Sighisoara

Ciao, as they say in Romania!

Jimmy and I recently embarked on yet another adventure. This time to Romania. Because Romania is so inexpensive we were able to spend many days there, and were able to have adventures all over Transylvania.

For those of you unfamiliar with the history of this part of the world, Transylvania belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary until the Treaty of Trianon, after WWI, assigned the territory to Romania. Also, in medieval times, the Hungarian kings offered Saxon settlers semi-autonomy for their loyalty (loyalty primarily meaning their help in fighting off the Turks and other invaders). Hence, the region has a rich history and is peopled by individuals of many ethnic backgrounds, including Magyars, Saxons, and people of Romanian heritage. Today, all these people are called Romanian, but they are still aware of their cultural heritage, and do much to maintain the traditions of the past. Because of this rich heritage, most towns have three names---a Romanian name, a Saxon name, and a Hungarian name. Most names are posted in both Romanian and Saxon. I understand if you visit regions of Sekely Land, which is another part of Transylvania populated by the Sekely people, who are of Hungarian descent, most signs will be posted in Romanian and Hungarian instead of Romanian and German.

The first town we visited was Sighisoara, or Schassburg in German (Segesvar in Hungarian) well known because it is the home town of a man named Vlad Tepes, aka Count Dracula. For those of you who picture Dracula's hometown having a big castle, like I did, this is incorrect. Sighisoara is one of the most well-preserved medieval citadels in Europe, but there is no castle, per say, in Sighisoara.

Map of Medieval Sighisoara

About 4 hours away, near the town of Brasov, is a castle called Bran Castle, which has laid claim to the title of "Dracula's Castle." From all the historians can determine, Dracula may have spent a single night, if that much, in this castle, although the castle itself is a beautiful specimen of medieval castle.

Bran Castle

Our day started with an early morning trek to Keleti Station, and the prospect of 10 hours on a train. As usual we were well supplied with ham sandwiches and pretzels and bottled water and of course Jimmy had plenty of Cokes packed away as well.

I won't go into too much detail about the long boring train ride, except to say it gets much more exciting after you leave Hungary. First, there is border patrol, so you get to have your passport stamped. Then the countryside starts looking hilly and pretty instead of flat and boring. You start to see bee hives, haystacks, beautiful mountain streams, shepherds with their dogs. It's a lovely sight.

Of course you also see your share of the ravages of Communism and Ceasescu's reign. The train goes through it's fair share of ugly run down communities with abandoned factories, burnt out smokestacks, hideous concrete block multi-story "housing projects." Thankfully this gives way to more beautiful countryside and mountain views.

It's spring, and that was evident in rural Romania. We saw horses plowing fields, people digging huge fields of potatoes by hand, and people working huge stretches of field by hand without help of horse or plow. It was quite picturesque, but it makes you muse on how one's person's poverty is another person's quaintness, and I'm sure those people would have given most anything for a motorized plow, and I can't say I blame them.

We arrived in Sighisoara around 8 and managed to secure the only taxi from the train station to our room in the old town. We were staying at Casa Legenda. Once there we were greeted by our host Florea, a sweet Romanian lady who spoke little English, but between her tiny amount of English and my tiny amount of Romanian we managed to get the key and drop our stuff off in our tiny but clean and pretty room.

The first thing we did was go out to eat. I believe I was haunted by memories of my first trip to Romania. Arriving at 11:00 PM, not being able to get money out of the bank machine before many calls to the NCSECU back home, finally being able to get out a tiny sum well after midnight sometime, before that bank teller broke permanently, leaving me with no place else to obtain cash. On that horrible night I stumbled across an all night "fast food" stand near the train station and bought a "hamburger." Never again will I trust a burger in Europe unless it comes from a sit down restaurant or a McDonald's. I have no idea what kind of meat it was, although I'm pretty sure beef was not one of the components, and certainly not soy. Scrap pig parts is more like it. With this memory haunting me I wanted to make sure we got a hot meal and didn't go to bed hungry.

