Living high on the hog

This is part three of the story about our amazing weekend. Check out Its not a party until somebody kills a pig (part 1) and Wine, History and Magic (part 2) if you missed them.

We got back to the camp just before lunch (yes, all that Wine, History and Magic happened before lunch) to find that the pig had already been butchered and laid out into a beautiful array on a table outside the dining hall and that sausages were already being made in the kitchen for tonight's dinner. The musicians arrived at the same time, a violinist (or more accurately, a fiddler) and an accordionist.  They played through lunch (and kept going straight through till midnight).  Honestly, lunch was a bit of a blur because of the wine and Pálinka.  I remember that Imra told us that we would have soup for lunch, which was fine I thought, but I thought I should eat quite a bit if that's all we were having. Just as I was finishing my second bowl, he suggested I should save room for the second course. Second course!?!? It was too late for me to save room, but there was no way I was going to miss out.  Crystal was wiser than I was and elected to stop after the soup and go take a nap.  I stayed and completely stuffed myself on the best pork dish I think I have ever tasted.  While at this point the haze from the wine had subsided, by the time I finished my second helping of the second course I had taken on a different kind of intoxication.  Crystal has chosen to call it "high on the hog".  I stumbled back to the cabin rubbing my swollen belly and fell asleep.

It must have been a deep sleep.  I woke feeling completely refreshed, like I had slept for a day, even though it had only been a short nap. Crystal was getting ready for the night's party, so to get out of her way I took a walk back to the hall to see what was going on.  The number inside had grown.  Children were running around both inside and out in the yard.  It was unseasonably warm, so a light jacket and a soccer ball were all they needed.  The party was Carnival themed (like Rio or Mardi Gras), so everyone was to dress in costume and many of the new arrivals already had.  I decided I should probably get back to the cabin to get ready myself.

Of course we didn't really have costumes.  We had only been in the country for a couple of months and party costumes were not terribly high on the list of things to pack and bring with us.  Crystal, though, is a master with the makeup, so we decided to paint masquerade masks on our faces and leave it at that.  Crystal looked fantastic and I, of course, looked silly, but it was great fun to join in and be a part of something so decidedly silly and to feel like we fit right in.  When we arrived back at the hall, the festivities had already begun.

The party started off with a costume contest.  We watched as one after another, folks would come to the center of the room to present their costumes to the judges.  They weren't just presenting costumes though, they had put together whole acts.  One couple had dressed up as neanderthals. They had included rigging in her costume so that he could drag her by her "hair" into the hall.  Another couple had dressed as a wine and a Pálinka cask, complete with strategically placed working taps from which they poured samples for the judges.  It was all great fun.  After the awards were handed out, we all milled about, chatted, and sipped on more wine and more Pálinka. Then came dinner.

Oh, what a fantastic dinner.  We had the sausages made earlier that day, fresh bread, mashed potatoes, and polenta, the European predecessor to southern style grits.  It was all so good, I can't even put words to it.  I've never had sausages so fresh or a meal so perfectly matched to its occasion.  It was like a Christmas or a Thanksgiving dinner except that, other than the meal, the only occasion was that the family was coming together.  They simply came together to celebrate this meal and each other.  I felt like I was getting away with something. Like I had sneaked into something truly sacred and special, only to find myself welcomed with open arms.  I guess that's kind of how I feel about Romania as a whole, really.  It's as if we somehow managed to con our way into a place we shouldn't be allowed, the place where they keep the truly wondrous and incredible secrets tucked away.  And now that we're here, we're finding out that these are not really secrets at all, and that we are so very welcome.  How could you not love a place like that.

Friends New and Used

Selling/giving away the vast majority of your earthly possessions can be a daunting proposal.  This, however, was not the scariest part of moving overseas for me.  I was absolutely terrified of leaving behind the wonderful friends and family that Mike and I love so much.  We have, over the years, gathered around us some of the most engaging, intelligent, funny and loyal friends a person could ever desire.  I miss them all dreadfully.   What I am learning, however, is that friends are not a finite resource.  As much I miss the people I love from home, there is a whole world of amazing new people just waiting to be to be found. 

The Birthday Boy

I have been stunned by the outpouring of generosity and hospitality by many of the people in our adopted country.  We are truly blessed to be in the company of such thoughtful and caring people.  Mike has talked in depth about Imre and his wife Zsuzsa and their remarkable family, so I will not say more here. However, I will state that everyone needs an Imre and Zsuzsa in their life. 

