Category: bucharestian

I didn't know the worst part this time would be the lady with a knife sticking out of her.

Peter was up all night writhing around in pain, whimpering about how something wasn't right. He kept getting up and walking around our bedroom. Sleeping going on last night: none.

Not trying to score pity points with his mussed look, this morning he made himself pretty for his own med unit and walked miserably to the car, prescribing himself an ultrasound. At work, Gabby, Getta and Ouana, his amazing staff, went into immediate action, taking his temperature, blood pressure and blaming a local restaurant. 

The med unit crew insisted on an ambulance. "For safety." (I guess I shouldn't have let him take that shower without back-up.) Nothing like a Monday morning, first-day-back-after-the-holidays wheel chair ride to the curb, where flight-suited cigarette-scented paramedics covered Peter-on-a-gurney with a blanket and slid him into the ambulance.

On the way to the hospital, Gabby, Peter's nurse, formerly head of nurses at the very Floreasca hospital we were headed to, made a phone call to the head of emergency. The perimedics rolled Peter into the shiny new half of the state hospital. Behind us in the old half, continuing her wait, a gypsy lady with impressive sideburns. 

They stuck Peter with needles–I knew he must be feeling out of it because he didn't even bother to faint–got an IV going, asked the same questions a lot of times about his so-bad-he-threw up pain. Doctors taking histories, nurses–who wear scrubs covered up with bathrobes, while the patients stay dressed–more doctors. Gabby waves at everyone and they come over to kiss her and wish her La Multi Ani, Happy New Year. A technician wheels in a monitor and Gabby threatens Peter with a trans-vaginal ultrasound. In two seconds the tech finds kidney stones. He then spends five more minutes touring Peter's other organs, "There is the apendix that isn't the problem."

In spite of Peter's entertaining innards, the big show is two beds over. A lady with an eye-catching mylar blanket has her arm wrapped up as if someone hadn't been sure what to do, so they kept wrapping. "She was stabbed," Gabby tells me. Ugh. I try not to look. Me not looking observes, she's lying on her side, wearing an oxygen mask, the flashy mylar has slipped down to expose her breasts. The knife, still impaled, enthroned on a mound of gauzed-up shoulder, points its handle to the ceiling. Her husband stabbed her, Gabby tells me. I send the lady good vibes, prayers, white light, good wishes that she never gets a kidney stone. Poor thing.

Peter meanwhile has been given pain meds and now makes pee jokes. The head internist checks in, a surgeon comes by to declare surgery unnecessary. Whew. I really didn't want to have to call London to find out how to medivac Peter myself. Gabby gently rolls Peter's sleeves back down and buttons his cuffs.

On the top of my do-not-want list: kidney stones. But the hospital staff was thorough and kind, Peter got to come home the same day in a car, pretty much all put back together, with a typical European-style laundry list of meds. Every time they opened another tube package or another specialist showed up to shake hands and hear Peter's history, I added, American-style, another line to the hospital bill: cha-ching, cha-ching. In the end, the final cost for the hospital visit: 0 dollars, 0 cents.

On the way back to the Embassy, Gabby asked for money to buy Peter's meds and I gave her 400 RON, hoping it was enough for the load of antispasmotics, antibiotics. She came back with a shopping bag full of pharmaceuticals and two-thirds of the money. She'd spent $15.

The worst part last time was that it happened in a hotel room in the middle of the night in Ougadougou and Peter and were so alone.  

This time, Peter went back to the Embassy for a short time and Gabby brought him noodles with butter and soup from the cafeteria.

Romania-care. Boom.

I read a piece this week on the most Halloween-y places to be and I can't believe they didn't even mention Bucharest. I'm not even playing the Dracula wine-lable card here! It's been a gorgeous 31 days of Halloween.

Our housing compound, or "territory" as our neighbor calls it, threw a huge blow-out block party on Saturday where we went through 125 pieces of candy, some of which I even gave out to kids. By the end of the evening we were giving away little apples, which wow, does that slow down the frequency of the door-bell ringing! We have a 70-kid trick-or-treat party planned at work, so visions of arched-back cats and jack-o-lanterns dance non-stop in my head. Maybe Salem casts a more Halloween vibe, or New Orleans, but San Francisco? No way. With the changing leaves, chilly mornings, plaster skulls for sale in the art shop and crosses planted on the side of the roads where ravens stalk the fields…this is the place.

In Moscow we heard the radio in cabs and blaring over the loud speaker from the skating rink out our bedroom window–Mageec eeeeeef eeeeeem–but I didn't hear the same songs enough that any became familiar.

Like cigarette smoke, Romanian pop music constantly wafts through the air. And like the cigarette smoke, I've gotten use to it and sort of enjoy my new addiction.

