La Revedere Romania

That's it. Last post of my blog. I'm back in Porto, back to life.. the real one. 6 months ago i was arriving in Cluj airport, now i'm at home writing in a computer which is not mine. I'm still with a lot of questions but the biggest one is: who am I now? For sure i'm different than when I left. For sure i don't have the same ambitions, the same dreams. For sure I don't have the same friends, i've a lot of new ones, and some old ones were lost.. but well, i guess that is normal. But Romania changed me, and i just can say: multumesc!

This last month was something beyond this planet. I was trying to leave every minute doing things i normally do in one hour. Every Timisoreana, every conversation, every hug, was like the last one. And well, in the end, there was a lot of last ones. I don't know why but this people liked us (me and Ricardo).. we had one week full of farewell parties and dinners. It was hard to say goodbye to Club A, to Universitate, to my faculty (!!!), to camera 5, my home, to the sicilian embassy (which is not just sicilian anymore), to Revenge, to the metro, to the dogs, to the colours of Bucharest (which is not that dark in the end), to the 66, to the cars in the sidewalks, to the non stop supermarket, to the cloudy sky, to the "buna diminata", the "poftim" and the "ce face?", to Obor, to the taxis, to the cantine, to Lipscani, to the chaos, to Chismigiu, to the mamaliga, to the real Bucuresti, my Bucuresti. Different than the one of the romanians, different than the one of the touristic guides, but for sure similiar to the one of all the lost Erasmus that one day fell down with parashutes in that place.



But besides this city, which I do love now, and I do say it's beautiful somehow, (even if people say i'm lying), there's a lot more that makes me want to take the next plane to Romania. This beautiful country filled me with memories. Cuz that's it, its so worth to go there, even for a few days. Just go there! Brasov, Sibiu, Cluj, the Carpathians are just some examples. Brasov, my first trip, it was the place where i saw the bears, the place where I started to know Javi, and the place where Sylvie was a queen. Sibiu was the first contact with the Italians, and i thank that city for that. Carpathians was my "lonely" trip, but the one where i got more in touch with the culture of the country side, and with the beauty of the its nature.
Cluj. It also passed sometime since the language course. My memories are so focused in Bucuresti now, that i almost forgot that rainy month of September. But now i'm starting to organize everything in my brain, and no one will take me those weeks of romanian, beer on the terraces, bizz and buzz and the good friends i made there.



But, most of all, thank you Romania for the people I met there.

Razvan, Romania
This is an exception. I knew this transylvania giant from before. Much before. And i knew him very well. Slovakia, Porto, Belgium.. our lives met each other, sometimes arranged, others a completely coincidence. He was the main reason who made me chose Cluj, not because he is handsome or smth (he is not, i think), but cuz of his character i was sure that place had to be smth worth to go.

Sylvie, Belgium
My first friend. My buddy. Since the first day till the last in Romania she was always there for me. All the soap operas, with us, with the others, they all had to pass trough our conversations. She helped me a lot. I hope i helped her too.

Margaux, France
My dancing queen. This "francesinha" (little french girl), made me change my opinion about french people. She always have a smile or a burp for you, anytime, just clap your hands and "voila".

Marguerite, France

The Robert Smith from Bordeaux. We proved in the end that shy people can do more than anyone else. You just need a bit of freedom and nice people around.

Giam Paolo and Mauro, Italy
The sardignian citizens. GP, The guy who wakes up at 8h in the morning to go to the mountaings with a bag and the knife and cut mushrooms. Fockin hell! Mauro, the only guy who is proud to say that Romania will be for ever on his face!

Pedro and Luis, Portugal
The portuguese "roomates" in Cluj. With them we were the perfect embassors of Portugal, in the parties, in the football.. just not in the classes.

Ricardo, Portugal
My mate, the guy who was always with me, since the begining to the end. We both had the same experiences.. well, we took differnet directions, but in the end we always filled the tank in the same gas station. And well, at least i will see him almost everyday, unfortunately, not the others.

Marina and Miahela, Romania
The two sisters who helped me more than anyone else to get trained to Bucharest. And if they witnessed this new life of mine, i also can say that i had the pleasure to see their lives growing, even if we just met half a dozen times.

Javier, Spain
My brother. My roomate. With this bastard i had the craziest stories of my Erasmus, people say i was there to take care of him, but what they don't realize is that it was him who took care of me, much more times.

Monika, Poland
My sister. My neighbour. The moon girl which gained my trust one day, the star of Club A, the vodka professional, the one that only a hug was enough to say hello.

Edyta, Poland
The other sister. The angel. Also the neighbour. One of my closest friends of all, but for sure the one I know less about. She's a box of surprises, and well, that's why i can't get rid of her.

Ralf, Germany
My crazy german roomate. With him i learned that you can do miracles with vegetables and that it's possible to be a fisherman and an heavy metal fan.

Fernando, Portugal
The inhabitant of Camera 8. A surprise. Quiet in the first months, but suddenly he revealed all his power. It's a pitty that i leave and i wont be able to see where this guy goes. The creator of one of the Erasmus musics "El belo cognito"

Tudor and Mircea, Romania
My coleagues from CFDP. Without them i coulnt have done anything for the faculty. They helped me with the courses, but most of all, they helped me to understand the treasures of romanian people.