There was a hostel next to our guest house and they advertised food, and looked busy, so we went inside. They were entertaining a huge group of Romanian students who were all eating sunflower seeds and drinking beer. The proprietor personally got up to take our order and prepare our food.

We both started off the meal with beef ciorba, which is a Romanian soup. Ciorba is one of my favorite types of soup, and I ate it all over Romania. Pictures supplied by google since we were too hungry to take any!

Beef Vegetable Ciorba

Jimmy ordered what was to become his meal of choice---breaded fried meat. This time it was "chicken schnitzel" instead of pork. I ordered something my friend Ibolya, who grew up in Romanian but who has one Hungarian parent, insisted I try. It's a dish called mititei, which are little "burgers" as Ibolya calls them. They are actually a mincemeat mixture of pork and beef and probably lamb too, which are rolled into little sausage like rolls and fried. They are served with bread and mustard, and are extremely tasty. This came with boiled potatoes and a salad, and of course I drank apa minerala (sparkling water). It was delicious!

Here is a picture I retrieved online of mititei.

Mititei

After supper we packed off to bed so we could start the day early, but we did end up sleeping in a bit he next day. I had just gotten off a several-week stint of late nights, and the night before we left Romania I had been up until after 2 helping a friend with a paper, so we were a bit fatigued.

Move to the next post for cool pics of our first day.

Ciao!

As I Lay Dying

Hello,

For my friends reading this, you know I like to read and have more books than ought to be legal. Forget Nooks and Kindels and ebooks. I like them old-fashioned and dog-eared. The more the better. It's hard for me to name my favorite author or favorite book, but Faulkner is in the top five. It's always easy for me to throw everybody into a category like "the top five" as long as I don't have to order it further than that.

While Jimmy was living down East my first "semester" in Hungary, which is how I often think of the period from July to Christmas, he started reading some of the fiction I had boxed up and stored down there. I believe he came upon Franny and Zooey and started with that because it was handy. He told he me wanted to read some Faulkner and could I recommend anything because he knows how much I like Faulkner, and how I've read all but one or two of his works. For Christmas I put together a little packet of what I considered to be the quintessential Faulkner for somebody who's never read him and who doesn't like to read fiction. I thought I'd throw in something like Intruder in the Dust whose mystery might make the stream of consciousness technique one has to adjust to with Faulkner a little more palatable, but than I had to include the greats like The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom (my personal favorite), and As I Lay Dying.

When Jimmy came to Hungary to spend my last four months with me he asked if he could bring anything, and I said, yes, bring your Faulkner. It was easy enough for me to find English translations of the classics but I was a little tired of reading Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, much as I bow down to both those authors. I love reading Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy by choice, but when I want something new and different and am forced to choose between a the Twilight Series and reading Emma for the umpteenth time, I tend to feel a little less enthused about my old friend Jane Austen. I thought I would enjoy reading Faulkner. By the way, one of the best decisions I made was to drag A Confederacy of Dunces to Budapest! Boy, that was a shot in the arm when I got tired of the old standards.

I was reading the Sound and the Fury in Venice, and on the train ride home sometime in the early hours between Vienna and Budapest I finished it and asked Jimmy to hand over As I Lay Dying.

Padova

Padova! I've been hearing about Padova since 1992 when I took an art history class and learned about the Arena Chapel and the famous frescoes of Giotto. And ever since that day I've wanted to visit it. I was finally getting my dream come true. Broken arm or no broken arm, to the Scrovengi Chapel I was going. When I had made our arrangements in Venice I had specifically made plans for this last leg of the journey, and had been looking forward to it for weeks.

Saturday morning Jimmy and I bid Mr. Luciano and Mr. Stefano goodbye and headed for San Lucia. We boarded a hot crowded train and set off for Padova. Upon arrival we had a few minutes to rest and then had to head to the Chapel. They make you book tickets in advance for a specific time, because they only allow a limited number of people inside at one time, and you are only permitted 15 minutes in the Chapel.

I will admit I was a horrible grouch, whining about the walk, the heat, how heavy my 50 pound mummified arm was. Jimmy was a saint to put up with it. We stopped for a pita sandwich along the way to cushion all the Tylenol and ibuprofen on my stomach, and went on.

