My last days in Romania: Bucharest, roasted pumpkin, giant government buildings, and surprise case of homesickness
I arrived in Bucharest around 8pm on Wednesday night. My host, Dan, was waiting for me at the station. That night, he took me to Dristor Kebap, a fairly popular fast food chain in the city. We got there kind of late, and there were all types of people waiting in line for food. It reminded me a little bit of Chipotle in that sense, but much more chaotic, with about twenty people running around the kitchen while customers placed their orders. Dan ordered me a chicken kebap with a little bit of everything (lettuce, french fries, olives, sauces, etc. etc. etc.) and a Turkish yogurt drink- I’d never tried anything like it before and found it really refreshing.
Afterwards, he took me on a driving tour of Bucharest to point out interesting buildings and historical spaces. Throughout my Romanian trip I was learning constantly about the Communist regime that dissolved in the late eighties/early nineties, so I took the opportunity to ask Dan about some of the events he had been present for in Bucharest during the revolution. Dan was a student at the time, and told me about the protests he had partaken.
Dan’s in his mid-forties and does consulting work, and is a pretty funny guy. He had a pretty relaxed and flexible schedule. I didn’t make many plans for touring the city, so for the most part I was on his schedule, working (read: writing my blog) in the morning, and running around the city in the afternoon to do errands. Dan also had an interesting meal pattern- he usually eats a large breakfast in the morning, has a second meal around 4 or so, and stops eating after 7pm. Seeing as I was adapting to other hosts’ food lifestyles regularly, I decided to join him in this endeavor as well.
Dan took me to an amazing market to pick up fruit for him and vegetables for his mother. We spent several hours combing through the stands, looking for the best prices on peppers and eggplant. We stopped by a meat and cheese counter and I tried some of the best cheeses I’ve had since I left France, including Borduf a Romanian cheese I heard about from Mihaela, my CS host in Timisoara. Burduf is a sheep's milk cheese that has been aged inside fir tree bark, and it is ungodly delicious. Besides that, we also picked up some fresh sheep’s milk cheese and dried sausage links. Yum.
We stopped by Dan’s mother’s apartment that evening to drop off the veggies and eat dinner. Dan’s mother didn’t speak English, but knew a tiny bit of French, so we were able to have a basic conversation. She said I reminded her of an actress from a movie, but couldn’t think of who is was. Dan and I sat down to a meal she cooked for us, consisting of soup with small bits of beef and a dumpling each, a pepper and tomato salad, and mancare, which translates literally to “food” but was stewed vegetables similar to ratatouille but with other herbs. It was absolutely delicious. She also pulled out chunks of pumpkin she had roasted with vanilla, sugar, and rum flavoring. That was amazing, and reminded me so much of pumpkin pie that I longed for a dollop of whipped cream to put on top. In the meantime, she found the actress she was looking for, Phoebe Cates, who starred in the 1980s miniseries Lace. I don’t particularly see it, but judge for yourself:
The next day I split off from Dan to visit the Palace of Parliament, the second largest government building in the world (the first being the Pentagon). The Palace was started in the last five years of Nicolas Ceaușescu’s time as General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party/President of Romania, and was unfinished when he was killed during the Revolution. It’s a massive building, and was fun to walk through. It was ridiculously fancy in some rooms, though I was told the majority of the building was ho-hum office space.
That night, after another lovely dinner at Dan’s mother’s place, I discovered my host’s secret stash of multiple ice cream flavors, all neatly packed into his freezer drawers. I couldn’t, at the time, remember when I last had ice cream (it turned out to be the McDonald’s mini milkshake I bought with my last Euro in Slovenia. I’m American. So sue me.), so I indulged with a bowl of walnut and chocolate flavors. It was after seven, but hey, it was my last night in Romania. Dan was out for the evening, so I curled up on the couch to watch Inside Out, which I hadn’t seen yet. I felt almost like I was back in the states. This is something I would do on a Friday night.
It was great until the end, when Riley, the main character, tearfully confesses: “I miss Minnesota.” Her father kneels down next to her and says, “I miss Minnesota too.” Well now I’m in tears. After the movie, I have myself a nice little pity party with a second bowl of ice cream. I don’t consciously miss home very often, but with blatant dialogue like that there was no excuse not to let myself be outwardly homesick, just a little bit, just this one time. I miss my family, my friends, having my own kitchen (priorities, right?), going to early morning yoga, eating peanut butter, working at the City, biking along the Mississippi, and a bunch of tiny things that collectively remind me how great my life was in the states. I just have to remind myself that most of those things will be there when I get back (whenever that may be), and that there are reasons I’m sitting on a couch in an apartment Bucharest eating bowl after bowl of Dan’s ice cream. Adventure! New experiences! I don’t let myself eat this much ice cream at home!
This may be the only chance I have in my lifetime to do something of this magnitude. I really hope that’s not the case, but who’s to say? In the immortal words of Drake, who I will never give any credit to again in my life, #yolo.
The next time I come (at least in warmer weather) I'll be doing more to stay out of cities and spend more time in mountains and villages. Hopefully I get the chance to do that fairly soon. Or who knows, maybe it'll make a really good family vacation in twenty years.
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