Most of the friends that we have thus far were made through Mike’s job.  He is fortunate to work with some extremely talented and thoughtful people.  We relocated to Cluj just a week or so prior to Mike’s birthday.   I don't want to rat him out by throwing out a number, but suffice it say, he is old.  But his firmly entrenched status as “over the hill” is not the point of this story.  The point is that in just over week, the people that we had met a short time before gave Mike a welcome to Cluj/ Birthday party that was replete with presents!  We had at this point in our home, very little in the way of kitchen necessities.  And let me tell you, cooking dinner when all you have to slice an onion is a butter knife is a load of fun.  These people already know us so well, they gave us the most wonderful gift possible:  wine glasses and a bottle of especially tasty wine.  We were also gifted a beautiful poinsettia that brings me pleasure every day when I gaze upon it on my window sill.

It was a wonderful night, filled with laughs, conversation, and a few glasses of wine.  This was my first time meeting Cornel.  He is a friendly and fascinating chap.  He told us all about his family’s tradition of making Țuică and pork production.  After expressing some interest in both of these subjects, would you believe that later in the week Cornell brought us several items produced by him and his family?  There were three types of Țuică, a bowl of meat filled gelatin (which is surprisingly good) and other various items that you just can’t buy in a store.   There were so many items in this goody bag, Mike was unable to walk home from work and had to take a taxi.

Mike enjoying his present
with help from the girls.

During the party, I mentioned to Oana that we were in need of a veterinarian for our two dogs.  Instead of just giving me the information on the vet that she uses, she went out of her way to pick me and my canines up later in the week, and drive us to the office.  She then proceeded to introduce me to everyone and facilitate a great working relationship with my vet and his staff that in my life, has had no equal. 

The things that I mentioned above may seem inconsequential, but to me they mean everything.  The people that we have been so fortunate to meet are proving to be freakishly nice.   As I mentioned previously, it is hard being so far away from the people that you love.  However, if it were not for the distance between us, these new relationships would not have the opportunity to grow.  

Wine, History, and Magic

This is part two of the story about our amazing weekend. Check out Its not a party until somebody kills a pig if you missed it.

On the way to the wine cellar, Imra explained to us that the place was not finished, but his brother in law and father in law were building it to be a resort where people could come to experience the Romanian countryside and the unique beauty that it offers. The wine cellar was actually part of a very old building that was acting as the foundation for this new pensiune. After the 30 minute drive down (mostly) paved roads, we arrived to find that the vintner was not there. Imre's sister in law had called to make the appointment, so we called her to make sure that we weren't early or terribly late. She said that she would ask her husband to call, because apparently this particular vintner felt that wine was men's work and that it should be a man who makes the appointment. He had obviously never met Crystal.

We walked around the grounds and joked about chauvinism in wine while we waited. When he finally did pull his Dacha 1310 into the parking lot, we went straight to it. He led us to a set of double doors and through the archway into the most beautiful basement I think I have ever seen. It was filled from one end to the other with huge barrels painted black and red. It had arched ceilings made of brick which had taken on the white of the minerals that had grown over the centuries to encrust the entire chamber. It had the smell that only age can give a place, as if the brick, the wood, the wine, even the air was just an extension of the Earth. This place definitely had magic in it. Magic and lots of wine.

He pulled out two glasses and set them on the table. Imre and I shared a sideways glance, both of us wondering if the chauvinism would go so far as to exclude Crystal from the tasting. Both of us knowing that would not end well for any one. Thankfully, it was our driver, Imre who did not get a glass, which makes a lot of sense when you consider Romania's absolute zero tolerance for drinking and driving. Our new favorite vintner picked a glass up from the table and handed it to Crystal and pointed at me to pick up the other. He used a mallet to knock the cork loose from the top of one of the enormous casks and pulled a siphon hose down from the wall. By siphon hose, I mean just a hose (or hose pipe, for those readers in Eastern NC), not some new fangled thing with a hand pump on one end so that you wouldn't need to use your mouth to suck the contents of the barrel into the hose. No sir! Not here! But that's the old way, right? Besides, it's wine; what's the harm?

Our new favorite vintner

He filled each of our glasses in turn for a taste and then started filling the various plastic bottles we had brought with us. For those who didn't catch that, this is just a tasting and he filled our glasses. Any bar I've ever worked at would have reprimanded me for filling a paid glass that full, and these "tastes" were free! We "tasted" several wines, including a semi-sweet white, a dry white, and a strong semi-dry red that we were told clocked in at about 15% alcohol. We bought a liter or two of each. He also allowed us to "taste" some small batch pet project wines that were truly exceptional. I should mention that the wine we bought was amazingly inexpensive. It worked out to 7 Lei per liter, or about $2.10 US for wine made from the grapes growing less than fifty feet from where we stood. One of the best things about Romania is that the distance food travels from the ground to the table really isn't much more than the distance from the ground to the table. Together, the three of us bought a bit more than 30 liters. Some to take home, some for gifts, and some for the party.