I didn't take many pictures even though it was a gorgeous spring day. The Chapel is in a park and the trees were flowering and daffodils blooming, but I hurt too much to really appreciate it like I should have. I'm afraid google will have to supply most of these photographs. They don't let you take pictures in the Chapel of course, so those photos definitely have to come from google.

Here is the outside of the Scrovegni Chapel, which was built as an atonement for the sins of this family of money lenders.

You are not allowed to approach the Chapel directly, but must enter into a visitor's center. You are then guided through a courtyard and around a glassed-in walkway to the Chapel entrance. Despite my immense pain, walking inside the Chapel was magical. The beautiful blues created by crushed lapis lazuli stone is so striking and so awe-inspiring it's hard not to be moved.

The inside is painted in sections, depicting scenes from the Life of Christ. Here are some of the most impressive, and most famous ones.

Ospidale

Do you know how to say hospital in Italian? I do no. I had an experience that is what I would rank as one of the worst vacation experiences that could happen to a person outside of losing one's passport, ATM card, all one's money, etc.

After visiting the Castro and having a boring lunch of pasta and pizza in a cafe near our hotel, we took a little siesta because it was really hot. An hour or so later we were preparing the head out again. I was exiting the bathroom in my sock feet when BOOM! I hit the floor. In an idiotic move I attempted to cushion my landing with my arms, and as soon as I hit, I knew something had gone horribly wrong with my left wrist. Jimmy wanted to lift me up but I wouldn't let him touch my arm. I got myself up after sitting there crying a minute or two, and my wrist was twisted oddly and swelling quickly.

We went out to the front desk where Mr. Luciano was working and showed it to him, and he immediately started giving us directions for the hospital. We had to walk several blocks toward the Lagoon, catch the Vaporetti towards the hospital, and get off at the stop called Ospidale. He said it would take about 55 minutes.

By this time, rush hour was approaching, and the water taxi stand was packed. We couldn't figure out where to buy tickets because the kiosk was closed and I was in ever-increasing pain, so we just climbed on and figured we'd deal with tickets later. Oddly enough, that never came up. The vaporetti was packed. More and more people kept cramming themselves on, and I was trying to hold my wrist by it was getting smashed and knocked about. The pain was excruciating. I am NOT one to rush to the ER, so trust me, if I was going to the ER in VENICE of all places, DURING RUSH HOUR, I was in dire need of medical attention!

The ride to the hospital would have been interesting and beautiful if not for the pain and the dreadful anticipation of what would ensue. And it turns out my dread was well timed, because it was not a trip for the faint hearted. We pretty much rode all the way around the outside perimeter of the pain island, and got to see all kinds of buildings and side streets and docks and neighborhoods, then we hit the wide open water and got to see little islands and other boats.

When we arrived at the hospital a kind Italian doctor checked me in. She noted that I was in extreme pain, and rushed me off to the x-ray department. After sitting for over an hour in x-ray, a very kind x-ray technologist took me into the x-ray room and took some shots of my arm. She was very gentle and kind and kept exclaiming how badly my wrist was broken and how she knew it was extremely painful. She told me the wrist was broken in three places, and she thought they would give me something for pain and they would definitely have to set it.

From there, I was pushed in a wheelchair down to the orthopedic unit where the real nightmare began. Another lady and I sat there for two solid hours, in a darkened room, waiting for someone to come and open up the unit. She had sprained her ankle and was also in a wheelchair. She kept looking at me and smiling and shrugging, as if so say, "I wonder what the hell is going on?" I would smile back and shrug back at her, and we would continue to wait.

By this time my arm was throbbing uncontrollably and it was all I could do not to start sobbing. I was gritting my teeth, firm in my assumption that being a hospital, someone will administer some pain medication and help mend my arm immediately. This was the first in a long string of episodes where I made grossly inaccurate assumptions about European health care.

After we had sat in that dark empty room for over two hours, someone finally rushed in, turned a light on, and whisked the woman next to me away to another room. In no less than about three minutes they whisked her back out again with her ankle wrapped and she smiled at me in encouragement as they wheeled her away.