Andrea and Alex, Romania
The ones who brough a romanian smile to our evenings, also amazing romanain food.. and tuica!

Benoit, France
The most peculiar human being living in Bucuresti. A guy wihtout phone, with a beloved serbian girlfriend and with the craziest dancing moves i've ever seen.

Baldo, Italy
Don Baldo. My roomate for one week in the Sicilian embassy. The night instructor of Bucuresti, the guy who never stops (just during the day) and still can get 10 in all the exams, including the language course.

Alessia, Italy
Dona Alessia. Also my flatmate for one week and the craziest girl Bucuresti has ever seen. Don't give her beer, she will give you troubles.. but nice troubles.

Nino, Italy
Don Nino. The calm guy with a killer look. If you have problems over the night, please contact him. Just be worried when he wants to throw you in the Dambovita.

Fanny, Belgium
One of the responsibles to make my english accent change for ever. A christmas gift, my night buddy for more than one month. Things got strange when she left. I was the second Pedro for her, but she will allways be the first for me.

Hector, Spain

The king of the night. Expect everything from him. This guy can steal a Dacia and dress an erotic dress in a club. The hermano from Madrid.

Barbara, Germany

A February aquisition. Short time to meet her, but enough to build a team and destroy (or try to..) some obstacles together.

Susanne, Germany
The jumping frog. We met in Sibiu. We didn't talk by then. For 2 months she tought i didn't like her, so, she was nice to everybody except me. One day in January she realized how wrong she was. And i realized how stupid i was not to talk with her before. But we're both happy that that day came.



Don't get mistaken, there's much more people who marked my erasmus. The ones above were kind of my family. For them I would cross the world.

So, I say now goodbye to my blog. It was quite hard sometimes to find the time to write it, but i kept on because a lof of people was asking for more. I was not expecting so many people to read it, and specially so many different people. My family, my friends here and in Romania even my faculty in Bucuresti (!!!). I just hope i didn't leave bad opinions on you, but anyway, all I wrote was true, and it showed the exact feeling i was having at the time.

And my feeling now that i'm in the most beautiful city in the world, with delicious food on the table, with good coffe on the terrace by the Douro, with warm weather which allows me to be all the night outside in the street, with friends and family coming to see me and welcome me back, is the feeling that i just left a whole life behind, and that life is still running, and i'm back in another life, which also ran during my absence. So i'm now stucked beetween two worlds, and all I wish is to go back.

Go back to the east, to that land over the Danube shores, that warmful country called Romania. And be with all of them again. And live everything again.

There will be always a Romania Calling. I wait..

La revedere!

A beautiful count down

I'm quickly aproaching the end of my stage in Romania. I really don't know what to write about. Let's call this 6 months a final thesis of a degree in "how to survive in romania", and ill start with the final conclusions..

It's strange to read my blog now. All the posts are in 2008, and it looks like it was another life. Everything is so diferent now. My life turned completely upside down on the last two months. By this i don't mean that the first 4 months were just some walk on the desert. No, just read the posts, and you'll know what they meant to me. I will never forget September and Cluj and the amazing people i met there. I will never forget the trips i made, the things i saw, the people i went with. I will never forget the small dinners at the room with Monika and Edyta. It's just that what is perfect don't last forever. And well, some perfect things were over, others are still here with me, others came up.

I'm in love with Bucuresti now. Still not that attractive, it's a fact, but i finally managed how to know it. Now i know the best places to go every single night of the week, the best tea or coffe shop for a relaxing afternoon, the time tables of all the macdonald's in the city centre, the taxis to trust, the magic of piata universitate, all the metro stations of magistrala 1 and 2, the trams, the bus, the controllers and the 50 lei fee for not having a ticket. Still have some visits to pay this last 2 weeks: i want to go to the crazy casinos where you can eat and drink for free, the hospitals for disable children, the ceausescu patrimony (which ive tried to avoid but i cant leave this town without seeing it).

But what got me attached to this place was more than everything, the people i shared my days with. I've a family here. My next aim for the blog is to dedicate a post to all of them. It's going to be hard, they're are a few and there's so much to say about them..


Studying time.. Javi even the beer refused!

It's not funny arriving home at 6am and having a gas bottle in my bed..

Yes! Bacalhau, made by Ricardo! delicious...

Sun is back in Romania, it's time for some naps in the park and coffe on the terraces.



Party at Fanny's. We tasted the "balls of Liege". Nice balls!

The animals of Bucuresti in Laptaria

T-Shirt Party. Noroc!!
Babsi and Suzie (:

Te quiero Sergio!! lalalalala
Universitate





And yes, it's true. Erasmus does change your life.

I'm back!

La multi ani my friends.

My last post was 1 month and 10 days ago. It's a shame, but the truth is luck was not by my side this last month. We lost the net in the residence, my computer was broken, and, adding some other bad things, i was never able to loose some time alone in front of the computer. Also this post wont be like the others.

