Yes, some people still use a horse and buggy as their primary mode of transportation in Romania.

Romania, Romania, Romania…where to begin? I’ll be brief. Let’s do this by bullet point:

• Food: creamy, meaty, smelly, and always tasty
• Housing: tiny, tidy, smoky, and the oven is always occupied.
• People: joyful, thoughtful, prideful, and just plain full.
• Drink: homemade, strong, deserving of suspicion, and definitely illegal in the U.S. of A.

I was never hungry in Romania. Nor was I hungry for three or four days after my return. We finished a meal and Laura began asking us what we wanted for the next. In the breaks between meals (it was like the break after running your leg of a tag-team race), she would bring out slices of fresh oranges and a plate full of bite-sized cakes that you reached for again and again not against your will, but against your better judgment.

Christmas Eve comes and we bake in the kitchen all day preparing cakes and soups and salads with fresh homemade cream and mayonnaise, and lots and lots of garlic (I’m sure I still have some in my system, even now). I asked Laura as we were leaving things to chill in the refrigerator, “How are we going to get these things to your sister’s house for dinner?” To which Laura replied, “We are NOT taking these to her house! These are for us!” Oh?

At about 8 or 8:30 pm, we headed out of the house to have Christmas Eve dinner in the home of Laura’s brother and sister-in-law, which is where the big family dinner happened, and where I almost ate my way into my very own grave.

Upon arrival, the family members present asked Leanne (girlfriend from Australia) and I to sing a traditional English Christmas carol, so we sang Silent Night and everyone applauded and smiled and kissed us and herded us to the table, which was big and full of sliced ham, turkey, salami, bread, strawberries, ripe cherry tomatoes, bottles of campari (the most wicked of all alcoholic beverages), juice, white wine and only one bottle of water (fizzy). I’m thinking, “Well, good. These are all things that I like and won’t have to explain why I haven’t chosen to eat an item or two. “ But, just as I finished my second and final serving from this course, the host swept away what was left and planted a second course on the table. This time we were having what seemed to be egg rolls drenched in an oily-spicy-tomato kind of syrup/sauce. They were delectable. And then they were even better when they brought out the homemade heavy cream that you are supposed to dollop on top. At this point, I am beyond stuffed. No one says anything when I ask if there is going to be more. Leanne and I are trying not to gasp as the host heads to the kitchen to bring in a third course: Meat. Pork chops the size of both of your hands put together. Baked chicken wings, bratwurst the size of a child’s forearm. I’m thinking I might cry if I have to eat another bite, and then Laura seizes my plate in order to plop one of each in the center. I look at her pleadingly to put one or all three back on the serving platter. She insists.

Thank goodness she did not insist that I eat one of the big tomatoes that had been naturally cooking in a basin of highly acidic vinegar all day. I was curious, but not able to hold anything more! And just so you know, as the bottles of beverage were emptied with each course, pitchers filled with family recipe wine were brought out and the men kept watch so as to refill our glasses as we got within an inch of the bottoms. I’ve never been in such pain!

Family members wandered in and out of the house through the night, singing traditional songs as gifts to Leanne and I, sharing stories with their family in their native tongue, asking Laura and Florin about their English speaking guests, touting babies and young children…Finally, at two thirty in the morning, after another round of the first course, a digestive (more wine, but even stronger), and some dessert, we headed for home. First thing out of Laura’s mouth the next morning was “What will you eat?” Dear me! I think I said something like, “Only a cup of coffee this morning, please,” to which she reacted by scooping out a portion of salad and two big hunks of bread. I promise, one will never go hungry in Romania.

The pictures I posted previously are from the mountains of the Transylvania and Moldova regions of Romania. Beautiful, huh? Words cannot describe the awe that I experienced as we drove up and down the mountains, in and out of valleys, from views of snow glistening under the intense sunlight into the darkness of a deep crevice resembling the icy kingdom of the nemesis in Narnia. Truly incredible, you’ll need to see it to believe it.


hmmm, not so brief after all:)