The view from the doors of the cellar

Imre and our favorite vintner (that is now his name, by the way) talked at great length about the history of the place and many other things, all in Hungarian. Imre kindly translated for us throughout. We learned that while no one knew just how old the original building was, a wine from this place had won gold in a Paris wine competition in 1829. That was before a disease of some sort had ravaged all the grape vines across the entire region. It's only recently that folks like our favorite vintner have been able to plant new vines from a species similar to the one that used to grow here, imported from South America if I recall correctly (this was during or second or third "taste" so my memory is a bit fuzzy). We also learned that this wine would not give us a hangover, to which I promptly called bullshit (this was during or fourth or fifth "taste" so my mind to mouth filters were not working properly). Imre told us that he was electing not to translate that part, he did however share with our favorite vintner that we enjoyed his wine very much and we looked forward to testing his assertion. We gathered up our our hodgepodge collection of make shift wine bottles, each filled to the brim with wine, history and a little bit of that magic, and we headed back to the camp.

Still more to come...

Its not a party until somebody kills a pig.

Long before we moved to Romania, Crystal and I watched a show called No Reservations in which one of our favorite celebrity chefs, Anthony Bourdain traveled to Romania with his Russian cohort Zamir Gotta. The trip seemed to be a disaster from Anthony's point of view, with touristy destinations, not too interesting food, and bad planning on Zamir's part. That is, it was a disaster until they got to their last destination where Zamir hurt his back, took a few heavy duty pain killers then proceeded to get very drunk on Țuică, and finally got carted off to a hotel to recover. Don't get me wrong, that wasn't the good part (well, kind of). It was just the comedic back drop for Anthony getting to join in on a family weekend where three or four generations had come together to slaughter and prepare a pig for a feast. It was that part that I think left Anthony with a good impression of Romania and it was that part that I have wanted to experience for myself ever since. This last weekend, we got the opportunity to do just that.

A friend of mine from work, Imre (pronounced kind of like another famous celebrity chef, Emiril, only without the "L" at the end) and his wife Zsuzsa (Pronounced like Zsazsa Gabor's first name, except the first syllable has an "oo" sound) invited us to join them and their two kids for a weekend with Zsuzsa's extended family, comprised, in part, of three generations of butchers. The plan was to go to a small village in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains where we would sleep in cabins, drink until the early morning and eat lots and lots of pork. How could I possibly say no?

Our experience was slightly different than the televised depiction Anthony presented in a couple of ways. Zsuzsa's family is ethnic Hungarian, as is Imre's for that matter, so everyone at this little get-together spoke Hungarian, not Romanian. That's one of the great things about moving to Transylvania. You get two cultures for the price of one. While Transylvania is part of Romania now, between the 9th and 18th centuries, this region was, in one way or another, under Hungarian rule (it's much more complicated than just that, but this is not a historical document), along with Hungarians making up about 20% of the current population, so there is quite a large Hungarian influence here. In fact, in the particular area we visited this weekend, the majority of the population is Hungarian.

The bottle of Pálinka had
plums in the bottom.

Also stemming from this Hungarian influence, we were drinking Pálinka, not Țuică, which to the untrained (me) is exactly the same thing. We drank it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We drank it until it ran out. Even then, when the Pálinka was no more than a blurry memory, no one there was interested in the Țuică we brought, so apparently there is a difference. We also drank wine at every meal and in between. We also drank that until it ran out... and then we got more, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We got there Friday evening, were introduced to everyone and found the cabin we would be staying in. We got settled in and then walked down to the central dining hall for a dinner comprised of sausages, cold cuts, cheese, and several types of spreads for bread. The spreads really stood out as exceptional. My favorite was eggplant with cottage cheese, garlic, and I don't know what else mashed into a smooth paste that was similar in some ways to Baba ghanoush. Crystal's favorite was introduced to us as "pig parts" and was made up (we gathered later) of cracklin that had been mixed with spices and boiled until it too was a spreadable paste. They were both really good and I might be lying about which was who's favorite. Of course, we drank local wine and the Pálinka that one of Zsuzsa's uncles had made.

One of the Marys
unwrapping garlic.