I was then whisked back into a back room, and it was glaringly apparent that the staff member assigned to take care of me was extremely mad about having to be at work, after what seemed like inordinately early closing hours for a hospital. It was probably 8 PM at this point. I was helped onto a table and someone yanked my arm out to the side of me and smashed my mangled wrist down flat, then started to slap a cast onto it. In the process, they actually forced my wrist back into the bent position it had been in. Before putting the cast on me they took my shirt off and left it dangling around my neck.

In less than 5 minutes they heaved me up off the table and pushed me toward the wheelchair. By this time the cast was dry and I attempted to pull my shirt back over my arms but the attendant told me not to. As an afterthought, they tore a thin strip of material and tied it around my neck and arm, and then pushed me towards the exit.

Once in the entry way, another attendant approached me and I said, "What next?" He said, "Get out." I'm willing to allow for differences in language, but it seemed an appropriately rude and to-the-point command after the slipshod way they had handled my case.

The second I was out of the wheelchair I ran towards the nearest restroom, with my bra and gut hanging out of my shirt, which was still only around my neck, and wedged my giant cast back into my shirt sleeve. No way I was going out in the city of Venice, to ride 55 minutes on a vaporetti, without a shirt on. Jesus! The cast on my arm was HUGE. It went up to my shoulder, all the way down to my fingertips, and my wrist was bent at almost a right angle inside of it.

They had not even given me ibuprofen. By this time I was tired and starving. I told Jimmy to let's just immediately head to the restaurant where we had eaten the night before since we knew it was good and inexpensive, and then we could head home.

It's sad when you're only comfort is a good meal. Lucky for me I also had the comfort of a smiling face across the table from me and someone to button my pants for me. Yes, I had to exit the restroom of the restaurant and ask Jimmy to come inside the door and button my pants for me, that's how badly my arm was damaged.

Supper was actually good despite all the mess, or maybe because of it. They had another octopus appetizer special which I simply had to try. It was a sauteed octopus and tomato mixture served on polenta. Jimmy shared it with me. We also had those fried olives, at Jimmy's insistence. He became a confirmed olive man after those fried ones! For an entree Jimmy had pizza, and I had oven baked sea bass served with roasted potatoes and olives. It was absolutely divine, of course. I wish I could supply pictures but the day was a little too hectic and the evening a little too unpleasant for me to remember to take photographs of our supper.

After supper we went home and fell into bed. I think Jimmy was up awhile but I collapsed immediately from the pain and fatigue of the day. Venice was so wonderful the broken arm and trip to the ospidale did not ruin it, although it did put a damper on the next few weeks.

The next day was completely uneventful. Mr. Luciano asked Jimmy how I was doing early in the morning, and when Jimmy told him I was in a lot of pain, he offered to get us some medicine from the farmacia and he brought it to us shortly after breakfast. He said the pharmacist insisted that I eat something extra to cushion my stomach. Jimmy and I set out for our cafe, and in addition to coffee I ordered a doughnut like the ones I'd been watching everybody eat all week. Here's a picture. Mr. Luciano had said to come back and hour or two later. I later found out that what I had taken was tylenol, but at the time I didn't know that. I waited and waited, and still the pain was extreme. We went back to the room so I could lay down, and Mr. Luciano gave us the other type of medicine he had gotten, which turned out to be ibuprofen. I took some of that and lay down. Poor Jimmy. He had to go out walking without me. I lay there in horrible pain and finally dozed off.

I woke up later when Jimmy came back to the room. He was sad at having to mill around Venice without me, and I was sad because I had wanted to go to the San Giorgio Maggiore, but I was feeling so horrible I could barely get down the street, let alone take a ferry across the Lagoon.

I had emailed my sister and she had written back to say at first there would be some deep pain but that it should start to subside before too long. I know I can be a baby, but usually I know in my own heart if I'm whining a lot or if I'm really suffering, and I felt like I was really suffering and that either she had it wrong or something was wrong with me.