So, let's try to summarize:

1- i can count 10 christmas dinners, in the room, restaurants, flats, everything. all of them very good.. with tuica, rabanadas, porto, french wine, aletria, roasted chicken, sarmele, kosonov, vodka, timisoreana, coffe, russian salade.. and 10 different families all the time.
2- christmas itself was pretty nice, i kind of had some bad time, i lost the computer in that day, i was sick, and i really did miss my family, but anyway, Cluj was there to support me.
3 - i did snowboard.. or maybe snowboard did me. and my ass.
4 - cold, -10 average. snow in bucharest!! it's nice, in the beggining.. not anymore.
5 - amazing new year's at the sicilian embassy and in the streets of bucharest.
6 - people leaving home.. so i had to meet other ppl. and i dont regret at all.
7 - people arriving from home, and everything starts again, this time it looks like we know them for years.
8 - bucuresti by night is everyday a surprise. i finally found some good places with alternative music but also some clubs with almost naked thin girls dancing in the counter, which was a bit discussing.
9 - kids still blowing rust and glue from bags in the streets, next to ultra modern things like the biggest outdoor screen in eastern europe.
10 - new doormen, who drink our drinks and eat our food, but in the end they clean the dishes.
11 - exams period on the air. still have a lot to comment about this.
12 - javi broke the ankle and he was with two sticks the last two weeks before christmas. amazing to see, specially for the party monster he is.
13 - i lived for a week in the sicilian place. by the end i was speaking italian and eating pasta by breakfast.

13 things to remember. 13 because it was a really bad luck period, but for sure the best till now. And it's just one month till i leave this... paradise.

La revedere!

Wild Beautiful Moldova

Discover Sean Riley & The Slowriders!

Last weekend I was supposed to stay in Bucharest. But I didn't. Because of the elections there was no classes for everybody Friday and Monday, so there were big erasmus parties all the nights. But I got an invitation from Ralf to do a road trip to Moldova, a region in the northeast of Romania, and well, I didn't hesitate. We organize everything so suddenly that it was too quick for Javi so he decided to stay. We still went to this party at our italian friends dorm, where near 50 people joined in small living room. It was great but the next day we had to wake up at 9h so we left early.

The region that surrounds Bucharest is like an african desert. There's nothing but labour fields till the horizon. And some oil refinaries and trash camps from time totime. And it's like that till Bacau, the second city in Moldova, where my french friends from Cluj live.. Poor girls, it's a ugly city with nothing but buildings and horrible churches. Ralf told me that if you want to know the real Romania you have to do some kilometres on the road. And it's true. People from the country side make their lives on the road. Every 300 meters there's a tent or just a car selling wine, onions or honey. There's always people and dogs walking because side walks it's something not invented yet here. You always know when the police is around cuz the cars which come in the other direction warn you with the lights. There's old Dacias carrying furniture on the car, sometimes heavier than the car itself. There's churches, some beautiful, in wood, others being buit, made of concrete and with the domes in gold.. horrible! But above all, there's a lot of life in the road. I wanted to sleep but i couldn't cuz there was always something happening!





So, we payed a visit to Margaux and Marguerite, we got a relaxing tea with the rain outside the window where there were some groups of black crows which make the city even more sad. An hour of break and we drove to Piatra Neamt. It was like a deep breath of fresh air. I would call it a little Brasov. A cute city center and some mountains around with a "telegondola" connecting them. Still we didn'tget to Moldova to see that, we wanted the nature. But we had to sleep on the city, and yeah, it will be a night to remember too, this time not because of alcool or parties or whatever, but because of the Ciorba de Burta, a typical romanian soup made of guts!! Discussing. and the guy coned us, cuz he said it was a soup of beef!! But his english was not that good.. so he did a little big mistake. In theend we couldn't eat that thing. But at least we had a nice DVD playing on the tv of the restaurant: Cristian Rizescu. Crazy! Folk romanian music, guys and girls dancing in a circle where there was "Mamaliga" being cooked, and two guys singing in the center with "Vin Firt" in the hands.. Nice birthday gift to the family.. or not..





In the next day we went to Durau. A mountain resort in the Ceahlau National Park, where there's no one living besides the people working in the pensions
and the priests in the Monestery. And bears. In the way we had some amazing views which reminded me Açores, our islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Well, how
can I compare something in the middle of the sea with smth in the east of the most eastern country of European Union? It's easy when lakes and forest join together in this breathtaking valleys. Up the hill and we arrived in the village. And well, enough with travelling.. This is the place. I spent in Durau two days, relaxing, walking, climbing and specially, enjoying the still hidden treasuor of Romania: Its natural patrimony.



We came back in the 2nd of December, one day after the national day. 1st of December of 1918, the day when Moldova, Valachia and Transylvania joined together to create the place where 90 years later a portuguese little guy reached happiness: Romania. There was a huge parade in Bucharest, it should have been nice to see. Javi had his own celebration as you can see in the picture.. We also had the first football game since Cluj. Again Latins but this time against Romanians (and Ralf).. We were kicked in the ass but we had to be nice with the natives.

My bed..

We're out of internet in the residence because some stupid people stole the switches. So no internet till January (at least).



Anyway, I will survive. It's not difficult now. Not difficult at all.