Top 40 radio, or more like Top 10-at-Most radio, accompanies us constantly: in the car, at the grocery store, at the dentist, and playing on my co-worker's computer as I walk past her office. On the school bus the kids are exposed to second-hand songs. Our hatred of Broken Angel unifies us.

O stea They don't play this song O Stea enough, (click the gray bar to hear! it's good!) even though it's number 8 this week. During Ceausescu times songs had to be in Romanian, so as a backlash Romanian songs are sometimes in English. I like my Romanian pop in Romanian.

Apa (feat Cabron) If I make a Bucharest video this number-one-song-this-week will be the score, since I can picture the Arc de Triumf, Herstreau Park, people making left hand turns from the right lane and Bucharest going by frame by frame. For a while these posters of the singer plastered Bucharest. Guess we missed hearing Apa live.

A friend who recently moved to Moscow really misses hearing the band Smiley on the radio. When we aren't living in Romania I will miss the soundtrack of Romanian pop hanging in my hair and clinging to my clothes.

As much as Moscow was about snow and ice rinks, and Niger was about going to see the giraffes, these songs are about parking on the sidewalk, buying freshly baked pretzels after class on Piata Amzei, the smell of turpentine, having an 11 and 15 year old, and life in Bucharest right now. Back then.

KissFM is here, if you want to hear what it sounds like to live here or in case it's been more than five minutes since you've heard Casablanca.

Normally if I get a headache or have some pain, I take what Peter calls the placebo dose of Advil: one pill. I was taking the maximum dose, four pills every 6 hours and cheating and taking them every 5 and half hours, plus Tylenol in between and the pain was still so bad, I'd have to get out of bed and pace around the room, making the dog think I've lost something.

I like to have my dentistry done in the U.S. by my cousin, who is my favorite dentist not because he is my cousin or because he is a dear, sweet man but because he was number one in his class.

Then if I need a crown, I like to have my sister's lab make it, not only because she is my sister, but because hers is the crown I can't find in my mouth because it looks and feels so natural and beautiful.

So I'm up all night, the president may or may not be re-elected, and I'm doing school, drawing and painting in the evenings, and doing four events at work in two days. Peter isn't here to arrange a dentalvac and clearly, I don't have time to go.

Dr. Christina in the med unit has loaded me up, European-medicine style: medicine, a medicine to make the medicine not give me a stomach ache, a back-up medicine, a heavy duty-medicine, an antibiotic and an ointment. A full trick-or-treat bag of cures that don't help me sleep at night.

I decide to see the Romanian dentist.

She's nice and I like her name, Roxana Karin, and I'm kind of namist. The office is plain, but nice enough and it's clean. The instruments and equipment look just like at home, Dr. Karin wears gloves when she examines me. She does a panorama xray of my head and determines the potential problem tooth and then sends me out for another xray. I've never not just had bitewings taken at the dentist, but okay. I take a taxi across town.

I visit an xray clinic that operates McDonalds-style. A white-scrubs-wearing person takes your order. You take a seat on a green plastic chair. In about five minutes they mispronounce your name.

They lead-apron you up, take the xray and shoo you back to the green chairs. In two minutes they mispronounce your name again. You go to the counter pay 10 lei–3 dollars–and they hand you your xray in a to-go bag.

I took a taxi back to the dentist where she decided I needed a root canal. When I told a friend I was going to a Romanian dentist for a root canal, he said, "Are you a Scotch drinker?"

The worst part of the root canal was having to have to drive myself to an unfamiliar place at night–the appointment was at 8 pm. Dr. Karin did the procedure by herself, only using an assistant for about two minutes. She didn't suit up like I'm hazardous material in the way dentists normally do now, but she wore gloves and the assistant disinfected everything. Afterwards, she filled the tooth, no crown needed she said. 

Obama continues to be our president and Peter got home from Albania. An hour after I arrived at the dentist, I walked out with a numb face, went home and slept all night. 

The cost of the procedure: 200 lei, $75. Well, plus the $3 for the xray.

A door going into the National University of Fine Arts in Bucharest, the inscription reads "Torture Chamber."

Half the buildings, which surround a tree-lined courtyard, have just had their guts torn out, awaiting renovation.

Easels, benches, broken pieces of glass, textile and ceramic projects and every other kind of unclaimed artwork have been dragged out of the building. You can imagine what a hard time I had not walking away with everything on the street.

On the renovated side of the courtyard, new windows, plaster and mosaics adorn the alma mater of Constantine Brancusi.

A few rough patches still show on the fixed-up side, but it's more than half way to beaux-arts beautiful. I wish I knew when they were getting rid of that door.