to buy crappy Dracula souvenirs!

Sunday

So...some of us didn't make it to the church on the hill today in time to attend services. We were held up at the carpenter's house for an interview and it was a lot of fun. I could tell that he was holding back from telling us everything since the convo was so political, but he was really generous, let us play with his cat & dog, he picked daffodils and white lilacs from the garden, and gave us plum brandy (which is a drink you give to guests, who have to partake). Since I'm totally recovered from the last run-in with the plum brandy, it was totally fine. He also cut us a fresh stalk of rhubarb! For the rest of the day I guess we'll be talking about our interviews thus far and I will probably bring up the whole "lack-of-internets" thing, so wish me luck on that one. In the meantime, the weather is beautifully sunny and I'm wishing my mother a happy mother's day. Our tour guide: "no, mother's day is in march, it's an international holiday. Why do you celebrate it today?" Guy in group: "in case you haven't noticed, the US doesn't follow international laws." True dat.

Village Life

Romania is really neat. We all here feel like we've already been here for 3 weeks just because we've seen so much! Last night we actually saw the cows come home. There are a lot of animals here in the village, and the gypsies identify with me because of my dark skin and b/c i'm also part of a persecuted group. Too funny.

I like the Romanian language and i am learning bits and pieces - I think the romanians are impressed by the fact that i am already speaking. And, I'm getting good practice in because you have to say hello to every single person as you pass by.

I don't know if this project is really about the internet, which makes me nervous because that's what i said i came to do, and i can't tell if the subject has changed because we already realize now that people don't have the internet. But i feel like the whole time the study was always going to be about doing an ethnography of village life (which i don't care about) since the whole internet thing just hasn't come up a lot. Basically, the only people who have internet is...me - right now, using a laptop and a mobile phone to dial the modem and the phone keeps cutting off. I'm living at the Emanescu trust house, and the village of Viscri has about 400 people in it - it's actually a UNESCO World Heritage site http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/596 and Prince Charles owns a house here. The village is ethnically mixed, made up of Saxons originally from Germany, some Hungarian Gypsies, some Romanian Gypsies who want to identify as Romanian, not Roma, and the Romanians. Basically, the town is Saxon in its structure and architecture, but there are very few Saxons (25) still living in the village, so there's an effort to preserve the Saxon culture, but for who? There's also an effort for the village to make money, so they knit wool into socks. Of course, I had to buy a pair.

The food is excellent, so fresh. I was at first a little worried that the romanians think that "vegetarian" means "mushrooms" because i spent the first 2 days eating more shrooms than i have in my entire life. But the food here in the village is awesome and we have a different kind of vegetable soup with every dinner. The air is so fresh and the food is so fresh, my skin is starting to glow. In other consumption-related news, last night i drank too much wine palinca, the twice-distilled, oft used as "medicine" plum alcohol at dinner. It really wasn't a fair fight, and I was very hungover this morning and had to sit out on the morning interview with the metalworker. It really wasn't a fair fight.

The people in the group are friendly and we're already working hard on doing 3 interviews of village people a day - but the interviews are not about...the internet! I have been lucky enough to shadow the village nurse as she went on rounds visiting people with newborn babies or chronic diseases like diabetes. What seems to be emerging is that the villagers think their lives were a little better during communism and now they're really struggling and nervous about recently joining the Euro Union for a lot of different reasons (like what will happen to them, their culture, etc). The biggest news this minute is that some French dude saw a girl in our group this afternoon, has fallen in love, and now has come tonight with a horse to take her for an evening ride. I guess that's how they do it in the country?

Everything's Soooooooo Green!

Hey hey hey from Romania! So a lot has already happened and I actually feel so comfortable here as if I've already been here a whole week or something. The people (the Romanians on the street and the Americans in my group) are very friendly. The flights were totally uneventful and even though I had to open my suitcase - probably because it was so densely packed they couldn't see in on their hi-tech monitors, I got through all the security checks and whatnot with no problems. When we got to the hotel I realized though that I have to leave bottles not screwed so tightly - I lost all my mouthwash, which spilled into the plastic bag and over everything else. Lucklily, i had some in the carryon bag, so I'm ok even for the 3 wks. I'll make it last, don't feel like buying more. I was the first person to meet Alina, our guide at the airport and then in the matter of a few hours, we had 14 people and were on the bus to Brasov, a cool town in Transylvania! What's cool is that we could see the mountains ahead and the road is literally pasted between two steep steep cliffs, with the teeny towns stretching across the road. We did about 6 hairpin turns at a time, too, pretty impressive. Reminded me of driving in california.

