"I am your new sofa. Welcome to Craiova."

A three hour train ride west of Bucharest, everyone in Romania warned me away from Craiova, saying things like, “It’s full of gypsies and thieves and pollution and mean people.” And I’ve gotta admit, it’s not exactly a place that families on vacation would visit...sort of like Brownsville, Texas or Bakersfield, CA, but with a developing-nation-with-a-grudge-and-corrupt-political-system twist. But I'm calling it home for nine months, so what the hey.
Mihai Cosoveanu, my contact in Craiova met me at the train station this afternoon. Have I mentioned the dogs? Romania is filled with them, and everyone here cautions you not to touch them, that they bite and they are rabid. When I asked Mihai why the government doesn’t round them up, he told me that anytime there’s talk of doing so, people shout and cry. “Mostly women.” Mihai is funny, he should be in movies. On the way from the train station, he told me about the gypsies here. “They sometimes shoot each other, maybe twice a year, but not to worry. Mostly, they cannot afford the gun.” He pauses, setting up the perfect delivery. “And so they carry the samurai sword.” After setting me up in my new apartment and taking me grocery shopping, Mihai warned me about the dogs. “At night they are in packs. And then they are not scared. They come for you and bite.” Not that I’m planning many late night outings, but just to discourage me further, while eating pizza Mihai filled me in on another Craiova treat. “What is it you call the children of the wealthy?” he asked, then laughed when I told him, “Rich Kids.” “Yes! After ten p.m. the 'rich kids,' the sons of wealthy, drive fancy cars. Lamborghinis, Maseratis, BMW. They drive them through the streets of city, near where you live, up to 200 kilometers an hour. You will hear them tonight...”
The train station, like other parts of this city, is in bad need of repair. And after dragging my stuff up four flights of stairs into the new apartment, I wondered where I’d gone wrong. The apartment,however, was bigger than I expected, a one-bedroom with a kitchen and living room. There’s a TV and a washing machine just outside the bedroom door. The bathroom has one very deep, square tub. There was no hot water today, and Mihai said that “Maybe after the first of October they will turn it on.” Post-communist French doors open onto a cracked cement balcony and the buildings outside are lovely. The doors don’t close all the way, and when I asked Mihai if there was any heat, he replied, “After October 15th they will turn on the heat. Maybe.” All that aside, I am just on the edge of the old part of the city, right beside the National Theatre, which is just next to the university. I’m meeting the dean tomorrow morning, and will hopefully get a schedule of my classes then. Because the university was badly damaged in the last earthquake here a few years back (30 years to be exact, but who's counting?) and is still going through repairs, not all of the classrooms are usable. And so classes meet weekends. I’m hoping mine do not.
A few other notes: I saw pyramid shaped haystacks and oil derricks from the train window today. Nearly all of the drab gray concrete apartment buildings have their air conditioning units barnacled onto their shell...one for each unit, just beside the satellite dish. And there are almost no minorities of any sort here. I saw a black guy at the train station this morning and realized he was the first non-Caucasian I’d seen in nearly a week. No Asians, Arabs, Hispanics, nothing. Which makes for a pretty homogeneous culture. You’ve gotta love the variety America offers. The supermarket I shopped at today was huge, but there were barely any fresh vegetables, no lettuce, and when I asked Mihai if there was broccoli, he smiled and shrugged, “Frozen.”
It’s going to be a very long nine months.

A New Dawn

So after a day of touring Bucharest, the National Museum of Cotroceni (part of the presidential palace where we had to wrap our shoes with slippers so as not to disturb the centuries-old Turkish rugs), Ceaussescu's Palace of Parliment, lunch at Caru cu Bere Restaurant, and a visit to Mogosoaia Palace, I soaked in a hot bath and then met Petru and his father Nicolae Margineanu at a really nice Italian place in our neighborhood of embassies and gated older homes, just a block and a half from my hotel. We were seated in a small side room where we started with cappuccinos and then moved on to a variety of delicious treats. Nicolae, one of Romania's top filmmakers, brought me a bag of dvds as a gift. We talked about life and God and movies. I told them some harrowing personal tales, and Nicolae explained that one story in particular had stirred up a memory of a film idea he once had. He laid it out, and the three of us kicked it around while I took notes. Nicolae asked if I would be willing to write a script. A script? Oh yes indeed. We followed the dinner with the most delicious tiramisu ever, and then I walked Nicolae part way home. I feel like I am in heaven, where all I have to do is imagine something before it begins to unfold. This reminds me of the time I hitchhiked from Tampa to Vancouver, when everything was lined up perfectly and I was exactly where I needed to be and the universe responded with bounties of gifts and I was blessed and I knew it then and I know it now.
Besides, I finally slept last night. And this morning, Romanian pop music is being broadcast throughout the neighborhood. Or maybe it's a concert; soon, I'll venture to find out. It's still cold and gray out, maybe even a bit colder today. I've a feeling that winter will come fast and hard. Everyone says that other than the university and a really good theatre that there is nothing to do in Craiova, which suits me just fine. Now I have a project. A writing project. Plus, I'll be taking a class in Romanian culture and language. And traveling weekends. Petru's sister, a playwright, has a new play opening in mid-October at a theatre festival in Timisoara...
Life is good. Everything I've ever done, every place I've visited, every person I've talked with, every relationship, every love, every loss, has led me to where I am right now. Thank you.

