Moon Overhead

Moon Overhead, August 13, 2005

Even being in the posh corps (see previous story) it’s still a job adjusting to life in a foreign country. It’s not just life, it’s like camping out. We are not tourists anymore. Our accommodations are thus – two rooms and a bath in a sort of a basement efficiency apartment beneath the main house. Our hosts are a Hungarian/Romanian couple, although we haven’t met the wife yet as she’s been on vacation in Hungary. We are gradually making the two rooms our own.

The refrigerator is large by Romanian standards. We have a gas stove, plenty of hot water, a double bed with squeaky springs that’s a great improvement over the bed we slept in here during site visit back in July. We’ve a kitchen table and couch that would fit in well on a porch along Naked Creek. It’s a quite livable situation, although evening entertainment here is playing solitaire. Perhaps I’ll have time to write that great American, err, Romanian novel.

The house sits along a dirt road, unless it rains, and then it sits along a mud track. Luna de Sus (Top of the Moon) is the first in a string of mostly Hungarian villages that follow the paved road 40 kilometers to a small city called Bura. The hills directly surrounding the town are beautiful and further along the road the hills turn into real mountains. We’ve no transportation of our own, but on a nice day I hope to hike a ways down the road and take some pictures.

An experience worth noting is this: the other evening while I was helping my host and brother in placing netting over a small area of commercial cut flowers, the brother’s young daughter starting counting. Although Nancy and I had seen the girl and her older sister twice before, they had never said anything. The family’s natural language is Hungarian and we weren’t sure if they knew Romanian or not. Anyway, Andrea, perhaps 4 years old, started counting. One, two, three, four.
We laughed. Her older sister never did say much in English, but Andrea knew thank you and your welcome, and could at least count to ten. It made us feel not quite so alone. I haven’t taken a picture of the girls yet, but I promise to do so.

Cluj is the nearest large city, east of us by 12 kilometers – Oh, get used to the kilometer bit, they are so much easier to use than miles. Not sure if we’ll convert to the metric system while we are here, but I’ll surely use kilometers instead of miles. One kilometer is about 2/3erds of a mile.

Nancy and I toured the botanical gardens of Cluj yesterday. They are very nice and clean, with a couple of tall greenhouses reminding us of a smaller version of the gardens at Kew in London. We also walked into the Church of St. Michael, a gothic cathedral the first portion of which was built in the 1300’s. Cluj is a university city with many cultural activities. Our problem is that the last public transportation between Cluj and Luna leaves the city at 7:30. Taxis are expensive, particularly on our slim budget. Nancy will work in Cluj, and I here for the Romanian Organic Agriculture folks. It would make more sense if we lived in the city and I commuted, rather than have Nancy have to make the trek to her job.

We are working on the possibility of finding an apartment. It might be bigger than our current place, but the surroundings would not likely be as nice. There would be no mud perhaps, but it would be one of those block apartments constructed by the Communists and lacking in any exterior pleasantness. I refuse to take a picture of them, they are so ugly.

Nancy’s counterpart who will show her what’s expected and assign first tasks is on vacation so Nancy will not report to work until the 22nd. I’ve been to work but no one has assigned me to a task yet. I’m not sure they know what they want to do with me. They seem to be glad that I’m there, so that’s enough for now.