Brasov is a little touristy town but definitely helps with the whole culture shock thing. Lots of old stuff to see and people watching is really fun. I think the Romanians are a good-looking group of people and the men like jeans and those sporty jacket things. The young women like to look feminine and wear dainty scarves around their necks with their jeans - very cute. But then the old women look....really old. With scarves on their heads and hunched backs, rough faces - hard living? How can the cute young women transform into them?
[In the internet cafe, "La Tortura" is playing - memories]

Meanwhile, I had a deja vu moment this morning trying to figure out what I was going to wear to the village - the thought was that it really doesn't matter because...it's a village and we're totally going to stand out, especially me. I mean, I get looks, sometimes stares on the street so far, I find, but that's about it. I am totally used to that anyway, 'cause i get that in america too. I am trying to learn Romanian as fast as i can, because I want to be able to talk - already tired of feeling like an infant, ready to have whole conversations with people. Maybe not even that, but just being able to have a simple exchange.

Romania Eve

Yeah! Two posts in two days! It's like when you start exercising and you've done it two days in a row and you think you're invincible and that you really can do this forever. I'm not fooling myself, though, 'cause I know I will not be writing at all tomorrow because my butt will be doing the "sleep-for-2-hours, watch-movie-for-2-hours" all the way to Bucharest. I wasn't jet lagged when I did that on two 8hr flights to Nairobi, but I think it was because I confused my body to the point where it didn't matter what was going on. The plan: if you're not sleeping, then you'd better be eating, and if you're not eating, go to sleep. Simple.

So... I leave tomorrow, and I'm a little nervous (mom: proud) about flying somewhere where I don't speak the language, don't look remotely like the native folks, don't even know the people that I'm gonna be spending the next 3 weeks of my life with. When I'm not nervous, though, I think this feeling of anticipation might be better than Christmas. I have spent the entire day packing - not that I am a "everything but the kitchen sink" packer, but more like "am I not going to be able to buy this in ROM and can I fit it all into 2 carry-on pieces of luggage?" - so...it's taken me a while to get it all in and I *think* I've done it. My mom has been a big help and I appreciate it. I talked to my Aunt tonight and she had me laughing hard warning me about "village love" - that I shouldn't give up wanting to return home if I fall in love with some Romanian dude. "We will come to the village and get you." She's like, "don't think that you don't need things like running water just because you have love. You still need certain things." Funny. Then she made all my cousins yell into the phone "Have Fun in Romania" and the amount of endearment mixed with apathy was perfect. I'll remember that for a long time.

What a difference (almost) a year makes

Greetings and Salutations! as Charlotte (the spider) would say. It's been a while since I've written a post, but I've been ridiculously busy, and honestly, I think I'm approaching my breaking point. Grad school is technically easy but it's a grueling set of hoops to jump through. Readin' and writin' aren't that difficult, especially when you've done them for so long and you think you're good at it, but when you have so much of it to do and it's so dense and all this unstructured time to get it done and you may or may not have a support staff to help you do all this work you have to do by yourself.

See, 'cause that's the problem: even if you have a great set of people behind you, most of the work has to be your own. YOU have to be the one to sit in class and take notes, YOU have to write your papers and use sources correctly to create original work, and then given the choice of working in groups, you'd really rather work alone.

So that's what makes grad schoo stuff hard. I am really diggin' anthropology because it's about...everything! And I am able to combine the 4 things I like about what I want to do with my life: 1) get paid to 2) travel around the world, 3) talk to people, 4) and write about stuff. I am so grateful for all the opportunities that anthro has been able to swing my way. That being said, the reason why I am writing today is because I am just two days away from going to Eastern Europe for the first time! I'm going to Transylvania, Romania to search for Dracula - no, I'm going to look at how the Romanians are dealing with the internet access that they've received. How are they using the services, how is the state using services? It seems a long way to go when I already know the answer is "porn" - b/c that's how everyone else uses it! - but I'm looking forward to going.

I am looking forward to going, but I really think it will be hard to get on the plane on Monday knowing that my friendship with my best friend is on such shaky ground - it can't keep me from leaving, but it's keeping me from being completely excited about this trip. I really wanted to patch things up well before I left, and I can't honestly say if that has happened. Makes me nervous and sad.