Amsterdam to Bucharest

Hello fellow adventurers. It's Wednesday morning and I'm about to traipse out into big bad Bucharest for a day of wonder. I got here yesterday afternoon after spending two days readjusting sleep patterns and getting my land legs. It had been twenty years since I'd last wandered Amsterdam, and it's funny how my perspective has changed. This time around, I spent about an hour walking through the main tourist center with its hash bars and tired, overly made-up prostitutes (why they don't wear different themed costumes is a mystery, it's like somebody told them that men dig women who look like they're made of plastic) and dopey tourists and prowling junkies, and it was like listening to some Journey or Eagles album that you liked as a teenager and haven't heard in twenty years and suddenly you wonder what the hell you were thinking all those years ago. And so Monday I rented a yellow, upright bicycle and pedaled along canals out where the tourists don't roam, past leaning narrow houses and coffee shops and out to park lands and rose gardens and ponds and dogs and families and lovers and it's like I could breathe again, big chest fulls of air, and the wind tore water from my eyes and I ate vegetarian lasagna in an Italian joint and a big calico cat came in off the street and crawled up into my lap and nuzzled against my nascent beard and then later I saw the movie Elegy and though it was sort of New Yorker arty it rubbed very close to the bone; Penelope Cruz gets better and better and it was perhaps some of the most focused acting from Denis Hopper ever.

Flying into Bucharest from Munich, I noticed how the neat orderly landscape had slowly become a little more sloppy and unplanned, a bit like flying over parts of Texas or New Mexico. Weeds peeked out from the worn and weathered runway, and two retired jets, their nose cones amputated, sat idle in the tall grass. It's gray here, and chilly, a prelude of what's to come. But at the airport, one of my long-time fantasies was nearly fulfilled: two men waited with a sign that read "Fulbright," and they greeted me warmly and one of them, the driver, insisted on carrying my bags. Someday, my name on a sign; but this is perfect for now. Mihai Moroiu, the Fulbright rep here, sat beside me in the backseat of the dusty compact and as we inched along through five o' clock traffic he pointed out sights and filled me in on Romanian history and his erudite enthusiasm was contagious so that by the time we turned off the highway onto a tree lined boulevard dotted with foreign embassies, I was wide awake and knew I'd made the right decision in coming here. The Casa Victor Hotel is off on a little side street. My room is spacious, with wooden floors and a large bathtub. There's a large armoire that I've unloaded my suitcase into (the duffel bag, stuffed with winter clothes, squats ready at the foot of the bed), two bedside lights warmed the chill off the room last night, and the low bed, embarrassed by its lumps and springs, creaked apologies every time I moved during the night. The free breakfast was European delicious: great coffee, bread, cheese, salami. I will continue to skip the evil hard-boiled egg portion.

Before I left Tampa, Michelle Young put me in contact with a Romanian actress and teacher whom she met at Larry Silverberg's summer intensive at Eckerd College. Mihaela Sirbu teaches at the National University of Theatre and Arts here in Bucharest and evidently stays very busy. She picked me up in her blue Volvo in front of the hotel last night after a rehearsal, and drove me around town a bit before we returned to this fancy-schmancy neighborhood and we dined at a quiet and smoky place around the corner. Yep, folks in Romania still smoke in restaurants. And so much for trying to be a vegetarian. I ate delicious salmon and we talked acting and music and movies. She's invited me to watch a rehearsal today, a Viewpoints-based performance she'd directing that goes up Thursday night. It's across town, and so I'll crash-course the city metro, and then I meet Petru Margineanu, a film composer and friend of Rozalinda Borcila from USF, for a late lunch.

Thursday, tomorrow, the eight Fulbrighters walk from Hotel Casa Victor to the American embassy for an all day orientation and welcoming dinner. Friday, we're led around the city, Saturday is an off day, and then Sunday I take the three hour train ride to Craiova! I'm able to receive Skype calls (free international telephone via your computer go to www.skype.com) here, but it'll be trickier in Craiova because I will not have internet access at my apartment there, only in my office. Hope you're all doing great. More anon. Kerry