We ended up eating supper in the same place we'd eaten the nights before, because it was very reasonably priced yet delicious. For the life of me I have no idea what I ate except that it was seafood, and that when we left the restaurant I was so nauseated from pain I ended up not being able to keep it down. And for you skeptics out there, no, I had not been drinking! Back at the hotel I stumbled into bed wishing the night were three times as long because the next morning we left for Padova, but all I wanted to do was rest in complete oblivion. For the continuing saga of the broken arm, read on.

Arrivederce!

The Castro

Ciao Again!

On our third day in Venice we asked our hotel proprietors what they would recommend us seeing---a part of Venice you simply must see. They recommended the Castro, which is the oldest neighborhood in Venice, and it's at the tip of the island that Venice proper occupies. My cousin Sarah had told me that the best way to see Venice is to walk through all the little neighborhoods, and that's what Jimmy and I had wanted to do, so it was nice to have the same recommendation from our hosts. Normally I enjoy art museums, but when I have a limited amount of time to spend in a place, I prefer to soak up the scenery and visit churches. Art museums are great when you have more time on your hands, but if I only have a few days to spend somewhere I don't want to spend it in line in an art museum, waiting for someone else to get out of the way of a painting I want to view.

After our morning ritual of latte macchiato at the local cafe, we struck out for the Castro. This required us to cross the Academia Bridge and the Grand Canal, go through San Marco square, and venture down into the area known as the Castro.

Here are some shots I took of us getting there.

The Domes of San Marco

Palace of the Doge

Bell Tower and Cathedral Domes

Here is a shot looking back towards San Marco.

Looking Back Towards San Marco and the Bell Tower

And here you can see what it looked like as we made our way alongside the lagoon edge and on towards the Castro proper.

Motorboat on the Lagoon

On the Way to the Castro

And now you can see shots of what it looked like as we really got deeper into the neighborhood.

Brick Bridge in the Castro

Building in the Castro Neighborhood

Row of Pink Buildings in the Castro

A Sunny Alley in the Castro

Just a note about the Castro. The buildings tend to be simpler and less ornate than many of the buildings in the rest of Venice, and there are not nearly as many tourists here. You see many more people working and going about their daily lives, including holding markets from little boats docked on the canal side. It's very quaint and quite fascinating. It feels like "real Venice" without the tourists and the crowds. Just a city of no cars where the streets are water and bridges are as much of a necessity as sidewalks.

Shrine in the Castro

Red Building in the Castro

Brick Bridge in the Castro

Peaceful Neighborhood

Busy Street in the Castro

Clothesline

Grocery

Easter Cakes in Castro Bakery

At this point I must relate a funny story. I had been drinking a lot of water and Jimmy a lot of Coke, and I needed to use the bathroom (of course). I swear, in all travels there is the dreaded moment when you have to find the WC. We had no trouble in the main part of Venice but in the Castro there was no public WC evident, so I suggested we step into a little bar and have a beverage and use the facilities.

Jimmy ordered a beer and I ordered a "spritzer" simply because everybody else was ordering them all over Venice and I wanted to know what they were and how they tasted. Jimmy went to the back of the restaurant first. When he came back up front, he said, "You're not going back there. It's a squatter!" I told him we women could squat better than he could. The toilet was hilarious, and it was, in fact, a squatter. It was a giant bowl sitting on the floor.

A few days later in Padova we went out to eat. We treated ourselves to a nice dinner because I was in horrible pain with my broken arm and was quite miserable. I accidentally walked into the men's room, and it was nothing but a hole in the floor. Italy is not by far the most underdeveloped place I've been. I've travelled all over Central America and Romania, and these places are far poorer and less developed than Italy, but I must say, Italy takes the cake thus far for having the most primitive bathroom facilities.

Here is our bar.

Once we got down into the Castro the view of the little harbor and all the boats was magnificent.

Harbor in the Castro

Side Street in the Castro Neighborhood

Dock in the Castro

Wooden Bridge

Here are some shots of the plain old water. It's beautiful isn't it?

And here is a shot of San Marco as we made our way back towards Academia.

If you want to know what else happened that day, read on!

Arrivederce!