Preparation for the festivities of the next day had already begun, so after dinner we helped to free garlic from its paper and decorate the hall with balloons. While it's true that we spent a good deal of time listening to stories we didn't understand and laughing when we felt we were supposed to, we never felt like outsiders. Even this early in we were made to feel like part of the family. It's also true that several there spoke a little English, so whenever it was possible, they would offer translations for us, taking a bit of the burden off of Imre and Zsuzsa. At one point, the trio of matriarchs (Mary, Mary, and also Mary. I shit you not.) were talking and laughing while I stood by. After a brief pause in their conversation one of the Marys turned to me and said "We were just talking about how 20 years ago... we were so much younger." I laughed and said "So was I."

Breakfast on Saturday began at eight and was essentially the same as dinner the night before. Hard sausages, cold cuts, cheese and spreads with the fantastic bread that it seems can only be found in Europe. A new spread was added to the menu this time though that took the place of Crystal's favorite, made with beans and garlic and I don't know what else. There was always butter on the table for the bread, but only the children used it. When butter becomes a second class citizen on your bread, you know what you're eating is amazing. Of course, we drank wine and Pálinka (and a little coffee).

The pig arrived while we ate and by the time I went out to see it for the first time, it had already been stuck. Two guys from the family's processing plant had come to prepare the pig and they wasted no time. They covered the pig with hay and set it alight several times to remove the hair, using a blade to scrape the skin each time. Once an area had been cleared of hair, they would smear mud over it to protect it from the flame. When one side was complete, they washed the mud and soot off with water, turned the pig over and started on the other side. All the children chipped in to help spread the straw and keep the fire going. The bottle of Pálinka sat on a table nearby with several glasses and frequent visitors. It was about this time that Imre came to me and said that he was leaving to go to the wine cellar to get more wine and asked if we would like to join him. How could I possibly say no?

This is just Part 1 of the story of our amazing weekend.  For more, check out Wine, History and Magic.

So, this is your first time?

We decided we wanted to move overseas quite some time ago.  I can't remember if it was just before or just after Crystal and I got married, but either way, this move has been in the works for several years.  In fact, it was our marriage that interrupted Crystal's plans to move to South Korea. She had intended to continue her work on her Masters degree by teaching English as a second language there.  Then I popped the question and screwed the whole thing up, so I guess it was already decided that we would be moving. Perhaps I just didn't know it yet.

The company I work for contracts with an on-shore/off-shore software development firm that has an office here in Cluj-Napoca (It's pronounced Klooj Nah-Poka.  Most call it Cluj, for short).   About a year ago, I started sowing the seeds that it might be a good idea for me to travel to Cluj to meet the team who writes our software face to face.  I wanted to shake their hands and get to know them a little better, since I'm the one in charge of the whole software thing.  We got here in late June and stayed for about 10 days, arriving back home in Greensboro, NC on the fourth of July, just in time to watch the city's fireworks in the distance while we waited for a friend to take us home.  It was a fantastic trip and before we got on the plane for our return flight, I was making plans to pitch the idea of our moving here.

Needless to say, the pitch was successful and we arrived again in Cluj a just few days before Halloween. I'm still a bit amazed that we managed to pull it off.  We sold or gave away almost everything we owned including two cars, a whole bunch of furniture, and lots of kitchen stuff.  We rented an apartment here that we had looked at on a whim during our first trip, booked our flights, planned a really big going away party and a whirlwind trip to catch up with family and friends before we left, and, believe it or not, we got our two dogs certified as healthy by the USDA.  Yep, that's USDA Certified dog.  When you consider that Crystal and I both continued to work full time, I think you would agree that it was a pretty busy four months.

This is what happens when they do maintenance. Had the
notice been in English, we might have known.

So, all of that was before we got here.  It was all, relatively speaking, smooth sailing.  Despite the fact that much of what we were doing was new to us, we still had a pretty good idea of how it was done.  We knew how the systems worked (yard sale, banking, travel, lawyers, USDA!?!?) and we could use them pretty easily to make a bunch of big changes happen fairly quickly.  Since we arrived here though, things have changed a bit. We have had adventures, hangovers and surprises both good and bad.  We've tried new foods, new drinks, new ways of thinking, and tried to introduce a few new things of our own.  All the while, we've been flailing. Not wild, gangly, every-one-is-afraid-to-come-anywhere-near-us flailing, but that "Oh shit! This water is deeper than I thought it was" kind of flailing.  And I suppose that's what we'll keep doing.  At least for a while.

We are flailing expats.