Happy New Year Everyone!

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It snowed yesterday in Bucharest

Back in California

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Our plane landed at San Francisco airport about 12 hours ago. It's about 3.00 in the morning local time, and I can't sleep. That's because I've slept in the afternoon - against Cris's advice - being tired because I didn't sleep on the plane - again, against Cris's advice. I don't know why I wasn't able to sleep on the plane. I usually do. The flight was pretty smooth. We had seats in an exit row, so I had place to stretch. I watched two French movies which were ok, nothing memorable. I tried to read but didn't get too far. We had an hour layover in Paris and I was afraid we won't catch our connection but we did. In my opinion, CDG is a well organized airport.

The apartment smells a bit funny. It's going to take a few days until the smell goes away. I thought I'm going to feel a bit weird after being away for so long. After all, we stayed in Romania for more than 4 months. But I found the place as familiar as always, finding my things around the house like I just left yesterday. I looked out the window at the view. It was a bit foggy but I took a picture.



The car started at the first turn of the key, so no towing this time. Cris went to the Russian store on Clement and 32nd and now we even have food in the fridge. Of course we forgot something in the fridge when we left and that something almost came alive during these four months. One thing we noticed was how quiet the apartment was in the afternoon. In Bucharest there's always dogs barking, cats meowing, the neighbor remodeling his apartment, cars passing, children yelling. Here it was so quiet. I guess it's because we live on a hill, away from the hustle and bustle of downtown.

Today I'm going to be very tired. And I have 4 months of mail to go through. A long weekend just started.

I know what you did last summer

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Summer is almost over. In one week Cris and I will return to California where there will be a lot of work waiting for us. Plenty of things to do, some unpleasant - like taxes - and some pleasant ones - like a trip to Yellowstone mid-September. The last week in Bucharest was somewhat boring, with us trying to put affairs in order before our leave. Our main activity this week was fighting over bills with the construction company that oversees the remodeling of our house. Since I don't image who will be interested in this subject I decided to write about the summer that will be ending in a few days. It was a summer full of activities and events. A summer in which we made a lot of new friends and met with many of the old friends. What else have we done this summer? Bucharest had a few great events in which we took part, like the Depeche Mode or the Gotan Project concerts.

I saw a couple theater plays, including a very good "Heart of a Dog" by Bulgakov at the National Theater. We met a group of people obsessed with tango and we took part in a few milongas, out of which we organized two of them. We celebrated 10 years of marriage. We threw a bunch of bbqs on the terrace of the house before the construction workers started ripping it apart. We went horse-riding for the first time in our lives, somewhere in Corbeanca near Bucharest. We went to Bookfest, the annual book fair in Bucharest. We went to the seaside in Mamaia, and to the mountains at Muntele Rosu, Cheia, to Timisoara and Belgrade.

We took a trip to the south of France, visiting Saint-Tropez, Cannes, Nice and Monaco. We had a great time in France, making friends and drinking a lot of rose wine. We've been to Sighisoara for the Medieval Festival. All in all it was a good summer. Except the last week of June, but that's a different story.

Here comes another blogger

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So... here it is. The first post of my new blog. For a long time I wanted to start a blog but until now I've been too lazy to do it. I didn't know much about blogs until about six months ago when I was doing research about visiting Argentina and I ran into a blog written by an American living in Buenos Aires. I liked that blog a lot. I still read it daily. From there I started discovering the world of blogs . And about two months ago I decided to start my own.

It wasn't easy coming up with a name. First I though to call it "A Tale of Two Cities" based on the fact that I'm now sharing my time between Bucharest and San Francisco. But that seemed a bit too easy. I also thought of the name "The Wild West & The Wild East" based on the same idea, that I would be writing mostly from San Francisco and Bucharest, the Southwest USA and the Eastern Europe. But the name seemed too long and somewhat boring. In the end I settled for the name "Roads of Romania" because that's where I'm from and no matter where I am geographically I see the world with Romanian eyes. I grew up in Romania and culturally I will always be a Romanian product. The "roads" of Romania don't have to be physical roads. They can be mental roads as well, the way I interpret everything through my Romanian upbringing. So "Roads of Romania" it is.

When thinking about the blog I had to make another decision. What language will I be using? I want my English-speaking friends to be able to read it, but I would also like to write in Romanian. I see no other way out but to keep a bilingual blog. Which I will be trying to do in the months following. It might take me a little while to figure out how to do this but I'll try to do my best. I already came up with a Romanian version of the title. I called it "Prin Romania".

And here ends my first post.